Adventures in fisting

ABSTRACT

Fisting is a sexual practice that is almost always left out of sex and sexuality education. It elicits strong reactions, both from practitioners who describe it as a highly pleasurable, safe, and even spiritual activity, and from critics and clinicians who condemn it as dangerous. Fisting has attracted little scholarly attention but has ignited conservative outrage and censorship. Education about fisting is largely confined to nonformal delivery outside of mainstream sex education, mostly through queer sexuality educators and porn producers. This paper analyses the politics and pedagogy of fisting to identify what fisting can teach us about sexuality education. I argue that fisting is a generative topic for thinking about safer sex and pleasure in sexuality education, and that a pedagogy of fisting can advance a queer, unruly vision of sexuality education.

KEYWORDS:

• Fisting
• sexuality education
• queer sexuality
• safer sex

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. See https://crashpadseries.com/queer-porn/?episode=crash-pads-guide-to-fisting, https://www.autostraddle.com/international-fisting-day-148355/, https://fistingday.com/ and https://www.autostraddle.com/merry-fistmas-a-virtual-vaginal-fisting-workshop-with-malic-white-today-at-1pm-pst/

2. Good Vibrations is a US-based sex-positive sexual health and wellness toy retailer founded in San Francisco in 1977.