qsmpc 2 (3) pp.

275–292 Intellect Limited 2017

Queer Studies in Media & Popular Culture

Volume 2 Number 3
© 2017 Intellect Ltd Article. English language. doi: 10.1386/qsmpc.2.3.275_1

Jade Aguilar
Willamette University

Pegging and the

heterosexualization of anal
sex: An analysis of Savage
Love advice

Abstract Keywords
This article analyses the Savage Love advice columns that discuss the act of anal sex
‘pegging’, a term that US sex advice columnist Dan Savage and his readers coined in gender performance
2001 to describe a woman anally penetrating a man with a strap-on dildo. Since the heterosexuality
term was coined, the act (and the term) has gained popularity in the United States, media analysis
appearing regularly in the mass media. Using a queer theoretical approach, this pegging
article shows that while straight-identified peggers benefit from the gains that gays/ queer theory
lesbians/queers have made in expanding norms in sexual culture, they simultane- sexuality
ously engage in a form of ideological work to expand the definition of ‘straightness’
in order to maintain their straight identity and the accompanying social privileges.

In 2001, when syndicated sex-advice columnist Dan Savage asked his readers
to submit and then vote on a term to describe ‘when a woman fucks a man in
the ass with a strap-on dildo’, more than 12,000 readers took him up on the
invitation (Savage 2001b). One female reader wrote:

When you first suggested a term be coined for a sexual act that specifi-
cally applied to a woman doing something to a man, I wondered why

275
Jade Aguilar

we had to be so specific? After all, the terms fucking or fisting or kissing

don’t specify the gender of the actors. Then I saw the advantage. My
husband (like most straight men) can’t break the connection between
being fucked in the ass and being gay – but a gender-specific term
might help! If you’re gay and another man is fucking you in the ass, he
isn’t ‘punting’ you. You have to be straight to get punted. A woman has
to do the job. I vote punt! – Positively Uninhibited Newly Turned-on
Effeminate Radical.
(Savage 2001b)

In the end, that reader’s vote for the term ‘punt’ lost out to ‘peg’, but her ideas
are compelling because they show a social desire – evidenced by the 12,103
readers who voted – for a word to describe anal sex during which a woman
penetrates a man (Savage 2001b). As ‘Positively Uninhibited Newly Turned-on
Effeminate Radical’ points out, part of the necessity of this word is to maintain
the straightness of the man being anally penetrated, a sexual act that has
been predominantly associated with gay men. In order for straight men to feel
comfortable engaging in this ‘gay’ act (albeit between a man and a woman),
new language was needed that disassociated it from gay sex and gay culture.
In this article, I discuss how the discursive creation of the term ‘peg’, as well as
the act itself, queers heterosexuality while it simultaneously upholds hetero-
sexuality and masculinity as dominant ideologies.
According to his ‘About Dan’ webpage, Dan Savage first published the
Savage Love sex-advice column in 1991; it is now syndicated in more than 50
newspapers, primarily in alternative weeklies in the United States and Canada
(Savage Lovecast 2017). Savage maintains a popular online presence and a
podcast, and in 2012 he even took his show on the road to college campuses
for the cable television series Savage U (2012, USA: MTV). Savage, who openly
self-identifies as gay, has said in interviews that he started the column as a
humorous response to advice given to gays and lesbians by straight advice
columnists who he felt were ‘clueless about gay issues or gay people or gay
sex or gay rights’ (Robinson 2006) and used the advice platform as a way to
ridicule straight people, stating that he wanted to be ‘obnoxious and contemp-
tuous about straight sex and straight relationships’ (Robinson 2006). However,
once he realized that people of all sexual identities sought open and honest
sex advice, he became more committed to treating the letters seriously
(Robinson 2006).
While the Savage Love column addresses a wide range of sexual acts and
identities, this article focuses specifically on the sexual act of ‘pegging’. The
act itself is not new and has been traced as far back as 1970 to the film Myra
Breckinridge (Sarne, 1970), though at the time no specific word existed to char-
acterize it (Varnishe 2016). In 2001, after Savage solicited suggestions from
readers to come up with a name for this otherwise unnamed sexual act, he
chose the three that he liked best – ‘bob’, ‘punt’ and ‘peg’ – and asked readers
to vote on their favourite (Savage 2001b). In her response, ‘Picking Peg’ specu-
lated why the term ‘peg’ won:

Bobbing is too evocative of the action done by a person performing oral

sex (‘his/her head was bobbing up and down’), and punting gives the
false impression that there’s a foot involved somehow. Pegged, on the
other hand, just seems to beg the addition ‘my ass’. As in, ‘My girlfriend

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 Pegging and the heterosexualization of anal sex

pegged my ass last night’. The fact that it’s a woman’s name makes it all
the more appropriate.
(Savage 2001b)

Since the term was coined in 2001, ‘pegging’ has gained traction in a more
mainstream way, appearing in online articles in Cosmopolitan, Salon, Buzzfeed
and Alternet; TV series such as Peep Show (2003–2015, UK: Channel 4),
Weeds (2005–2012, USA: Showtime), Dirt (2007–2008, USA: FX) and Broad
City (2014–present, USA: Comedy Central); and the film Deadpool (Miller,
2016). Lelo, a luxury sex-toy brand, claimed on its website that ‘topics about
“anal sex” have become the most-searched for terms on our blog’ and that
2015 saw sales of male anal pleasure objects increase by close to 200 per
cent, with a prediction that sales would double again by the end of 2016
(Thorn 2016).
This article analyses all of the Savage Love columns that discuss pegging
in order to understand the complex interpretive processes through which
Dan Savage and his advice-seeking readers reworked the deviant and stig-
matized sexual practice of pegging into a normative and ‘straight’ sexual act.
In particular, it investigates how the act of pegging challenges and shapes
the letter writers’ understanding of their own (or their partners’) sexual
identity, and how dominant gender ideologies uphold the straightness
of the act. Ultimately, this article investigates whether the act of pegging
(de)stabilizes heterosexual identity or, more broadly, heteronormativity.
While much work has investigated how ‘queerness’ serves as a destabiliz-
ing force, the queer practices of those identifying as heterosexual have been
largely ignored to date (exceptions include Schippers 2000; Silva 2017; Ward
2008, 2015).

Literature review
Newspaper advice columns in shifting sexual societal norms
Researchers have pointed out that advice columns offer a unique location to
talk about sex – especially in cultures that otherwise place strong restrictions
on public sex speech – and provide a ‘widely available and culturally main-
stream venue for talking, learning and debating issues of sexuality’ (Gudelunas
2005: 62). Gudelunas posits that in the United States, there are two predomi-
nant venues for public discourse concerning sexuality: the ‘formal’ curricula
of school-based sexual-education programmes and ‘informal’ curricula, which
include the mass media (2005: 62). According to Gudelunas, newspaper
advice columns are uniquely situated at a ‘critical site of convergence of these
two venues’ because they provide a ‘mediated space’ where periodical readers
and leading pop culture authorities can talk about topics that are prohibited
elsewhere (2005: 64). Newspaper advice columns thus provide a rare merging
of ‘formal and informal discussions of sexuality’ that are seen as both serious
and casual (Gudelunas 2005: 63).
Beyond simply their unique position between ‘hard news’ and ‘pop culture’,
newspaper advice columns also have a rare quality of being dialogical; they
are by definition a sort of ‘conversation’ between the readers and the advice
columnist. In isolation, each column may seem one-sided – a reader writes in
and the columnist responds. Read as a group, however, we see that as other
readers write in to critique, agree or elaborate on the columnist’s advice, these

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responses produce a dialogue about the issues at hand. Gudelunas points

out that readers ‘want their vote – on issues ranging from intimacy to dinner
party etiquette – to be recorded and distilled by the columnist, perhaps influ-
encing the view of the columnist that will in turn influence millions of other
readers’ (2005: 75). Additionally, research shows that advice columns do
influence both public opinion and people’s personal sexual choices (see Currie
2001; Garner et al. 1998; Gudelunas 2005; Kirkman 2001; Locher 2006; Ryan
2010 and Shissler 2007).
For example, in the 1970s, sexual advice given in the Dutch magazine Opsij
helped shift public perceptions of ‘appropriate sexuality’ in the Netherlands
from ‘sexual restraint for men and an increased sexual confidence among
women’ towards the discovery of the individual’s own sexual desires (Ryan
2010: 320–21). In comparison, Irish advice columnist Angela Macnara is cred-
ited with increasing tolerance of gays and lesbians in Ireland in the 1970s and
1980s (Ryan 2010). Hays (1984) found a similar influence on sexual mores with
Ann Landers’ advice in the United States, as did Mutongi (2009) in Nigeria
and South Africa with the popular Dear Dolly column in the 1960s and 1970s.

Research on anal sex

Anal sex between heterosexual couples is still significantly under-studied, as
compared to the wealth of academic research done on male-to-male anal
intercourse. The studies that have been conducted on heterosexual anal inter-
course (HAI) have focused almost exclusively on male-to-female penetration
and typically emphasize the ‘increased risk’ of this type of intercourse, particu-
larly for women (Fahs and Gonzalez 2014; McBride and Fortenberry 2010).
For example, engagement in HAI puts women at higher risk of HIV and other
sexually transmitted infections, particularly because condom usage is typi-
cally much lower with anal intercourse than with vaginal intercourse (Benson
et al. 2016). To date, only two academic articles have focused explicitly on, and
named, the act of pegging – one on Christian men who justify their deviant
sexuality (which includes pegging) within a Protestant Evangelical framework
(Burke 2014) and another on pegging pornography (Nault 2010).
Conversely, many articles examine anal sex between men, both in sexual
health and social science journals. For instance, a query on Academic Search
Premier for articles with ‘anal sex’ in the title produced 87 results, the vast
majority of which focus on men who have sex with men. Yet beyond academia,
we also see a strong linking of anal sex to gay male intercourse prevalent in
popular culture. Anal sex is equated to ‘gay sex’ and is stigmatized by this
association. In 2009, McBride and Fortenberry (2010) searched the Internet
site Sex-Lexis.com and found more than 200 slang terms for anal inter-
course, most of which referred to male-to-male (rather than male-to-female)
anal sex. The most frequently used slang terms for anal penetration –
including ‘sodomy’ and ‘buggery’ – also elicit negative connotations, such as
being ‘unnatural’, ‘illegal’, ‘nonconsensual’ and ‘dirty’. As an example of state
surveillance, moreover, anti-sodomy laws, still on the books until 2003 in thir-
teen states, were rarely enforced against straight couples and instead served as
a tool of social control against gay men (Ball 2015).
Despite the focus on men who have sex with men within both the
academic and popular culture domains, scientific documentation shows
that the prevalence of heterosexual anal intercourse has risen over the past
two decades. For example, McBride, Sanders and Hill (cited in the review by

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 Pegging and the heterosexualization of anal sex

McBride and Fortenberry 2010) found that 51 per cent of men and 43 per cent
of women had participated in at least one act of oral–anal sex, manual–anal
sex or anal sex toy use, a significant increase from previous studies. McBride
and Fortenberry also claim that ‘although there has been no systematic study
of public interest or opinion of heterosexual anal sex, the proliferation of
materials and references in popular culture, combined with scientific docu-
mentation of increased behavioral prevalence, may together suggest shifting
cultural norms’ (2010: 124). In other words, society is becoming much more
accepting of heterosexual anal sex, so much so perhaps that the rise in behav-
ioural prevalence of anal sex ‘has prompted some news media to suggest that
anal sex is the “new oral sex”, another behavior that was once stigmatized
but is now accepted as highly prevalent’ (McBride and Fortenberry 2010: 124).
Despite findings that anal sex has increased in popularity both in the
media and in the bedroom, McBride and Fortenberry point out that still ‘virtu-
ally nothing is known about people’s attitudes toward heterosexual anal
pleasure and its influence on behavioral motivations’ (2010: 131). Further,
they point out that ‘very few efforts have been made to understand receptive
anal sex behaviors in heterosexual men with female partners, including anal
masturbation’ (McBride and Fortenberry 2010: 132). In turn, this research
contributes to our knowledge about the experiences and motivations of men
who are anally penetrated by women.

‘Ideological manoeuvring’ and the social construction of

heterosexuality
While the men and women I discuss in this article are engaging in the hetero-
sexual act of pegging, the deviancy of the act and its association with gayness
serves to stigmatize them or, as Erving Goffman would say, ‘spoil’ them.
Goffman (1963) provides a useful framework to consider how those stigma-
tized for their deviance can compensate for their stigma by drawing attention
to another area in which they do conform to norms. This can be viewed as a
form of ‘ideological work’ (Berger 1981) that people use to re-establish consist-
ency when their actions do not match their stated belief systems. It involves
finding new ways of understanding, defining and rationalizing in order to
maintain feelings of pride and stability.
Wolkomir (2015) extends this concept to reflect the additional difficulty
in making sense of behaviours that challenge ‘dominant’ ideologies, not just
stated belief systems, and deems this work ‘ideological maneuvering’. She
notes, ‘[a]lthough the revision of a dominant meaning system is a daunting,
complex task, it enables subordinate groups to resist stigmatization by subvert-
ing or sidestepping dominant ideology and to re-create themselves more
positively through ideological alterations’ (Wolkomir 2015: 418). The gay sexu-
ality of the Christian men she studied brought them into ideological conflict
with their fundamentalist Christian belief system. In order to resist the stigma
associated with their sexuality and remake themselves as moral Christians,
the men had to confront and revise an oppressive dominant ideology. By her
definition, the ‘ideological maneuvering’ they used involved: selective disman-
tling of existing ideology to open new interpretive space, constructing a new
affirming ideology and authenticating new self-meanings (Wolkomir 2015:
418). The process, she points out, is complex and problematic for several reasons,
not the least of which is the reality that the ‘deviant and dissident groups
cognitively depend on the ideologies that legitimate their oppression’(Wolkomir

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2015: 421). In other words, the Christian men in her study did not renounce the
oppressive structure of Christianity; rather, they found a way to exist – even amidst
strident marginalization – within the heterosexist Christian Church (Wolkomir
2015: 421).
Other sexuality scholars have also shown how people deploy interpreta-
tive strategies to make sense of non-normative sexualities, often relying on
those very ideologies (such as heteronormativity, hegemonic masculinity
and romantic love ideologies) that legitimate their oppression. For example,
while Silva’s research on straight rural men who have sex with other straight
men demonstrates ‘the flexibility of male heterosexuality’, it also points to ‘the
centrality of heterosexuality to normative rural masculinity’ (2017: 53). Indeed,
the participants in his study interpret their same-sex intercourse as fully
compatible with heterosexuality. Their ‘interpretations’ of their sexual prac-
tices as straight (as opposed to the sexual practices themselves) allow them
to maintain the privilege of their heterosexuality. In a similar vein, Wolkomir’s
work on couples in mixed-orientation relationships shows that while indi-
viduals in those relationships at times engage in bisexual practices, ‘partici-
pants did not see themselves as bisexual because they perceived their behaviors
emerged as a means of accommodating homosexuality in the context of hetero-
sexual marriage rather than as a sexual identity’ (2015, emphasis added). In all
of these studies, participants deconstructed and revised a key component of
the dominant ideology in order to ‘reattach it to the overarching, legitimating
framework’ (Wolkomir 2015: 422).
This article intervenes in the current academic trend of analysing
and deconstructing normative, unmarked and taken-for-granted cultural
identities such as men/masculinities, whites/whiteness and heterosexuals/
heterosexuality (Dean 2011). Recent scholarship on the construction of
hegemonic heterosexuality has offered scholars of sexualities new ways of
thinking about the homosexual/heterosexual binary (Sedgwick 1990). An early
proponent of studying heterosexuality, Steven Seidman urged scholars to
move from a preoccupation with homosexuality to ‘a focus on heterosexuality
as a social and political organizing principle’ (2003: 9). Given the dominance
that heterosexuality holds in US society, however, some have questioned
this move. Cameron and Kulick (2006), editors of The Language and Sexuality
Reader, recently acknowledged this dilemma when they claim in the book’s
introduction that some readers may be displeased with the number of arti-
cles focused on heterosexuality. Explaining their decision to include multiple
essays on heterosexuality, they assert, ‘[b]y placing the linguistic construction
of heterosexuality under scrutiny one might destabilize its presumed invis-
ibility’, thereby demonstrating that ‘heterosexuality is in fact “queer” under
a certain gaze’ (Cameron and Kulick 2006: 132). Similarly, Schippers (2000)
aims to shine a brighter light on heteronormativity in order to deconstruct the
social structures that serve to uphold its dominance in society.
Dean (2014) interrogates the social construction of heterosexuality
in Straights: Heterosexuality in a Post-Closeted Culture, which builds on
Seidman’s (2002) ‘post-closet’ culture. Seidman argues, and Dean further
develops, that prior to the mid-1990s, heterosexuals could count on being
assumed to be straight, because unless one specifically ‘came out’, every-
one was assumed to be straight. This meant that straights did not have to
think about or work to cultivate a ‘straight’ identity or presentation of self.
However, once gays and lesbians were much more visible in public life,
‘at least some heterosexuals became more thoughtful not only about gays

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 Pegging and the heterosexualization of anal sex

but about their own sexual identity’ (Seidman 2002: 109). Seidman views
this historical period as the beginning of Americans thinking about hetero-
sexuality as a primary identity category for many straight-identified people
or, as he puts it, ‘the formation of a self-conscious, deliberate public culture of
heterosexual identity’ (2002: 115, original emphasis). Thus, in the post-1990s
straights have become less homophobic, but the culture is not neces-
sarily less heteronormative. According to Seidman, straights are simply
more committed to announcing and performing their heterosexuality and
recognizing this identity as one of their primary identities. As an exam-
ple, Seidman (2002) describes one man he interviewed, Miguel, as ‘deliber-
ate, almost compulsive, in presenting himself as heterosexual. In a world
fraught with suspicion and the risk of being ridiculed or excluded by his
peer group, his heterosexual credentials must be established in an unam-
biguous, aggressive, and repetitive way’ (Seidman 2002: 116). While Miguel
did not view himself as homophobic, he recognized that a straight identity
is still socially preferable, as it comes with material and cultural advantages
such as status and privilege, whereas a gay identity carries definite risks
and fewer advantages (Seidman 2002: 113).
This focus on the development of a firmer and more public hetero-
sexual image and identity significantly moves away from older scholarship
that had been more focused on considering how engaging in homosexual
or heterosexual sex acts formed the basis of one’s sexual identity. The more
recent scholarship, such as from Seidman and Dean, has been critical to how
we understand the cultural construction of heterosexuality as not simply a
behaviour (i.e. sex act) but as a set of identity practices formed in relation to
non-heterosexualities. Jane Ward illustrates this well in Not Gay: Sex between
Straight White Men, where she shows how white straight-identified men who
engage in sex acts with other men recognize those behaviours as ‘merely
joking/hazing/experimenting/getting off’ (2015: 193) and in fact use these acts
to bolster and define their straightness, not as markers or indicators of their
latent gayness. Ward argues that it is not the sex act itself that renders the
actors ‘gay’ or ‘straight’. Instead, it is the circumstances, settings, gender and
race of the participants, and motivations behind such acts that have sustained
the hetero/homo binary.
In turn, this article demonstrates how those engaging in pegging collec-
tively work to destigmatize pegging’s association with gayness by expanding
the definition of heterosexuality and reconfirming their adherence to other
dominant ideologies such as gender. Similar to the groups discussed above (i.e.
gay Christian men, rural straight men engaging in sex, and mixed-orientation
marriage spouses), the peggers are only successful in (de)stabilizing a domi-
nant heterosexual identity just enough to find a way to fit inside of it, before
closing the door behind them. They want access to both the ‘kinky’ sexual acts
that the gay and lesbian community made popular and accessible while keep-
ing their place in the ‘charmed circle’ of non-deviant heterosexuality (Rubin
1981). In other words, in order to continue to benefit from heteronormativity
these straights aim to appropriate the sex acts they want and rename them
to signify their straightness, all without dismantling the oppressive structures
that had once kept them out. Building on Dean’s and Seidman’s work on the
‘post-closet culture’ wherein the importance of highlighting one’s hetero-
sexual identity is increasingly important, this research highlights the efforts
that straight peggers put into constructing pegging as a normalized part of a
straight identity, not a sign of latent gayness.

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Jade Aguilar

Data collection and analysis

I read and analysed each of the 25 Savage Love columns that mention the
act of pegging between 2001 and 2015, including the two initial columns
where the term ‘pegging’ was not yet coined but was being created and voted
on by readers. I coded and analysed both the letters written to Dan Savage
from readers and his responses (or the responses of a ‘guest expert’) to the
letters. In coding my data, I conducted a deductive thematic analysis based
on Braun and Clark’s (2006) method. First, I read all of the columns to ensure
their relevance and familiarize myself with the data. I subsequently re-read all
the columns and conducted the data analysis in three phases: coding, catego-
rizing and identifying themes. I determined that coding and recoding were
complete when I readily classified all of the data and clearly marked the cate-
gories. I placed codes into broad categories and then carried out comparisons
between multiple categories in order to locate similarities and differences.
Finally, I synthesized categories and analysed based on interpretative frames
that guided the analysis and interpretation of the data (Clarke et al. 2015: 225).
I then selected quotes that best illustrated the themes found.
While it is common in qualitative analysis to claim that ‘themes emerge
from the data’, Braun and Clarke (2006) note that researchers should not
simply claim that the themes ‘emerged’ as that language masks the active
role the researcher plays in identifying patterns/themes, selecting which are
of interest and reporting them to the readers. Braun and Clark (2006) also
emphasize the importance of tying the method of thematic analysis to a
pre-existing theoretical framework. In the case of this research, to analyse
the data I used a constructionist approach, which ‘examines the ways in
which events, realities, meanings, experiences and so on are the effects of
a range of discourses operating within society’ (Braun and Clark 2006: 81).
In other words, the data analysis did not to seek to discover some ‘external
reality’ about pegging; rather, I interpreted the language used by Savage
and his readers to show how the discursively created gendered and sexual
meanings produce particular realities.

Results and discussion

Is he straight or gay?
The term pegging was created by Dan Savage and his readers precisely to
mark it as a straight, rather than gay, act. While an increasing number of
heterosexuals are engaging in anal sex, it is still tainted by its association with
gayness, particularly for the participant in the penetrated position. Readers
wanted a word that clearly marked this kind of anal sex as being between a
man and a woman, thereby marking it as a strictly heterosexual act. Returning
to the quote at the start of this article, the reader explicitly lays out how having
a gender-specific term would help her husband feel more comfortable engag-
ing in penetrated anal play. She writes,

My husband (like most straight men) can’t break the connection

between being fucked in the ass and being gay – but a gender-specific
term might help! If you’re gay and another man is fucking you in the
ass, he isn’t ‘[pegging]’ you. You have to be straight to get [pegged].

Despite her assurance that you ‘have to be straight to get [pegged]’, women
letter writers frequently seek confirmation from Savage of their partners’    ‘true’

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 Pegging and the heterosexualization of anal sex

sexual orientation, based on their concern that their partner’s interest in anal
penetration is a sign that they are actually gay. The first part of this section
shows how these women are, based on the circumstances of their partner’s
actions and desire, asking Savage for clarity on where the ‘line’ for gayness
begins, and whether their partners have unwittingly crossed that line.
In Savage’s responses to letters from the many female readers who want to
know if their boyfriend’s interest in pegging makes them ‘gay’, Savage resists
clearly delineating between ‘gay’ and ‘straight’ sex acts and identities. Through
his vague and often conflicting answers and frequent refusal to definitively
attach a ‘gay’ or ‘straight’ identity to the letter writers’ husbands or boyfriends,
Savage and the writers are discursively disrupting the hetero/homo binary. At
times, Savage points out that men who like anal penetration might be or defi-
nitely are ‘really’ gay or that it may be a slippery slope to a gay identity. Other
times, he points out that any sex between a man and a woman is definitely
‘straight sex’, even if the acts they partake in have a ‘gay’ association to them,
like pegging. The two examples below show this range of responses.
‘Truthful Hetero (TH)’, a reader who claims that men who seek to be
anally penetrated are really just in denial about their gayness, writes:

What should we call it when a woman fucks a man in the ass with a
strap-on dildo? It ought to be called ‘Latently Gay Man Desperately
Trying to Hold on to His Heterosexuality.’ It doesn’t roll off the tongue,
but at least it’s honest.
(Savage 2001b)

Savage pushes back against this reader by writing, ‘[s]orry, TH, if a straight
woman is doing it to a straight man, it’s hetero sex, however uncomfortable
it might make some insecure little pricks’ (2001b). But a few years later, in
response to another reader, he writes, ‘[a]ny straight man who would let a
woman do him in the ass has to be secretly gay. You’re a fag, HMO, just admit
it already’ (Savage 2004). So which is it?
Part of Savage’s strategy in flexibly labelling the sexual identity of the letter
writers’ boyfriends is to consider context. On its own, an interest in pegging
may or may not indicate same-sex desire, and thus other factors must be
considered. His ‘your partner is sort of gay’ answer to many women read-
ers reaffirms that the situation, the performances and the (sometimes secret)
desires of the actors are important to consider before assigning a sexual iden-
tity. Savage tells one woman who is worried that her boyfriend, who likes to be
pegged, is gay, ‘[i]f this guy ate your pussy like a champ and fucked you abso-
lutely senseless before, during, and after you touched his ass, all signs point to
straight’ (Savage 2003c). He then goes on to say that if her boyfriend ‘seemed
reluctant to fuck you, ignored your tits, and screamed, “Yes, Rufus! Harder,
Rufus! Deeper, Rufus!” when you touched his ass, well, then he’s probably a
big ol’ HOMO’ (Savage 2003c). Through his answer, Savage is suggesting that
the woman consider what other desires or sexual acts her boyfriend has or
wants to engage in – like cunnilingus, penile/vaginal intercourse or an inter-
est in her breasts, all of which could seemingly prove his straightness – or the
absence of which could indicate his secret gayness.
In the examples that follow, Savage rejects the exclusive ‘gay’ or ‘straight’
boxes entirely and instead suggests more of a straight-to-gay continuum
model, made popular by sexologist Alfred Kinsey. For example, ‘Freaked Out
Female’ wrote about her boyfriend, a ‘nice, white, Jewish’ man, who, while she

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was pegging him, ‘started (unconsciously?) muttering something about a “big

black man” fucking him in the ass’ just before he came. She was worried that
this behaviour indicated a ‘secret gayness’ on his part. Savage responds,

So is your boyfriend gay? No, not necessarily. Your nice, white, Jewish
boyfriend isn’t 100 per cent straight either, that we can say for sure, but
whether he’s straight enough for you is something you’ll have to deter-
mine for yourself.
(2003a)

To another woman, signed ‘Not Wanting a Gay Ex (NWAGE)’, whose

boyfriend enjoys being pegged by her and might be (but denies) frequenting
gay men’s bathhouses, Savage writes, ‘I’m sorry, NWAGE, but your guy can’t
be straight. He may not be gay; he could be bisexual, or just heteroflexible
enough to be curious about what a real cock feels like’ (Savage 2005). In both
of these cases, Savage resists explicitly categorizing the men in simple boxes
and instead suggests ‘percentages’ or ‘degrees of gay-straightness’. Thus, while
Savage does begin to destabilize the hetero/homo binary in these cases, his
continuum model serves to reaffirm the idea that there are still two ‘true’ ends
of the spectrum and that one’s sexual identity is set and fixed along the range.
With these letters, while Savage and his readers do not actively challenge the
binary itself or the essential nature of one’s sexual identity, their discourse
does destabilize who gets to belong in what category and context under which
identity gets created.
In a final example, Savage moves away from trying to identify the sexual
identity of a person (in this case a reader’s boyfriend) and instead seeks to
place the sex acts themselves on what he calls a ‘bullshit continuum’ from
straight to gay. ‘Confused Straight Girl (CSG)’ is frustrated that her boyfriend
will not taste his own come to please her because he thinks it is ‘too gay’, but
he enjoys being pegged by her. Savage responds:

A man doing something that gets his girlfriend off – particularly a guy
who subs doing a particular something that gets his girlfriend off – seems
a whole lot less gay to me than a man begging his girlfriend to fuck him
in the ass with a strap-on dildo. Not that I think a desire to be pegged
means a guy has gay fantasies or is a closet case or that he’s going to start
doing super gay shit like learning to figure skate or frequenting sports
bars or marrying Michele Bachmann. Heavens no. But if Rick Santorum
were to hold a gun to my head and force me to place all known sex acts
on some sort of bullshit continuum that stretched from ‘totally straight’
to ‘totally gay’, pegging would fall somewhat closer toward the gay end
of the spectrum than a guy eating his own come out of a pussy he just
fucked. […] Final insight: homophobia is a kind of magical thinking,
CSG, and sometimes the magic works like this: ‘Things I don’t want to
do are gay, things I do want to do are not gay. It’s magic!
(Savage 2011, original emphasis)

In reflecting on these quotes, two patterns emerge. First, the panic and confu-
sion that is evident in the women’s letters reflect the deep societal links
between a man’s enjoyment of anal penetration and his supposed gayness.
In writing to Savage for advice, these women are desperately trying to figure
out if they are being misled by their straight-identified partners and/or asking

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 Pegging and the heterosexualization of anal sex

Savage for help in uncovering their partners’ essential, biological gayness

that they themselves might not even know about. Ultimately, the concern
is greater than simply a case of misstated identity. There is no comparable
group of letters coming from gays and lesbians worried that their partners are
‘really’ straight. In these letters, gayness is clearly marked as the marginalized
and undesirable identity. Thus, while the straight letter writers are likely toler-
ant and accepting of gays and lesbians (as evidenced by writing to a gay sex-
columnist, for example), they also want to clearly mark themselves as straight,
and want their partners to be straight as well.
Second, while Savage’s answers regarding the ‘straightness’ or ‘gayness’
of the men are inconsistent, this inconsistency highlights the messiness
of and destabilizes sexual identity categories, recognizing them as socially
constructed. The inconsistencies also signify that the context of the acts,
including the sexual desires and sexual identity of the actors, is a necessary
component in constructing coherent sexual identity narratives. This contrib-
utes to the growing body of work within feminist and queer scholarship that
shows how gender and sexuality are malleable but, as social constructions,
also must be continually reproduced – and through their reproduction, they
offer the potential for change (West and Zimmerman 1987).
These letters written to Savage Love also offer us new insight that is rarely
discussed in the scholarship about how women enact and uphold homopho-
bia. More frequently studied is how masculinity and heterosexuality intersect,
such that homophobia becomes a way for men to prove their masculinity
(Pascoe 2011). In this study, however, the women – ostensibly out of ‘concern’
for their straightness – police men’s behaviours away from anything that
seems ‘too gay’. For example, ‘Happy Ass Girl’ recounts how she is now ‘ignor-
ing’ the man who asked her to peg him:

I was in the passion of sex with a gentleman when he asks […] would
I please touch his ass. Gay men might happily accommodate such a
request; however, I am a lady. My lady friends all say they would get up
and RUN if this request was made of them. I did not. I stayed. I touched.
Then he requests of me, ‘Do you have a strap-on?’ Soon I am worried
that I am having sex with a HOMO. Now I am ignoring him, which is
too bad for me because he had a VERY NICE PENIS. Your suggestions?
(Savage 2003c)

Despite her enjoyment of sex with this man, the woman’s fears of his gayness
cause her to dismiss him completely, showing how women’s policing of heter-
osexuality is a powerful tool in the continued marginalization of a gay identity.
Consequently, this persistent marginalization ensures that masculinity and
heterosexuality remain tied together.

‘Real men’ take it in the ass and ‘real women’ take control
A second theme reflected in the letters is how masculinity is deployed to reflect
a sexual power dynamic. Both women (peggers) and men (peggees) highlight
the masculinity/power of their respective positions. Men do so by emphasiz-
ing the masculine power and strength that it takes to enjoy anal penetration
as well as highlighting the other ways in their lives that they showcase their
masculinity and heterosexuality. Women find pleasure in ‘playing the man’ and
highlight what they see as a gendered ‘reversal of power’ in the act.

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Jade Aguilar

Culturally, in both homo- and hetero-penetrative sex, the ‘penetrator’ is

viewed as ‘masculine’ and ‘dominant’ and the ‘penetrated’ as ‘feminine’ and
‘submissive’. However, in the case of pegging, both women and men viewed
their role as ‘dominant’ and ‘masculine’, even though there is only one pene-
trator. In a culture that devalues femininity, and in which femininity is closely
tied to submission, it is no wonder that both parties distance themselves from
this association. Instead, male peggees wrote to the column to emphasize the
‘tough’ and ‘manly’ attributes that are required to be pegged, whereas women
revelled in the ‘masculine power’ that came from being the penetrator.
Likely in response to the fears men have of emasculation (feminization)
and gayness that come from taking pleasure in anal penetration, male writers
reasserted their masculinity by using aggressive sexual language in regards to
being pegged. The letters are filled with vivid descriptors – ‘take it like a man’,
‘she was pounding my ass like a pro’,‘woman-on-man ass banging’ and more –
to create a pattern of tough masculinity. Other letters highlight the sexual-
ized aggression that further masculinizes the act, such as ‘pegging my brains
out’, ‘pegged the shit out of him’, ‘ravaged in the ass’ and ‘slamming it into
their boyfriends’. By asserting that only ‘real men’ can handle being pegged,
these men are simultaneously resignifying their masculinity and, by exten-
sion, their heterosexuality. Hoang argues that the past two decades have also
seen a ‘remasculization’ of bottoming in the gay male community. Language
of ‘demolition, danger and sacrifice’ (Hoang 2014: 12) imbues descriptions
of rectal penetration, which is not seen in vaginal penetration. Similarly, he
points out that in barebacking culture, online testimonials function as ‘hard
proof of a masculinity powerful enough to endure endless ass poundings’
rather than an embrace of ‘powerlessness, feminization, and self-shattering’
(Hoang 2014: 13). Thus, both gay and straight ‘bottoms’ are using heteronor-
mative and patriarchal ideologies to reconstruct understandings of ‘the pene-
trated’ that have long been associated with weakness and femininity into a
powerful, masculine position.
Furthermore, the aggressive way that pegging is described is not limited to
the ‘toughness’ of the men who are penetrated. In the few letters from women
who write in about how they enjoy pegging their partners, they often frame
the act as a powerful gendered ‘role reversal’. Savage seconds their sentiment:

Most of the straight girls I’ve heard from over the years who enjoy
slamming it into their boyfriends and husbands – the ones who aren’t
just indulging a male partner who wants to be pegged – have told me
that they’re turned on by assuming the male role, by inverting gender
expectations, and that they dig feeling like men/fucking like men when
they’re slamming it into their boyfriends and husbands.
(Savage 2010b)

Beyond the power that comes from being the penetrator and not the pene-
trated, there is a secondary power for women by way of the strap-on. The
use of the dildo serves as a form of gender play for the women, who enjoy
access to the ‘power’ associated with masculinity via a penis. One woman cited
‘penis envy’ and control as the dominant sources of pleasure in the act, as the
actual physical pleasure is minimal. Savage claims that the act is ‘patriarchy-
shattering’ and that the women he has heard from do it ‘for the thrill of upend-
ing, destabilizing, and fissuring those traditional gender roles’ (Savage 2010a).
While under a certain gaze pegging could be viewed as gender subversive,

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 Pegging and the heterosexualization of anal sex

I argue that in many ways it is not. For instance, while pegging is a sexual
act that de-emphasizes the man’s penis and thus disrupts the coital impera-
tive (typically the focus in heterosexual sex), men’s bodies remain the site of
emphasis. Instead of the penis, the man’s anus becomes the focal point of the
act, once again making the woman a secondary actor in service to his pleasure.
Despite Savage’s claim that women who are into pegging do so in part
because of the pleasure they find in challenging existing gender roles, he also
claims that not many women are actually interested and willing. He writes back
to one man, ‘PEGME’, who is disappointed because he cannot find a woman
who is interested in pegging him, that they are ‘few and far between’ and that
‘“goodbye” is what most women would say when asked to peg’ because ‘most
will fear that you’re queer’ (2003b). Savage makes clear again that the act is too
closely associated with ‘gayness’, which will then keep women from engaging.
Those women who do partake often do so at the insistence of their partners,
despite their reservations and the lack of physical sensation it actually offers
them. So, while some women find pegging to be powerful and subversive,
many feel both obligated and disgusted.
‘Heterosexual masculinity’ is the cultural pressure men experience that
requires them to be masculine in traits and heterosexual in orientation or else
be viewed as feminine and socially unacceptable (Theodore and Basow 2000).
Thus, men who enjoy getting pegged are doing what they can to distance
themselves from being read as gay, which means asserting their masculinity –
and thus their heterosexuality – by highlighting the parts of their lifestyle and
desires that are symbolically ‘masculine’ in their culture. For example, one letter
writer touted, ‘I am your typical straight Joe who meets his buddies for beer on
Fridays and doesn’t live in Gayville’ (Savage 2001a). Another writer relied on
sports analogies to link the masculinity of football to the act of pegging while
also pointing out the gender reversal and sexual aggression of the act:

Football is 50 percent violence, 20 percent men bending over, 15 percent

big egos, 10 percent getting slapped on the ass, 4 percent inane dialogue,
and 1 percent love. Sounds pretty much the same as getting ‘[pegged]’ to
me! And I’m curious [–] after a vigorous session of [pegging], does the
woman get to roll over and go to sleep while the man silently lies there
and wonders what the future may hold?
(Savage 2001b)

The careful construction of this typical, straight Joe who has buddies, drinks
beer, watches football and engages in unemotional sex is a deliberate distanc-
ing from any hint of gayness or femininity. This is a man’s man, and linking
the act of pegging to this person helps give it the legitimacy of hegemonic
straightness. In her study of straight men seeking sex with other straight men
on Craigslist, Ward also found that the men highlight their straightness using
the stereotypical symbols of straight male culture, including references to
sports, beer, fraternity membership, smoking pot and being ‘chill’ (2008: 423).
She argues that this ‘bro culture’ also clearly marks it as a form of white mascu-
linity, which further lends credence to its adherence with the most hegemonic
form of masculinity. While it is impossible for me to know the racial identity
of the letter writers, they frequently use signifiers, like ‘typical Joe’ above, that
serve to mark them as straight, white men.
Rather than emphasizing their own masculinity, other men choose to
emphasize their partners’ femininity; for instance, one reader boasts that ‘one

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Jade Aguilar

half of the thrill is that [being pegged] feels really good, and the other half is
the wonderful thought that a woman is doing this to me, which is naughty
and cool and otherwise freaky and fun’ (Savage 2004), while another reports
being turned on by a female partner wearing high heels (a hyper-feminine
item) while pegging him. Savage sarcastically responds, ‘[t]he pegging-and-
high-heels fetish combo has come up before – some part of the straight kinky
boy’s brain perceives a link between heels and pegs’ (Savage 2012). My analy-
sis is that the association with high heels reassures the men being pegged that
the person pegging them is indeed a woman, thereby once again affirming
their exclusive desire for women as a key component of masculinity.
In relation, Pascoe (2011) clearly identifies how men’s masculinity is
always in question and must repeatedly be ‘proved’ via homophobia, sexual
objectification of women and competition among men for toughness status.
The way men explain their interest in pegging fits all of these points: the
strength it requires to take it in the ass, the assurances of straightness and the
reminders that they are being pegged by feminine women are all tools used to
prove their masculine status. Women who seek opportunities to gain access to
the high-status markers of masculinity also highlight the power of being the
pegger, while at the same time policing their partner’s straightness.

Conclusion
This scholarship contributes to a growing body of work that highlights how
people engaging in diverse sexual acts and relationships interpret their behav-
iours in strategic ways in order to conform to a normative heteropatriarchal
ideal. While pegging does serve to ‘queer’ heterosexuality in a limited fash-
ion, I argue that most peggers/peggees are still firmly rooted in heterosexual
privilege and homophobia and beholden to the hetero/homo binary. For some
of the straight letter writers, pegging offers a ‘safer’ way to affirm their sexual
open-mindedness and benefit from the gains the LGBTQ movement fought
for while still remaining, though perhaps tenuously, in the ‘straight zone’. The
increasing acceptance of once-deviant sexual acts is greatly influenced by the
visibility and growing acceptance of the queer community, which has fought
hard to affirm non-vanilla sex (including oral and anal sex) and which in turn
has benefitted everyone. As many dominant groups do, straights have cherry-
picked what they want from the queer community and renamed those acts to
make them fit within their straight identity.
In his study on pegging pornography, Nault claims that pegging ‘compli-
cates a one-to-one association between homosexuality and sodomy by pull-
ing straights into the fold of sexual perversity’ (2010: 7). I disagree. Despite
the increasing popularity of pegging, and the eagerness of straights to not be
too ‘straight’ anymore, these heterosexuals want to co-opt queer activism for
their own pleasure while still benefiting from straight privilege. Unlike many
in the LGBTQ community who have pushed for a rejection of assimilation
into heteropatriarchal norms and fought for pride in their deviant status, these
straight peggers are not deliberately knocking down the false constructs of
what counts as appropriate ‘straight sex’. Instead, they are carefully and delib-
erately manoeuvring the definition of heterosexuality to include them, using
normative gender ideologies to justify their case.
Masculinity, like heterosexuality, remains a dominant ideology in the
pegging columns, which is seen clearly by the fact that both the men and the
women assert desire for and access to it. Women peggers claim to want ‘to be

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 Pegging and the heterosexualization of anal sex

like men’, to have penises, to be in control and to dominate and penetrate their
partners. They want access to the power that has been associated with the
penetrator in our culture, and to use that power to police men they think are too
‘gay’. While their version of masculine power might look different and offer us
a unique alternative to male power, it does not challenge the fact that masculin-
ity is more highly valued and offers a higher status than femininity in society.
On the other hand, the men may enjoy the pleasure that pegging provides
but not the association with femininity that comes with being the one who is
penetrated. In his study of pegging pornography films, Nault (2010) found that
men in the films deliberately took on stereotypically feminine traits, such as
one man who let his long hair hang loose while being pegged. Yet men taking
on stereotypically feminine traits were never represented in the pegging advice
columns. Instead, Savage, as well as the letter writers, discursively reinscribed
peggees as being powerful, strong and comfortable in their masculinity. The
men further rejected the women’s masculinity by assuring the readers that
their female partners were ‘feminine’, as evidenced by the emphasis on high
heels. In other words, the columns reveal an upholding of traditional gender
roles, not a ‘reversal’ of gender roles that Nault (2010) reports from the porno-
graphic pegging films.
Although the columns on pegging uphold heterosexuality and masculinity
as dominant ideologies, there may indeed be something ‘queer’ happening.
In his book Straights: Heterosexuality in Post-Closeted Culture (2014), Dean
highlights the multiplicity of ‘heterosexualities’ and urges readers not to read
heterosexuality as ‘a singular unitary set of identity practices nor viewed as
automatically constitutive of normative heterosexuality’s institutional domi-
nance’ (2014: 32). In a similar move, Halberstam (2005) and Ward (2008)
have written about opening the boundaries of the ‘queer subject’ to include
those often not thought of as queer but who, like peggers, fall outside main-
stream culture in significant ways. For these scholars, the label of ‘queer’ is
available to those who ‘defy the rules of normative, respectable adult citizen-
ship’ (Ward 2008: 417) and is less about sexual identity or sexual practices.
Thus, while I have argued that the way pegging is discursively constructed in
the columns does not radically challenge masculine or heterosexual hegem-
ony, it does suggest a version of queerness that has slowly chipped away at
heterosexuality’s institutional dominance. Savage and his readers are creating
a new sexual culture, one that challenges social norms and invites readers to
participate in acts that ‘feel good’ regardless of their association with sexual
identities. However, these deeply entrenched roots of masculinity and hetero-
sexuality in our society signal that we have a long way to go.

Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Dawn Hinrichs, Allison Hobgood, Janet Lorenzen,
Emmanuel David, C. J. Pascoe, Oluwakemi ‘Kemi’ Balogun, Tony Silva and
Lauren Stewart for their comments and suggestions that greatly improved the
article. I would also like to thank the anonymous reviewers of this article, all of
whom provided feedback that strengthened the manuscript.

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SUGGESTED CITATION
Aguilar, J. (2017), ‘Pegging and the heterosexualization of anal sex: An analysis
of Savage Love advice’, Queer Studies in Media & Popular Culture, 2:3,
pp. 275–92, doi: 10.1386/qsmpc.2.3.275_1

Contributor details
Jade Aguilar is an associate professor of sociology and women’s and gender
studies at Willamette University, where she studies and teaches courses in
gender, sexuality and family, in particular examining and challenging essen-
tialist and biologically determinist perspectives. Her main areas of study
include intentional communities, gender and non-normative sexualities.
Contact: Willamette University, 900 State Street, Salem, OR 97301, USA.
E-mail: aguilarj@willamette.edu

Jade Aguilar has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents
Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work in the format that was
submitted to Intellect Ltd.

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