Normalization around butt fuck is shifting modern conversation around consent but what does evolution and science have to say about anal sex

Kathy Kimberley | Cosmopolitan

What a journey our attitudes towards anal sex have taken over the last few years. From Drake and the butt-loving conundrum spawned by Hollywood biggies, to scientific celebrations of anal penetration, to pegging on Broad City, to twerking, to Kim Kardashian’s epic shiny rump on the cover of Time Magazine in September 2018, it’s no question that all things ass-related have taken on a mainstream edge.

Pop-culture acolytes proclaimed 2018 the “Year of the Booty,” which heralded a deluge of think pieces in important publications about the portrayal of butt sex in popular imagination. Primetime hit shows like The Mindy Project and This Bold America have further explored the erotic potential of the anus. It’s now ascended to a cushy place in pop culture where it’s become normal in the US and much of Western Europe to talk about and engage in the act of anal sex. And it goes with both sexes: males as well as females.

Latest data from nationally representative survey carried out by Prof Christina Hulbe, Dean and Head of School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, indicates that just over one-third of adult women aged 25-44 report having anal sex with a man at least once before, and about one-fifth of women in this age group report having done so during the past year. As for young men aged 25-44, almost one in every five indulged in anal sex with either a female or a male. These numbers have increased significantly over the past few decades.

If you look at national survey data from the 1980s, you will notice that about one-fifth of women reported never having anal sex, and fewer than one-tenth of men reported it. But for the generation born after 1980, morality started undergoing a huge metamorphosis. While rural and those from less educated and more conservative households reported fewer numbers opting for anal sex, those exposed to wider cultural trends, urban and from educated families observed such sexual behavior more often, the study found.

There seems to be a common perception that previously young women and men didn’t receive anal sex. For example, consider this conclusion from a 1979 study of women’s sexual attitudes: “anal sex is a sexual activity that women and men may engage sometime in but seldom enjoy”. There are a lot of things wrong with that sentence! For one thing, generalizing consensual love-making, regardless of gender, is highly problematic because it’s both voluntary and evolutionary, scientists now believe. The typical conservative view of receptive anal sex: That ‘nature’ dictates you must not do so, has since been rubbished by a plethora of scientific and philosophical study over the issue.

Evolutionary tale

Flicking through anthropological texts yields a pathetic number of references to heterosexual anal sex. The Ancient Greeks weren’t the only peoples to have had a mania for portraying sex acts in clay – mankind’s oldest historical document. Between 100AD and 800AD in Northern Peru, the Moche culture production of pottery exploded. Archaeologists have unearthed 10,000 pots. The vessels baffled scholars who tried to tackle their subject matter. Here’s why: there’s plenty of anal sex between men and women, and men and men. Explanations range from showing a form of birth control to the pots making sense of new political power structures. In this instance, contraception isn’t necessarily the driving factor behind entering through the rear. As we’ve seen before, a correlation between vaginal sex and pregnancy isn’t always made by participants.

A pot (circa 2000 BC) depicting a male couple engaged in anal sex has been the focus of particular archeological study. A younger male (his genitlia inside his partner’s bum) is shown atop a slightly older male in this particular artifact, now at Louvre, Paris. Archeologists from Sorbonne, the largest institution in France dedicated to the study of civilizations, arts, humanities and social sciences, found it in 2010 in modern day Sambia, Eastern Highlands Province of Papua New Guinea, in the southwestern Pacific.

Explains Prof Eric Fouache, Research Faculty at Department of Archelogy at Sorbonne, “Semen was viewed as an important life force and this pot might suggest that early humans believed that receiving spunk via the anal route meant power. The sperm would be channeled through the woman’s or man’s butt to her or his gut. The second reason – that occasional anal sex by straight men (with other men or women) might be an internalized mechanism to show their status in political power structures – is also plausible”. Prof Yuval Noah Harari, a historian, philosopher and best-selling author of ‘Sapiens’ and ‘Homo Deus’, explains that the ancient human society was to some degree much more equal. This may have led to the evaluation that the anal sex pots are trying to communicate the notion that “relationship have an evolutionary basis in agreements and pacts. Often those pacts meant love but also power. What the pots explain is one partner tunneling this power to the other.”

Science of the rear

The entire anal region is interconnected by genito-spinal nerves which can trigger a quick orgasm. One of them, the pelvic nerve, transmits signals from the rectum in both sexes. Anecdotal evidence shows that both men and women have reported orgasms from anal sex. Presumably the best orgasms would come from when all the nerves can be simultaneously excited – which would explain why the entire length of a boy’s penis inside the anal tunnel has its virtues. Anuses, by their very built, are delicate. The skin is very thin and unlike vaginas, buttholes are not capable of producing their own lubrication. Butt hair, often in case of boys, may act as a source of friction (easily overcome by lube, lotion or spit as the case may be) but helps in loosening up the prostate, the bean like structure attached to the penis.

Anal sex requires a bit of extra preparation, but other than that, it could just be another sex act. Getting the tip in hurts. This is because the head of the penis is the widest part. Once you’re past that and up to the shaft, it’ll feel a little better. Sex specialists note that since the opening of the anus contains tons of nerve endings in both genders, it allows stimulation of the prostate. Prof Dr. Stefan Schumacher, Consultant Urologist, Head of the Department of Urology & Endo-urology, Charité Universitätsmedizin Hospital Berlin, who lead a team of specialists to study the incidence of anal sex in Berlin (2017) concludes in the Nature magazine, “Regular penetration of butt is likely to result in strong prostate stimulation, leading to less instances of erectile dysfunction, better urine flow, fewer cases of disorders like prostatitis or prostate cancer.”

The prostate surrounds your urethra. It is a bean-shaped, walnut-sized gland located between your urinary bladder and the penis. The urethra runs through the center of the prostate, from the bladder to the penis. Swelling and inflammation in the prostate increases, typically after 50. In some cases prostate may begin to interfere with or even cut off your flow of urine even by 40. Someone with an active sex life, who rims both vagina and anus regularly, may stand to benefit. A penis tip penetrating an anal tunnel is akin to a prostate massage. It automatically eliminates some of that swelling that may take place in future as you cross 30 and hit the median age. “I won’t call it a guarantee for boys who enter both from the front and rear but there are definitive benefits of anal sex. Regular anal sex with one or both genders reduces chances of prostate inflammation and cancer besides improved urine flow”, says Sarah Tomchesson, a sex educator and head of business relations at Pleasure Chest in Los Angeles.

However not all agree on going anal. Cautions Rita Cannis, senior psychologist of Ontario school board, with an extensive training and experience in assessment of sexual mores in high school and college students. “You must be careful in terms of limiting your anal sex partners. Anal can be done well spontaneously, in the heat of the sexual moment but care must be taken to ensure that you are well greased.” There is a reason the term ‘anus is the new pussy’ trended a few years ago on social media. We know the reason why!