Abstract
In this article, we explore the gendered dynamics of coercion described by 18 women we interviewed about their experiences of unwanted and nonconsensual heterosexual anal sex. Several women referred to what they believed to be the normative status of heterosexual anal sex. In many cases, the socially coercive effects of perceived norms intertwined with threads of interpersonal coercion, leaving women feeling pressured to agree to, or little room to refuse, anal sex they did not want. We discuss the ways that new sexual norms can translate into new pressures for women within the gendered framework of heterosexual relationships.
Introduction
The place of anal sex within the heterosexual repertoire has shifted dramatically. No longer the taboo subject it once was, popular cultural representations of heterosexual anal sex have proliferated in recent years (McBride & Fortenberry, 2010), often hailing it as liberating and empowering for women (Faustino, 2020a, 2020b). Research suggests this has been matched by an increasing prevalence of heterosexual anal intercourse (Herbenick et al., 2010; Mosher et al., 2005; Satterwhite et al., 2007), with some studies finding that women perceive it as having become normalized within heterosex (Fahs & Gonzalez, 2014; McBride, 2019). 2
Research, however, suggests that many women may not welcome this trend towards the normalization of heterosexual anal sex. A nationally representative survey in the United States found that the large majority of women surveyed (85.8%) rated anal sex as not appealing (as did 64.6% of men) (Herbenick et al., 2017). Several studies point to women's experiences of a male partner coercing them into anal sex (e.g., Benson et al., 2019; Fahs & Gonzalez, 2014; Fahs et al., 2015; Herbenick et al., 2019; Hess et al., 2013; Maynard et al., 2009; McBride, 2019; Reynolds et al., 2015). While some women have anal sex in line with their own sexual desires or curiosity, or for practical reasons of their own choosing, research suggests that sexual coercion features prominently as a factor leading women to engage in anal sex with men—with or without their agreement. This has been reported to take a variety of forms, from more subtle relational pressures that might lead a woman to acquiesce to unwanted anal sex (e.g., Fahs and Swank, 2021; see also Stahlman et al., 2015), to deceptive tactics that can lead to a woman finding a man penetrating her anus without invitation or warning, claiming to have “slipped” during consensual sexual interaction (e.g., McBride, 2019), to violent sexual assault (e.g., Fahs and Gonzalez, 2014).
Other studies report on men's normalization of their own or other men's coercive attempts to anally penetrate a female sexual partner. Congruent with the findings from research with women, Jozkowski and Peterson (2013), for instance, found some men reported having utilized deceptive techniques and behaviors, such as inserting their penis into a woman's anus and pretending it had been accidental or unintentional. As one male participant wrote, “So she wouldn’t complain, I would just act like I had put it in the butt by mistake and was really aiming for the vagina” (2013, p. 2020). In Marston and Lewis’s (2014) study with English teenagers, they found young women and men shared expectations of normalized male coercion for heterosexual anal sex. Some of the young men in this study reported having adopted a “try it and see approach,” initiating penile or digital penetration without prior consent. Similarly, in Jeffrey and Barata’s (2019) Canadian study, men's accounts of sexual violence in heterosexual relationships also included references to attempting anal intercourse without women's consent.
This body of research suggests that not only has heterosexual anal sex become normalized to some extent, but so too has men's coercive pursuit of it. There is some evidence to suggest that this is relatively new. Classic early studies on sexual coercion and violence within marriage relationships found high rates of marital rape (Finkelhor & Yllö, 1985; Russell, 1982). Both Russell and Finkelhor and Yllö also observed a continuum of sexual coercion within marriage, in addition to rape itself. 3 They noted the ways that sociocultural norms of the time could script sex in ways that were animated by male entitlement and female obligation, leading to sex that fell short of most definitions of rape but was nonetheless unwanted by women (see Gavey, 2005). In such cases, men can coerce their partners into unwanted sex, mobilizing traditional heteronormative scripts that can strip women of the social vocabulary and interpersonal means of refusal. Even in more clearly forced and/or nonconsensual interactions, men can draw on the justificatory logics woven into such scripts that naturalize male sexual dominance and female sexual submission, to minimize and excuse their abusive behavior (Gavey, 2005).
Finkelhor and Yllö (1985) observed that in these more aggressive cases of forced vaginal intercourse (rape), women in general found it difficult to resist; however, some women were more likely to be able to resist when their husbands tried to force anal intercourse. The reason, Finkelhor and Yllö surmised, was “the normative climate around sex in marriage” (Finkelhor & Yllö, 1985, p. 114). While most women considered (penis–vagina) intercourse a marital duty (see also Russell, 1982), “anal and oral sex were not obligations of marriage” (Finkelhor & Yllö, 1985, p. 113, emphasis in original).
The absence of a normative context for anal sex did not protect women from sexual violence involving anal penetration. 4 Indeed, precisely because of this normative context, anal rape represented an ultimate expression of hostility, control, and punishment: “In many ways,” wrote Finkelhor and Yllö (1985, p. 36), “anal rape appears to be the quintessential way for a man to humiliate his wife.” But in some cases, they suggest the taboo nature of anal sex granted women more cultural support in resisting their husbands’ coercive attempts at anal sex, as they “felt more justification in resisting, even when forced” (Finkelhor & Yllö, 1985, p. 113). Such normative views could have shaped husbands’ tactics as well, according to Finkelhor and Yllö, by constraining their attempts to force anal sex in circumstances where they would otherwise feel justified with vaginal intercourse.
Rationale and Purpose
In this study we set out specifically to explore in more depth how heterosexual coercion works in relation to anal sex in a sociocultural context where heterosexual anal sex has become more prominent and increasingly normalized. While several studies, as noted above, have highlighted that gendered power dynamics do emerge in women's narratives about anal sex, with some exceptions (Fahs et al., 2015; Hess et al., 2013; see also Stadler et al., 2007) few studies have specifically explored in depth the entanglement of sexual coercion and heterosexual anal sex. With this more specific focus, we deliberately foreground an interest in sexual coercion and sexual violence—focusing on women's experiences of unwanted and nonconsensual heterosexual anal sex. Given Russell’s (1982) and Finkelhor and Yllö’s (1985) observations about the role of socio-sexual norms in facilitating men's sexual coercion of women for vaginal intercourse (in marriage), while working to help protect against coercive anal sex (Finkelhor and Yllö's point), we questioned how this might play out differently in a new heterosexual landscape that has begun to include anal sex in its normative fold. We were interested to see if and how coercive anal sex operates in ways that are similar to heterosexual coercion and violence more generally, or whether there are unique elements that underpin coerced anal sex in particular. Specifically, we were interested to explore whether the changing norms around heterosexual anal sex contribute to a cultural scaffolding that helps to facilitate coercion—and if so, how?
The analysis we present in this article is driven by three main interlinking questions: What is the nature of women's experiences of unwanted, coercive anal sex with men? What do their stories tell us about the coercive tactics at play? And, what are the gendered dynamics underpinning those experiences?
Method
We used semi-structured interviews to gather detailed accounts of people's experiences of unwanted and coercive anal sex, in the context of their descriptions of their relationships with the sexual partner involved, and their broader views about anal sex between men and women, gender and sexual relations more broadly, and related sociocultural norms.
Participant Recruitment
Previous qualitative research has drawn attention to women's experiences of unwanted, coerced and painful anal sex, suggesting a strongly gendered pattern to coercive anal sex between men and women. To allow for the possibility that the dynamics of coercive anal sex between men and women might be more variable and less closely mapped on to gender, we designed a recruitment process that was intentionally gender neutral, so that any gendered patterns we might observe would be less likely to be artefacts of the framing of the scope of our study.
Participants were recruited through flyers posted on university notice boards and distributed in various locations in central parts of the city, through notices and information about the study sent to community contacts and professional colleagues to disseminate among their networks, and through social media. The text on our recruitment notices framed the study as being about “unwanted and unconsented experiences” of “heterosexual anal sex.” We noted in the recruitment materials that research has suggested that “both partners are not always equally interested in [heterosexual anal sex] and that tensions, disagreements and some forms of pressure do happen,” and that we were interested in talking to people who had had one or more experiences like this. We deliberately avoided explicit reference to sexual violence, as we did not want to restrict the study only to people who understood and/or labelled their experiences as “sexual violence.” Participation was limited to people who were 18 years of age and older, fluent in English, and based in Auckland. Participants were given an information sheet explaining the study and what their participation would involve, and were asked to sign a consent form before the interview. The study was approved by the University of Auckland Human Participants Ethics Committee.
Participants
Eighteen women and five men participated in the study. This number of interviews was shaped in part by the number of people who responded to our recruitment notices over the period of the study. It provided a rich body of women's accounts, describing a range of different kinds of experiences but also a number of common patterns. Fewer men volunteered to participate in the study, and we decided not to pursue further targeted recruitment to boost their numbers. The men's accounts were markedly different from women's, covering a wider range of experiences, including both acts of pressuring as well as being pressured to have anal intercourse. We decided to treat the women's and men's interviews as separate data sets, regarding the men's interviews as a small scoping study.
This article draws solely on the interviews with women. They ranged in age from 18 to 64 years. The mean age was 27.7 years, and 7 of the 18 participants were aged between 18 and 20 years. Most participants (14 out of 18) identified as heterosexual, three identified as bisexual, and one did not answer. Participants’ ethnicities/cultural backgrounds included Pakeha/New Zealand European (11), New Zealand Chinese (2), Other European (1), New Zealand Indonesian (1), North American European (1), New Zealand Other European/South American/North American (1), and South American (1). Nine participants were in a relationship, one responded “kind of,” and eight were single.
All participants were given pseudonyms. Given the size and nature of our local community, and recruitment methods that used community connections and specified locations to recruit participants, we provide minimal information (age) for each participant. Some of the information that we do not connect to individual participants, including their ethnicities and cultural backgrounds, is omitted in the interests of protecting confidentiality. We recognize this omission as a difficult compromise, given ethnicity and cultural backgrounds are likely relevant to participants’ experiences of anal sex and sexual relations more generally. However, given the small numbers of participants in some ethnic/cultural groups, it would be difficult, if not impossible, to provide robust culturally nuanced analytic claims. Participants did not draw attention to culturally specific perceptions or meanings in their accounts, which is unsurprising given they were not recruited in culturally specific ways and all participants were interviewed by someone who was not a member of their own cultural group. Where women did raise characteristics that were directly relevant to their accounts (such as a religious affiliation or a relationship situation), these are woven into the analysis.
Interviews
Interviews were conducted face-to-face by the first author, and lasted on average around one and a half hours. They all took place in Auckland, Aotearoa New Zealand, between February and August 2019. Most were conducted in a private interview room at the University of Auckland, with two conducted at women's homes, at their request, due to health or time constraints.
The interviews were semi-structured with open-ended questions exploring the umbrella category of unwanted and nonconsensual heterosexual anal sex. We asked participants to describe in detail any such experiences they had had, and explored with them the nature of their experiences, including the relational context, the coercive dynamics involved, and the impact of the experience. We also asked participants about pornography consumption and condom use, as well as their general views about anal sex and consent. The interviews were audio-recorded, and fully transcribed.
The interviewer (first author) is a woman, who was a 32–33 year-old international doctoral student at the time of the interviews. It is likely that her gender and age (which was near the mid-range of participants’ ages), helped to facilitate rapport and provide a nonjudgmental context for women to discuss these kinds of intimate experiences. As a nonnative speaker, whose first language is Portuguese, this point of difference turned out to offer an unexpected ice breaker that helped to diffuse the implicit hierarchy between interviewer and interviewee. Before asking any questions, she asked participants to correct her in the (likely) situation of inadvertently saying something wrong or funny. This further helped to build rapport and set an informal tone for the interviews. It also helped to navigate sensitive questions that could have risked being too intrusive, and to ask for clarifications or details that might have seemed obvious among cultural insiders.
Analytic Approach
In this analysis we are interested both in people’s experiences of unwanted and/or nonconsensual anal sex, as well as the sociocultural context that scaffolds these experiences (Gavey, 2005). This psychosociocultural style of analysis blends a descriptive realist approach to identifying patterns in behavior (via people's accounts), with a discursive lens that is attentive to patterns in the ways participants talk about their experiences, the way their partners reportedly spoke to them at the time, how they described framing their options and decisions at the time, when faced with pressure to engage in sex that they did not want, and how they later make sense of these experiences (Gavey, 2005). The assumption underlying this method is the idea that dominant discourses and cultural norms provide guides for behavior and interpretive resources for how people can make sense of their experiences and, consequently, their options within sexual and social interactions.
This article focuses specifically on identifying the coercive dynamics that women described leading to such experiences, both interpersonal and discursive. Mapping these dynamics provides an important first step towards understanding how coercion operates in relation to women's unwanted experiences of anal sex with men.
Our analytic process starts in the development of the interview guide, which, informed by prior knowledge and the wider literature relating to sexual coercion, ensured the scope for fine-grained questioning around participants' specific experiences. The analytic process continues through the interviewing stage, through reflection during and after interviews, listening to audio-recordings, and discussing the interviews between us as they were taking place, attending to the details of women's experiences, and starting to make connections to possible discursive influences. This stage of the analysis is consolidated at the end of the interviewing, in a process of deep engagement with the interview transcripts and audio-recordings. The first author read the interview transcripts and listened to the audio recordings multiple times, initially with a wide and open lens, looking for patterns in women's experiences, and in the way they framed those experiences and made sense of them, as well as for other thematic points of interest (e.g., we became interested in the way “consent” functioned in women's experiences and accounts—the subject of another paper in progress), with the second author listening and reading more selectively to sections of material identified by the first author. At this stage, when we have an overview of the domains of key findings from the interviews, we make decisions about what thematic questions we will focus on, in separate articles.
For this article, as noted above, we focus on describing and analyzing the coercive tactics that women experienced. At this stage, the nuts and bolts of the analytic process involve selecting all sections of the transcripts that described unwanted and/or nonconsensual experiences, and starting to identify patterns in the coercive tactics women described. Relevant extracts from the transcripts are collated and organized into patterns. We approach this task in a dynamic and fluid manner, whereby we start to identify a loose framework of key patterns alongside the process of organizing the transcript extracts into categories that matched these patterns. It is a dialogical, back-and-forth, process that involves ongoing careful reading and interpretation of participants’ accounts, to refine distinctions in the patterns we observed, and at the same time tune our analytic framework in response.
In this descriptive part of the analysis, we were loosely guided by previous research on gender and sexual coercion (e.g., Finkelhor & Yllö, 1983, 1985; Gavey, 2005) that has identified categories of sexual coercion within heterosexual relationships. Finkelhor and Yllö, for instance, distinguished social, interpersonal, and physical forms of coercion, as well as threats of physical coercion. The categories described in this prior research did not operate as an a priori guide, to code interviews, but as a reference point when we observed similar (but not identical) patterns in women's accounts. We modified this loose typology into a framework that fit the categories of tactics women described, and we overlaid this categorical descriptive analysis with an analysis of the discursive features of women's accounts that help to provide sociocultural context, and show how coercive tactics work in practice, particularly social and interpersonal tactics.
The discursive layer of the interpretive process was driven by a close reading of women's accounts of their coerced experiences, paying attention to the language they used and the discourses within which they positioned themselves. This analysis was supported by the insights provided in feminist research on the dominant discourses of heterosexuality (Hollway, 1984, 1989) and the way these work to “scaffold” heterosexual coercion (Gavey, 2005), as well as research specifically tracing the normalization of heterosexual anal sex within popular media (e.g., Faustino, 2020a, 2020b).
Through this analytic process, we finalized the selection of extracts from the interviews that best demonstrate the patterns of tactics we identified, and extracts (sometimes the same ones) that evidence key discursive dimensions that are important to our analysis of sociocultural dynamics.
Findings
Women shared a broad spectrum of experiences, from unwanted but consensual anal sex to physically violent anal penetration where resistance proved impossible. In most cases, women described experiences of being anally penetrated by their sexual partner's penis, although one woman described a pattern of digital-anal penetration, which was performed reciprocally, although unwanted by her; and another woman described having been coerced to engage in receptive anal intercourse as well as to penetrate her partner with a strap-on dildo. The large majority of coercive situations that women described had occurred in the context of intimate partner relationships. Some, but not all, of the participants reported broader patterns of emotional and psychological abuse in the context of these relationships. With the exception of two women (noted above), where male partners requested, and pressured for, their own anal penetration, anal sex was not mutually performed. Some women reported that they had suggested to their partners, mostly as a joke, penetrating them. They described their partners’ immediate refusals and/or reactions of disgust, in ways that suggested these men would have interpreted it as an affront to their heterosexual masculinity. As Amber (20) said of her boyfriend, “that would blow all his hetero norms,” suggesting he “would have felt emasculated or whatever” if she had penetrated him; and Caroline (25) said her boyfriend would say “that's gay.”
While the study specifically focused on experiences of unwanted and nonconsensual anal sex, three women also reported wanted, consensual, and pleasurable experiences of anal sex at some point in their lives.
Our analysis that follows is divided into two main sections. In the first section, we map the range of different forms of interpersonal coercion. In the second section, we look at broader gendered dynamics of social coercion. We approach these tactics as interconnected, existing within a continuum of sexual violence and not indicative of a pre-established hierarchy (Kelly, 1988). We then also briefly discuss women's accounts of the dehumanizing impact of these coercive experiences.
Interpersonal Dynamics of Coercion
In this section we discuss women's experiences of direct forms of coercion by their male sexual partner. Different tactics often overlapped in women's narratives: several women reported having experienced different coercive tactics perpetrated by the same partner (e.g., a partner repeatedly requesting anal sex verbally and then acting angrily when his requests were not fulfilled). Some women described experiences of different coercive tactics used by different sexual partners.
Psychological Coercion
Verbal Pressure
Several women described having experienced verbal pressure from their male partner to agree to anal intercourse. This pressure occurred in the context of intimate/romantic relationships and assumed different expressions, mostly involving insistent and prolonged appeals by their partners, despite their having expressed their disinterest or refusal. Amber (20), for example, explained the dynamic operating in her long-term relationship, where her first boyfriend and sexual partner would make “constant” references to anal sex, despite knowing her “answer was no”: It was like he would be, “oh can we do it?” And he’d know that my answer was no, I was saying no, I just don’t want to do it. And he’d go, “oh okay” and act disappointed, whatever. But it wasn’t like he was seriously pushing me, but it was just constant, like, you know, every time we talked about something sexual that would just come up as a little kind of thing, because I think, I don’t know whether it was deliberate or not, he's not a malicious person. But he is very aware of the fact that I would like to make him happy, and he likes to make me happy in different ways. So I guess he knows that if he just kind of scrapes away at it quietly that eventually after, you know, a year or something that I’ll eventually give in. And that's kind of what ended up happening.
Amber framed her experience as “consented but unwanted.” Similarly, Lucy (24) described how her partner's insistent requests were never formulated as an order or imposition: it was clear it was something he wanted to do but it was never like, “do it.” Um. So, it's hard because like at the same time there's no like, “I want you to do this for me, do it.” Like force or anything.
Lucy recalled how those insidious requests would happen in an intimate context: “I don’t think we ever talked about, not before doing it for the first time,” she explained; “It would never have been discussed outside of the context of like us being sexual together.” She described yielding, saying, “eventually I guess I gave in.”
A similar process of increasing requests from her first boyfriend was described by Katie (38): “He kind of kept asking and asking, and then till the point where it was like ‘oh would you do it for my birthday?,’ sort of like as a treat, like a present to him (laughs) which I consented to do.” She reported engaging in anal sex as a “sacrifice,” and recalled how her experience of it profoundly differed from her former boyfriend's: “He really enjoyed it, I found it painful, uncomfortable, embarrassing.”
Tracey (48) recounted how anal sex was requested by her ex-husband several times, despite her expressed refusal, and how it eventually happened “after much coercion, much [saying] no from me.” She recounted being intoxicated the few times she conceded to engage in anal sex: “Regularly on a Saturday night I would be expected to dress in sexy underwear that he would buy me,” she explained. “I didn’t particularly like it. I would take drugs to basically lose my inhibitions and the fact that I was uncomfortable with a lot of the things that was happening.” She recalled that her ex-husband's insistence, while not overtly aggressive, was effective in wearing down her defenses and refusal: When you say he would … ask for it, how would he ask for it? In an aggressive tone? Ah no, it was sort of coercive and kind I guess. Like “Hey, do you want to do this?”, and I’d be like, “yeah, no,
5
that really hurts, I’m not into it, it's not something I’m into.” And when I’d say yes it was just basically after … um, … you know, a lot of that just sort of being worn down, worn down and then “okay then, do it.”
Both Caroline and Lucy characterized their partners’ requests as forms of nagging, portraying the tone of such requests as childish and insistent: He kept talking about it. It's like a, I guess when a child keeps talking to their mum about having ice-cream and then the parent's like, fine (laughs). It was kind of like that, but I guess a bit nicer, maybe. Yeah, a bit like that I suppose. I kind of like gave in. (Caroline, 25) Because he was like, “Can we do it, can we do it, can we do it?" (childish voice) And eventually you’re like, fuck, like, okay. It's like a child nagging their mum for a chocolate bar or something, like, like just fuck off, we’ll do it so that you can stop nagging me. (Lucy, 24)
Some women minimized their experiences by contrasting them with those that would involve physical force. For instance, as Lucy (24) said, she had not experienced “force or anything.” Although these kinds of verbal requests were ostensibly not aggressive, threatening, or intimidating, several women reported their impact as emotionally draining. In fact, several participants referred to a sense of exhaustion over being insistently and continuously asked to engage in unwanted anal sex and then “giving in” (Caroline, Amber, Lucy, Tracey).
Verbal pressure in some other cases was accompanied by other forms of emotional manipulation. Daniella (23) recalled how her former boyfriend (and first sexual partner) had justified his request for anal sex by saying he was the only one among his peers who had not tried it yet, subsequently framing anal sex as a personal “dream”: I don’t remember specifically [the first time her partner requested anal sex], but it was never “we should have anal sex.” It was always like “oh why don’t we try it from the back,” or “why don’t we try, you know.” Like … But never mentioned it with all its letters and words. And … yeah, so he said first, like the first explanation for this was that his friends had all done it and he hadn’t done it. So, I guess in my head now his masculinity was probably at test (laughs). Um … So he wanted to tell everyone that he had done it too, at my expense. (…) and I would say, “Oh I’m not sure, I’m not sure.” And then his other explanation was um, “I, it's like my dream now, like it's a dream, it's my dream to do this.”
She recalled how this “excuse,” in her words, went further: after engaging in anal intercourse, an experience she had never wanted and found painful, her former boyfriend kept insisting on trying it again, saying his new “dream” was to reach orgasm through anal intercourse, which had not occurred the first time. “He kept bringing it up all the time,” she said, until “it became the only thing that he would, you know, want sort of thing.” Such insistence is consistent with pervasive cultural norms around (particularly men's) orgasm as the ultimate purpose of sexual interactions (Frith, 2015; Potts, 2002) and an expression of male achievement (Chadwick & van Anders, 2017).
A few women described experiences that seemed to be underpinned by the meaning and supposed value of a woman's virginity, portraying it as a gift (in line with common interpretations of virginity, see Carpenter, 2002). One participant (Olivia, 21) described how she and her former boyfriend shared a “really strong belief of like no sex before marriage” due to their Christian faith and background, which he used to justify his requests: “He wanted to do anal sex because it kind of wasn’t real sex.” Another participant (Caroline, 25) reported that her former boyfriend would invoke her sexual past to justify his request for anal sex: He really wanted to do it, because I was not a virgin when I met him and he said it was like an honor, because he said it was like taking my virginity, and he kept like talking about it for ages, and then I finally said, oh yeah, okay, we’ll do it.
Anger and Moodiness
Another way that women described their male partners exerting psychological coercion and relational pressure was through their expressions of anger and moodiness if women refused to engage in anal sex. For instance, Olivia (21) described how her former boyfriend would respond to her refusal: “He would get annoyed, he’d get angry. Not angry physically, but just like really pissed off.” Among the expressions of his anger, she mentioned he would “be a little standoffish in the morning” or “slamming the door” as examples, which she found “really disrespectful.” Similarly, Caroline (25) described how, in the face of her refusal to have anal sex, her partner would act “pissed off” in an overt expression of sexual entitlement: “He’d just take himself off, probably to do something to himself,” and he would “huff really loudly like it was my fault that I wasn’t pleasuring him.”
Some women feared that sustaining refusal of anal sex would have tangible negative consequences: they felt they would disappoint their partner or compromise their relationship. As Lucy said about her partner's pleading, she felt “like you’re going to be letting him down if you don’t do that. You know, like, just regular sex is, you know, like not good enough anymore, he wants to try the other thing” (Lucy, 24). Similarly, Daniela (23) said, “I guess you feel like normal sex is not enough anymore and this is the thing.” Olivia (21) described how her former boyfriend being “really pissed off” made her “feel stink”: “It made me feel that I was wrong, like I needed to be like supportive of what my boyfriend wants and stuff like that.”
Threat to End the Relationship
While some women feared the consequences of sexual refusal (e.g., by compromising their relationships and angering or “disappointing” their partners), one young woman (Fleur, 18) reported receiving direct threats from her first boyfriend to end the relationship or “to have sex with other people” if she did not have anal sex with him: “My boyfriend made it really clear that if you don’t have sex with me um, we’re over.” This was said after a few attempts to engage in vaginal intercourse, which proved unbearable due to her vaginismus: He then said at one point, “How could you be this selfish, what about my needs? Don’t you want to think about how much this is going to affect me” kind of thing. And then he said, Well, if you’re not going to sleep with me, then I’m going to sleep with other people and there's nothing you can do about that, “cause I need it.”
Such threat and feared consequences are consistent with previous findings on women's reasons for engaging in anal sex with men, such as feeling “obligated” or fearing that refusing to engage in anal sex would threaten the relationship itself or cause their partners to be unfaithful (e.g., Stahlman et al., 2015).
The kind of psychological coercion that characterizes both expressions of anger and moodiness, as well as threats to end the relationship, was significantly different from the dominant pattern of verbal pressure described above. In those cases of verbal pressure, women described being appealed to take up an altruistic, giving and caring subject position. In contrast, some expressions of anger and moodiness and the threat to end the relationship were more openly demanding, calling for women's alleged duty and reinforcing their position of subordination. These tactics were more confrontational, threatening, and hostile, more directly constraining women's agency.
Sexual Abuse of a Young Person
One participant (Nina, 28) reported being sexually exploited when she was a young teenager. Although her experiences shared common ground with those of other women, there were features of her experience that related specifically to her age. The abusive relationship started when she was around 13 or 14 years of age, while the man who abused her—who she considered her boyfriend at the time—was in his early to mid-twenties. Nina said that while “looking back on it” she realized “[she] was being blatantly exploited,” and that she had experienced “statutory rape,” although she had a very different perception at the time: “I felt free, and I felt like I’m a strong woman—I can do what I want with my body.”
The relationship involved considerable psychological coercion and manipulation. She recounted that “he would supply me with drugs,” specifically opioids, before engaging in anal sex. She described how his behavior was never directly confrontational or threatening, but rather manipulative. In her words, “it was never like a direct aggression”: He would never be like, if you don’t do this with me there will be something negative, or threatening something; it was more-—not like an act of violence … more just like assuming consent or making sure that I was in an intoxicated state so that I would consent. Um … yeah, keeping everything strategically light-hearted.
Physical Coercion and Force
Physical Initiative
Several women described experiences of unwanted and nonconsensual anal sex as a result of their male partner's direct physical intrusions, despite their previous refusal or in the absence of any sign that they would want, welcome, or consent to the act. This included physical attempts to initiate anal sex as well as completed acts of penetration. For example, Paige reported how her former boyfriend “would just try and do it,” physically, “like when we were being intimate” (Paige, 19); and Maddy (18) reported having been asleep when her former boyfriend started penetrating her with his penis. Most of the examples of physical coercion that women discussed had occurred in intimate contexts of sexual interaction. Caroline (25) described anal penetration “by surprise,” in the context of a sexual interaction with a casual partner whom she met for the first time, an experience she labelled “100% nonconsensual”: I’d say it was a surprise. So, I was having normal vaginal sex with this person (Maria: hm-mmm) and then um, then he pulled out, and suddenly I was having anal sex, and I was very—it was very abrupt, and I didn’t really know what to say, and I was sort of—I was like, oh my goodness—this is happening—okay—right. I was very shocked.
Ruby (21) also described a situation of being anally penetrated in the context of a casual sexual encounter. She had expressly told her casual partner that anal sex was off-limits, and that it was necessary he use a condom. Nevertheless, he violated these explicit requests by penetrating her anally when “I couldn’t see what he was doing, [because] he was behind me”. Ruby later realized that in the same encounter he had removed the condom without her consent or awareness.
Katie (38) reported that on multiple occasions during casual or short-term relationships male partners would “just try to penetrate me [anally] during normal sex,” “without any verbalization of it” and “no warning whatsoever.” One sexual partner penetrated her anally in the context of a sexual interaction: “He simply didn’t ask, he just simply started having anal sex with me.” Similarly, Belinda (19) described being anally penetrated by her first boyfriend in the context of sexual interaction: “He didn’t give any indication that he wanted to try it, but he just um, just like half way through he just like, just like, just shoved it in unexpectedly and um … didn’t give me any warning .” Belinda described the experience as emotionally harmful and physically painful: “He didn’t try and comfort me or anything, he just kind of laughed and was like just told me to stop crying.” She recounted how this former boyfriend answered a phone call from a friend and made jokes, despite her crying, which she considered a “very insensitive and callous thing”: So after about 10 seconds or so, his like, his phone rang, and like while we were there his friend called him and he was just making jokes. His friend asked him what he was doing and he was like, “oh yeah, I’m inside my girlfriend.”
Eleanor (19) similarly recounted having been anally penetrated by her first boyfriend without any previous communication or request. The first time they engaged in vaginal intercourse, her partner stopped and complained about the condom, saying, “I don’t like, the condom feels weird, it's not fun,” then proceeded to remove it and started anal penetration. She described “[feeling] in pain right away,” which she believed her boyfriend was aware of: “but I was trying to be quiet because there were other people in the house. (…) I just made uncomfortable noises but keep staying quiet.” After this first episode, a pattern developed where he would initiate anal sex occasionally, which resulted in her crying: He would not verbally ask, just put his fingers in and then it would just be like, sometimes I’d be like, “oh no, don’t do that,” and then he would put his fingers in again. And I’d be like, “oh, I don’t think I want,” yeah, I wouldn’t … and then if that happens, like, and then he tries to have anal sex, I would cry and it would stop.
Not Stopping When Asked to
In addition to women's experiences of male intrusions, either by attempting or initiating anal intercourse “by surprise,” one participant described further physical restraint when she attempted to stop anal intercourse, which resonates with experiences reported in Herbenick et al.’s (2019) study on experiences of fear during sex. Lucy (24) described having conceded to engage in anal sex, despite not wanting it, after the “nagging” described above. In one particular situation, she asked her boyfriend to stop anal penetration, which he did not do, which led to her feeling “stuck”: He asked if I was enjoying it. (…) But I said, “no” (…) And he kind of was like, “Oh, can we just try a little bit longer?” You know, kind of like pleading, like, “oh, just keep at, keep trying.” And so I’m kind like, okay. And then it was just still not enjoyable and I kind of like, “I don’t want to do this anymore”. But he just kept doing it as a, and it was kind of like, “Oh, can you just do it for me because it feels good for me?” And it's like, no, I don’t want to do it. And I kind of just did nothing though, I just said, “No, I don’t want to do it.” But he didn’t stop. (…) And I’m saying, “I don’t want to do it anymore ‘cause it's not nice.” And him saying, (…) like “are you sure?” And by questioning every time I say no, questioning that and not removing himself. And just kind of like waiting it out. And I, like I guess I’m just kind of stuck, I didn’t like get up and move, but also I guess like the position I was in it's not really like, it's easier for the boy to move than for me to, to move. Like I’m kind of relying on him to take his penis out.
Violent Physical Force
One woman reported an experience of violent physical force. Helen (64) described a situation where an acquaintance had invited himself to dinner at her place with another acquaintance they had in common. She remembered he was “plying me with a few drinks and we ended up having like a little party, just he and I, we were dancing to some music”: And then the next minute I’m in bed, I’m, I’m drunk, that's the truth. But not too drunk to not remember what happened. And the next minute we’re having sex and within that first part of that sexual act this guy who was a big man, flipped me onto my stomach and literally just plunged his penis into my bottom. Just like that. It just was so fast. And obviously I knew immediately and I tried to stop him, I tried to fight him off. No. Too big, he had me pinned on my bed having anal sex with me. And I, in the end because I could not get him off and because it was so painful, I, I just stuck my head under my pillow and let him finish.
Even though Helen identified what had happened as rape, she decided to not report it to the police, as she anticipated she would be judged, and that her word would be dismissed: “The next day after that I thought, ‘If I go to the police I’m going to look like an idiot. I’m 49 years of age, I’m the one that got drunk, I’m the one that let him into my home.’” Helen remembered how her acquaintance proceeded to smoke a cigarette after raping her, which left her “horrified” and feeling “grubby”: “When he had finished, he leaned over the side of my bed and got, picked up his trousers which he’d dropped on the floor, got his cigarettes out, and proceeded to smoke a cigarette lying beside me. (…) And he said, ah, he said, 'a fuck and a fag'” (Helen, 64).
Sociocultural Coercion
Having mapped the coercive tactics at play in interpersonal dynamics, in this section we explore the broader sociocultural dynamics that can be seen to have facilitated and/or supported interpersonal coercion. Sociocultural coercion is manifested in more diffuse ways, such as expectations, beliefs, and normative assumptions that support and work alongside interpersonal coercive tactics (Basile, 1999; Conroy et al., 2015; Finkelhor & Yllö, 1985; French & Neville, 2016; Gavey, 2005)--that is, the wider sociocultural context that forges the cultural conditions of possibility in which interpersonal coercion and violence can thrive. In contrast to interpersonal coercive dynamics, both psychological and physical, social coercion does not imply direct relational pressure, although it intersects with and supports it.
In line with recent studies suggesting that women consider anal sex an emerging norm in heterosexual contexts (Fahs & Gonzalez, 2014; McBride, 2019), most of the women interviewed described it—with resignation, disapproval, or criticism—as increasingly expected in heterosexual contexts. Despite this perceived normalization, most participants framed anal sex as different from vaginal sex, positioning anal sex as, for example, “a next step after intercourse or something different” (Isabella, 25).
Women's Accounts of an Emerging and Provisional Social Norm
Several women made sense of their experiences of unwanted and coercive anal sex by explicitly referring to social agents and resources that they identified as playing a part in normalizing it, such as peer groups, media, and pornography. Describing a “chronological pattern of realizing that [anal sex] was a thing,” Amber (20) said, “it had never even like occurred to me” that it was “a thing outside of like homosexual relationships,” a view that shifted when “I heard that one of my friends had done it.” Her boyfriend subsequently reinforced that perception: “I met [him] and he started saying that that was a normal thing.” Along with other participants, she also referred to media messages and representations of anal sex, and pointed to what she associated with this: “the prevalence now of like Kim Kardashian” and that “having a big booty has just come into the center of media attention.”
Several participants critically discussed pornography in relation to their views about the normalization of anal sex. For example, Maddy (18) stated that “[porn] idealizes [anal sex] a lot and it just kind of makes it look exotic,” and Belinda (19) said that “even though in real life people don’t perform it very often or talk about it,” the fact that “it's much more common in porn and that's causing a shift in people's expectations.” Consistent with the young participants in Marston and Lewis’s (2014) study, several women in this study considered men's interest in anal sex as directly motivated by their consumption of pornography. Katie (38), for instance, reflected on “the normalization of anal sex” and pointed to pornography as its driving force: I don’t think guys in the 1600s would constantly [be] hassling their wives to have anal sex. I don’t think that that's true, because, not than I can ever tell, what was the history of anal sex. But without that constant reinforcement of pornography, the normalizing of anal sex and all those other things, I don’t think that, I don’t think that guys would be so insistent nowadays to do that.
Women's sexual behaviors and expectations in relation to pornography were also discussed. Nina (28), for instance, made sense of her own behavior and socialization through her exposure to pornography, which she described as her “sex education.” She considered porn had been influential in shaping her views (and behaviors) related to female pleasure and sexual performance: I thought that when two people have sex it's quite passionate and to the point of like violently passionate—-women should never say, oh that kind of hurts, or I like this—I don’t. (…) two people having sex don’t discuss what they’re going to do; the man just kind of grabs the woman, and has sex with—-like, uses her for sex. Yeah (laughs), so when [he] would have sex with me, and I didn’t like it, and it hurt, I didn’t feel I had a right, although I was like, it would be unsexy of me to say, oh I don’t like that (laughs).
Despite women's accounts regarding the visibility of anal sex in pornography, media, and social group talk, none had been exposed to any sort of information about anal sex in sexuality education at school.
“There's almost a vanilla shaming”: Social Pressure to be Sexually “Adventurous”
Some participants reported feeling a general social pressure to engage in anal sex despite not wanting it. For example, Daniela (23) reported thinking, when she was verbally pressured to engage in anal sex by her former boyfriend: “I should do this for him, you know, for him to be happy, or because he's waited this long, or because he can tell his friends afterwards.” She continued: “Everyone's having anal sex, everyone's enjoying anal sex apparently,” concluding that “then even if you want to say no when someone asks you, those things are going to creep in your head and you’re probably going to give in very easily.” Also referring to perceived social expectations, Belinda (19) said, “I feel like people see it as more exotic and daring, I guess.” She added, “an average female would probably feel maybe obligated to give it a try at least once, it's sort of widespread and talked about.” Katie (38) reflected on her dating experience over time, saying “the pressure's getting higher”: When I look back on my first sexual experiences it wasn’t, it wasn’t always brought up, it wasn’t always tried. It was, it was considered still maybe a bit of a taboo, I don’t know. (…) But then as I’ve noticed going through all my partners, yeah it's gotten, it's become more and more expected and considered like normal. It's very, very normalized to the point where I’m, I’m weird not to.
Even in the absence of direct relational pressure, a few participants reported a sense of personal duty, translated into a self-imposed pressure to please their partners through engaging in anal sex. For example, Nina (28) explained that while she was not directly coerced by her first sexual partner to engage in anal sex, she reported feeling “a sense of obligation” given that “[she] just really liked him.” Similarly, Caroline (25) shared how, after previous experiences of coercive anal sex, she took the initiative of asking her current boyfriend if he wanted to try it. She explained how she felt compelled to suggest it out of affection, although finding it painful: “I think because I have done it with people I didn’t really care about very much, and I very much care about my current partner.” She went on explaining her motivation as linked to a gendered sense of gifting: I think a lot of the time as girls, we kind of see our virginity as a gift, and when it's not there, what do we give? So, maybe I did—-maybe it was because he hadn’t done it with anybody else—-it was kind of like, I have a thing to give you.
Some women also reported feeling pressure to engage in anal sex to avoid being labelled prudish. Lucy (24) said, “I wanted him to like perceive me as being open, or I wanted to be like open to trying things, I guess.” Some participants described feeling such pressure to push sexual boundaries: “There's almost a vanilla shaming,” said Katie (38), while Belinda (19) affirmed, “I think women would be seen as more vanilla if they didn’t enjoy it or try it as much.” Amber (20) reflected on the pressure to take “the next step,” wondering if her boyfriend's insistence to try anal sex was more effective due to the social norms she had internalized, specifically the pressure to be “adventurous” and “hard core”: I wonder if part of me had kind of internalized that and felt that, you know, if I want to be adventurous or if I want to take the next step, like if I want to be interesting and hard core or whatever, or whatever the fuck that is, then I’d have to try that as well. I wonder.
A clear absence of female desire was present across most of the narratives—which, considering the pressure to avoid being seen as “prudish,” could appear paradoxical. For instance, Jennifer (51) talked about her first experiences of anal sex, saying, “[I] was tolerating [anal sex] for that period of time”; “I didn’t think that I liked it. (…) I guess I thought I was doing it for him.” Moreover, when asked whether anal sex was something she would do for herself, Isabella (25) responded: “No (laugh), not for myself but maybe more for my ego because I want my partner to be pleased as well.”
Additionally, a few women referred to the potential or actual stigma surrounding anal sex, which corroborates previous findings about the sexual double standard around anal sex (also observed by Marston & Lewis, 2014). Fleur (18), for instance, said she thought women would be negatively judged by others for having anal sex: “If you let someone do you in the bum, that's even worse than a slut kind of thing.” The potential stigma of being seen as “prudish” on the one hand, or “worse than a slut” on the other, evidences the multiple and contradictory pressures still exerted on women's sexuality (see also Thorburn et al., 2021).
“My Chore or My Duty Has Been Done”: Emotion Work
Women's reports of perceived (hetero)sexual obligations are well established in the literature (mostly or implicitly referring to coitus; see Gavey & Senn, 2014), and have also been documented in relation to oral (Burns et al., 2011) and anal sex (Fahs & Swank, 2016, 2021). Consistent with this, some of the women reported fulfilling their male partners’ desires with a sense of “duty.” Daniela (23) reported thinking, “Finally this is it, I did it sort of thing, like, my chore or my duty has been done,” after having engaged in anal sex with her then boyfriend. She said that “It absolutely felt like work,” invoking a rich description of a set of tasks that were exclusively performed by her: Everything, the preparation, doing the sex was me, all me. Afterwards it was all me, like I had to do, go to the bathroom, blah, blah, blah, he would just stay there and watch TV. It felt like I had done work. (…)
Similarly, Sarina (18) described unwanted experiences of digital-anal penetration as a routine task: “For me it was very much a task that I had to do. It was like, um, if I got assigned readings, it was like that, it was just something I had to do.”
All women reported painful experiences of anal intercourse—even the three women who also reported pleasurable experiences with it, which is consistent with previous studies that have reported the prevalence of pain related to heterosexual anal intercourse. For instance, in the U.S. context, about 72% of women, contrasting with 15% of men, reported having experienced some degree of pain in their most recent anal–penile sexual interaction (Herbenick et al., 2015); in the Croatian context, 79% of the women surveyed reported having experienced pain in their first experience of it (Štulhofer & Ajduković, 2013). Also congruent with previous findings about gendered emotion work regarding anal sex in intimate relationships (Fahs & Swank, 2016, 2021), a few women described tolerating and enduring pain, with a sense of inevitability and resignation towards their own pain and discomfort: “It's always really painful,” said Fleur (18), adding, “like it makes my eyes sting and you tear up a little bit ‘cause he does, he just shoves it in, you know. We use lube, but it's cold and my butt is really, really, really painful from douching.” Daniela (23) described the experience as “always painful”; however, she did not verbalize any opposition or resistance towards her former boyfriend: “I never felt like pleasure from it and I never felt like I was enjoying myself. And I would talk to myself being like ‘this sucks, like why am I doing this?’, but I was doing it anyway.” Katie (38) described how “sometimes there is blood in anal sex, ‘cause there's tearing,” which had happened “I think every single time.” She framed it in a way that speaks to the normalization of women's pain: “I just remember thinking that's just what a woman is, like that's, the pain is normal. Like I’m used to this. (…) I remember just thinking, oh it's just another kind of pain down there that I have to put up with.” These women's accounts point to the naturalization of women's pain (Carter et al., 2019) and its management as a sexual task, as well as to the complex ways in which gendered emotion in contexts of sexual intimacy can be associated with forms of "body work" that involve physical performance and endurance (see also Cacchioni, 2007).
“I Was Simply Just Meat in the Room”: Women's Accounts of Dehumanization
After exploring coercive tactics and dynamics, we now look at women's accounts of the dehumanizing impact of these coercive experiences. Several women described feelings of debasement and humiliation when engaging in unwanted anal sex. Olivia (21) recalled finding the experience “more like emotionally painful than like physically”; she described “[feeling] really stink inside” and that “it was just kind of like defeat.” Fleur (18) described the hurtful way her first boyfriend treated her during and after anal sex: “He doesn’t warm up, he just shoves it in and he knows that that hurts me. (…) And he wouldn’t look at me, he wouldn’t hold me or kiss me, he just rams me until he's done and then he just turns away and goes on his phone.” Similarly, Belinda (19) said, “I think he was selfish and just didn’t see me as a person. And he didn’t care about me in the same way he cared about himself.” Katie (38) reported feeling “like something was being taken from me. And I was simply just meat in the room, or just like a prop or that I wasn’t really there or human, you know.” Likewise, Eleanor (19) said that anal sex felt “dehumanising for me.” Daniela (23) recounted feeling “like a doll and I would just do whatever I was, it was being proposed, basically.” Similarly, Sarina (18) described “the feeling that [she] was just a sex toy, (…) nothing more than a flesh-light [a sex toy designed for penile penetration] to him.” Caroline (25), who had experienced unwanted anal sex in the context of “an abusive relationship,” described the “degrading” experience of being sexually used for her former partner's pleasure: I’d wake up in the night and he’d be like touching me, and stuff, like nonconsensual, and he’d only want to have anal sex. He wouldn’t want to have sex that would pleasure me. (…) So, like … instead of having sex that was mutually beneficial, you know, it would be sex that would pleasure him; anal sex, or sex where he would finish all over my face. It was like degrading.
In Caroline's account, her partner's anal penetration of her in the middle of the night was connected to him ejaculating on her face (another act associated by at least some heterosexual men as a pleasing expression of male dominance, see Antevska & Gavey, 2015; Sun et al., 2017).
Other women, in sharing similar accounts of the impact of coerced and forced anal penetration, highlighted the specifically gendered nature of the harm they experienced: Belinda (19) said, “I guess it made me feel more vulnerable as a woman, because men have the power to inflict that kind of pain whenever they felt like,” adding that “it made me feel just a bit, just a lot more vulnerable as a person compared to what being a male would feel like.” Lucy (24) framed her experience in terms of male control: Anal sex feels very much more like the boy was in control and I was just doing something for him. Like I never initiated it or anything, so it's—automatically feels more like I’m bringing almost nothing to the table, I’m just like, I’m there, I’m a person with a butt hole.
Discussion
In this study, we found that normative presumptions around masculine sexual entitlement (Gavey, 2005; Russell, 1982) were the driving principle underpinning the coercive tactics and dynamics recounted by women. Women sometimes anticipated male sexual entitlement and acted accordingly, often feeling they had little or no choice to challenge or oppose to it. Some women reported feeling objectified in the process, “like a doll” (Daniela, 23) or “a person with a butt hole” (Lucy, 24). Several other women's accounts suggested a subtly different dynamic at play. To make sense of a matrix of male entitlement and women's subjugation, as these women described experiencing it, we draw on Ann Cahill's (2011) concept of derivatization. As she explains, derivatization is the process through which a woman's desires, expressions, and course of action “are required to mirror nothing but the desires of men” (p. 34). As distinct from objectification, the process of derivitization does not entirely reduce a woman to a thing-like entity; rather, it co-opts her agency to reflect and revolve around the interests of the derivatizer. Women's accounts of feeling secondary and dehumanized speak strongly to this notion of being sexually constructed as derivatives: It is not, as Cahill emphasizes, that women's autonomy is totally absent in these cases; rather, it is configured as an expression and extension of male sexuality. As Cahill (2011, p. 33) explains, “The sexually derivatized subject is not quite a nonperson. She may express desires, emotions, and preferences; (…) she may even play a role of alleged dominance in relation to the derivatizer.” Women's agency is not nullified, but rather derivatized from and organized around male desire; such is observable in the example of Tracey being pressured to penetrate her partner with a strap-on dildo, as well as wearing “sexy underwear” on Saturday nights, as she was expected. We can also see this derivatization process across women's narratives of both consensual and unwilling participation in unwanted anal sex, as well as their descriptions of performing acts that felt “like work.” While their agency is present, at least to some extent, it is oriented towards male pleasure and desire, even when it involves their own pain, discomfort, and sometimes humiliation.
The male sexual entitlement that is manifest through women's accounts of coercion, and seems to drive this coercion in the first place, strongly intersects with the male sex drive discourse (Hollway, 1984, 1989; see also Gavey, 2005), which presumes that male sexual desire is naturally limitless and almost uncontrollable. The male sex drive discourse has been strongly linked with the coital imperative (Gavey, 2005), which holds vaginal intercourse as the standard and natural centerpiece of (hetero)sex, supported by a biological framework due to its reproductive potential. In this context, the nonprocreative nature of anal sex complicates this equation; when targeting such a nonreproductive sexual act, male sexual entitlement is disconnected from the biological rationale that discursively supports the coital imperative. Through this disruption, male sexual entitlement is more starkly revealed in women's accounts of coerced heterosexual anal sex; it is not the case that men behave as or invoke needing sex, as much as they want or demand a specific sexual act (and one that is heavily associated with male conquest; Faustino, 2020a, 2020b). Illustratively, Lucy recalled feeling that “just regular sex” was “not good enough anymore,” as “he wants to try the other thing.”
Conclusion
Women's accounts of unwanted and nonconsensual anal sex with men showed the persistence of traditional presumptions of men's sexual entitlement to women, along with normative expectations of women to please a male partner even if that implies undesired, unpleasurable, and painful sex, as well as other kinds of hurtful treatment. These long-standing gendered dynamics of heterosex intersected with newer gendered injunctions that were apparently absent from, or at least not driving, the coercive dynamics explored in 1970s and 1980s research on sexual coercion and rape within marriage (e.g., Finkelhor & Yllö, 1985). For the women we interviewed, pressure to engage in anal sex with their male sexual partners was tied to messages that “Everyone's having anal sex, everyone's enjoying anal sex, apparently” (Daniela, 23). While we certainly do not advocate for the (re)stigmatization of anal sex, it is important to recognize the subtle and not-so-subtle pressures and forces that can attach to practices that become normative. In the case of heterosexual anal sex, this normalization is strongly supported by popular cultural messages that endorse it as part of a liberated and empowered heterosexual repertoire (Faustino, 2020a, 2020b). Our concern is that these pressures are operating within a matrix of gendered norms and power relations that support men's sense of entitlement to a form of sex that their women partners may neither want nor enjoy—and, further, that heterosexual anal sex has particular associations with male conquest (Faustino, 2020a, 2020b). Without a critical watch, therefore, new sexual norms can just carve out new terrain for men's sexual exploitation and violence against women.
Footnotes
Authors’ Note
We are very grateful to the women and men who shared their experiences with us in the interviews for this study.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
