It's not a fetish, it's a belief system

how had some people worked it out made kink a natural part of their lives that was the dream was it to assimilate kink into capitalism along with everything else that was once subversive the forces were pushing up against each other true peak capitalism wanted everything it wanted the queers it wanted to market vodka to trans girls it wanted fetish weekend breaks but it had been brought about through alliance with a resurgence of right-wing religious Christian zealotry & these two forces once aligned somewhat were now starting to rub against one another creating painful friction because those zealots hated the degenerates but those capitalists were like the degenerates are a valuable market share you didn't want to be part of that & anyway the fetishes that were successfully or semi-successfully for now embraced by capitalism in the brief time before the neo-reactionary uprisings well those fetishes weren't even close to the thing you liked

Definitely one of the weirder, non-mainstream stories I've read in some time. (Thank you, Tournament of Books!) I don't think I can recommend it to anybody. (Except Vincent. And Leslee. Maybe Yann, and Nancy. But not you, I don't really know you.) Some people would be thoroughly disgusted by it. It's classified as body horror, if you're into those kinds of labels, which personally I don't really understand. But I couldn't put it down.

She'd pissed on a few men, once for money. It was hard to describe what was fun about it. In a way, it was easier to understand what was hot about being pissed on — that was so degrading, so filthy. But pissing on someone ... the pisser is dominant, but pissing itself is a moment of pure vulnerability. It's about loss of control. The power dynamics were more complicated than they appeared to outsiders.

Brainwyrms, by Alison Rumfitt, is set in  a highly transphobic near future. Political acts of terrorism are commonplace. Social media posts are scrutinized for questionable behaviour. It's also a love story, exposing the (literally) parasitic nature of relationships, and for this reason and others it's heartbreakingly sad.

The novel follows two main perspectives: Frankie (she/her) is a trans woman with an impregnation fetish, and a victim of terrorism, who falls hard for Vanya and tries desperately not to fuck it up. Vanya (they/them) is young and beautiful and has a dark secret, and their stream of consciousness narration is thoroughly unsettling. 

Vanya's mother also figures prominently, representing TERFism. The public face of the activist group she's involved in is a children's author clearly based on JK Rowling. 

People take fetish and kink seriously, they treat it as a lifestyle and structure their existence around it. There are many people in communities on the internet who essentially are engaged in fetish that would never think of it as such. There are communities of men online who obsess over cigars, their phalic shapes, the feeling of having them in their mouths, and they may never realise what that really means. They might never even get off on it properly. There are communities of people who dress up in Red Army costumes who don't fuck one another — and yet ... fetishes can burst out of the specific easy boundaries they are put in and overcome the entire self. They can become an ideology. Gaz was one of them. It was not enough to simply get infected. It couldn't just be that. It had to be something more. It had to have some wider meaning or what was the fucking point? You nestled into him to keep warm and he wrapped you close to his body underneath his oversized coat. He smelled of sweat and weed. I'll keep you safe, he said. You believed him because right then you couldn't bear not to.

This novel depicts a future grounded in today's fear, intolerance, and closed-mindedness fascism, while it pokes and prods at our tender spots. 

What is intimacy? What is pleasure, what is pain, why do we do what we do, why do we seek what we seek? Do we seek to escape reality, resolve past trauma, fulfill our human potential? Who are we when we are naked before ourselves? 

Transformation. Self-realization. Simply being is transgressive. Being is political.