On Anal Positivity
For the longest time, the representation of anal in porn was centered around the idea of it being something that guys wanted, girls rarely did, and when they did it, they would suffer through it and dislike it but do it for their guys. This gave many people the impression that that’s what anal was like in the real world, despite the fact that most of the porn actors in such scenes actually enjoyed anal and were pretending that it hurt or they disliked it. The result was a lot of women with no interest in even trying it, based on that false perception, combined with other myths and persistent ideas based on bad experiences of friends.
In the past decade, porn has generally shifted to a much more positive portrayal of anal sex and pleasure, focusing on the fact that women can and do in fact very much enjoy it, and can get a lot of pleasure from it. This is a good change, for sure, and has turned on a lot more people to the idea, encouraging them to try it for themselves to see if the same is true for them, resulting in a rapidly growing interest in and practice of anal sex by people in their regular sex lives.
More recently, however, a new trend has formed on Tumblr and Bdsmlr and other similar platforms, where a large quantity of the content and captions relating to anal sex and the anal only lifestyle are from a one-sided, misogynistic, “male pleasure is all that matters” perspective, and often focus on the idea that it’s not enjoyable or is even actively painful or harmful to women, and pushes that idea hard as a positive thing. Now, there certainly is a place for that as a kink, but it’s been unfortunate to see it become the predominant focus of porn focusing on anal only, and shift the general tone of AO in porn away from mutual enjoyment and positivity to this.
It’s a trend I’d like to see change, and I hope to see more blogs show up that focus on pleasure and enjoyment by women instead.
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