Worst Hookup Ever! ‘He Came with Subs and No Drugs’ Goddamn Gainers
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Many people struggle with their weight. More specifically many men struggle with their weight. But the way men deal with weight issues often presents differently then in women.
@bobbykazz TW: ED my story #edawareness ♬ Epic uplifting music – Makoto Hiramatsu
And that is something that has been getting increased attention by researchers, writers, and TikTok makers like Bobby Kasmire aka Bobby Kazz. Kazz has been sharing his past and ongoing experiences with eating disorder recovery through TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube, amassing over 270,000 followers through solo episodes or joined by countless nutritional professionals, including counselors, therapists, coaches, and more.
@bobbykazzPOV: you let food fears stop you from making memories♬ I walk this earth all by myself Ekkstacy – XVX
Although eating disorders affect women more than men, a large number of males suffer from anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa as well as binge-eating disorder and exercise addiction. In fact, 5 to 10 % of people suffering from anorexia are male, and approximately 10 to 15 % of people with bulimia are male. The percentages may even be higher as some experts suspect that few men actually seek help because they are ashamed and embarrassed that they have what has come to be viewed as a “female” problem.
Many male eating-disorder sufferers participate or have participated in a sport that demands a certain body type, such as wrestling and running. Wrestlers are a notoriously high-risk group because many try to lose additional pounds rapidly just prior to a match. This allows the wrestler to compete in a lower weight-class while having developed the skill and strength for a higher weight-class in practice. To accomplish this rapid weight loss, unhealthy weight reduction methods, such as fasting and purging, are often used.
Being overweight in childhood can also influence the development of an eating disorder in males. And dieting, a well-known trigger for eating disorders, can start the development of disordered eating in males.
While the health aspects of being overweight are certainly important, there’s often a much more vain reason it’s a concern: it’s ugly.
Increasingly in the 21st century fat and ugly have become synonymous.
And as being plus size is snonymous to being ugly in our society, concurrently there have arisen kinks around the issue.
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The sentiment reached peak gay when Sam Smith said in 2015 that he rather be called a faggot than being called fat.
“If someone called me fat, that affects me way more than someone calling me a faggot. I think just because I’ve accepted that, if someone calls me a faggot, it’s like, I am gay and I’m proud to be gay, so there’s no issues there. If someone calls you fat, that’s something I want to change; that is something I can change, so that affects me more.”
As someone who has struggled with weight maintenance most of my adult life, it’s an issue that I am acutely aware of. So imagine my dismay when confronted with the sexual kink called feederism, and its practitioners, feeders.
The first time I encountered it was when I hooked up with this beautiful 27 year old named Ollie. He kept telling me how hot I was and I was a bit put off by his attention to my belly which he would constantly grab and poke.
One night he looked at me, Gollum-like, and said I would sure love to feed you sexy boy.
Creeped out and perplexed I scanned the room to confirm I was the recipient of his request.
And suddenly I realized there’s something worse than being fat: feeders and feederism.
Coming from Ollie, who was straight edge and very vocal about his disdain for partying and playing of any chemsex, it was a lot to take.
A letter to the editor at the Milwaukee Record is cogent:
Dear MKE SEX,
During one of those late night tell-all conversations that close friends have after drinking too much, a dude I’m really into said he has a feeding fetish. Specifically, he likes to be fed. I just don’t get it. I’m a gay man who hangs out with a lot of gay men. In my circle, we’re all very concerned with health and fitness. We count our macros. We work out at the gym. As a gay man, I’m having a hard time reconciling the idea that someone would intentionally do something as unhealthy as overeating, and potentially becoming overweight. Should I talk to my new crush about the potential dangers of this fetish? What should I say?
Thanks!
I’ll Have the SaladDear Salad,
For the folks who aren’t aware, feeding fetish (also known as feederism and gaining fetish) is deriving sexual arousal and/or pleasure from one partner feeding the other partner, with the implicit goal of weight gain. The intended weight gain varies from couple to couple, from a few pounds to 50 or more. Sometimes one partner (the feeder) will literally feed the other (the feedee), spooning food into their mouth. In other relationships, the feeder simply provides prepared food for the feedee to eat.
In our fitness-centered, youth-worshipping culture, this fetish may seem extreme. Why would anyone want to gain weight? And why would you want your partner to look fat? This goes against the grain of everything we’re taught about good looks, long term goals, New Year’s resolutions, feeling great, and being happy (™).
The thing is, unless your crush asked you to participate in some way, your opinion about feederism is irrelevant. Your concern may well be for him and his health. But check yourself, and ask yourself if your distaste might be rooted in our culture’s deeply entrenched fatphobia. We believe that being overweight is the same as being unhealthy. The reality is that health is much more complex than that. Size doesn’t dictate anyone’s ability to eat nutritious foods, move their bodies, take their meds, participate in great conversations, have wonderful relationships, and (most importantly) be healthy.
Adults who engage in fetishes are typically pretty well educated about the risks of their activities. When they consent to participate, they are weighing the potential negative outcomes against the pleasurable experience. Like all kinks and fetishes, it’s possible to take it too far. Sometimes folks will gain so much weight that other health problems are exacerbated, or their mobility is negatively impacted. Occasionally, you’ll learn about a feeder who is using food to control the feedee in abusive and non-consensual ways. But most of the time, consensual feederism is just one more type of kink that folks find sexy, sensual, and fulfilling. And that’s the most important thing.
Feederism has been described as “a fat fetish focused on erotic eating, feeding, and gaining weight.”
There are two types of people who exist within this fetish culture: feeders and feedees. Feeders are people who get sexual pleasure from feeding other people and seeing them gain weight. By contrast, feedees are people who get sexual pleasure from being fed by others and gaining weight.
Feederism has been described in the psychological literature as a paraphilia—a term that means having an unusual or uncommon sexual interest. There isn’t a lot of data looking at exactly how common this feeding fetish is, but some of the results from my book Tell Me What You Want can speak to it—at least in terms of fantasies about being a feeder.
The basis for this book was a survey of 4,175 Americans who were asked extensive questions about their sexual fantasies, including whether they have ever fantasized about feeding someone else.
So where do feeder fantasies come from? There are a few different theories. Some have argued that feederism is an exaggeration of the fact that we tend to find food and eating mildly arousing to begin with. As evidence of this, consider a study in which people who weren’t into feederism reported on their sexual arousal while looking at and listening to sexual, neutral, and feeding stimuli. What researchers found was that feeding stimuli were rated as more arousing that neutral stimuli (though not as arousing as sexual stimuli).
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By contrast, others have argued that feederism has characteristics that overlap with both morphophilia (which means sexual attraction to a specific bodily characteristic—in this case, fatness) and BDSM (in the case of feederism, there are usually elements of power, control, and/or humiliation). Perhaps feederism stems from these other interests. Consistent with these ideas, I went back to the Tell Me What You Want dataset to see how feeder fantasies were correlated with other aspects of people’s sexual fantasies.
First, I found that people who fantasized about being feeders reported that the partners in their sexual fantasies tended to weigh more, which supports the idea that these folks may be attracted to fatness in general. Second, those who fantasized about being feeders reported more BDSM fantasies of almost every type, but especially fantasies about sadism, dominance, bondage, and discipline.
Our sexual fantasies and desires are, of course, complex and it’s possible that different people may be into feederism for very different reasons. So rather than just one of these explanations being correct, perhaps they all are to some degree.
And in gay culture it is also sometimes called gainers.
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Gaining (also referred to as “feederism” or “fat fetishism”) is commonly linked to BDSM. Like many other BDSM communities, gainers are active and tightly knit online, frequenting niche websites to share recipes and experiences, show off their bellies, encourage each other, and discuss the healthiest ways to get fat fast.
The first gainer-exclusive website, GainRWeb, launched in 1996, decades after the Girth & Mirth Movement formed to promote positive attitudes toward larger bodies and fat fetishism in 1976. This first-of-its-kind movement is now considered the birth of the gainer fetish. Its inception spurred gainer-specific newsletters and publications like The Oinquirer and Dragongate and events like EncourageCon, a weekend-long weight gain competition and event.
Gaining (also referred to as “feederism” or “fat fetishism”) is commonly linked to BDSM. Like many other BDSM communities, gainers are active and tightly knit online, frequenting niche websites to share recipes and experiences, show off their bellies, encourage each other, and discuss the healthiest ways to get fat fast.
The first gainer-exclusive website, GainRWeb, launched in 1996, decades after the Girth & Mirth Movement formed to promote positive attitudes toward larger bodies and fat fetishism in 1976. This first-of-its-kind movement is now considered the birth of the gainer fetish. Its inception spurred gainer-specific newsletters and publications like The Oinquirer and Dragongate and events like EncourageCon, a weekend-long weight gain competition and event.
For gainers among us, the bigger and more robust a body is, the better. The act of feeding and growing is the ultimate kink. (Note: Some in the community regard gaining as a sexual orientation, not a kink.)
