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In February, Cornell students filled a lecture hall past capacity to debate the question, “Is Pegging Gay?” More than 150 seats, standing room only, an even split of men and women, all assembled to litigate a strap-on like it was the Federalist Papers. The answer is no. A woman is doing it. That is the entire answer, and it did not require a lecture hall. But when the Ivy League starts debating pegging, the culture has decided it is ready, so I spoke to two women who have stood on the giving end. One pegged. One didn’t.
Linda has been married for 10 years. Kids, a mortgage, grandparents on standby. In year 10 she did the math on her husband’s enthusiasm for ass play at roughly the same moment she encountered the word pegging in a magazine, and unlike most people who file this kind of information away for a decade, she proposed it to him that week. Then she dropped the kids at the grandparents’ and booked a hotel, because Linda is a woman who understands that certain projects should not be attempted in the marital bed on a school night.
She bought a regular size dildo. She did not want him babied. Nobody ever babied her into anything, and she saw no reason to start a charity in his honor. Her approach was that of a virgin man with a girl for the first time, except empathetic, because she understands how the butt works, and she understands that when it comes to pegging, or any anal, you cannot immediately go full throttle. There are many, many steps. She went through the many steps. He liked it so much it frightened her in the good way, because now she knows she can do it whenever she wants.
Linda’s husband is the luckiest man in this article. His wife read one magazine and booked a hotel. Men spend fortunes on therapy trying to say one sentence out loud to their wives, and this man’s wife said it for him, over breakfast, with childcare already arranged.
Related: Four Straight Guys on Why They Like to Get Pegged
Danny’s situation shared nothing with Linda’s except the dildo, and technically not even that, since hers never left the drawer. She met a man on a dating app, and they went to a party where they drank enough that she assumed he would not be functional, an assumption he shared. Then they got back to his place.
He became an animal when her clothes came off, and she became an animal when his did, and the attraction hit both of them at the same time and in the same way, which is rare sober and nearly miraculous drunk. Despite the alcohol, they each came three times. Somewhere around hour six he asked her to peg him. She wanted to. She declined. She was drunk, she had been up too many hours fucking already, and she knew her hands were no longer surgical. She never did get to peg him. She did the responsible thing, which was not pegging him after six hours of sex.
Consider what Danny turned down. A willing man asking at peak animal. Most people treat a green light as a legal obligation. Danny grounded herself the way a pilot grounds herself in fog, because pilots who fly in fog make the news, and so do people who peg drunk.
Linda took the many, many steps and now holds a lifetime license. Danny skipped them and was equally right. The world wants to know whether pegging is gay. Wrong question. The question is whether you can be trusted with the other end of it.