November 30, 2015 • 46 mins
According to the sexual health statistics, anal sex is more popular -- and pop culturally relevant -- among women than ever before. Cristen and Caroline discuss how consent, safety and pleasure factor into this formerly taboo intimate territory.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff Mom Never Told You from House Top
Works Nott. Come hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Kristen and I'm Caroline. And as you might have judged
from the title of this podcast, today, on this show
we are going to be using straightforward language to describe sex,
(00:27):
and specifically anal sex. So parents, if you're listening with kids,
this is your heads up. Or people who just might
be squeamish about references to behind, or people who just
play our episodes full volume at their workplace. Yeah, this
might be a headphones necessary episode to listen to. And
(00:51):
you know, we've talked about taboo topics before on the podcast.
We've talked about sex before on the podcast our bodies,
our volva's vagiant and as clitteresses and also our butts,
so it makes sense that we can talk about well,
our butts again. You know, people have been requesting in
(01:11):
anal sex episode for as long as I have been
doing the podcast with you, Kristen, like I, I have
been familiar with these requests for quite a while, and
so here we are. Well in the years that stef
Mob Never Told You has existed, Caroline, I've witnessed anal
sex come more and more into mainstream conversations and even
arrive on primetime TV shows. Yeah, I was actually really
(01:36):
surprised to see uh, well not really surprised, but on
Girls when Marnie gets some attention from her boyfriend, uh,
not anal sex per se, but analingus. Yeah, the internet
kind of exploded when that scene happened. There were lots
of unnecessary think pieces about what does that mean? What
(01:58):
does it? What does it mean? Well, there was even
an episode of The Mindy Project. I think the episode
is titled It Slipped that was pretty much all about
anal sex, at least as the subtext. And in the
words of one of my favorite lady comedians, a lot
of Glazer a broad City. It's on the menu now. Yeah,
(02:20):
it seems to be. It seems like people are getting
used to the idea that it not only uh can
feel good, but it's okay for anybody to try. Well,
And the thing is, it's been happening, especially if we
consider women having anal sex, which is what we will
focus this episode on. It's not just about anal sex generally,
(02:41):
but more specifically women doing it because this is stuff
Mom never told you, and obviously women have been having
and enjoying and not enjoying anal sex since forever, but
it's only been in really the last decade that it's
been okay to even talk about and even experiment with
(03:02):
ye to the point where was it a salon piece
we read where the writer was discussing how it's becoming
so mainstream to the point that it might actually sap
the enjoyment out of it for some people who have
been enjoying more so than just the act, but also
the taboo factor. So so yeah, maybe maybe for those
(03:24):
of you who really like the taboo. Sorry, sorry, we're
ruining it. We're ruining we're making anal sex of vanilla
as we speak. But the thing about it is there
are issues that we do need to talk about and
we will talk about around anal sex and consent and
health issues and all these things, not to detract from
people's enjoyment of it and desire to experiment with it
(03:46):
or not experiment with it. It's up to you, um,
but to help everyone get on the same page with it,
because there there's so many how to guides now in
mainstream magazines. Dan Savage on Savage love, love him or
Loathe Him? Talks about it a lot. He gives lots
of tips for first timers. Um, but there are still
(04:08):
some nuances that are left out in a lot of
those details. Um. But first up, let's move away from
the tawdry and let's get down to some legitimate statistics,
because really, the people who got everyone talking about anal
sex more openly, it's not other than the Centers for
(04:29):
Disease Control and Prevention here in Atlanta, Georgia, represents what
up a p L. Feel free to invite us over
any time CDC were available, but not in that way. Yeah,
that's right. It's been really interesting to see the C
d C. Oh, that's so many c S statistics. Also
see and C talking about the CDC here, C and
(04:51):
C can see from the CDC statistics that more and
more people are engaging in anal intercourse and it's it's
kind of healthily jumped over the past couple of years,
over the past like two decades actually so according to
the CDC National Survey of Family Growth, and they were
looking at men and women who were engaging in heterosexual
(05:14):
anal sex. In particular, they found that just over thirty
eight percent of men between the ages of twenty and
thirty nine and about thirty two and a half percent
of women ages eighteen to forty four have heterosexual anal sex,
and those numbers came out in two thousand and six.
Is so that would be looking at reports happening in
(05:36):
the early odds um and that's a healthy jump from
the survey which found of men and twenty percent of
women were reporting having ever tried anal sex. And one
notable thing about this data is that the uptick probably
isn't a byproduct of hook up culture, because I feel
(05:59):
like there's a lot of yearmongering around the rise in
anal sex of like, oh, this is because these kids
aren't getting married. They're going out and they're drinking too
many wine coolers and then having anal sex. But that's
probably not so much the case. Thank god, they don't
make zema anymore. Also, who drinks wine coolers? Oh god?
(06:20):
The first time I ever got drunk, it was a
mix of smyrnoff, ice and rum and coke, all in wondering, No,
not all in one drink, all in one night, though
I was super ill, But it did not involve today's topic. Yeah,
it turns out that according to these statistics. It's not
part of, like christ And said, the hookup culture. It's
(06:42):
actually least common among people who have never been married
and aren't living together. It's most common among people who
are in committed relationships and are living together. And that
helps explain a lot of anecdotal reports that we ran
across in our research for this episode about how for
a lot of couples anal sex is actually a more
(07:05):
intimate form of intercourse for them, and especially in the
context of straight couples. But then the CDC got us
talking about this again a few years later when there
are two thousand eleven National Survey of Family Growth came
out and found that even more anal sex was happening,
(07:26):
at least reportedly, so not as huge of a jump,
but still compared to two thousand six whereto of women
between eighteen and forty four so they had ever had
anal sex, that number went up to six percent, whereas
for the men, forty four percent reported engaging it at
some point. Well, so clearly people are getting more comfortable
(07:48):
with it literally and figuratively, which is something that we
will talk about as we go on through this episode.
That it is that degree of comfort that is so important.
And Chris and you were mentioning that these were time
statistics that people who had ever engaged in anial sex.
But it's also worth noting that in that CDC report,
the percent of women A nine reporting having had anal
(08:10):
sex in the past year alone had doubled to twenty since.
And what I would guess has also doubled during that time, Caroline,
or tripled or quadrupled is our cultural acceptance of it,
at least among maybe the people under forty. I mean,
(08:30):
there's still a lot of uh moral panic around anal
sex in particularly straight people engaging in it. But like
we were talking about, I mean, it's it's so ubiquitous,
almost part of the zeitguys, this one might say. And
I think, piece it's so true. Our I mean, butts
in general are so zeiteguys right now. We did a
(08:53):
podcast a while back listeners in case you haven't heard it,
called Fat Bottomed Girls, and it was all about our
cultural fascinatnation right now and historically with women's behind. And
I feel like this is kind of an extension of
all that. Yeah, well, I mean, judging by you know,
we mentioned Marnie on Girls but like, judging by the
(09:15):
pop cultural response, it's totally zeitgeiste. Yeah, if it's on girls,
it is definitely zeitgeiste. But it was even in the
premier episode of How To get Away with Murder, which
I just started watching, and it was interesting. I was
just listening to an interview with Shonda Rhymes on Fresh
Air and Terry Gross was asking her about, uh, talking
(09:38):
about sex on her shows How to get Away with Murder,
Grace Anatomy and Scandal and um uh and how they
have pushed the envelope in terms of depicting sex as well,
and so so this is a clear example of that happening. Um.
And then of course there's Nicki minaj is Anaconda rap
song and video of what that includes her reference to
(10:03):
a guy um pleasuring her named Romaine. So we'll let
you fill in the blanks there dot dot dot um.
And of course you do have like I feel like
every other month, if you pick up a women's magazine
or a dudes magazine, a men's health kind of thing,
or g Q or Cosmo, there will be some feature
on how to do it back there for the first time,
(10:26):
or do it better, or how to you know, spice
up your long term relationship with it. So, I mean,
it's just something that we're all talking about. And to
the point to where a number of sex writers that
we were reading liken it to the way oral sex
was the new taboo thing that you just had to
try when you and I Caroline were in high school. Yeah. Well,
(10:49):
another thing that these writers are trying to figure out
in all of these pieces about anal sex is why
are so many more people doing it? We've seen the
CDC statistics, so why is it taking off so much?
And one big thing that a lot of people site
is the pornification of sex or relationships or that hookup
culture that you mentioned earlier. That part of the it's
(11:11):
part of that moral panic stuff that you mentioned, Kristen. Yeah,
I mean, And while anal sex is often depicted important
to the point that they're at least anecdotally, are a
number of straight guys who are like, WHOA, we don't
really even want to see it all that much. Um,
A lot of people consider that a knee jerk, short
(11:33):
sighted answer, especially when it comes to the question of well,
why would women want to do this? Because statistically guys
are the ones and especially in heteronormative context, guys are
the ones watching the porn. Women aren't watching it as much,
so why would we need to be mimicking all of that?
Um So, if we dig a little bit deeper, there
(11:55):
are some layers to it, I think, such as a
lessoning of homophobia that for so long preached the anal
sex was only something that gay men would do, and
that it was something dirty. And keep in mind people
that it was only in two thousand three that the
Supreme Court officially struck down anti sodomy laws in Lawrence Fee, Texas,
(12:16):
even though a number of states still have anti sodomy
laws on their books, and I mean just they're from
for centuries and and things. In large part to many religions,
the anus itself and anal sex has been depicted as
un natural and something that is vile and dirty, and
(12:39):
that since it's not procreative sex, that women shouldn't we
should certainly not engage in it, you know. And and
to that that topic of homophobia, though, we read a
couple of interviews and anecdotal reports from guys who either
were like, oh, well, yeah, it's just something I do
with my partner. It's totally great, we both enjoy it.
What ever, or there were also some quotes that we
(13:02):
saw from guys who were like, well, it's fine if
I'm the one doing it basically, so like I don't
want to get to you know, I don't want to
get to graphic with my language on sminty. But there
are some attitudes still out there circulating under this sort
of like homophobia. Umbrella almost were like, uh, it's not
cool for for guys to be on the receiving end.
(13:24):
That's just weird, right, because that is a more submissive position.
Submissive but also related still in a lot of people's
minds with gay sex. Yeah, and so I mean that's
why I think it is totally valid for us to
be talking about this on the podcast, not just because
you know, we do talk about sex. I think it's
(13:45):
important to talk about sex, but I I think that
the rising acceptance of straight anal sex does say more
than stay more than about just like our poor habits
and things like that, because also we have to accept
that people just have a natural desire for experimentation. Some
(14:06):
people are just doing it because they want to do it,
not because they feel some kind of pressure like oh
now this is a new third base, and I have
to do it. If I don't do it, then I'm
not an adventurous woman. So you know, there's there's that
whole thing and and just accepting that, oh well, some
people do it because they enjoy it. Yeah, yeah, it's
not all about coercion and feeling like you're less fan
(14:29):
if you don't. Although the whole coercion factors a huge
deal and it's absolutely something that we should talk about
and we should also mention too that sort of along
the same lines as the coercion that can happen, especially
if some one party is more interested in doing it
than another. There's a whole birth control at aspect of like,
oh well we need to do this because um you
(14:52):
know that way you won't get pregnant, or the whole
idea of it preserving your vaginal virginity. Yeah, this is
if there is a better argument. I mean, there are
so so many arguments for good, solid, comprehensive sexual education
in this country, but the idea, the weird ideas around
(15:13):
preserving virginity but still wanting to be sexually active. But
we're not going to call it sex because it's not
the vagina. It's not a penis and a vagina, It's
a penis and an anus. This is a huge outcry
in my mind for the need for comprehensive sex ad because,
as we will talk about, just because you have anal
(15:34):
sex does not mean that you are protected from a
pregnancy because mistakes happen and fluids can get other places,
but also from diseases and sexually transmitted infections. Yeah, I mean,
and and and that was something too that was always
concerning with the idea of oral sex being the third base.
(15:55):
That's the thing that precedes the quote unquote real sex,
which of course is incredibly head to normative and this
gendered of you know, the real sex being a penis
entering of vagina, where has like arguably these other acts
of a specifically oral an anal are far more intimate
in some ways than quote unquote real sex. Yeah, I
(16:15):
mean people, and I see people in the mist general sense,
like people tend to talk about anal sex and think
about anal sex is this thing that's like, oh, we're
just gonna do it because we're wild and maybe we're
a little tipsy and I just met this person at
a bar, when really, I mean, if you talk to
people who are in relationships, and you look at statistics,
Like we said earlier, this does tend to be an
(16:38):
activity that's more between people who are committed to each other,
whether that's opposite sex or same sex partners. But one
thing that we do have to talk about is how
the rate of anal sex becoming UM normalized has not
has written faster than the rate of comprehensive sex education,
(16:59):
and with that we do end up with a startling
pattern of young people in particular engaging in anal sex
in ways that are not pleasurable for any body. And
a lot of this is while all of this actually
is coming from study published in the British Medical Journal
(17:20):
which focused on a relatively small group of straight kids
between sixteen and eighteen years old who were having UM
who had had anal sex at some point at least
or multiple times. And it's a qualitative study rather than
a quantitative study, so it really focuses in on their
(17:40):
motivations and lots of interviews. UM. But what they found,
even though um it's more qualitative than quantitative, are some
pretty consistent patterns. Yeah. So they found that the first
time that these people were experiencing anal sex was typically
painful for the girls, and this indicates because a lot
(18:02):
of people to just assume that anal sex will always
end forever be painful when it doesn't have to be UM,
but this indicates. This finding indicates that there wasn't adequate
for play or preparation for it on either person's part,
and this also tends to indicate basically a lackluster experience
for the guys involved too. Yeah. A lot of them
(18:24):
reported like, I mean, yeah, I didn't and it was
it was okay, it wasn't as good as I thought
it was gonna be. UM And there was only one
girl that the researchers talked to who described any physical
pleasure whatsoever associated with it. And then, even more disturbingly,
or I don't know, I don't want to say that
one is worse than the other. But condoms were rarely
(18:48):
used in this case except as a fecal barrier, despite
increased risks of SCI contraction via anal sex, because a
lot of these UH teenagers did had no idea, UH
that your risks of contracting s t I S is
actually higher with anal sex. They thought that it was
kind of the safest way they could have sex in
(19:10):
regard to um health and also pregnancy. Caroline is doing
her squinty eyes. Well, yeah, I'm doing my squinty eyes
because I think this is horrifying and sad. Um. I
am a huge proponent of comprehensive and radically in depth
(19:31):
sex said because, as you and I have talked about before,
and as anyone who agrees with me on the whole
sex said thing knows, Uh, you're not going to prepare
anyone for what people are going to be doing anyway
if you don't teach them how to be safe. Yeah,
I mean, and also the need for her conversations about, yeah,
the frank conversations that people are gonna want to do
(19:53):
this and it can totally happen, um, but no no
education about the lead up to it. Well, yeah, I mean,
there needs to be education about the lead up how
to do any type of sex safely and responsibly and
in a pain free way, both emotionally pain free and
(20:13):
physically pain free. And also there needs to be the
other layer of education that anal sex isn't like a
chased substitute for vaginal sex, that it is still sex
and it can still have the same repercussions that penis
and vagina sex can have. Yeah, I mean, and reading
all of these reports from these teenagers made me think
(20:35):
so much about when I was in high school and
when oral sex was essentially the anal sex of yesteryear,
and I could find so much information even even way
back in online and the Cosmo dot com archives about
how to do it and what you should do it.
But there was and and there were expectations obviously because
(20:56):
this information existed, that this was something that as a
highly hormonal teenager, that this was something that I would
want to do and something that sexy women who were
very attractive would be doing, But there was no information
about like a, yeah, all of the trappings of it,
the lead up to it, like oh, if you don't
want to try it, you don't have to try it.
(21:17):
Um And I feel like it's just the same thing
all over again, just with anal sex this time. And
when the researchers were talking to the boys about their
motivation for wanting to try this, yes, the porn aspect
came up, but that was very much linked to status,
like they wanted to try it because it was almost
(21:38):
like a checklist that they had of all of the
various sex acts that they could do, that they could
then tell their guys about, and that they could then
be praised for, whereas, of course the opposite was true
for girls. Yeah, and I mean this actually, this idea
of using anal sex is a way to attain status
among their guy friends reminded me. Actually in the might
(22:00):
sound weird, but it reminded me of the episode we
did about Guys and Cars, about how we talked about
how men tend to define not all men hashtag A
lot of men tend to define their masculinity in relation
to other men, not define their masculinity in relation to women.
So to me, it makes sense that if you are
a teenage boy who is maybe getting his education and
(22:22):
ideas about sex from porn, and there's a lot of
anal sex in porn um and you're trying to define
and emphasize your masculinity, that anal sex would be, like
you said, part of like this conquest checklist. Yeah. Whereas
for girls, while a lot of them, I think all
(22:43):
of them, Um, in this case, we're having anal sex
within the context of dating relationships. They were still very
nervous going into it because they knew that if other
people found out that they had tried this with their
due that they would be shamed for it. Mm hmm.
I mean it's just a sexual double standard. It's just
(23:05):
you know, same old story. So there's an expectation on
boys to do it, but the expectation on girls is
to not do it or you're you're to be shamed,
and so then it's like okay, well then well it's
even more of a double bind than just an expectation
to not do it. There's still an expectation to do
it that if you don't want to do then you're
apprud But then if you do do it and you're
(23:26):
a bad girl, then you're a bad girl as long
as well. Maybe if you do it and then a
guy breaks up with you and you are single, then
you're a bad girl. I think if you do it
and you stay together with that person, then a girl friend, yes,
But as soon as that ends, because hello, sixteen, then
you are going to be the girl that all of
(23:48):
your ex boyfriends dude friends knows did that. It's so hard.
It's so hard to be a teenager. I'm glad I
studied a lot. I mean it and it also thinking
about like these guys talking to each other about it.
It reminds me of my first high school boyfriend. Okay,
(24:09):
who am I getting? Like my only high school boyfriend,
um hashtag late bloomer telling me very soon into us
dating in quotes, if you can consider like going to
the Dollar movie like four times a week, dating about
what his ex girlfriend would due to him, essentially like
laying on his expectations of like she did this from me,
(24:31):
and I just really enjoyed it. I was very inexperience
at the time, and you know, there was there was
no information or wherewithal to kind of bridge like where
I was and like what he was saying, and like no,
you know, thing in my head to be like, oh
wait this, this is odd that this conversation is happening,
But I feel like it's so common it is. Yeah,
(24:53):
it happened to me too when I was younger and
dating guys that would like do the same thing of like,
oh well I dated this girl, and so when I
really could have used this is like obviously going off
on a tangent away from anal sex. But what I
could have used when I was that age and you too,
was somebody like us being like whatever it is, whatever
it is. If somebody's doing that to you, like just
(25:15):
they're not worth your time. If somebody is like laying
out sexpectations for you, um, outside of the context of like,
you know, an understanding conversation, like a real actual conversation
about sex or sexual expectations or experience or whatever. Like,
that's one thing, But to describe what a past partner
(25:37):
did in order to put pressure on you, that is
the sign of someone who is obviously not meant to
be an immature, loving, understanding, supportive relationship yea. And someone
who just doesn't understand the basics of consent. Obviously, the
whole thing of no being a complete sentence, and that
issue of consent and coercion also came up a lot
(25:57):
in these teenagers. Narrative is about their experiences with anal
sex because it played such a major part, to the
point that the researchers wrote, quote, women being badgered for
anal sex appears to be considered normal because we've already
established that there's the sexual double double standard at work,
(26:17):
and so these girls are nervous about it, but they
feel like they should do it, but they're nervous but
they should do it, and there's a whole pain aspect,
there's the expectation that it's gonna hurt, so on so
many layers, there's resistance to it. So in a lot
of these cases, these guys were telling they're usually girlfriends
like oh, come on, come on, please, please, please, please please,
and sort of wearing them down, and then in some
(26:41):
cases using the whole reference back to the Mindy Project
episode it slipped excuse um for essentially having like non
consensual anal sex. And as upset as Kristen and I
have become during the course of this part of the conversation,
(27:02):
I don't think that we mean to say that all
anal sex is bad. Obviously, obviously this is definitely not
commentary on people's sexual relationships and preferences in general. But
this is an important part of sexual health to talk about,
and researchers definitely say that this just goes to show
(27:23):
how badly we need comprehensive sexual education, and that's exactly
what these researchers writing in the British Medical Journal. We're
stressing that this isn't the point that we lead to
the conclusion that all teenagers should be discouraged from even
trying this, but rather that it's just clear, clear evidence
(27:46):
that we need more comprehensive sex education that acknowledges that
things like anal sex and oral sex happen, and that
also discusses things like pain, coercion, and consent, rather than
it just being like, here's how to not get pregnant. Yeah,
good luck. Yeah, it would be incredible to arm young
people with information about consent. I mean, even if you're
(28:09):
not going to talk about anal sex specifically, to talk
about consent is a powerful, powerful thing. Well. And I
also have a hunch that sex education that focuses so
exclusively on not getting pregnant might end up fostering more
anal sex because hey, you can't get pregnant that way, right, Yeah,
(28:31):
but if we're talking about things slipping again, if you're
just relying on oh I'm hoping that nothing slips out
and slips in anywhere else, it's better to be smart
and armed with information about your body how sex works. Well.
And this is also another reason for us to talk
(28:52):
about this openly, because I think the more taboo things are,
the more left in the shadows that they are, the
more stigmatized they are the more room that leaves for
non consensual things to happen because you don't even want
to acknowledge that you're doing it, and there are um,
there there's more doubt about well, what is right? What
(29:14):
is wrong? As I'm going through this, I mean, I'm
already doing this thing that's taboo, so okay, let's just
do it. Um. And this was something This is not
all going to be downer au anal sex. We are
getting we're working our way toward orgasms people, aren't we all,
But we first have to lay this foundation, like, have
(29:34):
some rare talk about this, because this isn't just something
that the issues of uh coercent are just things that
happen among teenagers. Um. There was another study that we found,
a rare study on straight adult women's anal sex experiences,
published in two thousand fourteen and the journal Feminism and Psychology.
(29:56):
And I say the rare study because far and away
most most most studies on anal sex focus just on
gay guys, which also, hello, I mean it's not just
gay men and straight women who are having anal sex.
Researchers for this Feminism and Psychology study found that five
major themes emerged around the experiences of the women that
(30:18):
they interviewed. And again this is another qualitative study based
on interviews conversations about women's experiences, and so the themes
included initial resistance to the idea, followed by submission to
anal sex, um initial interest in it, followed by withdrawal
from subsequent anal sex experiences. So basically, they tried it,
(30:41):
didn't really like it, it wasn't their thing, so okay,
now we know. Um. Third, the third theme was violence
and coercion surrounding anal sex. So again this echoes. This
is basically like almost an adult version of the British
Medical Journal study that we were talking about earlier, and
then we have similarly echoing it as well. The social
(31:03):
norming aspect of dudes, guy friends normalizing straight anal sex
and seeing anal sex is something normative largely based they
think on like watching porn. This is something that like, oh,
you should do we should be doing this. Don't you
want to do this? Um? And then five, yeah, here
(31:23):
we go. This is this is a great part pleasurable
experiences with anal of roticism. And yes, that is a
direct quote from a study abstract anal eroticism. Don't I
love academia. I love academia. So one of the most
important things to remember about anal sex as it becomes
more and more normalized, as it becomes more and more zeitgeist,
(31:47):
is that everybody is different. Some people are gonna want it,
some people aren't, some people are going to try it
and hate it. Some people are gonna try it and
they're gonna love it. Everyone's different, and that's just good
to keep in mind. And that's pretty much the takeaway
of any Like women's magazine roundup of like real women
describe their experiences with anal sex, because yes, every glamor magazine, Clear, Reclear, etcetera.
(32:12):
Has one of those listical types of stories, and always
they run the gamut from a woman being like, it
was the worst, most painful experience of my life, I
will never ever try it again, to the woman who's like,
I can't get enough of it. It saved my marriage, etcetera. Yeah,
but here's the thing. Anal sex actually correlated with more orgasm. Wait,
(32:34):
what how is that possible? Who said that? Caroline? Academics again,
lots of that sex studies. Uh so, there was a
twenty study in the Journal of Sexual Medicine that found
ninety four per cent of women that they surveyed who
received anal sex in their last sexual encounter reported reaching orgasm.
(32:57):
And this is a higher rate of orgasm we should
know then was reported by women who had had vaginal
intercourse or received oral sex. And that study finding launched
a zillion Internet headlines because of the assumption that it's
something that has to be very painful and uncomfortable, especially
for women, even though I don't know that there are
that many biological sex differences between male and female anuses,
(33:21):
but there's just the assumption that lady is gonna hate it. Oh,
but it turns out they love it. Well, some context
to this um people think that the reason why there
is that relationship between women having anal sex and orgasms
is that if you do in it correct, actually doing
it in the way that will allow it to happen,
(33:43):
it requires time, patients for play, a lot of the
ingredients for female orgasms. Yeah. Well, and then a lot
of things we read two recommended, like having an orgasm
before a approaching anal sex. Yeah. So there's even like
the chicken egg question with that of like, are these
(34:06):
of women having orgasms, having orgasms before they have anal
sex or after, or on both sides. Well, you know,
and everything we've read anal sex or vaginal sex or
any type of sex is that the more comfortable you
are with yourself and with your partner and with your
sexual activity, uh, and the more confidence you have in
one another, and the comfort level all of this stuff
(34:28):
is a very positive factor for potentially than having an orgasm.
In other words, if you're happy with each other, if
you're feeling good about each other and yourselves, you're more
likely to have an orgasm. Because so much of sex
is not just physical but also psychological, and so that
obviously applies to anal sex too. We talked earlier, we
hinted at the whole comfort factor for anal sex, and
(34:49):
this is no different. And one thing that gets talked
about a lot is the assumption that anal sex will
be or has to be, or is always painful is
not only inaccurate, but it's also doing a lot of
harm because if you automatically assume that any sexual act
is going to be painful or harm you in some way,
(35:10):
you're automatically not going to be as relaxed as you
could or should be. And there was a column we
were reading about this in Vogue, yes that Vogue magazine,
about one woman's experiences with anal sex, and she made
the very good point that just basic mechanics wise, anal
(35:30):
sex facilitates more clitteral access, and as we have underscored
on the podcast before, women are likelier to reach orgasm
via clitteral stimulation than vaginal stimulation, so that could be
another factor in this whole orgasm correlation as well. Yeah,
(35:50):
and I mean we've cited on the podcast before the
fact that women in same sex relationships report more orgasms
than do women in opposite sex relations ships, and so yeah,
I mean we can't ignore the fact that it's not
just the concern of a straight woman or a gay
man or a bisexual man or woman, that there are
(36:11):
plenty of same sex couples out there doing this too. Absolutely.
And um, speaking of which, one piece we're reading about
this over at auto straddle dot com was talking about how,
of course anal sex can be very pleasurable because of
all of the myriad nerve endings back there as well.
So I mean, it makes a lot of sense that
(36:33):
women would enjoy it. What doesn't make sense, is that
it's so hard for us to collectively wrap our minds
around this being something enjoyable for women, regardless of who
they might be partnered with at the time. Well, I
mean I think that straight men get put in that
category a lot too of Like, well, whether it's by
(36:55):
themselves or by society, capitalist society that like, straight men
can't or shouldn't or won't enjoy it. Oh, yeah, I
mean that is also something that there's still not a
ton of data on it. But um, there is evidence
that straight men are engaging in anal activities more than
(37:18):
ever before. Um. Tracy Clark, Floury advocative now previously at Salon,
talked to Debbie Herbenick over at the Kinsey Institute, and
she referred her to a study which found eleven percent
of guys in their early twenties reported having received anal
sex at some point. But her Bennick said, well, we
don't know exactly what that means because there were no
(37:41):
detailed reports on what kind of anal sex that was,
whether that was manual, or whether that was solo partnered,
all the different ways that you can have anal penetration. Yeah, well,
I mean I feel like just as anal sex itself
is pop culturally. I don't want to say really, I
(38:03):
mean that makes it sound like a trend, but it's
so like within pop culture now, and it's so talked about.
And similarly, you know, more and more attentions being paid
to like women's clteral stimulation and pleasing women in that regard,
the same attention now is starting to be paid to
male prostate stimulus that people are like, hello, men like
(38:23):
different things too. Oh yeah. I mean I feel like
that that's been around for a while, the whole like
kind of joking thing of the old school Cosmo tip
that a guy enjoys manual stimulation back there. I mean,
I feel like that's almost like a go to question
at this point. Among Like, I don't know, I like,
(38:43):
it's come up in lots of conversations I've had with
straight guy friends of like do you like it? Do
you not? And half the time they're like, oh no,
and other times they're like, oh huh, yeah. I don't
even want to ask my guy friends that I don't
even like, I'm just picturing I I can't even picture
a situation in which I would, for instance, ask dude
(39:04):
roommate about that, O, Caroline. I mean, I'm just one
of those cool girls who could like drink beer and
watch football and talk prostates with them bros. Stimulating prostates. Yeah,
just hanging out over some beers talking about talking about
sabor metrics and and prostates stimulations. Spot the whole spot
he spot. Um, and I am really curious to hear
(39:26):
from our guy listeners on this too. Obviously, I want
to hear from everybody, but UM, I was really interested
to see the relatively still few and far between pieces
and research looking at straight men's experiences with this, because really,
thanks to the tools that we now have, anal sex
(39:50):
doesn't have to be off the menu for anyone if
they don't want it off the menu. And as long
as you're safe. I mean we've mentioned we've mentioned coercion
and consent, and we've mentioned s t I S and
things like that, but we haven't explained really, uh for
for people who might not know or understand what the
deal is with the potential spread of disease. Everybody is
very familiar with the idea that you should always wear
(40:10):
a condom, and anal sex is no different. What's the
deal with anal fissures, Caroline, All right, Jerry, Well, the
thing is the skin uh around the anus and in
the rectum is a lot thinner, for instance, than the
vaginal wall. So the vaginal wall can take a little
more friction than can the anus and the rectum, so
(40:34):
hence the need for lots of lube. But what does
that fragile tissue mean for you and me and for
all of our listeners. Well, not to indicate that all
of us are having anal sex all the time, however,
those little tears and fissures in the skin can introduce
and make the spread of S t I is a
lot easier. So regardless of whether you're using an object
(40:58):
or a penis, it is best with a condom on
if you are concerned about contracting any kind of S
t I S, and even with tools as well. I mean,
it's it's good to keep in mind that bacteria can
travel on that toy if you are using it again,
it can hang out on it, So you want to
clean it. You want to make sure that it's made
of non porous material things like silicon that can also
(41:21):
be disinfected. You just gotta keep it clean. I'm not
saying that it's it's a dirty, gross area to stay
away from, but it just comes with a little bit
different instruction manual. Yeah. In other words, take your time,
go slow, have lots of prep, have some lube on hand.
You're gonna need lots of lube, and just keeping in
(41:42):
mind that you don't have to do anything you don't
want to do. If you want to give it a
try and you like it, fine, If you don't, fine,
I mean you know, and if your partner tries to
shame you for not wanting to do it, then not fine. Yeah, no,
not fine. Well, now, listeners, we want to hear from
you about your thoughts and experiences as much as you'd
(42:03):
like to share. When it comes to anal sex, do
you think that it's something that signals progression in our
culture and society, that it means that we're loosening up
and sex is becoming more fluid and open for all
of us. Or does it just feel like more pressure
and the types of sexual people that we have to
(42:26):
be in the way that we have to act in
the bedroom or you know, wherever you like to get down.
Moms Stuff at how stuff works dot Com is our
email address. You can also tweet us at Mom's Stuff
podcast or messages on Facebook, and we've got a couple
of messages to share with you right now. Well, I
(42:50):
have a letter here from Eric in response to our
Anxious Women episode. He says, I just wanted to weigh
in on your nature versus nurture debate on your Anxious
Women episode. As a gay man, I started to experience
mild anxiety around the time I came out at the
age of fifteen. Because I have a very typical gender
expression in relation to my birth gender, I was often
(43:11):
told and praised because I didn't seem that gay. At first,
it didn't seem that out of place because high school
kids were not a bastion of self awareness. But as
I got older I'm now twenty five, I noticed that
this reaction happened on an almost daily basis anywhere I
would meet new people. I find that my anger about
this subtle, internalized homophobia triggered severe social anxiety around new people.
(43:35):
I find that most of my anxiety is centered around
the way that others perceived my sexual orientation, the fact
that people frequently make passively homophobic remarks to me, because,
as it has been explained to me, I'm a passible
straight man, and I'm less impacted by my sexuality makes
me second guess every gesture, word choice, and facial expression,
the result of which is overworrying and anxiety and in
(43:57):
some cases downright panic attacks are more often is canceling plans.
I think that pervasive sexual harassment, which has been widely
documented that women experience on a daily basis, could be
one of the ways that we nurture women into having
a higher rate of diagnosed anxiety disorder. But that might
also just be a bit of projecting. Love the show
and keep up the good work. Well, thanks Eric, Well,
(44:18):
I've got a let her hear from Nicole, who writes,
I'm a thirty year old African American woman and I
got diagnosed with anxiety disordered during my freshman year of
college after having a panic attack during an exam. You're
definitely right that culture has a lot to do with
notions of anxiety. While you discussed foreign cultures during the episode,
I thought to write to tell you about my experience
with this as an African American. As I'm sure you've heard,
(44:41):
mental health issues are still stigmatized in the African American community.
When I started college. I was a pre med major,
taking twenty credits. My first semester living away from home
for the first time, two roommates in a tiny dorm,
all the class work, and being one of only three
African American girls out of about sixty can take it's
toll on an eighteen year old. Well, my friends in
(45:02):
college seemed to understand, and we're very supportive. My family
was not. Older relatives told me things like I just
needed to be tough and they raised me to be strong.
Things like this made me discuss my anxiety less with them,
but more with a therapist. I saw several therapists throughout
my time in college and later in law school, and
now as an adult, I found a therapist who has
given me some coping mechanisms. As was mentioned, I think
(45:25):
it's a very modern, middle class millennial thing to have
a therapist. However, I still get some reactions of surprise,
like there's nothing wrong with you. Everyone has issues, et cetera.
When I speak with some of my older and more
working class African American relatives. It's my hope that shows
like yours and others will help continue to remove the
stigma surrounding mental health. Especially in minority communities where the
stakes tend to be much higher because of life circumstances
(45:48):
and community conditions. Oh, she says, keep up the great work.
I'm friends with both of you in my mind. Thanks
so much, Nicole, and thanks to everybody who's written into us.
Moms Stuff at how so works dot com is our
email address and drilling to all of our social media
as well as all of our blogs, videos, and podcasts,
including this one with our sources. So you can learn
more about anal sex and consent and pleasure. Head on
(46:12):
over to stuff mom Never Told You dot com for
more on this and thousands of other topics. Is it
how stuff works dot com
Welcome to Stuff Mom Never Told You from House Top
Works Nott. Come hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Kristen and I'm Caroline. And as you might have judged
from the title of this podcast, today, on this show
we are going to be using straightforward language to describe sex,
(00:27):
and specifically anal sex. So parents, if you're listening with kids,
this is your heads up. Or people who just might
be squeamish about references to behind, or people who just
play our episodes full volume at their workplace. Yeah, this
might be a headphones necessary episode to listen to. And
(00:51):
you know, we've talked about taboo topics before on the podcast.
We've talked about sex before on the podcast our bodies,
our volva's vagiant and as clitteresses and also our butts,
so it makes sense that we can talk about well,
our butts again. You know, people have been requesting in
(01:11):
anal sex episode for as long as I have been
doing the podcast with you, Kristen, like I, I have
been familiar with these requests for quite a while, and
so here we are. Well in the years that stef
Mob Never Told You has existed, Caroline, I've witnessed anal
sex come more and more into mainstream conversations and even
arrive on primetime TV shows. Yeah, I was actually really
(01:36):
surprised to see uh, well not really surprised, but on
Girls when Marnie gets some attention from her boyfriend, uh,
not anal sex per se, but analingus. Yeah, the internet
kind of exploded when that scene happened. There were lots
of unnecessary think pieces about what does that mean? What
(01:58):
does it? What does it mean? Well, there was even
an episode of The Mindy Project. I think the episode
is titled It Slipped that was pretty much all about
anal sex, at least as the subtext. And in the
words of one of my favorite lady comedians, a lot
of Glazer a broad City. It's on the menu now. Yeah,
(02:20):
it seems to be. It seems like people are getting
used to the idea that it not only uh can
feel good, but it's okay for anybody to try. Well,
And the thing is, it's been happening, especially if we
consider women having anal sex, which is what we will
focus this episode on. It's not just about anal sex generally,
(02:41):
but more specifically women doing it because this is stuff
Mom never told you, and obviously women have been having
and enjoying and not enjoying anal sex since forever, but
it's only been in really the last decade that it's
been okay to even talk about and even experiment with
(03:02):
ye to the point where was it a salon piece
we read where the writer was discussing how it's becoming
so mainstream to the point that it might actually sap
the enjoyment out of it for some people who have
been enjoying more so than just the act, but also
the taboo factor. So so yeah, maybe maybe for those
(03:24):
of you who really like the taboo. Sorry, sorry, we're
ruining it. We're ruining we're making anal sex of vanilla
as we speak. But the thing about it is there
are issues that we do need to talk about and
we will talk about around anal sex and consent and
health issues and all these things, not to detract from
people's enjoyment of it and desire to experiment with it
(03:46):
or not experiment with it. It's up to you, um,
but to help everyone get on the same page with it,
because there there's so many how to guides now in
mainstream magazines. Dan Savage on Savage love, love him or
Loathe Him? Talks about it a lot. He gives lots
of tips for first timers. Um, but there are still
(04:08):
some nuances that are left out in a lot of
those details. Um. But first up, let's move away from
the tawdry and let's get down to some legitimate statistics,
because really, the people who got everyone talking about anal
sex more openly, it's not other than the Centers for
(04:29):
Disease Control and Prevention here in Atlanta, Georgia, represents what
up a p L. Feel free to invite us over
any time CDC were available, but not in that way. Yeah,
that's right. It's been really interesting to see the C
d C. Oh, that's so many c S statistics. Also
see and C talking about the CDC here, C and
(04:51):
C can see from the CDC statistics that more and
more people are engaging in anal intercourse and it's it's
kind of healthily jumped over the past couple of years,
over the past like two decades actually so according to
the CDC National Survey of Family Growth, and they were
looking at men and women who were engaging in heterosexual
(05:14):
anal sex. In particular, they found that just over thirty
eight percent of men between the ages of twenty and
thirty nine and about thirty two and a half percent
of women ages eighteen to forty four have heterosexual anal sex,
and those numbers came out in two thousand and six.
Is so that would be looking at reports happening in
(05:36):
the early odds um and that's a healthy jump from
the survey which found of men and twenty percent of
women were reporting having ever tried anal sex. And one
notable thing about this data is that the uptick probably
isn't a byproduct of hook up culture, because I feel
(05:59):
like there's a lot of yearmongering around the rise in
anal sex of like, oh, this is because these kids
aren't getting married. They're going out and they're drinking too
many wine coolers and then having anal sex. But that's
probably not so much the case. Thank god, they don't
make zema anymore. Also, who drinks wine coolers? Oh god?
(06:20):
The first time I ever got drunk, it was a
mix of smyrnoff, ice and rum and coke, all in wondering, No,
not all in one drink, all in one night, though
I was super ill, But it did not involve today's topic. Yeah,
it turns out that according to these statistics. It's not
part of, like christ And said, the hookup culture. It's
(06:42):
actually least common among people who have never been married
and aren't living together. It's most common among people who
are in committed relationships and are living together. And that
helps explain a lot of anecdotal reports that we ran
across in our research for this episode about how for
a lot of couples anal sex is actually a more
(07:05):
intimate form of intercourse for them, and especially in the
context of straight couples. But then the CDC got us
talking about this again a few years later when there
are two thousand eleven National Survey of Family Growth came
out and found that even more anal sex was happening,
(07:26):
at least reportedly, so not as huge of a jump,
but still compared to two thousand six whereto of women
between eighteen and forty four so they had ever had
anal sex, that number went up to six percent, whereas
for the men, forty four percent reported engaging it at
some point. Well, so clearly people are getting more comfortable
(07:48):
with it literally and figuratively, which is something that we
will talk about as we go on through this episode.
That it is that degree of comfort that is so important.
And Chris and you were mentioning that these were time
statistics that people who had ever engaged in anial sex.
But it's also worth noting that in that CDC report,
the percent of women A nine reporting having had anal
(08:10):
sex in the past year alone had doubled to twenty since.
And what I would guess has also doubled during that time, Caroline,
or tripled or quadrupled is our cultural acceptance of it,
at least among maybe the people under forty. I mean,
(08:30):
there's still a lot of uh moral panic around anal
sex in particularly straight people engaging in it. But like
we were talking about, I mean, it's it's so ubiquitous,
almost part of the zeitguys, this one might say. And
I think, piece it's so true. Our I mean, butts
in general are so zeiteguys right now. We did a
(08:53):
podcast a while back listeners in case you haven't heard it,
called Fat Bottomed Girls, and it was all about our
cultural fascinatnation right now and historically with women's behind. And
I feel like this is kind of an extension of
all that. Yeah, well, I mean, judging by you know,
we mentioned Marnie on Girls but like, judging by the
(09:15):
pop cultural response, it's totally zeitgeiste. Yeah, if it's on girls,
it is definitely zeitgeiste. But it was even in the
premier episode of How To get Away with Murder, which
I just started watching, and it was interesting. I was
just listening to an interview with Shonda Rhymes on Fresh
Air and Terry Gross was asking her about, uh, talking
(09:38):
about sex on her shows How to get Away with Murder,
Grace Anatomy and Scandal and um uh and how they
have pushed the envelope in terms of depicting sex as well,
and so so this is a clear example of that happening. Um.
And then of course there's Nicki minaj is Anaconda rap
song and video of what that includes her reference to
(10:03):
a guy um pleasuring her named Romaine. So we'll let
you fill in the blanks there dot dot dot um.
And of course you do have like I feel like
every other month, if you pick up a women's magazine
or a dudes magazine, a men's health kind of thing,
or g Q or Cosmo, there will be some feature
on how to do it back there for the first time,
(10:26):
or do it better, or how to you know, spice
up your long term relationship with it. So, I mean,
it's just something that we're all talking about. And to
the point to where a number of sex writers that
we were reading liken it to the way oral sex
was the new taboo thing that you just had to
try when you and I Caroline were in high school. Yeah. Well,
(10:49):
another thing that these writers are trying to figure out
in all of these pieces about anal sex is why
are so many more people doing it? We've seen the
CDC statistics, so why is it taking off so much?
And one big thing that a lot of people site
is the pornification of sex or relationships or that hookup
culture that you mentioned earlier. That part of the it's
(11:11):
part of that moral panic stuff that you mentioned, Kristen. Yeah,
I mean, And while anal sex is often depicted important
to the point that they're at least anecdotally, are a
number of straight guys who are like, WHOA, we don't
really even want to see it all that much. Um,
A lot of people consider that a knee jerk, short
(11:33):
sighted answer, especially when it comes to the question of well,
why would women want to do this? Because statistically guys
are the ones and especially in heteronormative context, guys are
the ones watching the porn. Women aren't watching it as much,
so why would we need to be mimicking all of that?
Um So, if we dig a little bit deeper, there
(11:55):
are some layers to it, I think, such as a
lessoning of homophobia that for so long preached the anal
sex was only something that gay men would do, and
that it was something dirty. And keep in mind people
that it was only in two thousand three that the
Supreme Court officially struck down anti sodomy laws in Lawrence Fee, Texas,
(12:16):
even though a number of states still have anti sodomy
laws on their books, and I mean just they're from
for centuries and and things. In large part to many religions,
the anus itself and anal sex has been depicted as
un natural and something that is vile and dirty, and
(12:39):
that since it's not procreative sex, that women shouldn't we
should certainly not engage in it, you know. And and
to that that topic of homophobia, though, we read a
couple of interviews and anecdotal reports from guys who either
were like, oh, well, yeah, it's just something I do
with my partner. It's totally great, we both enjoy it.
What ever, or there were also some quotes that we
(13:02):
saw from guys who were like, well, it's fine if
I'm the one doing it basically, so like I don't
want to get to you know, I don't want to
get to graphic with my language on sminty. But there
are some attitudes still out there circulating under this sort
of like homophobia. Umbrella almost were like, uh, it's not
cool for for guys to be on the receiving end.
(13:24):
That's just weird, right, because that is a more submissive position.
Submissive but also related still in a lot of people's
minds with gay sex. Yeah, and so I mean that's
why I think it is totally valid for us to
be talking about this on the podcast, not just because
you know, we do talk about sex. I think it's
(13:45):
important to talk about sex, but I I think that
the rising acceptance of straight anal sex does say more
than stay more than about just like our poor habits
and things like that, because also we have to accept
that people just have a natural desire for experimentation. Some
(14:06):
people are just doing it because they want to do it,
not because they feel some kind of pressure like oh
now this is a new third base, and I have
to do it. If I don't do it, then I'm
not an adventurous woman. So you know, there's there's that
whole thing and and just accepting that, oh well, some
people do it because they enjoy it. Yeah, yeah, it's
not all about coercion and feeling like you're less fan
(14:29):
if you don't. Although the whole coercion factors a huge
deal and it's absolutely something that we should talk about
and we should also mention too that sort of along
the same lines as the coercion that can happen, especially
if some one party is more interested in doing it
than another. There's a whole birth control at aspect of like,
oh well we need to do this because um you
(14:52):
know that way you won't get pregnant, or the whole
idea of it preserving your vaginal virginity. Yeah, this is
if there is a better argument. I mean, there are
so so many arguments for good, solid, comprehensive sexual education
in this country, but the idea, the weird ideas around
(15:13):
preserving virginity but still wanting to be sexually active. But
we're not going to call it sex because it's not
the vagina. It's not a penis and a vagina, It's
a penis and an anus. This is a huge outcry
in my mind for the need for comprehensive sex ad because,
as we will talk about, just because you have anal
(15:34):
sex does not mean that you are protected from a
pregnancy because mistakes happen and fluids can get other places,
but also from diseases and sexually transmitted infections. Yeah, I mean,
and and and that was something too that was always
concerning with the idea of oral sex being the third base.
(15:55):
That's the thing that precedes the quote unquote real sex,
which of course is incredibly head to normative and this
gendered of you know, the real sex being a penis
entering of vagina, where has like arguably these other acts
of a specifically oral an anal are far more intimate
in some ways than quote unquote real sex. Yeah, I
(16:15):
mean people, and I see people in the mist general sense,
like people tend to talk about anal sex and think
about anal sex is this thing that's like, oh, we're
just gonna do it because we're wild and maybe we're
a little tipsy and I just met this person at
a bar, when really, I mean, if you talk to
people who are in relationships, and you look at statistics,
Like we said earlier, this does tend to be an
(16:38):
activity that's more between people who are committed to each other,
whether that's opposite sex or same sex partners. But one
thing that we do have to talk about is how
the rate of anal sex becoming UM normalized has not
has written faster than the rate of comprehensive sex education,
(16:59):
and with that we do end up with a startling
pattern of young people in particular engaging in anal sex
in ways that are not pleasurable for any body. And
a lot of this is while all of this actually
is coming from study published in the British Medical Journal
(17:20):
which focused on a relatively small group of straight kids
between sixteen and eighteen years old who were having UM
who had had anal sex at some point at least
or multiple times. And it's a qualitative study rather than
a quantitative study, so it really focuses in on their
(17:40):
motivations and lots of interviews. UM. But what they found,
even though um it's more qualitative than quantitative, are some
pretty consistent patterns. Yeah. So they found that the first
time that these people were experiencing anal sex was typically
painful for the girls, and this indicates because a lot
(18:02):
of people to just assume that anal sex will always
end forever be painful when it doesn't have to be UM,
but this indicates. This finding indicates that there wasn't adequate
for play or preparation for it on either person's part,
and this also tends to indicate basically a lackluster experience
for the guys involved too. Yeah. A lot of them
(18:24):
reported like, I mean, yeah, I didn't and it was
it was okay, it wasn't as good as I thought
it was gonna be. UM And there was only one
girl that the researchers talked to who described any physical
pleasure whatsoever associated with it. And then, even more disturbingly,
or I don't know, I don't want to say that
one is worse than the other. But condoms were rarely
(18:48):
used in this case except as a fecal barrier, despite
increased risks of SCI contraction via anal sex, because a
lot of these UH teenagers did had no idea, UH
that your risks of contracting s t I S is
actually higher with anal sex. They thought that it was
kind of the safest way they could have sex in
(19:10):
regard to um health and also pregnancy. Caroline is doing
her squinty eyes. Well, yeah, I'm doing my squinty eyes
because I think this is horrifying and sad. Um. I
am a huge proponent of comprehensive and radically in depth
(19:31):
sex said because, as you and I have talked about before,
and as anyone who agrees with me on the whole
sex said thing knows, Uh, you're not going to prepare
anyone for what people are going to be doing anyway
if you don't teach them how to be safe. Yeah,
I mean, and also the need for her conversations about, yeah,
the frank conversations that people are gonna want to do
(19:53):
this and it can totally happen, um, but no no
education about the lead up to it. Well, yeah, I mean,
there needs to be education about the lead up how
to do any type of sex safely and responsibly and
in a pain free way, both emotionally pain free and
(20:13):
physically pain free. And also there needs to be the
other layer of education that anal sex isn't like a
chased substitute for vaginal sex, that it is still sex
and it can still have the same repercussions that penis
and vagina sex can have. Yeah, I mean, and reading
all of these reports from these teenagers made me think
(20:35):
so much about when I was in high school and
when oral sex was essentially the anal sex of yesteryear,
and I could find so much information even even way
back in online and the Cosmo dot com archives about
how to do it and what you should do it.
But there was and and there were expectations obviously because
(20:56):
this information existed, that this was something that as a
highly hormonal teenager, that this was something that I would
want to do and something that sexy women who were
very attractive would be doing, But there was no information
about like a, yeah, all of the trappings of it,
the lead up to it, like oh, if you don't
want to try it, you don't have to try it.
(21:17):
Um And I feel like it's just the same thing
all over again, just with anal sex this time. And
when the researchers were talking to the boys about their
motivation for wanting to try this, yes, the porn aspect
came up, but that was very much linked to status,
like they wanted to try it because it was almost
(21:38):
like a checklist that they had of all of the
various sex acts that they could do, that they could
then tell their guys about, and that they could then
be praised for, whereas, of course the opposite was true
for girls. Yeah, and I mean this actually, this idea
of using anal sex is a way to attain status
among their guy friends reminded me. Actually in the might
(22:00):
sound weird, but it reminded me of the episode we
did about Guys and Cars, about how we talked about
how men tend to define not all men hashtag A
lot of men tend to define their masculinity in relation
to other men, not define their masculinity in relation to women.
So to me, it makes sense that if you are
a teenage boy who is maybe getting his education and
(22:22):
ideas about sex from porn, and there's a lot of
anal sex in porn um and you're trying to define
and emphasize your masculinity, that anal sex would be, like
you said, part of like this conquest checklist. Yeah. Whereas
for girls, while a lot of them, I think all
(22:43):
of them, Um, in this case, we're having anal sex
within the context of dating relationships. They were still very
nervous going into it because they knew that if other
people found out that they had tried this with their
due that they would be shamed for it. Mm hmm.
I mean it's just a sexual double standard. It's just
(23:05):
you know, same old story. So there's an expectation on
boys to do it, but the expectation on girls is
to not do it or you're you're to be shamed,
and so then it's like okay, well then well it's
even more of a double bind than just an expectation
to not do it. There's still an expectation to do
it that if you don't want to do then you're
apprud But then if you do do it and you're
(23:26):
a bad girl, then you're a bad girl as long
as well. Maybe if you do it and then a
guy breaks up with you and you are single, then
you're a bad girl. I think if you do it
and you stay together with that person, then a girl friend, yes,
But as soon as that ends, because hello, sixteen, then
you are going to be the girl that all of
(23:48):
your ex boyfriends dude friends knows did that. It's so hard.
It's so hard to be a teenager. I'm glad I
studied a lot. I mean it and it also thinking
about like these guys talking to each other about it.
It reminds me of my first high school boyfriend. Okay,
(24:09):
who am I getting? Like my only high school boyfriend,
um hashtag late bloomer telling me very soon into us
dating in quotes, if you can consider like going to
the Dollar movie like four times a week, dating about
what his ex girlfriend would due to him, essentially like
laying on his expectations of like she did this from me,
(24:31):
and I just really enjoyed it. I was very inexperience
at the time, and you know, there was there was
no information or wherewithal to kind of bridge like where
I was and like what he was saying, and like no,
you know, thing in my head to be like, oh
wait this, this is odd that this conversation is happening,
But I feel like it's so common it is. Yeah,
(24:53):
it happened to me too when I was younger and
dating guys that would like do the same thing of like,
oh well I dated this girl, and so when I
really could have used this is like obviously going off
on a tangent away from anal sex. But what I
could have used when I was that age and you too,
was somebody like us being like whatever it is, whatever
it is. If somebody's doing that to you, like just
(25:15):
they're not worth your time. If somebody is like laying
out sexpectations for you, um, outside of the context of like,
you know, an understanding conversation, like a real actual conversation
about sex or sexual expectations or experience or whatever. Like,
that's one thing, But to describe what a past partner
(25:37):
did in order to put pressure on you, that is
the sign of someone who is obviously not meant to
be an immature, loving, understanding, supportive relationship yea. And someone
who just doesn't understand the basics of consent. Obviously, the
whole thing of no being a complete sentence, and that
issue of consent and coercion also came up a lot
(25:57):
in these teenagers. Narrative is about their experiences with anal
sex because it played such a major part, to the
point that the researchers wrote, quote, women being badgered for
anal sex appears to be considered normal because we've already
established that there's the sexual double double standard at work,
(26:17):
and so these girls are nervous about it, but they
feel like they should do it, but they're nervous but
they should do it, and there's a whole pain aspect,
there's the expectation that it's gonna hurt, so on so
many layers, there's resistance to it. So in a lot
of these cases, these guys were telling they're usually girlfriends
like oh, come on, come on, please, please, please, please please,
and sort of wearing them down, and then in some
(26:41):
cases using the whole reference back to the Mindy Project
episode it slipped excuse um for essentially having like non
consensual anal sex. And as upset as Kristen and I
have become during the course of this part of the conversation,
(27:02):
I don't think that we mean to say that all
anal sex is bad. Obviously, obviously this is definitely not
commentary on people's sexual relationships and preferences in general. But
this is an important part of sexual health to talk about,
and researchers definitely say that this just goes to show
(27:23):
how badly we need comprehensive sexual education, and that's exactly
what these researchers writing in the British Medical Journal. We're
stressing that this isn't the point that we lead to
the conclusion that all teenagers should be discouraged from even
trying this, but rather that it's just clear, clear evidence
(27:46):
that we need more comprehensive sex education that acknowledges that
things like anal sex and oral sex happen, and that
also discusses things like pain, coercion, and consent, rather than
it just being like, here's how to not get pregnant. Yeah,
good luck. Yeah, it would be incredible to arm young
people with information about consent. I mean, even if you're
(28:09):
not going to talk about anal sex specifically, to talk
about consent is a powerful, powerful thing. Well. And I
also have a hunch that sex education that focuses so
exclusively on not getting pregnant might end up fostering more
anal sex because hey, you can't get pregnant that way, right, Yeah,
(28:31):
but if we're talking about things slipping again, if you're
just relying on oh I'm hoping that nothing slips out
and slips in anywhere else, it's better to be smart
and armed with information about your body how sex works. Well.
And this is also another reason for us to talk
(28:52):
about this openly, because I think the more taboo things are,
the more left in the shadows that they are, the
more stigmatized they are the more room that leaves for
non consensual things to happen because you don't even want
to acknowledge that you're doing it, and there are um,
there there's more doubt about well, what is right? What
(29:14):
is wrong? As I'm going through this, I mean, I'm
already doing this thing that's taboo, so okay, let's just
do it. Um. And this was something This is not
all going to be downer au anal sex. We are
getting we're working our way toward orgasms people, aren't we all,
But we first have to lay this foundation, like, have
(29:34):
some rare talk about this, because this isn't just something
that the issues of uh coercent are just things that
happen among teenagers. Um. There was another study that we found,
a rare study on straight adult women's anal sex experiences,
published in two thousand fourteen and the journal Feminism and Psychology.
(29:56):
And I say the rare study because far and away
most most most studies on anal sex focus just on
gay guys, which also, hello, I mean it's not just
gay men and straight women who are having anal sex.
Researchers for this Feminism and Psychology study found that five
major themes emerged around the experiences of the women that
(30:18):
they interviewed. And again this is another qualitative study based
on interviews conversations about women's experiences, and so the themes
included initial resistance to the idea, followed by submission to
anal sex, um initial interest in it, followed by withdrawal
from subsequent anal sex experiences. So basically, they tried it,
(30:41):
didn't really like it, it wasn't their thing, so okay,
now we know. Um. Third, the third theme was violence
and coercion surrounding anal sex. So again this echoes. This
is basically like almost an adult version of the British
Medical Journal study that we were talking about earlier, and
then we have similarly echoing it as well. The social
(31:03):
norming aspect of dudes, guy friends normalizing straight anal sex
and seeing anal sex is something normative largely based they
think on like watching porn. This is something that like, oh,
you should do we should be doing this. Don't you
want to do this? Um? And then five, yeah, here
(31:23):
we go. This is this is a great part pleasurable
experiences with anal of roticism. And yes, that is a
direct quote from a study abstract anal eroticism. Don't I
love academia. I love academia. So one of the most
important things to remember about anal sex as it becomes
more and more normalized, as it becomes more and more zeitgeist,
(31:47):
is that everybody is different. Some people are gonna want it,
some people aren't, some people are going to try it
and hate it. Some people are gonna try it and
they're gonna love it. Everyone's different, and that's just good
to keep in mind. And that's pretty much the takeaway
of any Like women's magazine roundup of like real women
describe their experiences with anal sex, because yes, every glamor magazine, Clear, Reclear, etcetera.
(32:12):
Has one of those listical types of stories, and always
they run the gamut from a woman being like, it
was the worst, most painful experience of my life, I
will never ever try it again, to the woman who's like,
I can't get enough of it. It saved my marriage, etcetera. Yeah,
but here's the thing. Anal sex actually correlated with more orgasm. Wait,
(32:34):
what how is that possible? Who said that? Caroline? Academics again,
lots of that sex studies. Uh so, there was a
twenty study in the Journal of Sexual Medicine that found
ninety four per cent of women that they surveyed who
received anal sex in their last sexual encounter reported reaching orgasm.
(32:57):
And this is a higher rate of orgasm we should
know then was reported by women who had had vaginal
intercourse or received oral sex. And that study finding launched
a zillion Internet headlines because of the assumption that it's
something that has to be very painful and uncomfortable, especially
for women, even though I don't know that there are
that many biological sex differences between male and female anuses,
(33:21):
but there's just the assumption that lady is gonna hate it. Oh,
but it turns out they love it. Well, some context
to this um people think that the reason why there
is that relationship between women having anal sex and orgasms
is that if you do in it correct, actually doing
it in the way that will allow it to happen,
(33:43):
it requires time, patients for play, a lot of the
ingredients for female orgasms. Yeah. Well, and then a lot
of things we read two recommended, like having an orgasm
before a approaching anal sex. Yeah. So there's even like
the chicken egg question with that of like, are these
(34:06):
of women having orgasms, having orgasms before they have anal
sex or after, or on both sides. Well, you know,
and everything we've read anal sex or vaginal sex or
any type of sex is that the more comfortable you
are with yourself and with your partner and with your
sexual activity, uh, and the more confidence you have in
one another, and the comfort level all of this stuff
(34:28):
is a very positive factor for potentially than having an orgasm.
In other words, if you're happy with each other, if
you're feeling good about each other and yourselves, you're more
likely to have an orgasm. Because so much of sex
is not just physical but also psychological, and so that
obviously applies to anal sex too. We talked earlier, we
hinted at the whole comfort factor for anal sex, and
(34:49):
this is no different. And one thing that gets talked
about a lot is the assumption that anal sex will
be or has to be, or is always painful is
not only inaccurate, but it's also doing a lot of
harm because if you automatically assume that any sexual act
is going to be painful or harm you in some way,
(35:10):
you're automatically not going to be as relaxed as you
could or should be. And there was a column we
were reading about this in Vogue, yes that Vogue magazine,
about one woman's experiences with anal sex, and she made
the very good point that just basic mechanics wise, anal
(35:30):
sex facilitates more clitteral access, and as we have underscored
on the podcast before, women are likelier to reach orgasm
via clitteral stimulation than vaginal stimulation, so that could be
another factor in this whole orgasm correlation as well. Yeah,
(35:50):
and I mean we've cited on the podcast before the
fact that women in same sex relationships report more orgasms
than do women in opposite sex relations ships, and so yeah,
I mean we can't ignore the fact that it's not
just the concern of a straight woman or a gay
man or a bisexual man or woman, that there are
(36:11):
plenty of same sex couples out there doing this too. Absolutely.
And um, speaking of which, one piece we're reading about
this over at auto straddle dot com was talking about how,
of course anal sex can be very pleasurable because of
all of the myriad nerve endings back there as well.
So I mean, it makes a lot of sense that
(36:33):
women would enjoy it. What doesn't make sense, is that
it's so hard for us to collectively wrap our minds
around this being something enjoyable for women, regardless of who
they might be partnered with at the time. Well, I
mean I think that straight men get put in that
category a lot too of Like, well, whether it's by
(36:55):
themselves or by society, capitalist society that like, straight men
can't or shouldn't or won't enjoy it. Oh, yeah, I
mean that is also something that there's still not a
ton of data on it. But um, there is evidence
that straight men are engaging in anal activities more than
(37:18):
ever before. Um. Tracy Clark, Floury advocative now previously at Salon,
talked to Debbie Herbenick over at the Kinsey Institute, and
she referred her to a study which found eleven percent
of guys in their early twenties reported having received anal
sex at some point. But her Bennick said, well, we
don't know exactly what that means because there were no
(37:41):
detailed reports on what kind of anal sex that was,
whether that was manual, or whether that was solo partnered,
all the different ways that you can have anal penetration. Yeah, well,
I mean I feel like just as anal sex itself
is pop culturally. I don't want to say really, I
(38:03):
mean that makes it sound like a trend, but it's
so like within pop culture now, and it's so talked about.
And similarly, you know, more and more attentions being paid
to like women's clteral stimulation and pleasing women in that regard,
the same attention now is starting to be paid to
male prostate stimulus that people are like, hello, men like
(38:23):
different things too. Oh yeah. I mean I feel like
that that's been around for a while, the whole like
kind of joking thing of the old school Cosmo tip
that a guy enjoys manual stimulation back there. I mean,
I feel like that's almost like a go to question
at this point. Among Like, I don't know, I like,
(38:43):
it's come up in lots of conversations I've had with
straight guy friends of like do you like it? Do
you not? And half the time they're like, oh no,
and other times they're like, oh huh, yeah. I don't
even want to ask my guy friends that I don't
even like, I'm just picturing I I can't even picture
a situation in which I would, for instance, ask dude
(39:04):
roommate about that, O, Caroline. I mean, I'm just one
of those cool girls who could like drink beer and
watch football and talk prostates with them bros. Stimulating prostates. Yeah,
just hanging out over some beers talking about talking about
sabor metrics and and prostates stimulations. Spot the whole spot
he spot. Um, and I am really curious to hear
(39:26):
from our guy listeners on this too. Obviously, I want
to hear from everybody, but UM, I was really interested
to see the relatively still few and far between pieces
and research looking at straight men's experiences with this, because really,
thanks to the tools that we now have, anal sex
(39:50):
doesn't have to be off the menu for anyone if
they don't want it off the menu. And as long
as you're safe. I mean we've mentioned we've mentioned coercion
and consent, and we've mentioned s t I S and
things like that, but we haven't explained really, uh for
for people who might not know or understand what the
deal is with the potential spread of disease. Everybody is
very familiar with the idea that you should always wear
(40:10):
a condom, and anal sex is no different. What's the
deal with anal fissures, Caroline, All right, Jerry, Well, the
thing is the skin uh around the anus and in
the rectum is a lot thinner, for instance, than the
vaginal wall. So the vaginal wall can take a little
more friction than can the anus and the rectum, so
(40:34):
hence the need for lots of lube. But what does
that fragile tissue mean for you and me and for
all of our listeners. Well, not to indicate that all
of us are having anal sex all the time, however,
those little tears and fissures in the skin can introduce
and make the spread of S t I is a
lot easier. So regardless of whether you're using an object
(40:58):
or a penis, it is best with a condom on
if you are concerned about contracting any kind of S
t I S, and even with tools as well. I mean,
it's it's good to keep in mind that bacteria can
travel on that toy if you are using it again,
it can hang out on it, So you want to
clean it. You want to make sure that it's made
of non porous material things like silicon that can also
(41:21):
be disinfected. You just gotta keep it clean. I'm not
saying that it's it's a dirty, gross area to stay
away from, but it just comes with a little bit
different instruction manual. Yeah. In other words, take your time,
go slow, have lots of prep, have some lube on hand.
You're gonna need lots of lube, and just keeping in
(41:42):
mind that you don't have to do anything you don't
want to do. If you want to give it a
try and you like it, fine, If you don't, fine,
I mean you know, and if your partner tries to
shame you for not wanting to do it, then not fine. Yeah, no,
not fine. Well, now, listeners, we want to hear from
you about your thoughts and experiences as much as you'd
(42:03):
like to share. When it comes to anal sex, do
you think that it's something that signals progression in our
culture and society, that it means that we're loosening up
and sex is becoming more fluid and open for all
of us. Or does it just feel like more pressure
and the types of sexual people that we have to
(42:26):
be in the way that we have to act in
the bedroom or you know, wherever you like to get down.
Moms Stuff at how stuff works dot Com is our
email address. You can also tweet us at Mom's Stuff
podcast or messages on Facebook, and we've got a couple
of messages to share with you right now. Well, I
(42:50):
have a letter here from Eric in response to our
Anxious Women episode. He says, I just wanted to weigh
in on your nature versus nurture debate on your Anxious
Women episode. As a gay man, I started to experience
mild anxiety around the time I came out at the
age of fifteen. Because I have a very typical gender
expression in relation to my birth gender, I was often
(43:11):
told and praised because I didn't seem that gay. At first,
it didn't seem that out of place because high school
kids were not a bastion of self awareness. But as
I got older I'm now twenty five, I noticed that
this reaction happened on an almost daily basis anywhere I
would meet new people. I find that my anger about
this subtle, internalized homophobia triggered severe social anxiety around new people.
(43:35):
I find that most of my anxiety is centered around
the way that others perceived my sexual orientation, the fact
that people frequently make passively homophobic remarks to me, because,
as it has been explained to me, I'm a passible
straight man, and I'm less impacted by my sexuality makes
me second guess every gesture, word choice, and facial expression,
the result of which is overworrying and anxiety and in
(43:57):
some cases downright panic attacks are more often is canceling plans.
I think that pervasive sexual harassment, which has been widely
documented that women experience on a daily basis, could be
one of the ways that we nurture women into having
a higher rate of diagnosed anxiety disorder. But that might
also just be a bit of projecting. Love the show
and keep up the good work. Well, thanks Eric, Well,
(44:18):
I've got a let her hear from Nicole, who writes,
I'm a thirty year old African American woman and I
got diagnosed with anxiety disordered during my freshman year of
college after having a panic attack during an exam. You're
definitely right that culture has a lot to do with
notions of anxiety. While you discussed foreign cultures during the episode,
I thought to write to tell you about my experience
with this as an African American. As I'm sure you've heard,
(44:41):
mental health issues are still stigmatized in the African American community.
When I started college. I was a pre med major,
taking twenty credits. My first semester living away from home
for the first time, two roommates in a tiny dorm,
all the class work, and being one of only three
African American girls out of about sixty can take it's
toll on an eighteen year old. Well, my friends in
(45:02):
college seemed to understand, and we're very supportive. My family
was not. Older relatives told me things like I just
needed to be tough and they raised me to be strong.
Things like this made me discuss my anxiety less with them,
but more with a therapist. I saw several therapists throughout
my time in college and later in law school, and
now as an adult, I found a therapist who has
given me some coping mechanisms. As was mentioned, I think
(45:25):
it's a very modern, middle class millennial thing to have
a therapist. However, I still get some reactions of surprise,
like there's nothing wrong with you. Everyone has issues, et cetera.
When I speak with some of my older and more
working class African American relatives. It's my hope that shows
like yours and others will help continue to remove the
stigma surrounding mental health. Especially in minority communities where the
stakes tend to be much higher because of life circumstances
(45:48):
and community conditions. Oh, she says, keep up the great work.
I'm friends with both of you in my mind. Thanks
so much, Nicole, and thanks to everybody who's written into us.
Moms Stuff at how so works dot com is our
email address and drilling to all of our social media
as well as all of our blogs, videos, and podcasts,
including this one with our sources. So you can learn
more about anal sex and consent and pleasure. Head on
(46:12):
over to stuff mom Never Told You dot com for
more on this and thousands of other topics. Is it
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