When Fisting Becomes Part of Your Identity

I've been thinking a lot about what happens when a sexual practice becomes more than something you do.

For some people, FF is simply a form of sexual exploration. For others, it can become a significant part of how they understand themselves, their bodies, their sexuality, and even their place within a community.

A recent study by Jarred Martin explored exactly this question. Through interviews with 32 gay men in South Africa who engage in fisting, Martin looked at how participants made sense of their sexual identities through the stories they told about FF. He identified six overlapping narratives: the kinkster, the explorer, the athlete, the expert, the lover, and the community member.

I found this fascinating because these aren't necessarily six different types of fister. Someone can see themselves as an explorer while also seeing themselves as an expert. They can approach FF as an athlete while also placing a huge amount of importance on intimacy and connection. These narratives can overlap and change over time.

What they have in common is that they give people a way to make meaning out of their experiences.

The kinkster narrative can provide a sense of identity around engaging in something outside conventional sexual expectations. The explorer can frame FF as a process of curiosity, discovery, and pushing into something unfamiliar. The lover places intimacy, care, and pleasure at the center of the experience. The community member connects FF to something larger than an individual sexual encounter.

Then there are the athlete and expert narratives, and this is where things get particularly interesting to me.

There's nothing inherently problematic about developing skill. In fact, I think skill is one of the things that makes FF so intriguing. Learning how your body responds, developing patience, understanding what you're experiencing, and becoming more confident in your abilities can all be incredibly meaningful parts of the practice.

But the study also found something else.

For some participants, fisting was described in terms of athletic achievement and exclusivity. The physical endurance, preparation, perseverance, and dedication involved could become sources of status. Some participants described fisting as an "elite" form of sexual activity, with the implication that not everyone could participate at the same level.

And this is where I think we should pause.

Because there's a difference between being proud of what you've learned and believing that what you've learned makes you better than someone else.

Those aren't the same thing.

Expertise can be empowering. It can give someone confidence and help them become a better play partner. It can also create a culture of mentorship, where people with more experience pass knowledge along to people who are just starting out.

But expertise can also become status.

Once experience becomes a marker of where you sit within a community, it's easy to create an implicit hierarchy. There are beginners, experienced players, experts, and people who are perceived as being at the top. The study's findings around the athlete narrative suggest that this hierarchy can sometimes become part of how fisters understand their own sexual identity.

And I think this is worth talking about because FF is already such a niche practice.

For many people, finding other fisters can be a really affirming experience. Suddenly, something that may have felt unusual or difficult to talk about is something you can openly explore with other people who understand it.

But belonging can also create its own boundaries.

Who gets to feel like they belong? Who is welcomed into the community? Who is treated as knowledgeable? Who is seen as desirable? Who is considered experienced enough to have something worth saying?

The study touches on this in another important way through participants of color. While White participants generally did not discuss race as part of their experience of being a fister, some participants of color described having to think about race when entering fisting spaces and communities. Their experiences included both concerns about racial exclusion and experiences of fetishization.

That distinction matters.

A community can be a place where you finally feel understood while still being a place where you don't necessarily feel equally welcome.

I think that's an uncomfortable but important thing for any subculture to examine.

It's easy to celebrate the community aspects of FF, and I think there is a lot worth celebrating. People find friendship, intimacy, education, and a sense of belonging through these spaces. Martin's research shows how strongly those communal experiences can contribute to the way people understand themselves as sexual beings.

But communities aren't automatically inclusive simply because they exist around a shared interest.

They are made up of people. And people bring their own ideas about status, desirability, race, experience, bodies, and belonging with them.

That doesn't mean we should shame the community.

It means we should pay attention to the culture we're creating within it.

For me, that's one of the most interesting things about these six narratives. They show that FF can become a way of understanding yourself. You can be the explorer who is discovering something new, the athlete who takes pride in developing their abilities, the expert who has accumulated knowledge, the lover who finds intimacy through the experience, the kinkster who embraces something outside conventional sexuality, or the community member who finds belonging among people who understand it.

You can be several of these at once.

But I think there's a question worth asking as we develop those identities:

Are these identities helping us understand ourselves, or are they becoming measures of our worth?

Because I don't think someone needs to be an expert to have a meaningful relationship with FF.

You don't need years of experience to belong.

You don't need to be able to do what someone else can do.

And you certainly don't need to turn your experience into a competition.

There's value in getting better at something, being proud of your experience, and finding people who share an interest that once felt difficult to explain.

But I think there's an equally important value in remembering why we started exploring in the first place.

Curiosity. Pleasure. Connection.

And the freedom to discover what FF means to you, rather than what it needs to mean in order for you to earn a place within someone else's hierarchy.

That's the part of this research that stayed with me.

—Danny Mercer

If you'd like to read the study

Martin, J. H. (2025). Fisting subjectivity: Narratives of sexual subjectivity among gay fist-fuckers. The Journal of Sex Research, 62(3), 398–410. https://doi.org/10.1080/00224499.2024.2339521