Fart Fetish Podcast: Always Under My Nose

I would come to learn, through therapy, that likely my parents didn't affirm me enough. I don't remember if they did or did not affirm me growing up; but when I think of boisterously celebrating a child's rudimentary explorations, it makes emotional sense to do so but intellectually evokes a sense of high-riding disgust. 

This understanding led me to realize how much of my creative drive was in search of affirmation, parasocial fanship, and external confirmation of worth. I do love creating, I have an undeniable passion for it, but my motivation was always to be seen. So when I never really gained an audience, when even friends and family didn't seem to care or be aware of what I was doing, it made sense to quit because I never attained any of what I was seeking. 

I never considered any of my pursuits to be inauthentic. I believe I always tried to put myself into my work fully which made the de facto rejection feel all the more personal. But in the background there was always one thing. One truly unique thing I was hiding from most everyone.

There's perhaps a universe where I am a successful, famous actor and filmmaker but I wonder if, with all his acclaim and status, would he have the courage to not only admit this potentially humiliating aspect of himself but also produce and host a podcast around it? Is it merely the I which has no status and thus nothing to lose that would put out such a show?

Eproctophilia, also known as fart fetish, is a paraphilia in which people are sexually aroused by flatulence (Aggrawal, 2009)

I have been thinking about farts in the context of arousal since well before puberty, the first grade at least. But I think the realization that what I personally enjoyed was a fetish came when I saw communities online dedicated to farts as a sexual thing. Mostly these communities were just about the sharing of adult videos and erotica stories, there wasn't much thoughtful or introspective conversation happening in these spaces and, in many cases, there still is not.

 

This story could go longer but, with that, you have enough helpful context to understand what might seem like a strange, even ruinous pursuit.

In January 2022, I released the first episode of the Fart Fetish Podcast. Admittedly I didn't have a direction or good idea for the show but I did have things I wanted to say so I just hit record and started talking. I talked about why I wanted to start the show, the importance of community and support, as well as sharing my candid views on the solitary case study that's been conducted on a pseudonymous eproctophile. By the third episode, guests were expressing desire and coming on to talk about their experiences with the fetish. 

During the course of the show, I started to realize the reason why it existed at all - why it mattered. I'd still been hiding from this aspect of my sexuality, even while doing the show part of me felt my desires for a relationship could not be met because of this fetish and that I had to try to be something else to have any hope of romantic companionship. But this was the antithesis of everything I was talking about on the show, I wasn't being the person I was encouraging others to be. 

So here I am. You may know me from some past iteration of myself or perhaps even this iteration has run its course by the time you've read this. 

My name is Raj Jawa and I host the Fart Fetish Podcast as a show around sexual acceptance and building community support. I consider it to be a show more about process than content, it's not a talk show about farts but an exploration of human sexuality and pondering the whys of our desires. You don't have to be a fetishist to enjoy the show but an open mind about sexuality is a must.