Fisting and the Sexual Revolution
Rictor Norton proclaimed in his essay, History of Homoerotica, the following:
Some marked changes in gay sexuality have occurred especially since the 1950s and 1960s. Fisting, for example, has no historical precedent—although impalement features in some early gay fantasies. ... Surveys of diaries, news reports, and the gay media have established that fisting was invented in the summer of 1971, in the 'backroom' of a gay bar in New York City. The practice quickly spread to the backroom bars of San Francisco, and was exported thence to Japan and Europe.[6]
Many reviewers of his essay rebutted this claim, noting that documentation may first appear on the record during the sexual revolution, but suggesting that fisting didn't occur until then is like saying:
...that everyone in the world was too stupid to make nachos until 1943.
The presumption is that two things have spurred growth in anal fisting as sexual activity: ubiquity of enemas/douches and fisting porn (both professional and amateur). Amatuer fisting historian and diarist, Finn Vortex, notes that his first post-elbow experience in 2015 was with a top who had been fisting for almost fifty years, since 1967. That top recounts that he was introduced to the practice by individuals who had been fisting for decades (early mid-century). A significant amount of history and experience was lost during the AIDS crisis.