Anal Sex From the Bottom Up: Part I
A practical beginner’s guide to anal sex and consent for women
You wake up with your man nuzzling your neck, his cock pressed urgently against you, but you are so sleepy that you roll onto your side, and give your body to him. But this time, there is something different — he isn’t in the right place. As you reach down to correct him, your fingers meet his, and with a start, you realize that it isn’t an accident after all and his erection is pressing on your anus because he is intending it to.
If life had a pause button, you would punch it, go back to sleep, and deal with the problem tomorrow, but life doesn’t. Maybe you have been living together for years, maybe you have three grown-up kids, maybe you are nineteen and you only just met, but the issue remains the same — consent.
Unlike life, Sexography does have a pause button, so let’s use it.
Just because you have agreed to have sex with someone doesn’t mean that you have agreed to have every kind of sex with them. Equally, just because you are known to have had a certain type of sex with someone else doesn’t mean you consent to have that type of sex with your current lover. Finally, just because you have had a certain type of sex in the past with your present lover doesn’t mean to say that you are good to have it with him right now.
With the ground rules in mind, let’s talk to some of my friends. One, who we will call Jenny, found herself in exactly the situation described, but decided not to make any waves because she was with a new man, and endured a failed attempt at anal sex that put her off for life. It cast such a shadow over what had been a promising relationship that it broke up and she was wary of committing again for several years. All for want of asking.
Another girlfriend ended up having a stand-up fight that led her and her partner to the brink of divorce before they saw the light and started talking about sex seriously. A third expressed such disgust at the way the question was put that the idea was never discussed again. People, this is 2020, not 1820. You would be staggered at how many couples of all ages, Generation Z included, have no idea about how to set out on this voyage of discovery — they just start having sex and never speak about it. If you don’t mind me saying so, this is the approach that our great-grandparents took, and look how well it worked for them.
Questions and answers
So what should Jenny have done? The best solution is to wake up, sit up (believe me, this simple maneuver that the doctors won’t tell you about baffles 99% of guys with a hard-on), look your lover in the eye, put a hand on his cheek and start talking.
But what if I am wrong?
Trust me, you know that you are right. If you pull your guy towards your kitty and he pulls himself back towards your anus, then, short of putting up road signs, his intentions can’t be clearer. And if he mumbles that he has made a mistake — not unlikely in a stealth bid like the one Jenny experienced — then you have the upper hand. All you have to do is to call him out on consent and now it is negotiation time.
But what if you would like to try anal sex? Common sense says that you still sit up, because the consent thing is there to be dealt with, the point being that this isn’t just a position you haven’t tried before, it is a completely different type of sex.
If your guy doesn’t understand that he needs your consent, then a period of re-education is going to be necessary, if not actual time on the naughty step. I had a boyfriend who repeatedly challenged the boundaries of my consent and in the end I dealt with it by insisting he came a second time within fifteen minutes of his orgasm. When he complained that I had no right to make him do that, I replied, fine, now can you see my point?
Guys are inclined to take the line, ‘Well then, how can I have sex with you at all if I have to keep asking if it is OK?’, to which the reply is, ‘Don’t be tricksy. You can tell from the way I am responding if it is OK, and if you are in doubt, ask, because if you don’t I will tell you.’ It is nowhere near as difficult to talk as some find it convenient to make out, and the advantage of consent is that it gets guys discussing sex so that you can take advantage of it to tell them what you want. Most men will discuss sex, but a significant proportion lack the vocabulary to do so.
Let’s assume you are Jenny, and that you woke up, and sat up. You asked, ‘Would you like to have anal sex with me?’, and he replied, ‘Yes, I really, really would — would you please consider trying it?’ Ideally, you wouldn’t have got to sitting up in the first place, because he would have asked you first. Perhaps, even, you would have asked him because you were the one who wanted to experiment, but whatever the case, we’ll assume that communication between the pair of you has fallen a way short.
At this point, much depends on how long you have known him, how practiced he is at anal sex, whether you have ever had anal sex with anyone before, and on how gentle a lover he can be. The one thing I absolutely would not advise any woman to do is to go ahead with someone she doesn’t know that well, especially if she is an anal virgin — because that is asking for trouble.
Anal sex can be extremely fulfilling, it can make a close relationship even closer, but it can also trigger all kinds of problems, because although you can have sex that way, we weren’t designed for it. This is not an article about STDs and I am assuming that there is no way that you are going to have sex with someone without knowing their status. One risk I would highlight is that if you have anal sex with someone who is carrying HPV and doesn’t know, or who doesn’t tell you, then you can end up with anal warts. Warts are treatable, once you get over the hurdle of the embarrassment, but they not nice, the treatment is tedious, and there are long term health risks. The worst of these is the possibility of developing cancer as a consequence of being infected with HPV. Plus, even after having warts treated, you will have to warn every single partner you have that you are a carrier — the virus is with you for life, not just for Christmas.
On a more practical level, anal sex can be painful with a lover who doesn’t understand what he is doing and you can end up bleeding and in all kinds of other discomforts if you aren’t careful. Without a good quality channel of communication that is kept open all of the time, the chances of first-time success are remote without a good deal of knowledge and a lot of cooperation. But if the pair of you can get it right it can be a dream. In the next article, we will take a look at how to get ready.
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