“I was trying to think of things that I genuinely wanted but might be embarrassed to tell other people about,” said Max Zavidow, a 24-year-old, New York–based comedian and TikTok creator whose video has amassed nearly 2 million likes since April. “My thought process was that if I wanted it and was embarrassed to say it, so did other people.” The vulnerability struck a chord. “The response was definitely insane. Over 400 strangers reached out to peg me,” he said. “My favorite part of the outreach, in general, was people telling me the video led to them getting pegged or pegging their partner.” For an act that has long been treated as taboo, how did we get here?
The term “pegging” is a recent addition to our sexual vocabulary, one that sex columnist Dan Savage helped coin in the early 2000s. It was a practical matter for Savage. “This was when my column was only in print,” he said in an interview with BuzzFeed News, “and every time someone said, ‘I’m a straight guy and I want to get fucked in the ass with a dildo,’ it took up a lot of space! Back in the day, you would cut ‘that’s and ‘the’s, anything to get it down to word count. That was the motivation. Here’s a twelve-word phrase I keep having to use. I want a one-syllable word for it. It needed a name, a short one, percussive, as with all good sex slang, and my readers gave it to me.”
In June 2001, after he tallied over 10,000 votes from his readers, the phrase “pegging” entered (sorry) the popular lexicon. It beat out other strong contenders, like “punt/punting” — because you kick things over to the other team — and “bob/bobbing” — a reference to Dr. Carol Queen’s landmark 1998 sex ed video series, Bend Over Boyfriend.
Since then, pegging has enjoyed brushes with pop culture prominence and mainstream recognition. Broad City’s 2015 episode “Knockoffs” featured main character Abbi on a date with a man named Jeremy, who asks if they can switch up their sex. Abbi assumes this means changing positions, but Jeremy is actually asking her if she will don a harness and dildo and fuck him in the ass with it. The show is a comedy, but the request itself isn’t played for humiliating laughs. Intrigued by the request, Abbi calls her best friend Ilana for a pep talk. Ilana is overjoyed and supportive of her friend’s sexual exploration.
“The whole comedy was Abbi replacing the dildo so the guy she had a crush on wouldn’t find out she ruined it in the dishwasher, the comedy wasn’t, oh, here’s a guy who wants to get fucked in the ass,” Savage said. “That wasn’t the butt of the joke. It was a perfectly legitimate fun form of sex that they could engage in that they were up for. I think it reflected the practice being embraced.” After the episode aired, the term “pegging” spiked in Google searches.
The 2016 movie Deadpool features Ryan Reynolds’ character on the receiving end of a dildo worn by his girlfriend (the actor Morena Baccarin). “Happy International Women’s Day,” she says before sticking it in — the punchline to a scene featuring their escalating sexcapades, but also the highest-profile pegging scene in a Hollywood film to date.
And in 2019, a tweet from a Rihanna fan asked, “Fellas… be honest. Would yall [sic] let Rihanna peg you? This is a safe space.” The tweet went viral, with thousands of likes and responses from male fans sharing their fantasies, some serious, some joking about getting topped by the pop star.
In the years since the creation of the term, the definition of pegging has expanded to include all genders and sexualities, as long as someone’s having anal sex with a strap-on. “Pegging classic is when a woman fucks a man in the ass with a dildo,” Savage said. “New pegging is anyone fucking anyone anywhere with a dildo. The definition is broadening,” he added. “Even [in 2001, when the term was created], there were objections to straight guys getting their own name for buttfucking, because maybe it walled off the kind of buttfucking they were doing, and I can see that.”
These objections arose from concerns about cisgender heterosexual men distancing their desires from anything the patriarchy deemed weak, effeminate, or threatening to masculinity. “Cis men believe the world revolves around them and anything they do should have its own special word — see: man bun, man purse, guyliner,” said Goddess Nyx, a professional dominatrix, “as sexuality becomes a bit more open and nebulous and we start to do away with the boring idea that a man who likes butt stuff is gay.”
Savage credits the evocative nature of the word as the source of its popularity. “I think people remember the initial connotations, but I think the thing that’s stuck is that it’s buttholes that get pegged, not vaginas,” he said. “‘Pegging’ doesn’t mean ‘straight.’ A peg gestures towards the use of a dildo. Pegging enters into your mind that it’s not a penis, it’s a peg. It’s the implement being used, which is what it’s referencing. Not so much the gender or sexuality, but the tool.”
‘‘AS SEXUALITY BECOMES A BIT MORE OPEN AND NEBULOUS AND WE START TO DO AWAY WITH THE BORING IDEA THAT A MAN WHO LIKES BUTT STUFF IS GAY.’’
Culled from Buzzfeednews
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