So, butt sex. In a recent posting on Jezebel, Hugo Schwyzer notes that heterosexual anal sex is now more popular – or at least more prevalent — than ever. According to one study he cites, some 40% of women age 20-24 report that they’ve tried it.
Obviously, many women love love love it – check out Toni Bentley’s engaging if possibly a little too enthusiastic buttsex memoir The Surrender if you don’t believe me. But Hugo wonders if some women are getting pressured into it. And it’s a reasonable concern, especially now that more straight guys have come to expect anal sex as a regular part of sexual relationships. Indeed, Hugo quotes a couple of young women who say that, yes, guys are constantly trying to cajole them into going to “5th base.”
The blogger Scallywag is having none of it.
Fending off anal sex? Really? Are we as men to believe that? If truth be known it is often and still remains the prerogative of women who she will have sex with (as much as a man may attempt to influence her decision) let alone anal sex. That a woman is somehow forced to accede to this demand strikes me as presumptuous and lacking in the understanding that as much as men often control the financial shots of a relationship (but that too is changing) it is often women who decide if and what type of sex will occur or not (otherwise it would be rape).
Uh, yes, I would hope that women always, not just often, would decide who they have sex with, and what kinds of sex they have. Same for men. That’s the way consensual sex works: everyone involved in it gets veto power. Otherwise, it would indeed be rape.
Scallywag, I would recommend that you go back and read the basic rules of sex before engaging in any more of it, much less something as advanced as anal.
As for Hugo, well, after asking that good question, he wanders off into some weird paternalist nonsense about anal sex being
yet another manifestation of the pressure on young women to focus on performance rather than on their own pleasure. … Perhaps the greatest incentive to do anal is the chance to prove the all-important capacity to endure pain. … [F]or most (certainly not all) young women, pleasure doesn’t seem to be the point.
You know, if anal sex hurts, you’re NOT DOING IT RIGHT.
Also, some people enjoy pain as a part of their sex life, at least when it’s inflicted safely and consensually. Sex is a messy and complicated thing, and you’re not going to get very far in understanding it if you project your own preferences and assumptions onto others with rather different preferences and assumptions about sex.
Hugo goes on to complain further about what he sees as the “sheer physical hurting that young women are expected to endure in order to meet the contemporary cultural ideal.” Somehow in his mind this includes not just painful waxing and the model-thin beauty ideal (a real issue, obviously) but also … sports:
Girls play more sports (and suffer more overuse injuries) than they did two decades ago. … On the soccer field or in the beauty salon, this generation is expected to prove its toughness as none before … .
Really? Maybe girls and women are getting more involved in sports these days because they, er, want to? And because they have more opportunities to get involved in sports these days because of, you know, feminism?
It’s one thing to worry about people – male and female – being pressured into conforming to social ideals or into sex or specific sex acts they don’t want. But it’s another to assume that girls’ and women’s choices are never really choices because patriarchy! Assuming that girls and women are playing more soccer, or going to “5th base,” mostly because they’re being pressured to is really kind of, well, assy.
On that note, enjoy this song about butts and coconuts.
WARNING: Do not actually put coconuts up your butt. For safe anal play, only use objects with a flared base. I cannot emphasize this enough.
Ah, that makes sense. Also makes Meller’s attempts to try to recruit you to the doll-loving team extra funny.
One thing that bothers me is how often high school football players have heat strokes during their two a day practices. Thankfully, more coaches now understand the dangers of dehydration and the signs of heat exhaustion before their players’ lives are at risk. In the past, coaches sometimes told their players to just suck it up and play through their pain. That’s why I say there have to be limits to the idea of “No pain, no gain”.
MRAL, it’s cool that you’re not a fan of porn. I wonder how many men don’t admit that and just go along and think they’re supposed to like it because it’s everywhere.
I myself am just conflicted on porn.
DKM was trying to recruit me? When? I didn’t notice.
@Hellkell: he’s also surrounded by women in their thirties, forties, fifties, and more — I’m at a four year university in a rural area, and I’ve had students in their sixties and seventies (one memorable woman in a creative writing course was 80). So it’s skeevy to think that the younger/more sexually attractive women are the ones he sees/cares about (as a professor OR a feminist).
It’s sort of like oral sex, honestly, which is something I’m still just a LITTLE aversive to, despite others’ defense.
It’s okay not to want to perform oral sex, so long as you (a) don’t demand to receive oral sex and (b) don’t make your partner feel bad about asking.
So, basically, this dialogue is fine:
Partner: I’d love it if you would go down on me.
You: Honestly, I’m just not really into oral. How about an awesome handjob instead?
This dialogue is not fine at all:
Partner: I’d love it if you would go down on me.
You: EWWWWWWWWWW! Vaginas are disgusting and smelly! That’s just sick! Now give me a blowjob.
Sadly, there exist a fair number of guys who actually go with that second option. Don’t be those guys. They are douchebags.
(All that said, I strongly suspect that once you get into a happy relationship with a girl and get to explore female genitalia up close and personal, oral will seem a lot less unpleasant and a lot more, “Ooh, when I lick this bit, she goes all squirmy! That’s hot.” I remember finding penises pretty weird and slightly frightening before I actually spent much time around them, but after a few chances to get used to the penis, I became a much, much bigger fan.)
You’re right, Ithiliana.
I don’t why anal seems to be a gold standard in sex – there’s plenty of things to do that don’t involve anal. And just like anything else, there’s people who love to do it, people who do it but are kinda “meh” about it, and people who absolutely hate it. If it’s really, really important that someone do anal, then why not find a partner that loves it? That pretty much goes for any sexual act. I know some women who do absolutely love it, but I can’t stand it.
A lot of it too may be due to the abstinence only education – many teens think that it doesn’t count if you have anal. You can still save yourself for Prince Charming! As long as you don’t shove it in the Holy Hole, God won’t smite you, I guess. Which is probably where some of the pressure comes from to have anal sex. It’s still technically sex, but not the wrong kind of sex.
That a woman is somehow forced to accede to this demand strikes me as presumptuous and lacking in the understanding that as much as men often control the financial shots of a relationship (but that too is changing) it is often women who decide if and what type of sex will occur or not (otherwise it would be rape).
Apparently Scallywag hasn’t heard of the one guy (and my Google-fu is failing me) who would have anal sex with his wife and then write her a check for it, because she didn’t like to do it. I forgot if he was big religious leader or if he was a politician.
> This is one place where I agree with Dan Savage: gentlemen, don’t demand anal unless you’re willing to get pegged yourself.
If that’s what he said, then I disagree with him, because
1. Don’t demand any sex act, ever. And,
2. Just because I like receiving anal sex doesn’t mean my partner has even the slightest obligation to even try it.
Hugo reminds me of this professor I kinda-sorta knew in college. I didn’t ever have a class with him, but saw him around and interacted with him a few times. There was something deeply creepy about him but I was never able to put my finger on it… until a friend told me that he came into her Human Sexuality class and taught a lecture (which was relevant since he does animal behavior stuff) and proceeded to tell an anecdote to the class about sitting next to an attractive female student and getting a boner.
———
I actually don’t have that much problem with this article because he does admit that some women enjoy anal sex. He says that the problem is how anal sex is for most women yet another sexual requirement that primarily focuses on a man’s pleasure rather than her own. He says:
which I think is a totally fair point. David says that if anal hurts, you’re not doing it right, which is true. But how many college students (or even people in general) know about or are into the sort of extended, careful, and intimate preparation necessary for most women (and men!) to enjoy anal play? If young men don’t know, don’t give a shit, and possibly would be turned off about what you need to do in order to help a woman accept and have fun with things in her butt, then of course anal is a terrible idea. Since anal is a delicate thing for anyone, if you don’t care about what’s going on with the penetrated person, it’s going to turn out more painful and possibly dangerous than most other sex acts. Anal is not something that is really amenable to the “pump and dump” mentality, or a mentality that doesn’t want or care about reciprocating pleasure. I mean, we’re talking about a population that thinks foreplay is for chumps and that blowjobs are mandatory but cunnilingus is optional. Anal isn’t necessarily kinky, but you do have to have the “safe, sane, and consensual” model to do it properly, and I don’t think the average college bro knows or cares. It’s possible that as Hugo says, part of the appeal is the non-consensual power play involved.
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I took the sports thing to be an example of increasing pressures on women, part of the “women have to do it all” phenomenon. Though I’d say that on the whole, women participating in sports is a good thing (for the reasons CassandraSays outlines), having a sport on your “resume” is one of those almost-necessary things you need to compete with other people for college applications these days. Children of both genders do get pressured into playing sports very young and often don’t have the option of choosing to quit (no matter whether or not they’re in pain), because their parents force them to participate. Pressure to stay competitive in a sport, even if you aren’t planning to go professional, can force children and teens to practice a single sport repeatedly throughout the year and get specific sorts of injuries related to overuse.
Girls and young women were isolated from these pressures until recently ’cause WOMEN ARE TOO DELICATE FOR SPORTS!!! or whatever. It’s one of those negative signs of equality, I guess, like women smoking and drinking more or going to jail more often. I think Kendra and Cassandra nailed it– it’s not so much a gender issue specifically affecting women, since men also have their own macho business to deal with & especially around sports. But it is a change in the ideals of “toughness” such that women now have to live up to that particular norm on top of everything else. The main problem is is that the things women need to endure are potentially painful sex acts and invasive body grooming. But sports are at least potentially a positive form of endurance that can teach useful character or value lessons; they increase your agency rather than lessening it. “Sucking it up and taking it in the butt” doesn’t teach you anything except that your body autonomy is worthless in comparison to another person’s pleasure.
Yep, he was all “I agree that modern women are awful, maybe you should get some dolls, like me, they can be great company and very useful for masturbation”. It was funny – as recruiting slogans go “be celibate forever and assemble a collection of Madame Alexander dolls” kind of lacks that certain something.
I don’t know if I’ll ever be in a relationship, but if I am, sure, maybe.
TMI time! I was kind of meh about penises until I actually got the opportunity to handle one that was attached to a man I was really attracted to. Penises in the abstract didn’t do much for me, mentally speaking, prior to having sex, but once I encountered one in the flesh and I was already really into the guy I was all “ooh, what an excellent toy to play with”. This is actually one of the ways in which porn totally fails to capture people’s actual experiences of sex – attraction can totally change how you respond to thinks that seem uninteresting in the abstract.
I’ve never felt pressured to have anal sex. I haven’t even encountered any guy who particularly wanted anal.
Most of the pressure to have anal, for me, is internal: I want to be the naughty up-for-anything girlfriend guys can brag about, you know? And honestly I think half the cause of my internal pressure about it is articles like Hugo’s that depict anal as this thing EVERY GUY WANTS and that women don’t really want, so if I have anal then guys will think I’m the awesome hypersexual chick and remember me years later.
…Which works out far less well when the reaction of the guy in question is more like “you want me to stick my WHAT WHERE?”
Also, I’d like to say that you can like some kinds of anal play and not others: it’s okay to like having your ass fingered or licked or whatever, and not like having a dick (whether bio or plastic) up there. Or the other way around!
MRAL: It’s perfectly okay to dislike oral. I’d suggest trying it once, just to see if you like it better in practice than theory, but if you feel such a strong aversion to it that you don’t want to, anyone has the right to say no to anything. There are lots of women who don’t particularly like getting eaten out. Just don’t be a douchebag about it: “eh, don’t like the taste” is fine, “EWWWWWWW” is not. 🙂
@ Ozy – That’s one of the cool things about being kind of kinky, actually, at least for me. It’s almost impossible for anyone to shame me into doing stuff I don’t want by suggesting that I’m a prude because, um, seriously, dude? You’re calling the domme a prude? Please.
Ozy, why do you feel the pressure to be the super-awesome hypersexual chick down for anything?
I remember that internal pressure.
I was kinda hoping shit like that had changed for younger women.
Actually, going by what my younger friends say I think that particular internal pressure has gotten a lot worse. Which is what Hugo was trying to allude to, I think, he just did a poor job of it.
Or to be more specific – the ubiquity of porn seems to have created a situation where not only do young women feel pressure to be super sexy and awesome in bed all the time, they have specific mental images of what that’s supposed to look like, and so do the men they’re fucking, and the women know that. And some of the men will specifically invoke those images as proof of what the women “should” be doing. It’s a lot of pressure to put on people without much sexual experience.
Look, I’m not saying I’d be all like UGH NO WAY YO!!!!! if I was in a relationship. And it may well be that I’d change my mind. I really don’t think vaginas are gross, that was all exaggeration. The only truth is that it’s just not something I’m raring to do. But again, I really can’t see myself in a relationship in the definite future, or ever really, so I’m not sure I’ll be given the opportunity. And from a distance, I’m not a fan.
Pegging is the biggest joke of a sexual act I’ve ever heard of. A woman couldn’t invade an asshole if you gave her Napoleon’s army.
And women having anal sex makes me mad because they’re obviously not enjoying it, so then why are they even doing it? Presumably, because their partner likes it. It’s the prostitution script writ large, a woman does things she doesn’t enjoy for the sake of keeping a man’s attention.
Hey there! I’m Arks, and everything about women pisses me off! My life is so awesome as a result of this, I bet you’re all really jealous.
Anal sex without lube? I wouldn’t even wish that on my enemies. Lube is your friend…the more the better.
Some TMI for all y’all:
I am quite uncomfortable giving oral sex, mostly because my first boyfriend (I was 15) presented it as something “normal” girls did for their boyfriends, and if I didn’t want to do it I was weird, so… *eyebrow raise*. It wasn’t something for the two of us to share. He also believed that it wasn’t “fair” of me to begin a blow job and then stop when I didn’t want to continue. That’s why sexual quid-pro-quo agreements make me really, really uncomfortable. My current partner enjoys going down on me, and he also understands that I’m not always okay with reciprocating. He doesn’t say “my turn now, it’s only fair!”
I’m a lot more comfortable with blow jobs now btw, I’m just still a little weird about them. It helps when you have respectful partners!
Arks is so funny. “Many women are pressured to do sex acts that they don’t enjoy because sex is viewed as something women give to men! That’s why women are terrible.”
O hai Arks! I like anal sex! And I’m a cis woman! Sorry about your exploded head.
Arks, the clitoral nerves can run from the tip of the clit, round the vaginal opening and towards the anus. Women may indeed receive physical pleasure from anal if their clitoral nerves run towards that point. And heck for other reasons too.
http://mosex.wordpress.com/2011/11/30/the-internal-clitoris/
MRAL-anal can be done without messiness. Enemas are advised if you are worried about that, condoms and so forth.
Brandon-yes. Lube is god/desses gift to great sex in general.