The Fat in Infatuation

I had originally planned to write something once a week and see how that goes but a recent conversation with a fellow gay man and sometime kinkster prompted this response. By the time you read this the post will likely be edited because I don't plan on posting anything in the heat of the moment so I will write this and then come back and edit it before posting. Anyway the kink I share with this friend of mine, whom I'll call J, is wrestling; we met last year when I visited IML and lined up a wrestling match with a great heel I met through globalfight, a wrestling personals site. Well J was staying with him and we had a match just the two of us. He was great fun, a creative wrestler and let's face it incredibly hot; I mean could be in a porno hot. Either way we exchanged contact info and I've been IMing him ever since. Our conversations are usually about wrestling and I've even had him over to my place for a weekend of wrestling and sexy time. I count him a friend, as much of a friend as you can be on the internet. I've counseled him when he felt depressed, got him to feel better about himself, though I doubt my counselling skills from time to time - I mostly just let him rant and answered questions he had. I thought we had a pretty good intellectual relationship and we debated about politics, economics; he the skeptic, pessimistic anarchist and I the optimistic, humanist socialist. Sometimes this political difference led to me trying to argue away from his rationalizing of mass extinction but I digress. Anyway I thought him to be a very intelligent person who didn't necessarily need or require a college degree.

The one area we continuously disagreed on was the issue of physical beauty and aesthetics.  Now before today,  I had disagreed with him about who we thought was attractive, who was "worth" talking to and setting up matches with. Sometimes I agreed with him in how we both didn't want to wrestle someone 40lbs over our own weight, mostly because of the size imbalance and the worry of injury. But today I noticed a more, well, uncomfortable side to this discussion. He commented to me that a man was hitting on him who was 80lbs over his weight limit and who consistently tried to set up a match with him, despite being turned down. The man in question, apparently, took great offense and said J was "not that attractive"- a rather natural reaction in my view to being rejected. I've felt that as well when guys either snub me or tell me they aren't interested. I realize the ego does that to save face.

But my friend's reaction irked me. Rather than brushing it off he ranted about how he was in the top 2-4% of attractiveness of all humans. I joked that he wasn't being too humble and he retorted that he was being humble, just taking pride in himself.  I then said I was referring to the notion that one could be within the top 2-4% of attractiveness. Now I am not aware of any "objective" scale of beauty to which one could apply to themselves. Most supposedly "objective" scales of beauty are actually based on Rennaissance or classical ideals of beauty which have proven to be Eurocentric in the extreme and limiting to a great many people even of European background. Objective in this case would need to be free of cultural bias, free of subjective understandings of beauty. Now things like the golden mean reveal mathematical "beauty" but when one applies it to aesthetics of human beings it comes up against deeply ingrained patterns and modes of behavior and beliefs. If one knows anything about Bourdieu's habitus one knows that (and I paraphrase grossly) these deeply ingrained and reproduced patterns of beliefs and structures become solidified in people's minds through relationships of power and become seen as natural. It is because of these deeply ingrained power systems that folk definitions of things like beauty and attractiveness tend to exclude non-white and darker skin, differently-abled bodies, fat, kinky or curly hair etc.

Words like athleticism, masculine, fitness etc. come to be code words that exclude a great many people and categorize them as undesirables. These are not natural or objective standards of beauty because they can and do shift over time; they vary across cultures, belief systems and even vary with regard to gender, race, class and sexual orientation. If all people operated under a standard, universal, and instinctual idea of beauty and bodily aesthetic, then you wouldn't have the Bear community, or feeders and eaters, or historical accounts that reveal that in our recent human past fat was indicative of health, beauty and wealth and desired, especially in times when food was hard to come by. Beauty is so complex and varied a concept that I doubt there can be any standard of beauty that is not subjective, much less able to be ranked.

Well needless to say my comments did not go over well. One comment that irked me through the entire debate was that he called people "whales". Well that did not sit well with me and I asked that he not use the term because it was demeaning to people.  I write this long ambling blog post because the interaction made me wonder about my own prejudices against people based on size. The website we are both on has people list what body type they are interested in and I, to my own chagrin, stated I am interested in guys around my size. Now I realize I am no spring-chicken. I have a flabby stomach, pecs that droop and wobbly-bits around the waist and arms. But relative to many people I am small in frame, some might say twinkish (though i deny that label and hate it with a passion).

But that restriction, that limitation, tells a lot about us. We  view body size and mass as having some importance when it comes to physical attractiveness. We like to say it's about "health" or "stamina" but the truth is it isn't. If it were about health we'd be looking for guys with blood pressures below 120/80 for an adult male or the optimal blood flow for extrenuous, physical activity like sex or even wrestling. We'd be talking about whether a guy can run up stairs without heaving rather than talk about waist in relation to shoulder width or whether a guy has a "gut". If it were about health we'd talk about a host of other measures besides appearance and size, but we don't.  Now this is more than just a kink thing, it's more than just a gay thing - we see this attitude in practically every site, personals or comment about aesthetic beauty. Since this blog is about kink I'll limit it to that.

Now to me it makes some sense, in a wrestling fetish and even in bondage, to have a partner that is physically able and healthy. Such strenuous and stress-filled activity requires a particular stamina and flexibility to avoid dangerous things like heart attack, pinched nerves, choking, pulled muscles and worse. In wrestling specifically weight is important because weight imbalance between opponents can lead to injury, especially if both are novices and have little experience in the sport. During the winter of 2011 I wrestled a young man who was around 250lbs; I had decided to join a group that practiced wrestling moves and thought it would benefit me in my kinky life. Well I was paired with another novice who happened to outweigh me by at least 90lbs. He was tall and a former football player so it had nothing to do with "fat", but he was heavy. I suffered a pulled ankle tendon when he fell on top of me and it was totally my fault, I was the one who didn't know how to fall. But since then I have put a limitation to weight in my profiles. But a part of me wonders and realizes how much such a limitation smacks of fat-phobia.

I won't lie, I have sizeist tendencies. I have always been attracted to those guys who are lithe and have an "elvish" frame. They draw my attention and I am, admittedly, more willing to talk to them if they hit on me than guys with paunches or a little extra girth. It's a part of me that I'm barely coming to grips with and trying to work through. As I realized my own negative attitudes around fat I've tried to make myself more inviting to people of different bodies than my usual "type". My profile on the wrestling site states,

"I'm looking to have fun, any range of wrestling is good with me as long as it's  

active and fun and not just going through the motions. Key word here is active, not  

necessarily rough but requiring stamina and energy...

I prefer guys close to my body type, though slightly bigger in muscle is also a 

welcome change of pace. I used to have an age limit but it really depends on the     

fitness level of my opponent. If you are have trouble  breathing or get  tired easily 

I will be cautious about wrestling you since I am not  CPR certified."

Admittedly I'm still not happy with it. Before it used to be much more ageist and sizeist and in the use of English it is hard to skirt the line between discerning and exclusionary. I want to not sound this way but at the same time I know my body and deeply-brainwashed mind will react to specific body types and shapes. That isn't to say I haven't derived pleasure from "bigger" guys. The best (receptive) anal sex I ever had was with a guy who one could argue was "fat" but he made me laugh and cum, a lot. One of the better experiences at IML in 2012 was with a guy who was "overweight", he was an expert bondage master and so lovingly dominant and experienced I trusted him to lead me around the market tied to two other guys. And the guy at whose house I first met J also had a little more girth on him than the ideal, and i had a lovely time wrestling him because he was strong and this little jobber boy enjoyed being tossed about a bit. 

In my personal life I've loved and been loved by friends and family (chosen and biological) who struggle with weight, fat and health and most importantly against society's attitudes about them. I've seen them diet, exercise and torture themselves to fit a certain ideal; and even though they are beautiful people I still see that look on their face when they realize they still don't fit that "beautiful" ideal. I see the pain and loss of self-esteem when they worry about how they look in specific clothes, or when they jokingly call themselves fat. It hurts because I don't like to see them in pain, pain that I know I can cause to strangers. 

Despite these experiences though I still, sadly, judge the photos of guys online. I don't pay so much attention at gay bars to men who fit a specific shape and I unfortunately do have a "type". I am not a bear lover, at least not sexually, though I admire the joy they take in their bodies and how carefree they seem to be. I confess these things to make it known that I am not trying to critique from some lofty academic and progressive, queerer-than-thou perch. I don't have it figured out. I suffer through the questioning and nervousness that most socially conscious people do when they encounter racism, sexism, and all the other isms in their communities and most importantly in themselves. It's a questioning I think most gay men and especially kinksters need to go through, because as an excluded and marginalized class of people we should not be excluding others within our own communities. We should be questioning how easy it is for us to make fun of the "whales", the "old guys", the dikes or trannies, because we can. We should question why it makes us feel better and realize it stems from our own pathetic need to make ourselves feel better as men, as sexual beings, as ourselves. 

If this made any sense or if you have any advice to offer please let me know. I'm still trying to grow. 

The family

I don't know why I started this week's blog talking about family; maybe it's because I am currently spending the month of July with them. Staying with my family is great, I love them and ever since I came out to them wheeeeww almost 10 years ago they have loved and supported me. I was lucky, not too many kids get that. I'm not saying they threw me a coming out party, and there was definitely struggle. My mom was a big fag hag in high school so she was just worried I would meet the wrong kind of people that would hurt me, she lost friends to AIDS and I imagine that was front and center when I told her I was bi (I came out as gay a year or two later, for me being bi was a transition). My dad took a bit more work, he wouldn't really look me in the eye for a couple of years after I told him and never wanted to bring it up; it took a while but now he treats it as an unchangeable thing about me, like my vegetarianism or my hair color. Once I started dating guys it became easier, they could wrap their head around it I suppose.

At the same time I was developing an understanding of my gay feelings I was also developing a taste for the kinkier side of life. Plain Jane vanilla porn just didn't do it for me. I craved story, drama even, and then I discovered gay wrestling.

It had everything, hot guys, sweat, action and best of all spandex. As a long time comic book fan I was deeply turned on by tight clothes and spandex, I even joined the swim team my freshman year of high school because I was drawn to the speedos. That was my first kink, spandex and wrestling, and I guarded it like crazy.Gay feelings was one thing but to be turned on by clothes was just weird, right? There were a lot of buts in those early days that kept me from fully identifying and keeping the kink part of me secret. Sure there are kinky guys: but they live in New York or San Francisco; but they're mostly jocks; but they're white; but they wouldn't want someone like me (short, flaco, brown).

It didn't help that my home town's gay community was mostly composed of gay bars and that's it. Any social media sites I went on like gay.com or kinky sites like gearfetish, eyeofthcyclone or globalfight the kinky guys were elsewhere, not here. Sure I heard rumors of a leather scene in my hometown on the border, but I never actually met anyone. Salvation came in a guy from Mexico, across the border, who was willing to meet up and roleplay a little bondage. I was new to bondage, not even sure what I wanted in either a bondage session or a roleplay. I knew I was into KO porn so I wanted to try that. The experience was amazing, it felt so great to actually do something kinky, even if it was just getting "knocked out" in my speedos, tied up and felt by some guy, who would turn out to be a pretty good friend.

The reason I bring this up is because my kink side is something I still hide from my family; while I have met plenty other kinky guys who do want me and who are also non-white, it for some reason can't see myself sharing that part of my sexual life with my parents who love me. I've read excellent blogs about guys who live their public lives in the kink world, guys who compete for IML, guys who have shared their kinkiness with their families, to mixed results. Some like Tynan Fox are definitely courageous and bring greater and greater publicity to kink. And with that comes acceptance, and that gives this kinkster some hope.

But here's the thing, as a Latino I can't readily talk to my parents about sex. Do they know I have sex, of course, but with my family it's a silent thing, something that everyone knows but no one cares to talk about. It wasn't until last year that I began even saying I had sexual attraction and to what type of guys! I have no doubt my parent's have stolen glances at my computer screen when I am on kinkster sites, chatting it up with my friends and bless them they have never said anything. So what keeps me mortified from telling them what I am gaining more confidence in when i talk to fellow graduate students? Do I not trust them to be understanding? Do I think there is a limit to their progressive Catholicism? Do I still think it is only something educated middle-class people can understand and my kind, gentle, Latino parents would be mortified by anything remotely kinky? Because in the end that's internalized racial bullshit, but it's powerful bullshit, it's bullshit that I know is shit, I know intellectually it's shit, but I can't stop thinking it's real.

So here it goes...

Well, I guess this is where things start getting a little strange. I never thought about putting together a blog before, certainly not a blog dealing with kink issues; I tend to stay publicly quiet about such things both for reasons of privacy as well as in consideration for my parents who do indeed accept me for being gay, but might need a bit of work should I ever tell them I am into kink. The reason behind this blog, I suppose, is that I have read a lot of blogs out there dealing with kink, most of them extremely good and wonderful. However I haven't read one, really that deals with kink in the way I have gotten to know it, from an academic perspective. As a graduate student studying sex, kink and sex are not just hot and steamy things that people do but actual activities where people act out their ideas about race, sex, gender and class, as well a a whole host of stuff.

So I thought that might be where this blog will head. In my travels through the kink world I've been finding lots of interesting things and fascinate, terrify and confuse me and this blog will, hopefully, be my way of dealing with it. A a kinky person of color I don't find too much mention about us and how we walk through a community that is usually presented as predominantly white and middle-class. Maybe there isn't all that much different, maybe it's just me being over-sensitive, but maybe I'm hitting on something that the kink community needs to talk more about. I don't make a claim to be a great leader, I'm not even a member of any kink groups and have only been to IML once (gasp, such blasphemy!!). But this is an adventure and I hope those who actually read this blog might find something good to take away with it. In either case- Allonsy.

--The Sidekink