Article: Why Men Are Obsessed With Anal

Some guys are boobs men. Others are legs men. But in the bedroom, all are bum men. I do not know a heterosexual woman alive who has not, at some point, experienced a partner trying to use her backdoor instead of the front. There are the curious gents, gently investigating if the key fits. Others are as unsubtle as the pile of junk mail flyers that stumbles through your letterbox every week. But the male goal is the same: they want in.

This isn’t universally true. Not all men are remotely interested in anal, as discovered by some of the female members of the anal only community as they meet resistance from potential new partners. As with all things, some men and some women love it, some like it, and some want nothing to do with it. Most of those who want nothing to do with it have either only had one or two bad experiences, or haven’t tried it at all.

Interest in anal certainly is on the rise, however, for men and women both.

Only, why do they? And why don’t we? I know plenty of women who’ve tried anal play, but I don’t know a single one who initiated it – or who’d admit to it without that other essential lubricant, wine.

Plenty of women do want anal, and do initiate it. Many don’t admit to it because of continuing stigmas and attitudes surrounding it and fear of being judged negatively by their peers for making that admission, because sex negativity and slut shaming remain big factors that keep people from being open and positive about sex and their enjoyment of it. But even this is slowly changing for the better, and people are becoming more open about sexual topics and sex positivity. The more people talk with their friends about enjoying anal or being anal only, the more some of that stigma can be combated and others can feel safe opening up as well, and trying anal for themselves if they haven’t already.

“It’s all that internet porn men are watching,” I hear you cry – and, yes, true. Over the last six years, PornHub has reported a 78% increase in the number of searches for anal clips.

Porn can have some influence by exposing people to a wider range of sex acts and making them curious about trying it for themselves, but it doesn’t determine your preferences. A lot of people—again, men and women both, because women love porn just as much as men do, they just don’t admit to it as openly for the same reasons as above—are watching more anal porn because anal is what they enjoy, what gets them off, and what they prefer watching.

From here, the article really goes off the rails.

At its most basic, men crave novelty more than women

“If a woman finds something that she likes sexually, she usually wants that repeated again and again. Whereas men seem to need different stimuli to stay engaged. The anus and anal sex is more taboo than vaginal sex; it’s perceived as ‘dirty’. If a woman is open to it, it implies that your sex life is ‘dirtier’, too.” And ‘dirty’ is a label that novelty-addicted guys crave – not fear.

Novelty and taboo might make people curious about trying it in the first place, but that’s not what a long-lasting interest in or preference for anal will be based on. One might come for the novelty, but stay for all the other benefits of anal.

Anal sex avoids intimacy – cue the commitment-phobes

“The most common position in anal sex is for the woman to be bent over, with the man on top or over her, looking at her back. For men, a sense of power and domination comes with that. There’s also no real connection: there’s no face-to-face interaction, no eye contact, it avoids intimacy and is not seen as a ‘relationship experience’. In our culture, men’s emotions are more supressed than women’s. So men might find anal sex more comfortable because of the lack of intimacy, while women might find it less satisfying because of the same thing.”

I don’t even know where to begin with this absurdity.

First of all, this sounds more like a critique of the doggy style position, which is commonly used for both vaginal and anal sex, and has no specific connection to anal. Anal can be, and is, done in a wide variety of positions.

Secondly, anal sex can be one of the most intimate forms of sex possible. It all depends on context, as with anything else. If you’re in a close relationship with someone, anal sex is the using and sharing of one partner’s most private and intimate part of their body for sex, and the trust and care involved, combined with the increased shared pleasure, makes it incredibly intimate. In fact, talking to women who regularly engage in anal sex with their partner, or who are anal only, the intimacy of it is one of the things most commonly cited as a reason they love it so much.

Men are secretly fascinated by their own bums

“There’s a deep psychological thing for guys because their anus is the source of enormous pleasure for them, with the prostate located there (in the rectum). Men may not have experimented with that, but in their psyche they’ll know that part of the body is capable of giving great pleasure. Because of lingering homophobia in our culture – even though homosexuality is normalised, good and healthy – there’s still this internalised idea, “If I enjoy having something up my arse that means I’m gay, and I am not gay.” So men displace their own desires to experience pleasure in that part of the body, and put them onto women.” So there’s an ulterior – well, posterior – motive, after all.

This one does at least touch on some legitimate issues with myths surrounding anal pleasure and the association of anal with homosexuality in combination with homophobia, but it draws an absurd conclusion from it by claiming that men who secretly want to play with their own asses are suppressing that desire and expressing it through anal sex with women instead, which is just so utterly stupid I can’t believe I just read it.

Guess what: men want to have anal sex with women because they enjoy anal sex with women. It feels great for men, and done right can feel better than any other form of sex for women as well. It can give some of the most intense and explosive orgasms for a woman, and men like their partners to enjoy sex as much as they do. It’s intimate, it’s passionate, it’s sexy, and it’s just an all around good time. Some men also like receiving anal pleasure, and there’s nothing wrong with that either. Anal pleasure can and should be enjoyed by anyone who wants it, without any judgement.

The above is more or less the entire article, since there was so much to respond to, but you can, as always, continue reading at Glamour.

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