Anal penetration within the context of heterosexual couples is not terribly taboo — but when the penetrative roles are reversed, the act remains controversial.
Pegging, a term coined by sex columnist Dan Savage in 2001, refers to the scenario when someone adorns a strap-on to penetrate their partner, usually anally. The sexual act dates as far back as — well, as far back as whenever someone decided sticking an inanimate phallic object up someone else’s hole looked fun.
Strap-ons are familiar territory for most queer folk, but for many straight men, the thought of their female partner(s) stimulating them anally is a sensitive topic.Â
Professional pervert and “philosopher” the Marquis de Sade wrote about the act in 1795, Williams S. Burroughs in 1959, eventually making its way to cinema in 1970 and porn in ’76 — where it would stay in the smutty shadows for the remainder of the century. Pegging would continue to be referenced by mainstream media in small ways, but the first prime-time break came in 2015 with the popular television show Broad City.
The episode featured the female protagonist’s male love interest asking her to peg him, going as far as to reveal a customized strap-on. Despite the comedic nature of the show, pegging itself was not made out to be the punchline. The joke — clarified by Broad City co-creator Abbi Jacobson — was the plot line in which her character attempts to wash her partner’s expensive, handcrafted dildo in the dish washer, thereby destroying it. “We were very careful because we didn’t want it to be misconstrued that that preference [pegging] is looked down on,” Jacobson said, as reported by Vulture.
The episode attempts to attach normalcy to the act, as male-bodied anal stimulation is still thought of by some to be a domain reserved solely for homosexual men. Many think anal pleasure is a decision homosexual men make out of necessity rather than their own volition (males have only one entry point, so…), but anatomical evidence proves that heterosexual men are biologically designed to enjoy it, too.
The prostate, often referred to by experts as “the male G spot” and located within the anus, is actually a highly erogenous zone, and when stimulated, can intensify its host’s orgasms. Additionally, prostate stimulation is also used as medical procedure to reduce inflammation. Studies have also found that continual prostate massages are believed to slightly reduce men’s risk of prostate cancer.
But despite the scientific evidence that anal stimulation is not only normal, but natural — heterosexual men and women still have reservations about butt play.
“My current partner would definitely not be into it. He’s really grossed out by butt stuff of any kind,” says Ashley, 23, who identifies as bisexual.
Allie, a 22-year-old straight woman, was also skeptical heterosexual men would be readily up for the task. “What I would assume, is that most straight guys would not be comfortable doing that. You have to find someone who was really comfortable with their sexuality.”
What about the boys?
20-year-old NYU student “Max” was not familiar with pegging. His brows remained furrowed while the specifics were explained to him. Afterwards, he was still unsure whether he would try it, but added, “If I did try it, I wouldn’t tell my friends.”
Yet not all straight men were vehemently opposed to pegging. In fact, it was art student Maddie’s male-identified partner who approached her about the possibility of penetrating him, apparently having done it before and enjoyed it. Maddie leaped at the opportunity.
“I loved fucking him in the ass and he loved it too,” she said of the experience, “it was empowering and sexy to see him get off from penetrating. It was really interesting to me to find his ‘spot,’ like I do when I have sex with women and I think it made him feel really vulnerable.” He is very comfortable with his sexuality, she believes and attributes to, in part, the fact that two of his brothers are gay.
After she pegged him, Maddie said she felt powerful. “It felt like I was able to express a feeling in a new way, like learning a new word for a way you’ve always felt.” A pretty glowing review.
But not all straight men are as comfortable as Maddie’s former partner with the notion of backdoor entry.
“Eric”, a 30-something heterosexual publishing exec, thinks that a strap-on would just be a gateway for the fleshier, real member the toy represents. When pressed on why he believes that, he responded heatedly, “Look, men penetrate and woman are penetrated, that’s the way it’s always been!”
An interesting proposition. He continued to explain that men and women have ingrained sexual roles. This sentiment — or at the very least reservations about disrupting the status quo of penetration — was echoed by college student Leah. “I don’t know, it’s just that I don’t feel comfortable doing that to someone else,” she said cautiously, seeming as though she did not want to offend parties who did enjoy pegging.
While Eric and Leah may be troubled by the role reversal pegging presents, for others, it’s exactly what drew them to the act in the first place.
Jordan Mannix, 21, said she was first introduced to pegging through the Broad City episode. She was approached by a man who wanted to try it, and Mannix raved about the experience. “It was such an interesting role reversal. Like it’s such a novel experience. I was just thinking about how crazy it was that I was fucking someone, like hell yeah!”
On the evening of November 2nd, a crowd of roughly seven gathered in the basement of a NYC sex shop called Pleasure Chest on the Upper West Side. Basked in red light of a neon sign reading “Sex is back”, they have come to attend a pegging workshop entitled “Bend Over Buddy: Anal Pleasure for Him.”
The basement lacks sufficient ventilation, so the room is quite warm.
“I’ve had a lot of sex,” Nico, the employee who led the workshop, assured the audience. The two hour workshop covered the literal in and outs of pegging; from how to broach the subject with a hesitant partner to the mechanics of the act itself. A variety of strap-ons, harnesses, and lubricants were displayed on a table to be referenced (and reviewed) during the presentation — the ultimate product placement. A worksheet was passed out which which allowed people to categorize specific sexual acts based on personal levels of comfort, promoting conversation on intimate and sexual boundaries.
After the workshop ended, the majority of the audience shuffled out quickly. The workshop was primarily technical, so politics were left out. However, talking to Nico afterwards, she seemed to possess added opinions about the stigma surrounding pegging.
Nico, a Latinx trans woman, believes the biggest reservation cisgender heterosexual people — those who identify with the roles society assumes of them at birth — have about pegging (other than cleanliness) is how it challenges the concept of gender roles.
“Queerness is pathologized,” she said, her face glossy with a sheen of sweat, “is that something that’s structural? Yes. [It is] something that we subliminally view, that queerness is dirty. That queerness is wrong. Things are changing, but queerness is terrifying to society.”
She believes that people are afraid that by engaging in an unorthodox sexual behavior that flips ingrained gender roles, they will somehow become queer, as queerness can best be understood as a philosophy and identity that rejects sexual and gender binaries altogether.
Whether this fear of subverting sexual stereotypes is rooted in homophobia — I’ll leave that call to the academics and Twitter critics.
However, it is further proof that gender roles define (read: confine) not only public spaces, but our most intimate and private spaces, as well. Many would reject a sexual exploration and deny themselves potential pleasure based on an outside, societal factor. So cemented are our ideas of “who penetrates who” that we’ll willfully ignore our biological capacities for satisfaction. Because what exactly is taboo about pegging?
Unlike other kinks like bondage and fantasies which introduce entirely new dynamics into the bedroom, pegging takes a concept we know well and simply reverses who’s doing the thrusting. The deep upset over this reversal is the true take away: that we have confined ourselves with learned notions of what it means to be a man and a woman having sex.
*Written and reported in part with Nina Rettenwander.Â