Gainer Shame: Part I

When I first discovered gainer websites in 2004, I was thrilled. Here I had this secret kink, pretty much in existence my entire life, yet heretofore unspoken of. I figured I was weird or broken for having such a non-acceptable sexual attraction. Joining gainer websites helped me to see that I wasn't alone, and in fact I shared this kink with lots of guys. A community of gainers has been growing, and with it I believe, a certain degree of acceptance of our unusual kink. We certainly feel very comfortable being into our kink on the websites, posting openly on community walls about our gains or admiring someone's growth. I see a similar comfort, although somewhat tempered, in the Grommoffs and beefy meetups. Its nice to see a community emerge where we can all feel safe and accepted in our shared attraction.

On the other hand, I have also seen quite a bit of confusion, shame, guilt, and regret over this attraction since joining. I've seen guys join, then leave, then join again, then leave again, and repeat this pattern fifty more times over the subsequent years. Guys announce they are gaining with abandon, then literally abandon those plans and start losing two weeks later. Some guys will chat with me for hours, days and weeks about the gaining process, trying to solicit enough encouragement to take the plunge, only to give up and disappear.

There's something else I've noticed too. Since joining these sites, I also began meeting with beefy guys to explore the sexual side of this experience. Unlike hooking up with a guy in a bar or other public space, meeting with beefy guys required lots of conversation, friendship building, trust building, and ultimately, plans to finally meet. In other words, it was a much more involved process, and at least in my experience, I really became good friends with many of the guys I met. Yet, following what I believed to be some amazing belly experiences, many of these guys would disappear after and never contact me again for weeks or months later...or never. These weren't random hookups from a bar or gym flirt; these were friendships (albeit, friends with benefits) yet why did the friendships dissipate after the belly encounter?

The answer, I believe, is due in part to the shame and guilt associated with active participation in our fat-admiring community. And let's face it -- there is nothing more active than hooking up with another beefy member for belly play and sexual experiences, or gaining 50 lbs of fat which is now on display for the world to see. I think for many guys, these experiences bring them face-to-face with a reality that summons significant shame in their behavior, guilt about doing something they shouldn't, and regret over their choices.

Let's think about how shame, guilt and regret surface in our community. First, it might be helpful to define these terms, vís a vís our friends at Oxford:

Shame: (n) a painful feeling of humiliation or distress caused by the consciousness of wrong or foolish behaviour; a regrettable or unfortunate situation or action

Guilt: (n) the fact of having committed a specified or implied offence or crime; a feeling of having committed wrong or failed in an obligation

Regret: (v) feel sad, repentant, or disappointed over; (n) a feeling of sadness, repentance, or disappointment over an occurrence or something that one has done or failed to do

After reading these definitions, I think its easy to see how these thoughts and feelings surface in our community, such as:

• Yo-yo gaining and losing
• Joining and leaving gainer websites, often in a hasty way
• Ignoring a beefy friend after a meet-up, as if pretending he doesn't exist or the experience never happened
• Constantly asking for reassurance while gaining
• Posting throngs of pictures to get attention and more reassurance
• Switching from gaining fat to growing muscle, a more socially-acceptable form of gaining
• Believing that your gaining will somehow negatively affect others
• Believing that you are wronging others, deliberately, just to satisfy a selfish urge
• Having difficulty dating someone in the beefy community because of the attention it would bring to your kink or the ridicule you might face
• Having a brief binging period where you embrace your piggishness followed by dieting and exercise to remove all traces of such piggery. 

I could go on and on. These are just a few examples, and I'll be the first to admit I am guilty of some of them. As a psychologist, many of the presenting problems I see in my office, whether anxiety or depression or eating disorders or psychological distress, have at their core difficulties managing feelings of guilt and shame, and regret over bad choices. You can probably see where I am going with this. The only way to really feel comfortable in our skin and happy with the decisions we've made is to challenge our feelings of guilt and shame, understand where they come from, and reconcile these feelings with our goals and desires. Pretending they don't exist, running away, or ignoring them won't will them away. 

The first step in understanding the extent of the problem is assessing the problem. So I decided to survey the beefy community with some questions about their experiences, their desires, and their guilt and shame about being into the gaining kink. Below you will find the results of the survey and my analysis. In Part II of this blog post, I will talk about confronting the guilt and shame associated with this kink, and living a satisfied life balancing your sexual kink with all the outside pressures and criticism we feel. 

The Survey

This survey was written by me, not vetted, piloted, or run through confirmatory factor analysis, and as such should be considered a quasi quasi-scientific examination of our community. Nevertheless, I think I put together some interesting questions, and hopefully they will shed some light on the experiences of our community. 

Just over 400 members of Grommr and Beefyfrat visited the survey, 349 started it, and 220 persevered to finish it. That's not too bad. The following is an age breakdown of the sample:

Q1 : What is your age?

Order	Answer	Responses	Percent
1	Under 18	18	5
2	18-22	116	33
3	23-27	92	26
4	28-34	58	17
5	35-45	30	9
6	46-55	24	7
7	56-65	10	3
8	66+	1	0
	Total	349	100%

A couple of things of note here. First, a whopping 81% of participants were age 34 or younger. That's a very young demographic on these gainer sites. Or, I just happen to have a younger following, and they were the ones who saw my posting about the survey. Either way, the following results definitely need to be considered with this younger age sample in mind. Also, almost 60% of the sample was college or post-college age. Again, this is an interesting finding and could speak to the way the data plays out. Finally, 5 percent of respondents were under the age of 18. So whoever thinks these young folks aren't on our 18 and older gainer sites, well, ...

Q2 : What is your sexual orientation?

Order	Answer	Responses	Percent
1	Gay	268	77
2	Bisexual	46	13
3	Straight	15	4
4	Unsure	20	6
	Total	349	100%

No surprises here, most respondents are gay, but it was a lower number than I expected to see. Fully 23% were bisexual, straight or unsure. My guess is that some in this latter category are trying to figure out their sexuality, this is, where does gainer/fat/belly attraction fit into one's sexual orientation. 

Q3 : How do you self-identify in the gaining community?

Order	Answer	Responses	Percent
1	Gainer	209	31
2	Encourager	206	31
3	Admirer	202	30
4	Bloater/Inflater/Stuffer	54	8
	Total	671	100%

What is interesting about this question is that there seems to be a roughly equal proportion of gainers, encouragers and admirers on the sites. I would have thought it would be more heavily (heh) weighted toward gainers, but not so. Respondents could choose more than one category, hence the greater total responses. 

Q4 : How would you describe the social/political views of  your family?

Order	Answer	Responses	Percent
1	Very conservative	24	7
2	Moderately conservative	58	17
3	Mildly conservative	46	13
4	In the middle -- neither conservative nor liberal	92	26
5	Mildly liberal	48	14
6	Moderately liberal	53	15
7	Very liberal	28	8
	Total	349	100%

Again, no surprises here, most respondents came from families that straddle the liberal and conservative extremes, with exactly 37% of respondents coming from more liberal families and 37% coming from more conservative families.

Q5 : How would you describe the religiosity of your family?

Order	Answer	Responses	Percent
1	Very religious/fundamentalist	23	7
2	Moderately religious	77	22
3	Mildly religious	77	22
4	In the middle -- neither religious nor non-religious	59	17
5	Mildly non-religious	22	6
6	Moderately non-religious	47	13
7	Very non-religious	44	13
	Total	349	100%

Religion is often closely associated with guilt and shame, as religious dogma is often written so that its ideals are unattainable by most people, leading to feelings of guilt and shame in having let down God, important religious figures in the person's life, family, and oneself. Unlike the question above on political leanings, the respondents were more likely to come from religious families (51%) than non-religious (32%). 

Q6 : How would you describe your family's overall concern  about fitness and fatness?

Order	Answer	Responses	Percent
1	Very concerned - fitness is strongly emphasized and being fat is strongly discouraged	30	9
2	Somewhat concerned - fitness is generally good, and weight control is also good	174	50
3	Neutral - neither concerned or not concerned	66	19
4	Not too much concern - fitness may be somewhat valued but also not a big deal	71	20
5	No concern - you can be as fat as you want, nobody cares	8	2
	Total	349	100%

This is another important question as it pertains to social acceptability of gaining in one's family. The more emphasis on fitness, the less socially acceptable gaining would be, and vice versa. In this sample, 59% of respondents come from relatively health- and fitness-conscious families versus only 22% which do not.

Q7 : To what degree does your family and/or important people  in your life comment on your weight or other people's weight  in a critical manner?

Order	Answer	Responses	Percent
1	All the time	16	5
2	Much of the time	52	15
3	Sometimes	149	43
4	Rarely	108	31
5	Never	24	7
	Total	349	100%

Similar to the above question, this asks not only about social acceptability, but direct questioning/challenges to one's weight gain from family and friends. Over 60% of the sample hear these comments at least sometimes or more often.

Q8 : How would you describe yourself growing up?

Order	Answer	Responses	Percent
1	I was really fat	21	6
2	I was somewhat fat/chubby	80	23
3	I had a bit of fat, but otherwise average	82	23
4	I had an athletic build, very little fat overall	38	11
5	I was thin, with almost no extra body fat	122	35
6	Other, please specify: [Open-ended answer]	6	2

This was an interesting finding. Whereas I grew up stick thin, and I believe is one of the reasons I was attracted to fat on men, many respondents (52%) had a least some fat on them, while 46% had little to no fat. A few opened ended responses were given as well, ranging from sickly (presumably very thin) to chubby-to-skinny or skinny-to-chubby.

Q9 : If you are gay, bisexual or unsure of your sexual  orientation, please indicate on the scale below how much  shame or guilt you feel or felt about your sexual orientation  and coming out to important people in your life

Order	Answer	Responses	Percent
1	1. Very guilty/ashamed - I was greatly concerned what my family and friends would think	38	17
2	2.	31	14
3	3.	14	6
4	4.	15	7
5	5.	29	13
6	6.	35	16
7	7. Not at all guilty or ashamed - I couldn't care less what my family and friends would think	53	24
8	8. Not applicable - I'm heterosexual	5	2
	Total	220	100%

To more deeply examine our guilt and shame around gaining/encouraging, its also important to get a baseline understanding of our guilt and shame related to our sexual orientation in general. The responses were quite bimodal. About 37% of the sample felt some or significant shame about their sexual orientation, compared to 53% who felt little or no shame whatsoever. About a quarter of the sample felt absolutely no shame or guilt, which is laudatory. In the open-ended responses, respondents indicated disappointing family, feeling weird or different, not living up to others' expectations, not producing a family heir, and letting important people down were among the more common responses. ** At the end of the blog, I post a link to the answers to the open ended questions about why respondents they felt guilty or ashamed**

Q11 : Please indicate on the scale below how much shame  or guilt you feel or felt about your attraction to bellies  and fat, either on yourself or others, and telling important  people in your life about this attraction

Order	Answer	Responses	Percent
1	1. Very guilty/ashamed - I am greatly concerned what my family and friends would think	46	21
2	2.	46	21
3	3.	39	18
4	4.	18	8
5	5.	30	14
6	6.	9	4
7	7. Not at all guilty or ashamed - I couldn't care less what my family and friends would think	32	15
	Total	220	100%

Compared to the question above, more of the sample stated they would feel guilty or ashamed telling important people in their life about their gaining attraction. Sixty percent of the sample would feel somewhat or very ashamed to tell others, compared to 37% who felt the same way about coming out as gay to their family. Similarly, while 53% of the sample felt little to no shame about coming out their family, only 33% felt little to no shame about disclosing their fat attractions. Reasons given for feeling shame included the taboo nature of the kink, society's negative view of fatness and gaining, rejection, being called weird or being judged, and worrying family about health concerns. **see below for all open-ended responses**

Q13 : How important is fat, bellies, gaining, etc., to  overall physical attractiveness, either on yourself or  others?

Order	Answer	Responses	Percent
1	Extremely important - there must be some fat	49	22
2	Pretty important - I definitely prefer some fat	86	39
3	Somewhat important - I like fat but its not necessary	77	35
4	Not so important - I don't care that much if fat is there or not	8	4
	Total	220	100%

This question gets to heart of where our attractions lie. If fat weren't so important, either on ourselves or others, then very likely there would be little guilt or shame over fatness. That's because we wouldn't work very hard to gain or to date someone who was a gainer. However, it's not the case, because 96% of us think fat is at least somewhat important, and for over 60 percent its gosh darn important. This makes eliminating the guilt and shame associated with fat attraction even more important.

Q14 : If you are sexually active, ideally how often would  you like to have sex?

Order	Answer	Responses	Percent
1	Daily or multiple times a day	25	11
2	Several times a week	91	41
3	Once a week	25	11
4	Several times a month	22	10
5	Once a month	7	3
6	Several times a year	8	4
7	Once a year	1	0
8	Every several years	2	1
9	Not applicable - not sexually active	39	18
	Total	220	100%

This next question taps into our sexual prowess. Clearly, we are a horny group, most of us wanting sex daily or several times a week. Now, let's see below how often we want gainer sex.

Q15 : If you are sexually active, ideally how often would  you like to have gainer sex (i.e., sexual activity involving  belly play, fat growing, stuffing, encouraging, etc.)?

Order	Answer	Responses	Percent
1	Daily or multiple times a day	32	15
2	Several times a week	85	39
3	Once a week	14	6
4	Several times a month	28	13
5	Once a month	9	4
6	Several times a year	10	5
7	Once a year	1	0
8	Every several years	2	1
9	Not applicable - not sexually active	39	18
	Total	220	100%

Compare the numbers here to those above. Not only do we want gainer sex as much as conventional sex, but we want it more frequently, 54% wanting it daily or several times a week. Fully 73% of respondents want gainer sex at least once a month, which is identical to the 73% of respondents in the question above who want any type of sex at least once of month. What does this mean? It means that gainer sex is fully integrated with our conceptualizations of sex, such that we want it at least as often, if not more so, than conventional sex (whatever that may be). This is yet another reason for us to effectively manage our guilt and shame over this kink so we can enjoy healthy sexual lives.

Q16 : If you have ever had a sexual encounter with gainer/ encourager/admirer that involved belly play, please describe, on average, how guilty or ashamed you felt about that  experience.For instance, if you felt you couldn't tell your  friends about it(even though you would tell friends about  non-belly hook-ups) then you would be experiencing some guilt  or shame about the experience.

Order	Answer	Responses	Percent
1	Never did it because I was too ashamed	19	9
2	A great amount of guilt and shame - I didn't want to tell anyone, and didn't want to do it again	8	4
3	Moderate guilt and shame - It was hard to tell others what I did, and I didn't want to repeat it for quite a while	21	10
4	Minimal guilt and shame - It was somewhat difficult to tell others, and I might have left out the part about belly play. But I could do it again soon.	81	37
5	No guilt and shame at all - I could do it all the time, and have no problem telling my friends about it	25	11
6	Not applicable - no opportunity to do it	66	30
	Total	220	100%

These results were interesting. First, thirty percent of the sample has never had belly play, despite the overwhelming number of respondents who want to. Since most respondents were of age, it is interesting that so many have never tried it. That alone speaks of the guilt and shame associated with venturing out for one's first belly experience. Of those who have, only 23% experienced moderate to severe guilt over doing so. Most who have tried it experienced either minimal or no guilt (48%). This suggests that, in general, the act of direct belly play does not itself conjure significant feelings of guilt or shame for most, but the reality of it...that is, to take it beyond the fantasy realm and tell important people in your life about your attraction, is much more guilt- and shame-provoking, according to 60% of respondents .

I also asked respondents about percentage of time they spend thinking about sex, and what percentage of time they think about bellies and gaining. The responses ran the gamut of 0% to 100%, but it was clear that respondents thought about bellies and gaining as equally as they thought about sex. Clearly, these two things are synonymous for most respondents, and we are a pretty horny bunch.

I also asked respondents how much time they spend on gainer sites. The responses also ranged a great deal, from 1 hr/week to over a 100, and the average was around 18 hours/week. We do like our chubby guys, don't we?

Summary and thoughts

In this blog post, I presented the descriptive statistics from a survey asking about our interest in bellies, fat and gaining, and the degree of guilt and shame that goes along with that. For most of us, there is moderate to significant shame and guilt associated with this kink, especially the thought of sharing this part of ourselves with important friends and family. We don't necessarily feel so much guilt and shame after we have belly play and gainer sex, but we are more concerned about disclosing this aspect of our sexuality with others. Furthermore, many respondents intellectualized and rationalized their responses, saying things like, "well I don't talk about sex with my friends and they don't talk about it with me. It's just a private thing. So therefore there's no guilt." That's a nifty and not-so-productive way to deny the guilt and shame associated with this kink. Think of it this way. If you went on a date with a terrific guy who was an amazing kisser, would you tell your best friend about that? If so, then there is no reason not to tell your best friend that your date gives amazing belly rubs. If you feel uncomfortable doing that, and only talking about more socially "acceptable" (i.e., common) activities like kissing, petting, cuddling, etc., and leaving out all the stuff that acknowledges your fat interests, then you have guilt and shame about your kink. It's that simple.

You can rationalize all the reasons why you don't want to tell people, why you think it might be harmful, or how it might alienate you, but these are all just rationalizations, and all they are doing is preventing you from revealing the truth about yourself. I'm not saying you should tell your mother about your sexual kink, no more than you should tell her you like being pounded in a harness by tag-teaming polar bears. But if she asks the kind of guys you are attracted to, you absolutely should share with her that you like bigger guys, and might even want to be bigger yourself. Its no different than saying you are attracted to gingers, or blondes, or big breasts, or fit people, or people who wear glasses. The sooner we can openly acknowledge who we are and who we like, the more likely the guilt and shame we feel about this attraction will fade away.

There is much more to say on the data in this survey. For Part II, I plan to do some additional analyses of the database and run some inferential statistics to see what correlations and significant findings emerge. Also, I plan to talk about strategies to reduce guilt, shame, and regret in our lives. So stay tuned for that.

And if you haven't read enough already, all the open-ended questions are in a separate blog post. Click here to enjoy further reading of your peers' responses. :)