I became a fisting enthusiast when the juicy pussy of a beautifully tattooed Crossfitter pulled my entire hand into her. I marveled at the disappearance of my wrist and the heartbeat I felt through my fist. I gazed at her in awe and wonder.
I’ve since fisted people of all genders, in front holes and assholes.
What I love most about fisting is the emotional intimacy: The stillness, the presence, the focus, the eye contact, the way the body expands into pleasure.
“There’s just the chemistry and the energy and the thrill and the excitement and the emotions that come with staring into the eyes of someone who wants to do this,” says queer porn star Dolan Wolf. “Even to the point where I might not be that much in the mood for it, and someone who I play with walks in, and is like, ‘Get your ass ready,’ and I’m weak in the knees.”
Still, the word fisting conjures images of violent, painful fucking for many. For me, this couldn’t be further from the truth. You don’t force yourself into someone’s body; the body pulls you in. You listen and you honour someone’s hole.
There’s so much misinformation about the risks and benefits of this particular kink, so let’s bring fisting into the daylight. Grab a cup of tea and settle in: We’re going to learn the ins and outs with help of Miles Harris, a queer family nurse practitioner, HIV specialist and lead provider for transgender health care at One Community Health in Sacramento, California.
Let’s start with the basics. What is fisting?
It’s not putting a hand that starts as a fist into someone else’s body. It’s the process of getting your hand, wrist or forearm into someone’s butt or someone’s vagina/front hole.
What are the differences between front hole and anal fisting?
The hand shape and the approach are similar. In both cases you need as much lube as you could possibly imagine and then more. But where you’re going, how far you’re going and what you do when you’re in there (and what it all feels like for the person who’s getting fisted) is quite different.
Why do people fist?
Some people love fisting and some people hate it, just like many other ways of being penetrated. On the physical side, some people describe a feeling of intense stretching or fullness that they don’t get through any other penetration. On the emotional side, fisting is a practice that requires a lot of communication and a lot of trust. It puts those skills to amazing use and can build a unique bond.
Is fisting safe?
I would say yes. Just like any other kinds of sex, if you’re paying attention and stop when it hurts, you’re not going to hurt yourself—with the caveat that you are sober while doing it. I did a quick look at the medical literature about injuries, and everything I could find about severe injuries involved fisting while high.
If you’re a newbie to fisting, I’d really advise you to do it totally sober, 100 percent. Even if you feel like you know what you’re doing and it’s a regular part of your sex practice, it’s still safer to do without substances. When you’re altered, your pain senses are dulled and it’s much harder to tell when you’re doing something that might produce an injury. Playing sober is also better in regards to consent and being able to have really good communication with a partner.
With any kind of sex, if you’re doing a thing that hurts and you keep doing it, you can hurt yourself. You need to pay attention to how you feel and how your partner is feeling—the same is true for fisting.
What would you tell folks who ask you about poppers?
Poppers are super common in cis gay men’s spaces. Poppers are inhalants that produce a short high and relax your muscles, including your sphincter muscles. People use them to make it easier to bottom, and to continue to bottom for a long time when it might otherwise not be as comfortable or enjoyable. I think people are going to tell you a variety of things about whether or not to use poppers while fisting.
Since poppers and fisting often go hand in hand, I asked two more experts for their advice.
“If someone I play with wants to use poppers, I encourage them to wait as long as possible before inhaling,” says Dolan Wolf. “The first huff of poppers is the beginning of the end. Once that hit wears off, you’re less receptive to a fist than you were before you took your first hit. So you have to take another, and another and another, until you have to stop because there’s only so much of that stuff a head can take.”
Dosage matters: “Taking too many poppers can result in the fistee getting lightheaded, getting headaches, getting dizzy, having palpitations and even developing more serious heart issues,” says Tauheed Zaman, a doctor and addiction psychiatrist at the University of California, San Francisco.
You may not need them anyway. “Poppers are, to many fist bottoms, Dumbo’s magic feather,” says Wolf. “If you can physically accommodate a fist, you don’t need poppers to do it and enjoy it. If you know this about yourself, awesome. If you doubt this, then poppers are the magic feather—you only need them because you think you need them.”
Enough huffing. Back to Harris and our fisting guide.
Can fisting cause prolapse?
There’s a myth that fisting causes prolapse—where internal tissues protrude from an orifice—of either the rectum or the vaginal walls. As a medical professional, I cannot imagine how fisting could result in that particular injury. That’s mostly just a made up homophobic thing that people say about anal sex in general.
What about microtears of anal or vaginal tissue?
On the more low-key, minor end of injuries, microtears or very minor tearing of the intestinal wall or the internal vaginal or front hole tissue is something that can certainly happen, even if you’re doing everything right and being good about communicating about what hurts. In general, your body heals those pretty fast. They can be uncomfortable, but your body can heal on its own.
The exception is something like an anal fissure, which is right on the skin of the anus itself. Those kinds of tears can be hard to heal. Regardless of where it is, if you have an injury that’s not getting better over the course of a few days, I would check it out with your health care provider. We’ll return to this, but there’s a lot you can do to help prevent those small tears, starting with gloves and lots of lube.
What about STI transmission?
What is the actual risk of transmitting an STI like HIV or hepatitis B or C if you have a tiny cut in your skin, or open skin if you have eczema? I’d say the risk is probably pretty close to zero—really small. But you’re going to want to wear gloves anyway for the fistee’s comfort, which provides an effective barrier.
Is fisting painful?
I think it’s normal after fisting to feel sore, like a muscle that you work out feels pretty sore for a couple days after. Soreness isn’t painful, but it just feels like, “Oof! That was a workout.” That’s pretty normal. It’s not a sign of something bad.
When should a fistee see a doctor?
When they experience any kind of severe pain and/or loss of blood. I know loss of blood is pretty subjective, and that for some people a little bit of blood looks like a lot. Medical providers even practice looking at a puddle of blood and guessing how much it is—it’s a learned skill.
For front holes/vaginas: That’s a place where blood comes from more often. If you’re experiencing bleeding at the level between spotting and a period for a day or two and it’s not associated with pain or any other symptoms, you could wait a little and see what happens. But if it’s more than period-level bleeding, or it’s not getting better or you’re experiencing pain, I would seek medical attention.
For anal fisting: The only amount of blood that is expected to come out of a butt is a trickle, like teaspoons. Even that should stop within an hour. If you’re experiencing more blood than that, or any bleeding that’s not stopping, or any severe pain, go to the ER. Other red flags include nausea, vomiting, fevers, lightheadedness, dizziness. Any of these symptoms following fisting mean you should promptly seek medical attention.
Let’s talk about tools of the trade. Why should people wear gloves?
They’re widely available, they’re not expensive, and they do a lot to keep both people safe. If you’re fisting a front hole or a vagina, gloves keep the skin bacteria out of the flora of the vagina, which can be easy to disturb—especially for folks on gender-affirming hormones. Even if you’ve washed your hands thoroughly, you’ve still got a little bit of bacteria around your fingernails. We use our hands all the time: We have hangnails, we have little nicks and cuts. Gloves keep other people’s bodily fluids out of our hands and our bodies. Gloves also make cleanup easier. Any kind of anal sex often involves a little bit of poop or fecal matter. It’s not the end of the world, but having a glove that you can just turn inside out is great.
In terms of materials, don’t use latex. Latex allergies can be developed over time through exposure. Health care workers and custodians, for example, have a lot of daily exposure and are more likely to develop allergies. The worst way to find out you’re allergic to latex is to have your butt be on fire. Do use nitrile, a form of synthetic rubber. It’s safe and it’s not going to interact with any types of lube.
What do fisters and fistees need to know about lube?
Use more than you thought you needed and then even more. Having a pump bottle is advantageous because if you need more lube, and one hand is inside another person, you can operate it with one hand.
Start with your favourite lube for penetration. Don’t feel like you need to buy a different kind of lube to try fisting. People use all different kinds of lubes: Water-based, silicone-based, oil-based. Most recommendations are to use water-based lube. It doesn’t react with silicone toys, and it’s not going to interact with gloves or barriers. As long as it’s unscented and doesn’t have any weird ingredients, it’s not going to alter your internal flora significantly. Some of them, like K Lube Powder, can be mixed to the thickness that you want. People often want a thicker lube for fisting, but it’s really personal preference.
Silicone lube stays slicker longer, but again, it would interact with silicone toys. You don’t want to ruin your $150 silicone dildo! Oil-based lubes break down latex. If you’re using any latex barriers or toys, don’t use oil-based lube. And then there’s Crisco. There’s no medical reason to use Crisco—I assume people using Crisco are only talking about anal fisting.
What do we need to know about lube ingredients in sensitive groin and anal tissue?
The numbing agent discussion is worth stopping on: I would really discourage people from using lubes or sprays or anything that has a numbing agent in it, because the ability to know whether or not you’re doing something that hurts depends on being able to feel what’s going on.
Some lubes still have sugars in them, especially the ones advertised as tasting good. I would discourage those. There’s a lot of opinions about lube ingredients. I think Babeland and Sliquid are both good companies that put a lot of thought into making lubes that are good and safe for bodies.
Lots of people’s eyes are bigger than their holes. One effective way to gently stretch a hole is to start with small toys and gradually move up to larger ones. What else do people need to know about toys on their fisting journey?
Hands and toys feel really different: Hands are bony and movable, toys aren’t bony and don’t change shape. One thing to remember is that the widest point of somebody’s hand, at the thumb joint, is something you go past. After that, it’s smaller. You don’t need to imagine that something this wide is going to be at the opening the whole time. The opening is typically the point of the limit.
Something shaped more like a teardrop, like a butt plug that gets skinnier at the bottom before a flared base, is a better analog for a hand. Any other shape considerations?
You never, ever, ever put something in a butt that doesn’t have a flared base—whether it’s a sex toy or something else. There are literally books of things that people put up their butts, and then get stuck and have to go to the emergency room.
And while I can imagine inflatable toys exist, they don’t seem like good practice for fisting. Your hand isn’t inflatable. Conceptually, it doesn’t make any sense.
What kinds of materials should people consider?
One hundred percent silicone is the safest sex toy material, aside from other nonporous materials like glass and metal. Cheap sex toys often are made of porous materials that can’t ever be completely cleaned. Smitten Kitten, a feminist sex toy store in Minneapolis, has a really good resource about toys.
How does a hand fit inside a front hole or vagina?
When a person is aroused, the vaginal canal gets longer. Somebody might be surprised with how far in a hand goes because of that lengthening. They might think, “When I put my tampon in my cervix is right there. How could you put your whole wrist there?”
What are the limits of front hole/vaginal width and depth?
The front hole or vagina ends at the cervix, which is the connection to the uterus. Some people really like having something crash or push on their cervix, some people really hate it and some don’t care. Somebody getting fisted or penetrated might say, “Yes, please smash into my cervix as hard as you can!” or “Do not touch my cervix” or “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
If somebody’s had a total hysterectomy or wasn’t born with a cervix, the end of the vagina is the end of a pocket. That’s the end—there’s nowhere else to go. The pelvic bone is on top of the bladder and it’s not going anywhere. If you angle toward the fistee’s back, more than is intuitive, you’ll find more space.
In vaginal fisting, laterally, you’re probably more likely to come up against the limit of someone’s ability for that orifice to stretch before you come up against a bone.
So what influences the stretchiness of vaginas or front holes?
How aroused you are and how practiced you are. A lot of fisting is working up to it, so it’s not like putting “I’m going to have a full fist inside me” on my calendar. It’s more like, “I’m going to explore this with a partner and see how far we get.”
I heard a message that I really liked a lot in a podcast I was listening to: Just remember that more is not better. The mentality of more is better, bigger is better, the goal is to take the biggest thing, is just an unnecessary mindset.
How does taking testosterone affect front holes?
Being on testosterone often decreases the elasticity and general happiness of one’s genital tissues, so people who found that they could easily get fisted before T might find that after T it is very different.
I want to add that vaginal estrogen tablets can help and are very unlikely to cause any systemic effects. Each tablet contains a tiny amount of estrogen, and most of it is absorbed into the local tissues. It really can make a big difference in making front hole penetrative sex more comfortable.
Some folks on T get recurrent bacterial vaginosis (BV) or urinary symptoms that don’t go away no matter how much they get treated—not always, by any means, but if it happens a little vaginal estrogen helps here, too.
What about neovaginas?
I would be so careful about fisting a neovagina (a surgically created vagina). Neovaginas need a long time to heal. If getting fisted was really important to someone with a neovagina, I would encourage them to talk to their surgeon and get the surgeon’s blessing. But I know it’s hard to ask a doctor.
Next up: anal fisting. What’s actually happening when someone inserts an arm up to the elbow?
There’s the outer sphincter, the inner sphincter and the sigmoid colon. If fisting goes past the rectum and farther up into the colon it’s time for the opera glove—a glove that goes beyond the elbow. Not everyone’s colon is the same shape, so it might not work. You can wiggle a little bit, but you can’t make your arm a new shape.
So basically, if you’re trying to go farther into someone’s body (and that’s what they want, too), and you’re trying to figure out what direction you’re supposed to be going, try to gently feel which way you meet resistance, then try another direction. Generally you’re going toward your right and their left if they’re in front of you belly up. Some people who love deep anal fisting describe a massage of their organs that doesn’t happen any other way.
Since the inner sphincter isn’t under conscious control, how relaxed you are really matters. I love Jack Morin’s book Anal Pleasure and Health for an in-depth explanation of the connection between the ass and our emotions. Beyond mindset, what else influences the stretchiness of assholes?
In general, our skin and our tissues are going to be better at healing and more elastic when we’re healthy in a broad sense: That is, well hydrated and free of nicotine. Surgeons often require people to quit smoking prior to elective surgery because nicotine impairs your body’s healing so much.
The sphincter between the rectum and colon isn’t something that mere mortals have any conscious control over. The fistee can’t consciously relax it.
Does hormone replacement therapy influence anal tissues?
Not that I am aware of. Most people have butts, which are quite similar regardless of your hormone sauce.
In terms of communication, I usually say (much like lube): Go as slow as you think you need to go, and then slower. Super super slow, lots and lots of lube. I like eye contact a lot for seeing how somebody is doing, and encouraging somebody to use their words, or another way to express if something is feeling good or not feeling good. Being able to say things like “more” or “less,” or “faster” or “slower.” And for the fister, it helps to pay very close attention to the resistance that you feel, and not really push but let yourself get pulled in.
I agree. And something that makes fisting unique in terms of safewords is that if someone says, “I need to be done right now,” you can’t get your fist out of them instantly. So you might want to talk about that beforehand, and agree on the meaning of your safeword: Does it mean the fistee wants all movement to stop while they figure out what they need? Does it mean the fister will very slowly take their fist out? What does the fistee need while the fist is gently removed? Do they want to be talked to or not, touched or not?
It can also be useful to have a scale of 1 to 10 for comfort to discomfort, where one means you’re hanging out and nothing is happening and 10 is your maximum tolerance for pain or discomfort.
And be really honest about your experience with the partner you’re going on a fisting journey with. Know their experience as well. It doesn’t mean anyone’s plans need to change, you just don’t want to find out that someone who you assumed had done this 100 times actually had only done it once while their fist is in you.
Also, groups of people can fist. Especially if somebody was new or nervous about it, having a person who is a moral support for the fistee or providing other stimulation could be very sweet.
So you’ve had your conversation. You’ve brought your gloves and lube. What else do you need to do to set up the space?
You’re going to make a mess with all that lube, so don’t use your fanciest sheets. Put down towels, a blanket you can throw in the washing machine…
Or a Liberator sex throw, or Chux pads or anything else you’re okay getting covered in lube and fluids. Now let’s talk about positions.
Sex slings and swings are a really great position for fisting, because they open and relax the body in a way that’s beneficial. Obviously not everyone has access to slings; if you do have a sling, try there first.
Most people want to start fisting with the fistee on their back. It tends to open bodies up more in the direction that’s useful. Also, being able to make eye contact and communicate is key.
How should the fister prep?
You want to take off your jewelry. Make sure your nails are real short and not sharp at all. Sharp edges of fingernails are a major culprit in terms of causing little cuts. Gloves help a lot. Some people who don’t want to cut their fingernails super short put cotton balls in the tips of the gloves.
As the fister, your attention needs to very much be on what’s going on with your fist. I would encourage you to not get off at the same time, and be sober. Don’t be goal-oriented: Whatever happens, the point is to have an enjoyable sex experience, not to get an amount of hand inside a body.
What happens first?
Often fisting is the last thing that’s going to happen in the play session. If there are other things you really want to have happen during play time, have them happen beforehand. After someone gets fisted, they’re often done, but don’t forget about the rest of somebody’s body. Full body arousal and relaxation is going to help. If having a vibrator on the fistee’s clit, cock or junk will help, go for it.
So let’s say somebody is quite aroused and now we’re trying to fist. I’m going to show you what the hand looks like with a hair tie.
Y’all, this is the best illustration ever.
So, if this hair tie was a front hole or a vagina or a butt, you’d start out by fingering—however many fingers are comfortable to start with. Once you’re at three you’re bridging from fingering into fisting. Then you get to four fingers: If you can imagine touching your pointer finger and your pinky so it’s like a pointy triangle, and tucking your thumb into it.
That’s called the silent duck.
Right. The more collapsible and flexible your hand is, the easier this is. You can have your hand be more flat or go more duck, and you can see what feels more comfortable to the person and what brings less resistance. Don’t push past resistance.
Regardless, your thumb joint is the biggest part. Once your thumb joint is inserted, this is going to get easier. When you’re inside, you can stay in the silent duck shape, or your fingers can come down over the thumb so that you do end up in a more fist like shape.
What kinds of sensations can people explore at this point?
You can do all sorts of different things with your hand, given the confines of the body part you’re inside. You might stretch out in different ways to feel what feels good. You can move in all sorts of directions. You can knock, or move in and out—what some people might call punch fucking. You could just rock gently. Experiment and find out what feels good for your partner.
The fistee might or might not have an orgasm. What should the fister be ready for?
If somebody has an orgasm while your fist is in their body, they may push your fist out as they have an orgasm. You might not really have a choice about it: Go with it. Other people will feel like they’re going to break your fist, crush it and pull it in. Keeping your thumb tucked under your fingers does help. Some people might have their first squirting experience while they’re being fisted. How fun is that!
Should we talk about two hands?
Sometimes people enjoy having two fists in, or a fist in a front hole and a fist in the butt at the same time. There are fun things that bodies can do.
So let’s say it’s time to exit.
When the fistee is ready for the hand to come out, come out slowly. Very slowly. It’s going to feel like a lot. Don’t rush. If you’re fisting a front hole, you may get a suction seal. Sliding another finger along your fist to break the suction may go better than just pulling against the force of it. It might make a fun noise, too.
And stay present, emotionally, even after your hand is out.
Right. People often aren’t ready for the emotional impact. Sometimes people have really emotional reactions to being fisted, so don’t be surprised by that. Don’t judge it. Just be with it. If you take your fist out of someone and they start weeping, be present with them. It’s a flood of emotions.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
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