Rimjob

What is a rimjob?

A rimjob is licking or kissing someone’s anus, called anilingus in medical terms. It is oral sex aimed at the anus instead of the genitals. Good for a lot of people, and it carries a real hygiene risk, because anything that passes through stool travels straight from gut to mouth here.

How common a rimjob is

More common among straight people than the literature assumed for a long time.

Tiffany Phillips and colleagues at the Melbourne Sexual Health Centre put the question in IJERPH to 709 heterosexual visitors, about the preceding three months. Of the women, 26.6% had received a rimjob, against 12.6% of the men. The other way around: 25.5% of the men had given one, against 9.3% of the women. Both differences were strongly significant.

Two caveats belong with that. These were visitors to an STI clinic, not a cross-section of the population, and the response rate sat at 24.6%. What the study does establish firmly is that rimming and anal sex travel together. Someone who had received a rimjob had almost four times as often had anal sex (aOR 3.8). The researchers themselves call it one of the first studies to show that both are not unusual at all among straight people.

In the kink world the numbers run higher. Jennifer Rehor counted in Archives of Sexual Behavior, among 1,394 women, that 49.14% had received it from a man and 40.32% had done it to a man. In some form, watching included, 70.30% came out at yes.

Where the word rimjob comes from

From the edge.

The Online Etymology Dictionary traces rim back to the Old English rima, “edge, border, coast”, as in særima, literally the edge of the sea, and dægrima, the edge of the day, which is to say dawn. As a verb, to rim has existed since 1794 in the dull sense of “to provide with a rim”. The sexual meaning arrives only in the 1920s, possibly under the influence of ream, “to widen a hole”. Rimming and rimmed sit on that same branch.

Why people love it

For the nerves, and for what the act says.

The rim of the anus is full of nerve endings and responds to something quite different from penetration: warmth, a soft tongue, pressure without anything going in. For a lot of women that is the nicest part of everything anal, precisely because nothing has to go inside.

There is a second layer on top of that. Someone who does this is saying something with it: I find nothing about you disgusting. For part of the people who ask for it, that matters more than the sensation itself. So it often plays a part in humiliation and in service-oriented submission, where the act is given as an order.

It is also the act most people are most ashamed to ask for. More often than with any other part, the conversation is first about whether it is even allowed, and only after that about whether it feels good.

What the health risk really is

Not injury, but transmission.

Nothing tears during a rimjob. What does happen is that mouth and gut touch each other directly. The RIVM’s LCI guideline on Hepatitis A names sexual oro-anal contact explicitly as a direct fecal-oral route of infection. The nasty thing about that virus is the run-up: the incubation period is 28 days on average, with a spread of 14 to 50, and someone is already infectious from a week before the jaundice becomes visible. So you cannot tell by looking at someone whether it is wise.

Along this same route travel gut bacteria and parasites too, plus the ordinary STIs that come with other forms of oral sex. There is a vaccine against hepatitis A. Against the rest, a barrier helps.

Misconceptions about rimjobs

“If you’ve showered well, it’s clean.” Showering removes visible dirt. It does not remove a virus from a gut. Clean skin and a safe act are two different things.

“It’s something for gay men.” The Melbourne numbers say the opposite: among straight people it happened to over a quarter of the women within three months.

“An enema solves it.” An enema empties the last stretch of the gut and changes nothing about what sits in the mucous membrane. On top of that, rinsing too often is itself irritating.

“Rimming is a stepping stone, not a goal.” For part of the people it is exactly the other way around: this is where they want to end up, and penetration does not have to happen at all.

What I make of it

I’m Victor, a gigolo, twenty-five years in BDSM and trained as a psychotherapist. On my list of what is possible, anal is a yes and anything involving stool is a no. Rimming sits between those two, and with me that means what it means for everything: open to discussion, with the agreements in place, whether it belongs to an intimate togetherness or to something with more tension.

The question often comes wrapped in a joke. People mention it in passing, watch how I react, and only when no disgusted face appears does the real question follow. That says more about shame than about the act.

And one practical point that almost no one mentions: this is the part where the order really matters. Nothing that has touched the anus comes back to the vulva after that, whether by tongue, finger, or toy.

What you can do

• Ask about hepatitis A vaccination instead of about showering. That is the question that actually covers something.
• Have a dental dam or a condom cut open ready if you do it with someone you have not known long.
• Agree on the order. Anus last, or else clean material in between.
• Say in advance whether you dare to ask for it or not. That conversation takes thirty seconds and saves an evening of hesitating.
• Do not go ahead if someone has had diarrhea. That is the one situation where the answer is simply no.

More about rimjobs

Within this glossary, anal sex covers the step that comes after, and prostate massage describes what happens inside, in men. On the blog, preparing for a gigolo visit covers the practical side of getting yourself ready for a date.

Beyond that, the Melbourne study gives the only good numbers on straight people, and the LCI guideline on Hepatitis A sets out the route of infection and the vaccination.

Sources

• Oral, Vaginal and Anal Sexual Practices among Heterosexual Males and Females Attending a Sexual Health Clinic: A Cross-Sectional Survey in Melbourne, Australia. T. R. Phillips, H. Constantinou, C. K. Fairley, C. S. Bradshaw, K. Maddaford, M. Y. Chen, J. S. Hocking & E. P. F. Chow, International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health 18(23), 12668, 2021 (DOI 10.3390/ijerph182312668; authors, volume, number and article number checked against Crossref). Cross-sectional survey among 709 heterosexual visitors to the Melbourne Sexual Health Centre, March and April 2019, response rate 24.6%. Used here: the share who in the preceding three months received rimming (26.6% of the women against 12.6% of the men) and performed it (25.5% of the men against 9.3% of the women), both with p less than 0.001; the adjusted odds ratios linking anal sex to receiving (3.8; 95% CI 2.4–6.0) and performing (2.8; 95% CI 1.8–4.6) rimming; and the authors’ conclusion that this is one of the first studies to show that anal sex and rimming among sexually active straight people are not unusual and often occur together.
• Sensual, Erotic, and Sexual Behaviors of Women from the “Kink” Community. J. E. Rehor, Archives of Sexual Behavior 44(4), 825–836, 2015. Questionnaire among 1,580 women from the kink world. Used here is only the line “Rimming (stimulating anus with mouth)” from table 8, on the sub-sample of 1,394 women: 18.87% did it to a woman and 40.32% to a man, 21.52% received it from a woman and 49.14% from a man, 64.20% did or received it, 34.07% watched it and 70.30% took part in some form.
• Hepatitis A | LCI guideline. National Coordination Centre for Communicable Disease Control, National Institute for Public Health and the Environment (RIVM), published March 26, 2024. The official Dutch control guideline. Used here: that the direct route of infection is fecal-oral through close personal contact and that transmission through sexual (oro-anal) contact falls under this; the incubation period of 28 days on average with a spread of 14 to 50 days; and the infectious period of one week before the onset of jaundice to one week after. The guideline also describes the vaccination option.
• rim. Online Etymology Dictionary, Douglas Harper. Gives the origin of the noun from the Old English rima “edge, border, coast”, with the compounds særima (“edge of the sea”) and dægrima (“edge of the day”); the verb to rim from 1794 in the sense “to provide with a rim”; and the finding that the sexual senses date from the 1920s, possibly influenced by ream (“to widen a hole”), with rimmed and rimming as derivations.

Related terms

A rimjob rarely stands on its own. What surrounds it is about the same spot, by other means.

• Anal sex. The step that in the research is statistically most strongly tied to it.
• Butt plug. The object that warms up the same area without a mouth.
• Prostate massage. What there is to find inside, in men.
• Pegging. The reversed roles in anal play.
• Humiliation. The frame in which the act is sometimes given as an order.
• Service-oriented submission. The same, but without humiliation and with devotion as the motive.
• Oral sex. The umbrella that a rimjob is the oro-anal corner of.