The study should have turned heads: It was the first research on anodyspareunia among women; it was conducted by a well-respected scientist Dr. Aleksander Stulhofer from the University of Zagreb ; and it was centered on young women and sex. That's often the kind of research that attracts media attention Young women sext! They get pregnant! They give oral sex! You get the picture …. However, anal sex remains such a strong taboo that this otherwise important study barely turned a head.
Except it did turn mine. As of the s, only about one-quarter to one-third of young women and men in the U. The correct circles. Which ones would those be? The ones where scores and scores of women openly sit around talking about anal sex between glasses of wine? So taboos persist and anal sex remains hush-hush even though more people are doing it.
What changed to make it more common, anyway? Honest, evidence-based answers to questions about anal sex are difficult to come by. Yet there is strikingly little scientific research on anal sex.
This is also what made the recent University of Zagreb study so valuable. They surveyed more than 2, women ages 18 to 30 about their experiences with anal sex. Among our interests was whether using a lubricant helped to make sex — including anal sex — more pleasurable, more satisfying and less painful it did. The Zagreb team found that about half of women 49 percent stopped their first experience of anal intercourse because it was too painful to continue — not surprising considering 52 percent of women report not even using lubricant when they first had anal sex!
Only about one-quarter of women said their first experience with anal sex was pleasant. That said, nearly two-thirds tried anal sex again hopefully this time with lubricant , continuing on another occasion. Those women who found it positive, pleasurable and pain-free were more likely to try it again. About 9 percent of women who had anal sex at least twice in the past year said that they experienced pain every single time. Based on what I know about women who experience pain during vaginal intercourse , my guess is that chronic pain during anal sex is even more common — perhaps hovering in the percent range — once the women who actively avoid it because it always hurts are taken into account.
