Figging

What is figging?

Figging (Dutch: figging) is the insertion of a piece of peeled ginger root into the anus, which produces a fierce burning feeling. With figging the stimulus comes not from a blow or from heat but from a compound in the root. The word comes from feaguing, a nineteenth-century term from the horse trade.

What happens during figging

Nothing, and then suddenly a lot. The stimulus does not start right away: it comes on slowly, grows stronger as it goes, lasts about twenty minutes according to the encyclopedic description of figging and then fades fast.

That makes figging different from the rest of the cabinet: a blow is over, a clamp you can release, ginger does not stop.

A typical course: the root goes in freshly peeled and the first minute feels almost nothing. After that comes warmth, then something sharper, and at the peak the attention is entirely on one spot. The same source reports that for some people it never goes past mild discomfort. You do not know in advance which group you fall into.

Why ginger burns

For the same reason as a chili pepper, only weaker and slower. Yin and colleagues write in British Journal of Pharmacology that ginger, like chili peppers, stimulates through a group of vanilloid compounds that activate the pain channel TRPV1.

They compared the three main pungent compounds in ginger and found a clear ranking: 6-shogaol is the strongest, then 6-gingerol with an EC50 of 2.9 micromolar, and zingerone lags far behind. These compounds take roughly the same position in the channel as capsaicin.

So no tissue is burned: the body reports heat that is not there, because the channel that passes heat along is opened chemically. And the strength depends on the root you have at home.

Why people do figging

Because you cannot work around it.

The appeal lies in the lack of control. With pain from outside you can brace yourself; with figging bracing makes it worse, because clenching intensifies the stimulus. Anyone looking for surrender meets that so directly in few other techniques.

• For the one who undergoes it the gain is in the slowness: there is time to notice how the stimulus builds, and that asks something other than just gritting through.
• For the one who applies it no force is involved and the intensity does not depend on your hand.
• For a couple it works as a test of control: once it is going there is nothing left to manage, so everything hangs on the agreement beforehand and the safeword.

Figging is not an introduction. The effect cannot be steered, and anyone who does not yet know how their own limit feels should not start here.

How people combine figging

Usually not on its own, but alongside something else. The classic combination is with caning: because clenching intensifies the burning stimulus, the person who takes the cane has to choose between bracing and taking the full blow. That is also why figging is used in that context, to punish the clenching.

Beyond that, the root is cut as a plug and used without lubricant, because lubricant dampens the effect. That has a price: without lubricant the friction grows, and that is where the careful version parts from the careless one.

What figging is not

“It is a burn.” No. No heat is involved: gingerols and shogaols open the TRPV1 channel, and that channel reports heat. Yin and colleagues show that this is the same channel capsaicin uses.

“So ginger can never do harm.” Not that either. The safety report from the Cosmetic Ingredient Review Expert Panel describes four patients with an IgE allergy to ginger, all with a positive prick test to raw ginger extract, and a woman who went into anaphylactic shock after a ginger-containing product. An allergic reaction on mucosa is not a theoretical scenario.

“There is research on it.” On ginger yes, on figging no. I have found no clinical literature on this use, and that is exactly the reason to take the risks of anal insertion and of a chemical stimulus seriously instead of sailing on scene stories.

“It is a BDSM invention.” The word is older than the scene. Grose notes in his 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue under feague: “to feague a horse; to put ginger up a horse’s fundament”, to make the animal lively and carry its tail well. A horse-trader’s trick, then, and that is the origin of the term.

What I see of it myself

I am Victor, a gigolo, twenty-five years in BDSM and trained as a psychotherapist. Figging is the technique I hear about most often out of curiosity and least often out of desire. People want to know how bad it is, not whether we are going to do it.

What stands out there: the question is almost always about the intensity and almost never about the duration, while the duration is the real point. Feeling something for twenty minutes that you cannot switch off is different from ten seconds of something more intense. Anyone who misses that difference is startled not by the pain but by how long it stays.

What you can do yourself

• Use only fresh root, not ginger oil or extract. The CIR report notes that undiluted ginger extract tested positive in a reactivity test for sensitization; concentrated preparations do not belong in this category.
• Test first on the inside of your arm and wait fifteen minutes, so you catch an allergic reaction in a spot where you can do something about it.
• Cut the root with a wide base, just like a butt plug, so nothing can slide inside.
• Agree on a safeword and keep it to one word, because figging asks not for negotiation but for a switch.
• Count on twenty minutes. Taking it out helps, but the feeling still fades slowly afterward.
• See a doctor for pain that does not ease after an hour, for bleeding or for swelling, and say what you used.

Learn more about figging

On this site you will find the technique figging is most often combined with at caning, and the article on sharp versus dull pain places a burning stimulus within that distinction.

Beyond this site, Yin and colleagues explain exactly why ginger does what it does, and the safety report on ginger ingredients is dry reading but the best overview of what is known about allergy.

Where this fits on this site

If you want to know how a burning stimulus compares to the pain you already know, that is a conversation. On the page about the BDSM date you can read how we agree beforehand which stimuli are on the table.

Sources

• Structural mechanisms underlying activation of TRPV1 channels by pungent compounds in gingers. Yin, Dong, Vu, Yang, Yarov-Yarovoy, Tian & Zheng, British Journal of Pharmacology 176(19), 3364–3377, 2019. Establishes that ginger, like chili peppers, stimulates through vanilloid compounds that activate the nociceptive TRPV1 channel, the ranking 6-shogaol > 6-gingerol >> zingerone, the EC50 of 2.9 micromolar for 6-gingerol, and that these compounds use the same binding position and hydrogen bonds as capsaicin.
• Safety Assessment of Zingiber officinale (Ginger)-Derived Ingredients as Used in Cosmetics. Cosmetic Ingredient Review Expert Panel, 2022. Establishes the documented IgE allergy to ginger in four patients with a positive prick test to raw ginger extract, the finding that a ginger-containing product can trigger an anaphylactic reaction, the strong patch-test reaction to ginger powder, and the positive result of undiluted ginger extract in a reactivity test for sensitization.
• 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue. Francis Grose, 1811, via Project Gutenberg. Establishes the entry FEAGUE: “To feague a horse; to put ginger up a horse’s fundament, and formerly, as it is said, a live eel, to make him lively and carry his tail well”, and with it the origin of the word figging.
• Figging. Wikipedia. Establishes the description as inserting a peeled ginger root into the anus for a fierce burning feeling, the derivation from the nineteenth-century feaguing, the course in which the effect comes on slowly, lasts about twenty minutes and then fades fast, that some people feel only mild discomfort, that lubricant dampens the effect, and that clenching intensifies the stimulus, which is why figging is used with caning.

Related terms

• BDSM. The umbrella figging falls under, with the agreements that come with it.
• Caning. The technique figging is most often combined with.
• Butt plug. The shape the root is cut into, with the wide base.
• Algolagnia. The word for arousal that comes from pain itself.
• Bastinado. A small surface with a big effect.
• Foodplay. The broader practice where something from the kitchen ends up on the skin.
• Peppermint oil. The other plant-based substance that burns, but precisely should not go on mucosa.
• Sadomasochism. The overarching category figging falls under as a pain stimulus.
• Chemical play. The branch figging belongs to, with the other stinging substances and their shared mechanism.
• Sensation play. The umbrella figging falls under as a chemical stimulus.
• Pain play. The collective name figging falls under, with what the research says about the experience.