[“Oftentimes when we think about preparing for penetrative sex, we think about the willingness and readiness of the penetrator: a penis becoming a boner, a dildo being lubed up. And yes, sadly, a phallus can usually make its way inside a canal whether the canal is ready or not. But wet and swollen pussies and rectums and throats are, simply put, better for fucking.
That’s one of the many advantages of fisting for people who enjoy being penetrated: unlike a cylindrical phallus, it requires patience and finesse to get the considerably bumpier shape of a hand inside. It’s easier for most penises to slip into most vaginas or rectums, but “easy” doesn’t necessarily translate to “more pleasurable” for anyone involved. Fisting emphasizes what the fistee wants and needs in order to relax and open, which changes the act of penetration from “let’s get this done” to “let’s take our time.” It’s not that it always requires hours of tantric foreplay: I’ve seen people swallow hands in a matter of minutes. But fisting tops and bottoms do need to be attuned to each other more than in any other kind of intercourse.
Adamczak mentions fisting several times in her piece (“a closed hand around a dildo, of lips around a foot, of a vagina stretched over a fist”). To my mind, getting fisted is the ultimate act of circlusion, even if the term itself refers to the penetrating body part. Fisting necessitates communication, patience, finesse, embodied listening, and active breathwork. This may go some way toward explaining why fisters tend to enter a meditative, trance-like state. Fisting requires intentional engagement from the bottom, because in order to take a fist you really have to breathe deeply, to communicate about slowing down or wanting more, to reach for the poppers, to ask for the lube. And these are all things bottoms could be doing all the time, but fisting takes us out of our assumptions that the bottom is there to satisfy the top’s lust, to simply take it. A fistee must be a size queen, someone who loves to be filled up with something massive. Opening to a fist is a trust fall for everyone involved. When your hand is deep inside someone, you can feel their heart beating back against you. Sometimes when I’m up to my wrist in an aroused, engorged bottom, watching and feeling and listening to and smelling a partner so aroused they’re thrashing and bearing down and grasping back and contracting over and over, I think: Why would you fuck a hole that isn’t turned on? Sure, I take pride in turning people on and driving them insane with ecstasy, but fucking an engorged hole is just more fun, like bouncing on a trampoline or being tossed into the air by a taut parachute, with all the verve that inspires.
It’s not just penises that enjoy being circluded either. Clit heads respond to pressing and smashing and mashing, especially once they’ve been teased into arousal. The suction of a mouth or pump toy vacuum sealed around the vulva can create the feeling that your junk is swollen enough to put inside of something or someone. “What matters is not what parts a body possesses, but rather, which parts are put into action,” concludes Adamczak, and this is a queer manifesto bigger than circlusion, bigger even than fisting. When we reinvent and remap our anatomy for the purpose of pleasure, we leave behind inherited anxiety and shame around what our bodies are capable of, opening wide to engulf the future.”]
tina horn, from why are people into that? a cultural investigation of kink, 2024
