10 Things I Wish I’d Known About Pegging

The sex act known as pegging is most often written about, in my experience, by two groups of people: vanilla straight people advising other vanilla straight people on how to do it, and, uh, Dan Savage.

Needless to say, this means that a lot of pegging-related media doesn’t provide a full picture of what pegging actually entails and what can make it hot. So here I am, harnessing (ha!) all my queer, kinky experiences with this act to tell you some stuff I wish I’d known before I ever strapped a dick onto me and pushed it inside a butt. Gather round!

1. Lube, lube everywhere. This should be obvious to anyone who’s ever done any kind of anal play, but, you know, a lot of couples attempting pegging for the first time probably never have! You should drizzle a good, butt-friendly lube all over the dildo you’re using, as well as on the outside of the ass you’ll be penetrating. You really can’t overdo it with lube in this case. Go hard or go home!

2. Positioning aids are your friends. Don’t be a hero: it’s okay to accept help with pegging, even if that help comes from a piece of foam meant to elevate the receptive partner’s ass. My Liberator Jaz is my favorite tool for this; slid underneath my partner’s hips before penetration, it makes insertion a whole lot easier and seems to improve contact between my dildo and their prostate. Plus the outer lining can be zipped off and laundered, always a plus for lube-heavy, potentially messy sex acts.

3. It’s okay to be particular about your cock. Why does queer and trans media know and accept that it’s okay to be picky about which strap-on dicks you’ll use, but so much cis-hetero media describes your choice of strap-on as a logistical consideration more than an important personal decision? Answer: because LGBTQ+ folks are typically more used to using “accessories” during sex, to make the experience both physically and emotionally better, so we have more opinions on said accessories. Anyway, regardless of your sexual orientation or gender, if you’ll be wearing a strap-on, you deserve one that makes you feel great – gender-wise, aesthetics-wise, and otherwise-wise. My cock of choice is a glittery Godemiche Ambit and it makes me happy every time I strap it on.

4. Your choice of harness matters. Again: you are allowed to want to customize your setup; you don’t just have to grab the first velcro-strap harness kit you spot at the sex shop! Obviously there may be financial reasons you’d want to go with something simple, but that doesn’t mean you have to pick an ugly harness that you hate, in the name of practicality. You should feel hot in your harness! My Aslan Jaguar is easy to put on and take off, and it makes me feel (and look) gorgeous.

5. Try on your setup before the crucial moment. Much like I would never advise a teenage boy to try condoms for the first time right before having sex (YIKES), I would strongly suggest you get your harness and dildo properly configured long before you’ll be using them to fuck someone. “Show time” has the potential to be awkward enough already without you struggling to get your leg through the straps and your dildo right-side-up! Try getting into and out of your setup a few times so you know exactly how to do it, and maybe have your preferred dildo already in the harness for faster assembly. You and your partner will thank me!

6. Be careful and pay attention. If you’ve never done anal play before, then I wouldn’t blame you for not knowing this, but: a butt is far more delicate than a vag, so you have to fuck it a bit differently. Certainly don’t just ram it in there. Go slower than you think you need to, watch your partner’s face closely, and ask them a lot of questions for guidance. You might be able to thrust with wild abandon once they’re used to the sensation and you’ve got enough lube in the mix, but for the most part, assume you should slow your roll.

7. “Strap-on sex” is a more inclusive term. What even is “pegging,” anyway? Much like “guyliner,” it’s a term adopted by the cis-het community to soothe toxic concerns about the “unmanliness” of things traditionally understood to be for women and/or queer people. Besides which, the term “pegging” was coined to refer to a woman fucking a man with a strap-on, and that may be a limiting word if you or your partner don’t fit neatly into those gender categories. It’s okay to call it “strap-on sex” – and once you do, you might open yourself up to even more sexual possibilities. (There’s far more you can do with a strapped-on cock than just stick it in an ass!)

8. Non-physical types of pleasure are perfectly valid. Based on the influx of “couples’ vibes” and vibrating strap-on accoutrements, it seems like straight cis people are overly hung up on the idea of both partners receiving pleasure at the same time. Queer folks, by contrast, are often used to “taking turns” during sex, in my experience. While there are a whole lotta bells and whistles you could add to your strap-on setup to make it more pleasurable for the wearer (e.g. a bullet vibe tucked behind the dildo, or a ridged base that rubs against you with every thrust), sometimes it’s also fun to just embrace that a particular sex act won’t be directly pleasurable for you, and that’s okay. After all, your partner can get you off at a different point in the sex session, and taking the emphasis off your own junk will help you focus better on fucking your partner well. And that is its own type of pleasure.

9. It’s not humiliating (unless you want it to be). Pegging is too often depicted (especially in straight porn) as a man submitting to a woman’s will by “letting” her fuck him. It’s often presented as humiliating, emasculating, and painful. Now, I’m extremely perverted and am certainly not going to deny you your kinky dynamic if that makes sex more fun for you, but I want you to know that power play doesn’t have to be a part of your pegging sesh. Things can be totally vanilla and equitable between the two of you – or the receptive partner can even be the dominant one in the scene, as I’ve learned when dommy partners have tugged on my leash to force me to fuck them harder. That said, if “submissive bottom” and “dominant top” is truly your dynamic of choice when it comes to pegging, go right ahead and make that happen!

10. It can be super romantic. I’ve honestly found few sex acts as intimate and connective as pegging. Needing to focus that closely on my partner really points out to me how cute and hot they are, and the trust they put in me by letting me fuck them is an incredible compliment. Though some people wax poetic about “lovemaking” in more traditional forms like penis-in-vagina sex, I’ve felt that gooey emotional closeness more often during pegging than during PIV!

What do you wish someone had told you about pegging before you did it?