Fisting

[5][10] Sex educator Robert Morgan Lawrence, for example, claimed the practice dates back thousands of years.

[11][12] Fisting became more visible and popular around the time of the gay liberation movement, during which sex clubs partly or entirely dedicated to the practice emerged.

The hanky code allowed fisters to surreptitiously solicit partners in public by wearing red handkerchiefs.

[13] By 1973, gay bars, bathhouses and clubs such as the Red Star Saloon in South of Market, San Francisco were openly advertising fisting.

[19][6] During the AIDS crisis in the 1980s, cities such as San Francisco[20] and New York[21] forcibly closed gay establishments that, accurately or not, were believed to permit unsafe sex,[22] including fisting.

Fisting's visibility and popularity has grown in the twenty-first century,[25][26] likely due in large part to the internet[27] and greater HIV prevention and treatment options.

[4][6] In the case of double fisting, pleasure may be derived more from the stretching of the anus or vagina than from the in-and-out movement of hands.

[41][42][43][44][6] As anal fisting may cause damage to the rectal mucosa, it may increase the likelihood of transmission of sexually transmitted infections.

The two photographs, which were deemed possibly prosecutable as obscenity, included “Helmut and Brooks, NYC, 1978”, which shows anal fisting.

[100] That same year, a jury took less than 90 minutes[101] to acquit Simon Walsh for possession of images of anal fisting that the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) alleged constituted illegal, extreme pornography.

[95] In 2019, the CPS declared it would no longer prosecute pornography produced by consenting adults engaging in legal acts,[102] including fisting.