A young woman, who had prom­ised her father that she would remain a virgin until a certain age, complied with his request by having anal sex with her part­ners (Note: STD protec­tion and contra­cept­ives still required).

Unsur­pris­ingly, she was very popular with men who tend not to be so hung-up about breaking sexual taboos. To be fair though — we expect more of women.

There is no such thing as a male slut, no matter how ‘wantonly’ a man behaves. Some women do explore sexual pleasure but there are many unflat­tering terms for women who are sexu­ally adventurous.

A strong argu­ment against anal sex is that it is not ‘natural’. Unfor­tu­nately ‘natural sex’ is usually defined in terms of repro­duc­tion rather than sexual pleasure. Looked at another way, the very fact that the anal area is an erogenous zone means that Nature designed it that way.

It is society that tells us to place moral restric­tions on how we enjoy sexual pleasure even with a consenting partner. Seri­ously though, can you imagine a sex life based on vaginal inter­course alone over a life-time? No wonder couples stop having sex — boredom alone would kill anyone’s sexual desire.

“Since inter­course has been defined as the basic form of sexu­ality, and the only natural, healthy and moral form of phys­ical contact, it has auto­mat­ic­ally been assumed that this is when women should orgasm.” (p42 The Hite Reports 1993)

Many women exper­i­ence a lack of arousal during sex because sex is not designed to facil­itate female orgasm, either phys­ic­ally or psychologically.

Sexual pleasure at any price

Men’s drive to enjoy their sexu­ality is stronger than women’s and so they are able to push aside any qualms about what is ‘proper’ more easily than we can. Men might have diffi­culty under­standing this limit­a­tion but then they are not usually the ones comprom­ised by sex. They are also more prone to opt for sexual pleasure at any price. A woman told me that a gay friend had to wear a tampon in his rectum because the sphincter muscle around his anus had become loose from over indulgence.

As with all good things, moder­a­tion is key! Em & Lo suggest in ‘The Big Bang’ (2004) that anal sex can even lead to a healthier aware­ness of the anal area. Nina Hartley, who runs sex clinics in the US, also deals sens­it­ively with this topic in erotic movies.

“… with enough relax­a­tion, commu­nic­a­tion, lubric­a­tion and TLC, anal sex can actu­ally strengthen your sphincter muscles.” (p80 The Big Bang 2004)

Our enjoy­ment of sexual pleasure will always depend to some degree on our will­ing­ness to indulge our sexual fantasies as well as to explore our own sexu­ality and our sexual rela­tion­ship with a lover. Ulti­mately we each need to find our own personal balance between recon­ciling our moral beliefs and enjoying our sexual experiences.

Hetero­sexual women need to come out of the closet over sex. Sex by its very nature cannot be pure. The most taboo concepts are likely to be the most arousing. Sexual fantasies are all very well but liber­ated women (if they are also sexu­ally motiv­ated) need to start admit­ting which sexual activ­ities they find most effective for enjoying sexual arousal with a partner.