Happy International Fisting Day
(ALL LINKS ARE NSFW. I first posted this on my now-defunct blog back in 2011, when International Fisting Day was brand new. A lot has changed within the queer porn world in the ensuing five years, but I still believe in the radical possibilities of pleasure, babe.)
It’s October 21st, and that means it’s officially unofficially officially International Fisting Day! Announced by queer porn superstars Jiz Lee and Courtney Trouble, Fisting Day is all about, well, the sexual act of fisting. But it’s also about the stigma surrounding it, and the ongoing de facto ban on showing it on DVD. It’s a day to fight back, by talking about it, watching it, doing it and loving it.
What follows are my thoughts on the act of fisting and why it’s so demonized, and why it shouldn’t be. I speak as a queer, a cis-male ally and an accomplice in the creation and distribution of ethical queer pornography.
Most porn distributors won’t carry a DVD that shows fisting because they fear running afoul of obscenity laws. Ironically, no one has ever been successfully prosecuted* over fisting, while many have over acts these same distributors do allow. As Courtney Trouble points out, some of the same places that won’t carry her films do carry Max Hardcore’s: A man who went to prison over obscenity charges. There are no laws specifically against the act of fisting.
However, it is true the act of inserting a hand into another’s body past the thumb is viewed as an act of violence by the sexually ignorant, and it’s little wonder when there are so few positive depictions of the act in the mainstream. But I think there’s something deeper behind this inability to see a fundamental part of many queer people’s sex life as anything but destructive.
The heteronormative ideal vagina is a virginal “tight” one. Nowhere is this more visible than in those ever-reliable social bellwethers known as “jokes.” There’s Carlin’s joke about “snappers,” and Patton Oswald has a whole routine about spam advertising “big vaginas” and wondering what man would be interested in that (it’s hard to describe listening to one of your generation’s favorite comedians and realizing the joke is that you don’t exist). We slut-shame women by joking about how loose their vaginas are, and of course there’s the classic “one stitch for the old man” episiotomy joke. Women are left as anxious about the elasticity of their genitals as men are about the length of their own. The concept that a vagina capable of accepting a whole hand (or even two) is erotic and desirable flies in the face of all this.
I think the idea of the perfect “tight” vagina became the default acceptable one for a number of reasons that are all rooted in patriarchy. For one thing, there’s our culture’s obsession with defining the morality of women by their sexual experience. Second, there’s the equation of beauty and desirability with youth — we’re to see the maiden as sexually desirable, not the mother. And of course there’s the traditional male anxiety about penis size, which I believe has led men that fear their own sexual potency to turn this worry into blame against women. Why fret whether you’re big enough, when you can blame the other party for not being small enough?
But most importantly, there is a core denial of the strength of the vagina. Running through all this ideas is the implication that vaginas are delicate, even fragile. We made episiotomy routine in many childbirth facilities, actually slicing the vaginal wall open for fear of it tearing, rather than giving it the chance to stretch. The truth is, vaginas are powerful. They’re built by evolution to accommodate, to accept, and to grow and contract as needed. Performed with care, there is nothing destructive about fisting. Rather, it’s a powerful sexual rite — a bond of trust between top and bottom.
But hey, don’t take my word for it — I don’t even have a vagina. Take these people’swords for it. Read about how it’s done. Even watch and learn.
As for the future, I can only hope that the stigma surrounding fisting follows the same path as that of anal sex — another act once considered dangerous, destructive and inherently violent that barely raises an eyebrow anymore (of course, there will always be people shocked by the concept, but those people are shocked by strong breezes and suggestive coffee stains). Until that day comes, Happy Fisting Day.
*UPDATE: Originally, I stated no case has ever been raised over fisting. This was false. In 2001 Adam Glasser was charged with obscenity for showing fisting in a film… yet the case was settled for a $1,000 fine, a plea of “guilty” to a public nuisance charge and an agreement to created an edited version for sale in California. Tellingly, Glasser was specifically allowed to keep selling the unedited film as part of the deal — obviously the prosecutor knew they hadn’t a snowball’s chance in hell of winning. Glasser is a millionaire — $1,000 meant nothing to him. Public nuisance laws mainly exist as a final resort when no other charge will stick, and what was the point if he was allowed to keep selling the film?
