“My body feels fucking great during sex”: Fat, Wāhine, Māori and sex(uality) – a Kōrero of sovereignty, desirability, deservedness, and pleasure

As Indigenous Peoples of Aotearoa New Zealand, Māori have rich expressions of sex(uality); we see this in our whakapapa, our ancestry, and the pūrākau of Hinenuitepō, one of the most powerful Māori deities, ancestors, and wāhine of Te Ao Māori. Hinenuitepō is a guide and a guardian of us, particularly as we move from Te Ao Mārama, the world of light, to Te Pō and Rarohenga, the world of night and the underworld. However, often colonial, gendered re-presentations of powerful wāhine Māori depict us as passive, meek, evil, ashamed, or destructive. Hinenuitepō is an atua with irrefutable sexual power, energy, and agency. (Re)tellings of Hinenuitepō highlight the ways in which her body sovereignty has been impacted and restricted, and how she re-claims her mana tinana. For wāhine Māori, Hinenuitepō is an example straight from our whakapapa of how we can conceive, relate to, and enact our own body sovereignty. In conceptualizing fat wāhine Māori sexual agency, we utilize these pūrākau from our whakapapa and our application of sovereignty, agency, pleasure, and consent can be seen in our bodies and our stories. This Kaupapa Māori research explores the kōrero and pūrākau of fat Māori wāhine from Aotearoa New Zealand. It re-centers and explores these sexual experiences and expressions and examines the ways in which we (re)prioritize, enact, and honor our mana, as well as the intersections of sovereignty, agency, desirability, and deservedness within our sexual experiences.