Pegging

What is pegging?

Pegging is anal sex where a woman penetrates a man with a strap-on dildo: a dildo on a harness around the hips. The act itself is old, the word is not. What sets pegging apart from anal sex in general is the reversal: the one who normally penetrates receives.

How pegging goes in practice

Most of a pegging session is penetrating nothing.

The order that works in practice: first a finger or a small butt plug, plenty of lube, and the time to notice that a sphincter only relaxes when nothing is asked of it. Only after that does the harness come in. The size of the dildo matters less than the pace, and the pace is almost always set by the one receiving, even if they are not moving.

The rest is mundane: a towel, a position where both can see each other’s face, and the agreement that it gets said out loud when something has to stop. Especially at first.

Where the word pegging comes from

From a contest in a sex-advice column.

The encyclopedic description lays out the history. In 1998 the instructional film Bend Over Boyfriend appeared, which brought the act to a wide audience. There just was no word for it: Dan Savage’s column noted that there was no dictionary entry and that for lack of anything better people called it “strap on sex”. Savage held a contest about it in 2001, and pegging won.

That is younger than most sexual words and it explains part of the discomfort around it. An act without a name is hard to talk about, let alone look up. According to that same source, the meaning has since been stretched: for Savage it was about a woman and a man, and these days the word gets used for any combination as long as a strap-on dildo is involved. Some queer speakers hold on to strap-on sex instead, because to their mind pegging leans too much on a straight starting point.

Why people do pegging

For two reasons that stand apart from each other: it feels good, and it turns something around.

The physical part was first mapped by Zaliznyak and colleagues, who in Sexual Medicine put anatomical drawings of the rectum to 466 men and 498 women and asked which part felt good during penetration. For both groups the same region came out on top: the shallow front wall, and that is exactly where in men the prostate sits against it. Of the men, 24 percent had ever had receptive anal sex, against 34 percent of the women. About half of both groups needed stimulation elsewhere on the body to reach an orgasm; 16 percent of the men never got there, against 32 percent of the women.

The other part is about role division. Bai, Wang, and Zheng studied in The Journal of Sex Research a Chinese community that has formed around pegging and calls itself fourth love: 529 people inside that group, 337 outside it. What came out is that the reversal does not stay in the bedroom. Women reported a much larger sense of power, men gave their partner more power during sex, and that ratio carried through into the relationship around it. Strikingly, of all the features the group names itself, it was not the act but the romantic relationship that got the widest endorsement.

What it gives each person differs.

• For the one receiving, a nerve region is added that most men have never used, plus the falling away of the role in which you are the one who has to do it.
• For the one penetrating, the perspective changes. You set the pace and you look at someone who has left that to you.

Honest addition: it is not for everyone, and for many people the first time is mostly strange rather than exciting.

Misconceptions about pegging

“So then you’re gay.” No. What happens is anal stimulation of a man by a woman. The attraction is to a partner of the other sex; there is no reason to read that as anything other than what it is.

“It’s humiliation.” Sometimes, if that is the agreement. In Bai and colleagues’ study a very different picture emerged: that community calls the romantic bond more important than the act. Pegging can be degradation, but it does not have to be.

“If it hurts, it’s going well.” The exact opposite. Pain is the signal to stop or go back, not to push on. Lube runs out faster than people think.

“It’s about the size.” The most often pointed-to sensitive region sits just behind the sphincter, a few centimeters in. Depth is not where the sensation sits.

What I see myself

I’m Victor, a gigolo, twenty-five years in BDSM and trained as a psychotherapist. Pegging is not on my published list of possibilities and I do not offer it as a standing service.

The question of whether it is “weird” to want this, I hear more often than you would think. Usually it comes from women who want to suggest it to their partner and do not know how. My answer is the same every time: the problem rarely sits in the act and almost always in the conversation around it.

It often goes wrong on pace. People prepare the gear and not the hour before it. A body that is rushed closes, and that is not a matter of willing.

What you can do yourself

• Talk it through. Not asking once, but discussing what you picture and what you do not want with it.
• Take more lube than you think you need, and put the bottle within reach. The rectum makes none of its own.
• Build up with fingers or a small plug before a harness comes into it, and accept that the first time can end there.
• Let the receiving party set the pace, even if that person lies still. Ask actively instead of waiting for a complaint.
• Do not use a toy without a wide base or grip. Objects left behind in the rectum are a known and avoidable emergency.
• Know that it can linger afterward. Plan something quiet after it; that is ordinary aftercare.

More reading on pegging

Within this glossary, anal sex gives the broader practice with the figures on risk and frequency, butt plug describes the object most people start with, and milking is about what happens to the prostate when the stimulation keeps up. On the blog, the psychology of captivity is about surrender in a role you do not normally have.

Beyond that, the study by Zaliznyak and colleagues is free to read and the only one that actually maps the rectum by sensation instead of by illness.

Where this fits on this site

Pegging is not on my list of possibilities. What does hold is that everything is open to discussion and nothing is required; if you want to talk about it before you decide anything, that can happen. The page about the BDSM date covers how an evening is prepared and what gets set out beforehand.

Sources

• Anal sex practices and rectal erogenous zone maps among men and women of diverse sexual orientations: an anatomic-map based questionnaire study. Michael Zaliznyak, Alexander B. Walton, Jenna Stelmar, Dylan Isaacson, Thomas W. Gaither, Gail Knudson & Maurice M. Garcia, Sexual Medicine 13(3), 2025 (DOI 10.1093/sexmed/qfaf037; volume and issue checked against Crossref, full text via Europe PMC). Questionnaire with anatomical drawings among 466 cisgender men and 498 cisgender women. Provides that the shallow front wall of the rectum was most often pointed to as pleasant by both groups and that this region in men runs directly over the prostate; that 24 percent of the men and 34 percent of the women had ever had receptive anal sex; that 47 percent of the men and 49 percent of the women needed stimulation elsewhere for an orgasm; and that 16 percent of the men and 32 percent of the women never got an orgasm from anal penetration. Note: the abstract and the results paragraph give two different percentages (39 and 36) for men who climax without additional stimulation; that figure is therefore not used here.
• “Female Top, Male Bottom”: Gendered Power Dynamics in Sexual and Romantic Relationships within “Fourth Love” Community in China. Wei Bai, Haihan Wang & Lijun Zheng, The Journal of Sex Research 62(7), 1322–1331, 2025 (DOI 10.1080/00224499.2025.2503893; authors, volume and pagination checked against Crossref). Comparative questionnaire study among 529 people inside the Chinese fourth love community and 337 outside it; only the abstract was read, the publisher version is behind a paywall. Provides that pegging forms the core of that concept, that women reported a strongly increased sense of power and men gave their partner more power during sex, that this ratio carried through into the romantic relationship, and that of the features the group names itself, the romantic relationship got the highest endorsement.
• Pegging. Wikipedia, with the more extensive English entry laid alongside. Provides the origin of the word: the instructional film Bend Over Boyfriend from 1998, the finding in the column Savage Love that no dictionary entry existed for the act and that people used “strap on sex”, Dan Savage’s 2001 contest from which pegging came out the winner, the later broadening of the meaning to any combination with a strap-on dildo, and the objection of some queer speakers that the word is formed too strongly from a straight starting point. Written by volunteers; used here only for the word history and the definition boundary.
• Monitor Seksuele Gezondheid 2023. Rutgers, 2024. National monitor among 12,551 Dutch people. Used here only for the Dutch context: for 8 percent of respondents, anal sex was part of the last time with a sex partner, against 85 percent for penis-in-vagina sex.

Related terms

• Anal sex. The broader practice, with the figures on risk and how common it is in the Netherlands.
• Butt plug. The object the build-up usually starts with.
• Dildo. What sits in the harness, and where that word comes from.
• Milking. What happens when prostate stimulation keeps up without ordinary build-up.
• Forced feminization. The scene pegging is often part of, but no condition for.
• Degradation. The layer that can lie over it if that is the agreement.
• Aftercare. Why a first time almost always calls for a quiet ending.
• Strap-on. The tool itself, with the word history and the difference between the harnesses.
• Strap-on dildo. The same tool under its Dutch name, with the verb voorbinden and the four newspaper citations.