Welcome to Enquire Within, our fortnightly newsletter exploring your sexual curiosities and confusions. Answering your questions is writer, journalist, podcaster, and person we trust, Madison Griffiths.
Question:
"Super excited by this initiative! I’ll jump right in. I want to know about fisting. Is this something people really do? How did it become a thing?
I’ve heard people talk about it, but I’m interested in how common it is. I thought about watching fisting porn but am too nervous it might scar me. Please investigate."
Answer:
You want to get to the bottom of fisting? That makes two of us, chook. As a horny adolescent who was equal parts terrified-and-curious when it came to having my insides explored, I always assumed fisting was as it sounds: a forceful, closed hand, postured as if ready to throw the fuck down, pushing its way into someone’s vagina. An excavation, if you will, reserved only for the most game, the most hardcore.
But fisting, which homes a moniker of names—including hand sex, all-finger fingering, hand-balling, vaginal punching (holy shit), fist fucking—doesn’t actually involve a closed hand. Imagine instead all of your fingers and thumb tucked into each other and grouped together for easier access, with the idea being: if one finger ain’t enough, why not try five? As one passionate fister I spoke to described, imagine making a shadow duck with your hand. And then, imagine fucking it. Hot.
So, off the bat, yes… this is something that people do. A lot of people, a lot of the time. From my investigation, good fisting practice involves allowing it to naturally progress during sexy times. Somebody I spoke to found herself trying it with her boyfriend while high on MDMA (we love a bit of powdered courage). As she was being fingered, in the grips of passion, she requested more fingers. And then more. Low and behold, once she asked how many fingers he was using, he said that he was fisting her. “I haven’t experienced it since,” she told me, but admitted that she freakin’ loved it.
Your fear of being scarred by looking for fisting methods through the world-wide-web is completely understandable. Most of the porn floating around that explores fisting is hardcore, so—if you’re curious, but trepidatious—I’d avoid those channels for now. In fact, everybody I’ve spoken to didn’t start their fisting escapades by sitting down with their lover and deciding to embark on a full blown hand-ball. For fisting enthusiasts, the progression was natural and slow-going. “I’ve never planned it before the horny mood strikes,” one fister explained, outlining to me that the preemptive expectation to get a whole hand up ‘em is perhaps what makes people nervous, which—as they describe—“is not great for sticking big, wide things in your pussy.”
The misconceptions surrounding fisting are in no way unique to just… fisting. Like all things sex, the vagina is an elusive, misunderstood channel of pleasure, pain and prejudice. It’s almost as if we live in a sexist society, folks. One fister said that they’ve had particularly shit male partners assume that if ‘their fist is as big as a babies head, and giving birth makes you ‘loose’, you’re going to be loose if I fist you.’ Gross. And, for those worried, this is absolutely false. The vagina opens up when it wants to, and retreats again when it’s time. It’s not a gaping crevice.
A non-binary fister I spoke to said that fisting allows them to explore their sexuality in a safe and horny way, given it involves fucking somebody outside of the confines of their penis. Not just this, the hand isn’t at all… penis-adjacent. It is an extension of the body able to offer, or provide, a sense of ‘fullness’, this particular sensation amplified largely by the fact that it can only really go down when the fistee is especially aroused.
What is really exciting about fisting, when plucked from the channels of hardcore, heteronormative porn, is that the hand is a completely genderless appendage. A non-binary fister I spoke to said that fisting allows them to explore their sexuality in a safe and horny way, given it involves fucking somebody outside of the confines of their penis. Not just this, the hand isn’t at all… penis-adjacent. It is an extension of the body able to offer, or provide, a sense of ‘fullness’, this particular sensation amplified largely by the fact that it can only really go down when the fistee is especially aroused.
Think of it this way: if you are somebody curious about fisting somebody else, imagine having them open themselves up to you so readily, so enthusiastically, that they can accommodate something as large as a whole hand. That’s pretty cool. To avoid it feeling clinical and invasive, fisting can be made even more alluring when you pair it with various organic sexual positions, including doggy. As much as the concept of fisting rather than the act itself seems to scare the living daylights out of a lot of us, sometimes—if you feel safe, secure and held—the concept of fisting alone is what makes it so sexy. “It’s a physical thing, and sociosexual thing,” one particular fistee describes. “It’s daring, which adds another dimension.”
When I decided to investigate fisting, I did not anticipate that it would peak my interest. But, after my copious research, and thanks to the amount of generous queers who enlightened me, I’ve decided that it’s something I’m curious to try. As my loyal community of generous fistees—and fisters—have encouraged: be ready, be curious, be lubed up, and be horny. If that isn’t just a wonderful ethos to live by, I don’t know what is.
Fisting has no gender, no sexuality, and… minimal worries. Borrowing the advice of my loyal community of fistees and fisters, perhaps it's time to buy myself a bag of MDMA, belt Prince out on my speaker, and let my lover’s fingers do their thing. High-five.
