Multiple Tumblr posts that denounce silicone injections are met with pushback from those within the gainer community. There has been ambivalence among many in the online gainer and fetish world to discuss the problem of silicon injections to avoid the appearance of sex shaming. I didn’t know that until I heard someone had died - and then Tank had died from it.” “But no one ever told me I could die from it. “I talked to Tank about it and I expressed interest in getting work done myself,” says Donick Slaick, a friend of Hafertepen’s. But the man Dovak went to wasn’t a doctor. (Hafertepen denies that he told Dovak where he could obtain the procedure.) I eventually stopped working out harder than him so he could feel better about his progress.”Īccording to Waltman and other sources, Dovak reached out to an online acquaintance - another popular online gainer named Dylan Hafertepen - who told him where to go to get the illicit procedure. “Whenever we left the gym, he would feel like shit about it. “He took more steroids and he definitely got bigger and stronger, but he never felt good about it,” Waltman says.
It’s also where he gained his internet fandom for growing huge, or “a monster,” as Waltman put it. It’s this community where Dovak found most solace in his size. It’s a site for all the guys who spent their childhoods stuffing pillows under their shirts or staring a little too long at big-bellied men in the supermarket.” (Grommr does not advocate for silicon injectors, which is a small portion of the gainer subculture, and the site’s online community has been adamantly against silicone enhancements.) The site coins itself as a place, “for guys of a similar mindset - that bigger is, most often, better. Gay men are also more prone to eating disorders and other body dysmorphia conditions that result in poor self image.īut until the gainer community became more popular with the introduction of a niche hook up app dedicated to them, “Grommr,” larger gay men had few places to find satisfaction or admirers of their bigger appearance. But the community isn’t only based around fetish - the gainer community is well known to encourage body positivity, which is sorely needed among LGBTQ communities.Ĭompared to straight men, gay men are more prone to focus heavily on their weight and appearance. The community lives online, mostly, with Tumblr blogs dedicated to idolizing bigger guts and monstrous testicles. Though the trend has appeared to decline recently - at least among trans women in New York, according to Radix - as quality care for trans-identifying people continues to grow, it’s now become more visible among the body modifying subculture of gainers. “You’re desperate to change your body, people will go through great lengths. “When people come in and say silicone, they don’t really know what they mean because it could be anything,” says Asa Radix, senior director of research and education for Callen-Lorde in New York City, an LGBTQ-focused health center, adding that some of his patients even had quick cement or peanut butter injected in them. It makes health experts reticent to even call the mixture “silicone,” at all.
In one Florida woman’s case, tire sealant and cement were both injected into her face. But over the past five years, there have been a number of news reports exposing “pumping parties,” where groups of trans women pool their money to get injected with silicone, and the practice has now become more underground and more risky.Īnd much of that has to do with what’s being put in the mixture, which many times is unknown by those who receive the injections. And now, the gay community is calling for more visibility on the practice now that two internet-famous gainers within the last year - including Dovak - are dead.Īmong trans women, silicone injections are a well known way to achieve the ultimate body: curvy butt, thick thighs or larger breasts.
But there are dangers to the illegal practice, as often it’s not just silicone being injected into the body. But the trend - coined “pumping” - has continued to be a cause of concern as it makes its way to a group called “injectors,” which is a subgroup of “gainers,” gay men who want to appear larger. Four years ago, the American Society of Plastic Surgeons witnessed a disturbing and deadly trend among those within the trans community: many were injecting silicone into their bodies to achieve the perfect curvy look.
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