The Sexuality of Care

Praise for The Sexuality of Care:

“M. K. Thekkumkattil has created something wondrous: a radical excavation of the entwined violence and softness at the heart of both nursing and kink. The generosity and rigor with which Thekkumkattil unearths and questions the cultural, social, and political forces that drew them to both these worlds serves as a beacon, lighting the way to a future where our broken systems might reorient themselves toward the interdependence of genuine care.” —Tessa Hulls, author of Feeding Ghosts

“This is a paradigm-shifting book—a bold tale of survival and self-actualization that moves deftly from personal narrative to historical and structural analysis, exposing the problems with a medical-industrial complex that fails everyone. By rejecting the binary between patient and nurse, The Sexuality of Care offers new possibilities for healing, consent, desire, and collective care.” —Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore, author of Terry Dactyl

“I am used to having conversations about harm in medical systems. I am used to doing this while also holding the complex humanity of those who work in those systems, trying to ensure that those they encounter are respected in their care. This book takes that conversation one step deeper, or maybe a mile deeper. M. K. brings an intimacy, a vulnerability, and a viscerality to their experience of nursing, and they use their experience with kink to strip down a conversation about consent to something that is real, embodied, contradictory, painful, pleasurable, and fearless.” —Susan Raffo, author of Liberated to the Bone

“No one’s heart and mind builds bridges like M. K. Thekkumkattil: between hospital room and dungeon, restraining a patient and tying up a lover, surviving a pandemic and surviving your own body. The Sexuality of Care asks what no one else dares: Where does a nurse’s desire go? Their answers are searingly honest, wildly original, and point to a future where care is no longer something we buy, but something we cradle together.” —Meredith Talusan, author of Fairest

“M. K. Thekkumkattil’s debut teems with the very stuff of life: blood and shit, care and community, labor and love. With a soft empathy and a sharp scrutiny, these essays expand and explode our ideas of caregiving, inviting us into a radical vision of a world beyond the brutality of hospitals and the binary of nurse and patient, a world grounded in consent, where care can become a daily practice shared by all of us.” —Amelia Possanza, author of Lesbian Love Story

“This is such a brilliant book, a powerful, practical, and tangible exploration of love through the study of care. It is wise, courageous, and deeply trustworthy. Reading this book is like spending time with someone who is very good at loving you. With all my heart I want everyone to not only read The Sexuality of Care but to understand what it truly means.” —Carvell Wallace, author of Another Word for Love

“Poetic, powerful, and heart-achingly human, The Sexuality of Care interweaves sharp political insight with the deeply moving personal story of a trans, queer ICU nurse. Thekkumkattil’s voice is at once raw and elegant, urgent and reflective, fearlessly drawing the reader into an emotional landscape profoundly shaped by care, power, pleasure, and pain. Readers will leave this book with more wisdom about the world, and about themselves.” —Kai Cheng Thom, author of I Hope We Choose Love: A Trans Girl’s Notes from the End of the World

“M. K. reminds us that a medical practice, like any art, is a craft—thus, a spiritual practice, a devotional, a gender rebellion, and ultimately a pronounced resistance to the inherent violence of the medical-industrial complex in capitalism. This book is an erotics of care that goes well beyond questions of giving and receiving to a negotiated codependence that we so desperately need in this age of loneliness.” —D/Annie Liontas, author of Sex With a Brain Injury

“M. K. strips care bare to reveal its flesh, bones, and blood, loving it as one loves the body itself—with its beauty and its monstrosity. The writing is theoretically sharp and critical without ever losing empathy for the hard choices we make under capitalism. The Sexuality of Care is a provocative and tender meditation on vulnerability, embodiment, and the radical possibilities of care and desire.” —Eman Abdelhadi, author of Everything for Everyone: An Oral History of the New York Commune, 2052–2072

M. K. Thekkumkattil is a trans, disabled, kinky writer and nurse whose liberation is bound up with Palestinian liberation. They have received support from SmokeLong Quarterly, Tin House, Queer Art Mentorship, Lambda Literary, VONA, and Writing by Writers. Their work can be found in the chapbook Weaving Liberation as well as in Black Warrior Review, smoke and mold, ___figuration, Year Round Queer, and In the Future There Are No Hospitals.