fingering is a lost art form

it's time the drought ended

I first heard about fingering in art class. A group of boys were hunched over a desk, trading details about a girl one of them had fingered a few nights earlier. They spoke like it was a conquest — loud enough for everyone to hear, dripping with bravado. To them she was territory. Easy to conquer, “wet for it,” because apparently his finger had “slipped right in.”

I remember thinking a few things at once. First, that I never wanted to be spoken about like that. I felt humiliated for her, even though she wasn’t there to hear it. Then, I wondered if she actually had enjoyed it. If she’d really been fingered by multiple people before, if she’d been as “wet” as he claimed and if so, how!? But mostly, I thought: that sounds uncomfortable. The idea of someone’s fingers pushing inside me felt invasive, foreign — not something I could imagine enjoying.

Still, it seemed to be happening everywhere. Behind the gym. At the local fish‑and‑chip shop after school. In dark corners at house parties. Fingering was rife in the mid-2000s.

So when the time came and I found myself on the bed of a boy I really liked — in the middle of the afternoon, sunlight spilling through his drawn curtains, his mattress on the floor — I let him finger me. We’d kissed plenty of times already. There’d been long, romantic moments. Flirty texts. He’d told his friends he liked me. He’d even taken me to meet his parents.

I went about it the old‑fashioned way, bargaining with myself. He’s earned it, I thought.

I was lucky for my first time. He was an experienced lover for his age — the captain of the basketball team. Tall, broad‑shouldered, six-foot-five. Manly, while somehow in his teens; Ryan‑from‑The‑OC‑core. He’d had plenty of girlfriends before me. I don’t know if he was naturally intuitive or if there was just a chemistry between us, but it was… surprisingly good. I remember thinking: I could get into this.

Sadly, it was the first and last good fingering experience I had in my early adult life.

As I launched into my late teens and early twenties, I entered the world of romance and sex with optimism. I was ready to let myself go. In high school I’d spent so much time being afraid of anything sex-adjacent — afraid of doing it wrong, afraid of what people would think if I did it at all, afraid of having a bad experience that would ruin me.

But once I left school, I started to feel more confident. And while my discovery of sensuality was largely beautiful and expansive, I was deeply disappointed in the quality of fingering across the board.

It only took a few goes with different lovers — men pushing their fingers inside me with no lubrication, moving them in and out of me in a disconnected, aggressive fashion and then wondering why I wasn’t climaxing, or going too hard, too fast, with no sense of rhythm or purpose — for me to give up on it.

Maybe fingering isn’t for everyone, I reasoned. In high school it had been talked about like a rite of passage, a must‑do in the sexual repertoire. But apart from that one experience with my first fulfilling high school crush, I don’t think I’d ever experienced it the way it was supposed to be experienced.

And like so much to do with sex, there wasn’t much information out there. I remember googling ‘fingering’ once and being met with mostly porn videos — which I watched with curiosity, and which, again, didn’t look particularly comfortable. The women were rarely lubricated. They appeared to enjoy it, if their faces and noises were anything to go by, but it always seemed like the man — or whoever was doing the fingering — was having a far better time.

I began to wonder if fingering wasn’t for those receiving it. A precursor to penetration. A warm‑up act before the “real thing.” And I understand that, in theory. Fingering can be a safe way to practise penetration, a way to ease in rather than leap straight to sex. Now that I’m well‑versed in the world of sexual wellness products and better sex education, I can see the value in it.

But I didn’t know any of that back then.

When I started sleeping with women at 23, I gave fingering another go. In woman‑on‑woman sex, there isn’t the same script of default penetration. So I mused that maybe women would be better at it. Sharing the same anatomy would help, no? They’d know that wetness isn’t just a lucky accident, that the most essential moments often happen in the build up, that if you want any chance of an orgasm you need to stimulate the entire erogenous zone — not just focus on penetration.

But to my dismay, my experiences with women were even worse than men. As a femme‑presenting woman who doesn’t cling too tightly to labels but, if pushed, would call herself pansexual, I noticed a pattern: my female partners often entered the bedroom armed with a kind of performative masculinity. I felt this undercurrent: a desire for me to be more into women than I was into men.

And sometimes, I felt that fingering was being used as a form of control.

via @nudecology

There was this one night, at a wine bar I was with a woman I had sexual tension with. We’d been friends for some time and that night we were drinking with her friends. I noticed her stiffen when men at the bar leaned in toward me, when I laughed a little too easily at their jokes.

And as the night went on, I sensed her frustration brewing. It became apparent to me that her frustration was a sign that we’d probably kiss — she wanted to be the one receiving my attention. I was flattered.

About an hour later, I excused myself to the bathroom. She followed me. Before I could register what was happening, she’d pushed into the cubicle behind me, slammed the door, and pinned me to the wall. Her mouth was on mine. It was urgent, rough, dizzying.

At first, I thought: This is really hot. It was everything I wanted. I loved that she was taking control, that she saw what she wanted and claimed it.

Then her hand slid down my pants and in that instant, the mood shifted.

Maybe this is just part of the heat of it, I thought. But it very quickly felt different — not about connection or intimacy or even pleasure, but about proving a point. About reclaiming something she felt she owned. Her fingers weren’t listening to me. They weren’t tuned to my body’s rhythms, to my cues. It felt like she was trying to win an argument through my body — to say: you’re mine, not theirs.

And I didn’t like that. I didn’t belong to anyone. Not to the men, and not to her. I was sick of people wanting my attention (and my body!) without giving a damn about what turned me on.

I’m someone who likes to be eased into things. I don’t like to just jump straight to the dirty stuff. I like kissing. I like to be touched. I like things to be slow and sensual. Even in the steamiest, most passionate moments, I want there to be connection.

And this wasn’t that.

I went on to date other women after her, and I had this same experience multiple times. Fingering was often pushed onto me when there were strong emotions swirling: jealousy, insecurity, comparison to men. It felt like they were using it to take charge, but not in a sexy power-play way.

And because those moments were so loaded, the fingering itself was never good. It was rushed, disconnected, thoughtless. I felt cheated — like I’d been robbed of all that fingering could be.

I wasn’t the girl in the porn videos who arches her back and gasps the moment someone slips their fingers inside her. Maybe that just wasn’t me. Maybe I wasn’t naturally wet. Maybe I was carrying too many old ghosts of bad experiences past. Or maybe we were all getting fingering completely wrong. Whatever the reason, I decided to swear off fingering altogether. It just didn’t feel worth it.

For the next couple of years, I wouldn’t let anyone near me with their fingers. I liked mouths on me. I liked toys. I had plenty of other avenues for pleasure, but fingering? Off‑limits. I was done feeling disappointed. Done feeling like I had to coach people through it, only to watch them get defensive or overcompensate or retreat into silence. Easier to skip it than to explain myself.

And then I met my current partner.

He reintroduced me to fingering in a way I didn’t expect. The first time he slid his fingers inside me, I remember feeling almost startled by how good it was. It reminded me of that very first time — the one good experience all those years ago. It felt easy. Effortless. He chose the right moment. He went slow. And more than anything, I felt his openness. His willingness to listen. If I wanted him to slow down, speed up, add more lube — I could say so, and he’d adjust without ego.

It made me realise that fingering is an art form. We must take it seriously!

And like any art, it can be done beautifully, or it can be butchered completely. But when it’s done well, it’s a tool for exploration — of our bodies, our pleasure, our boundaries. It teaches us what we like, which parts of us light up under certain kinds of touch, how we want to be held.

It’s also one of the safest ways to experiment. As a woman whose body has never agreed with hormonal contraception — I know how limiting fear can be. There were years in my single life where I felt I couldn’t fully explore my sexual desires because the risk of pregnancy or STIs loomed too large. Fingering, in that sense, is a door; a way in. A way to play.

And yet there’s no conversation about it.

Back in high school, I had nothing. No resources, no writing, nothing to tell me how to approach it in a way that was pleasurable, safe, and accessible. Nothing to tell me that it was okay not to like it, that the reason it felt yuck likely had nothing to do with me. And even now, it feels like a blank spot in the wider conversation around sex.

Maybe that’s why I’m writing this.

I don’t want others to endure the fingering drought I did — to grow up thinking it’s normal to hate it, that it’s meant to be more scary than pleasurable. Because in a world where young people are reportedly having less and less sex, isn’t it time we rediscovered the mechanisms of pleasure that don’t come with quite so many complications?

What if you could go on a date and kiss and get fingered and leave having had an orgasm and not needing to worry about the morning after pill or the many unpleasantries of condoms?

Honestly, that sounds like pure heaven to me.

I guess I could say I’m in a fingering renaissance. I encourage you to explore it as an avenue for pleasure, too. But only with yourself — or someone else who respects the artistry of it.

Hey, quick side note. I’d love for you to follow me on Instagram. I share all of my other work on there, including my fortnightly sex column. Come and connect. My DMs are always open.