December 23, 2004

( % 22 . 

The Thinking Woman’s Guide to Anal Sex

I remember the first time I ever got fucked in the ass. Vividly, even more clearly
than losing my virginity. I was scared to death, I was sure it would hurt like hell
and probably maim me for life. As a concept, it was buried in the “things you like
to fantasize about but wouldn’t really want to do” box. (That box has since been
renamed “things you like to fantasize about and really want to do but for some
reason are reluctant about trying.”) Actually, being scared to death about it was
probably the best way for me to be. Since I was so nervous, I insisted that we
take plenty of time, take the whole afternoon if we needed it, and build up very,
very gradually. One finger, very gently, lots of lube; then two fingers, very slowly,
very gently, lots and lots of lube; then three fingers, very slowly, very gently, lots
and lots and lots of lube; and then, oh my God, that’s it, it’s going in; no, wait, it’s
too soon, it’s going to hurt, I know it’s going to . . . oh, my GOD, does that feel
good. Revelation.
I also remember the first time I told a gay male friend that I liked to take it up the
ass. You know who gets really wigged out when they find out that some women
like to get buttfucked? Gay men, that’s who. The conversation went something
like this:
“But why do you like it?”
“Well, it feels good. Doesn’t it? You like it.”
“Yes, but you don’t have a prostate gland.”
“So? Is that the only thing you like about it? Getting your prostate gland
stimulated?”
“Well, no, but . . . but . . .” he gibbered incoherently.
You’d think they’d invented it. It’s almost as if being a queer guy was like joining
a secret society, and buttfucking was the secret club handshake. God forbid
women should like it too; it’d be like finding out the whole world belonged to your
Elks’ lodge.
In the interest of fairness, I’d like to stop for a moment and say two things. One is
that not all gay men think that way. I know several who are absolutely delighted
to have women in the Buttfuckers Guild. The other is this: the idea that women
don’t like anal sex is really pretty common. The prevailing attitude for lots of
straight men seems to be that women would never let you fuck them in the ass of
their own free will; you have to seduce, guilt-trip, sweet-talk, manipulate, or
otherwise pressure them into it. Men aren’t the only ones who perpetuate this
dreck, either. I’ve heard several otherwise intelligent and sexually aware women
(both queer and het) talk about buttfucking as something that gullible straight
women put up with to please their men. And they say this with utter certainty, as
if it were an obvious and inevitable fact of life and human nature. Yet another
chapter in the interminable tale of What Nice Girls Don’t Like To Do.
Of course all women aren’t going to enjoy it; I wouldn’t try to claim that they do.
Just like some women have super-sensitive nipples that don’t like being played
with, some assholes may simply be too tight or too sensitive to enjoy being
penetrated. (It doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy anal pleasure, by the way; try
tonguing or gentle fingering up and down the crack and around the opening.) It’s
just that whenever I hear a phrase like “that’s something women only do to
please men,” my Dworkinite Early Warning System goes off like a fire alarm. I
start ranting like a harpy and screaming things like, “You can’t tell me what to do!
You can’t tell me what I like and don’t like to do in bed! You don’t know anything
about anything! You’re a narrow-minded, repressed moron, you’re probably
frigid, and your mother dresses you funny!” and other equally relevant and
coherent pearls of wisdom. I’ll try not to do that here. I’ll be good now, I promise.
I’ll be calm and rational and sensitive and just talk to you about buttfucking.
Now, be forewarned — I’m not going to write this as an instruction manual.
There’s already plenty of good writing about the do’s and dont’s of taking it up the
ass. (Well, maybe not plenty, but it is out there. If you haven’t read them already,
put this article down right this minute and go read Anal Pleasure and Health by
Jack Morin, PhD, as well as the “Ass Forward” chapter in Susie Sexpert’s
Lesbian Sex World. You can also check out any good gay men’s sex manual.) I
will repeat the basics: relax, talk to each other, use a ton of lube, don’t use
anything that could cut, scratch, or disappear past the sphincter, take it slow,
stop if it hurts, and play very, very safe — gloves, condoms, and dental dams are
a must. But I don’t want to spend my time telling you how. It’s much more fun to
talk about why.
So what makes it so much fun, anyway? For one thing, you get to be the bottom
and still run the show. Since communication is such an important factor (trying to
make your partner read your mind when they’re buggering you is an even worse
idea than usual), it’s perfectly acceptable to give detailed instructions while you’re
lying there getting fucked. Perfect for control- bitch bottoms like me.
It’s also incredibly relaxing. In order for it to work at all, you’ve got to let your butt
muscles get seriously loose. In the process, the rest of you gets pretty loose as
well. It’s an odd sensation, relaxing into ecstacy rather than tensing into it. For
me at least, sex tends to be fierce and tight, with lots of blinding white light and
electricity, a bit like climbing a ladder of high tension wires. Getting buttfucked is
a very different experience, more like a slow gentle dissolve into the cosmic
abyss. It’s a welcome variation.
What else? Well, you can feel everything. Your asshole is very sensitive; a lot
more sensitive than your cunt in fact, and of course a lot tighter. Every move,
every nuance, every twist and turn of the finger or dildo or cock goes right
through your ass and into your brain. It doesn’t take much to feel completely filled
up, and it rarely leaves you feeling like you didn’t get enough. Sounds a lot like
fistfucking, you say? Well, right you are, give that lady a cigar. There are a lot of
similarities. If you like getting fisted in your cunt, you’re very likely to enjoy getting
fucked in your ass.
Getting buttfucked also forces you to slow down, loosen up, and enjoy the
moment. You can’t be too goal-oriented about it — it simply doesn’t work. You
have to relax, mentally as well as physically, and you have to be willing to enjoy
as much as you enjoy and not push yourself to take more than you can. If you
approach getting assfucked like you’re training for a marathon, you’re going to
wind up with an extremely sore asshole. For someone like me, an instant-
gratification junkie who has to get there right now and wants to be at the next
place as soon as she arrives, it’s very valuable to get fucked in a way that forces
me to stay in the moment. (See “buttfucking: similarities to fisting,” preceding
paragraph.)
I don’t want to push the “joys of the forbidden” angle too much. It seems that half
of what I read about buttfucking goes on for days about how dirty and sleazy and
nasty and forbidden it all is. I personally find that angle a little tiresome, and more
than a little simplistic. After all, it wouldn’t have been forbidden if it weren’t fun in
the first place, right? You don’t have to put a taboo on something that nobody
wants to do anyway. I think it’s a lot more interesting to talk about why assfucking
would be fun even if it weren’t taboo, and just skip this whole “forbidden fruit”
stuff. I do have to admit, though, that there is an element of truth to it. If sex is
supposed to be nasty, then something that’s super-nasty must also be super-
sexy, right? Ah, the twisted logic that lust takes in its bid to undermine
repression.
Personally, I’m not crazy about getting fucked in the ass as part of an SM scene.
When I do SM (as a bottom, anyway), I usually get pretty wired and wound-up;
which is fun, but not particularly conducive to a pleasant and successful
buttfucking session. But to each pervert her own. A lot of women feel that being
fucked in the ass is inherently (and delightfully) humiliating. The connection with
shit and dirtiness and body control can bring on a bad-little-girl regression in a
very special way. And since your asshole puts up a lot more resistance to being
penetrated than your cunt, the feeling of being taken, opened up, invaded and
ravaged and violated, can be particularly intense. If you’re able to stay loose
enough while you’re bottoming to take it up the ass, then by all means, go for the
gusto. You might enjoy playing with a buttplug — a short, diamond-shaped dildo-
like thing with a flared base, it goes in your asshole and stays there (in theory,
anyway) ‘til you pull it out — if you want to get buttfucked as part of a scene.
(Actually, you might enjoy playing with buttplugs whether you’re doing SM or not;
they’re great little toys.) Try having the buttplug put in before you start the scene,
while you’re still relaxed; that way, no matter how wound-up you get, your
asshole will pretty much stay open and accessible for whatever fun and games
your top may come up with later.
So far I’ve only talked about the joys of buttfucking from the recipient’s
perspective. I realize that that’s a little unbalanced. It’s not as if I haven’t enjoyed
the other side of the equation; in fact, the first person I ever fistfucked was a
bisexual man who loved to take it up the ass even more than I did. Many of the
pleasures of buttfucking that I’ve been describing — relaxation, extreme
sensitivity, surrender, nastiness, attentiveness to the here and now — can be as
much fun from the top as they are from the bottom. Fucking someone in their ass
can be a real treat, especially if you have a fetish for beautiful butts. It’s sort of
the ultimate in doing it doggie-style.
So why have I been so preoccupied with taking it up the ass rather than dishing it
out? Well, for one thing, I wanted to explode the myth that women don’t like
getting buttfucked; and being the exhibitionist that I am, I wanted to accomplish
this by blathering on about how much I do like it and why. There isn’t really a
corresponding stereotype about women who like to buttfuck other people, so I
don’t feel the same pressure to explore the subject. In fact, the image of a
woman assfucking her lover is something of a sexual blind spot in our culture; not
forbidden exactly, just inconceivable. Fucking someone in the ass is typically
seen as a dick thing, straight men’s fantasy and gay men’s territory and nothing
to do with women at all. Since there’s no particular misguided image about
women who fuck other people in the ass, there’s nothing for me to get on my
high horse about.
But there’s another reason why I’ve emphasized getting it rather than giving it,
and that’s that getting it is where I have more experience and tend to find more
pleasure. I try to write about what I know best and have a personal interest in.
And, in case you haven’t noticed by now, I have a very strong personal interest in
being fucked in the ass. One of the first things I ask a new lover is whether they’d
like to buttfuck me; if they even hint that the answer might be yes, I’ll be on my
hands on knees in a second, legs spread, face in the pillow, ass in the air and
ready for love. I even do it to myself, and I have the videotape to prove it (Clips
by Fatale Video, featuring the computer-digitized image of yours truly joyfully
buggering herself with a Jupiter IV dildo, now playing at a VCR near you). It’s one
of my favorite, best-in-the-world ways of having sex. It’s fab. Four stars. Siskel
and Ebert say two thumbs up.
At the time this was written, Greta Christina was the managing editor of Fishnet.
She was also film critic for the Spectator and book critic for San Francisco
Frontiers. Her work has appeared in the anthologies The Erotic Impulse and
Bisexual Politics: Theories, Queries and Visions.
Since this was written, of course, many new resources for anal sex have
appeared, including The Ultimate Guide to Anal Sex For Women the book, and
volume 1 and volume 2 of the matching video. For guys, there is The Ultimate
Guide to Anal Sex for Men, as well as volume 1 and volume 2 of the Bend Over
Boyfriend videos.