Cosmopolitan - Bleeding after anal sex

Batteries yes I am sure that is true.

The normalistion of it is new though. Or attempts to normalise. This article says it's normal to bleed. I mean FFS.

The amount of pressure put on woman, especially young women to have anal sex is appalling.

My own late teen daughter came to me with the same issue. Boys going on and on at girls to try anal sex!

In my own case, I said I didn't want to try repeatedly but I was worn down and told I wasn't cool or a "fridge".

This is so sad

Loving the idea that believing women should enjoy sex is 'pearl-clutching'

And perhaps "grateful" isn't the right word as it conjures up an older era when the view was that sex was something women "gave" men as a favour, or bargained with it, while not particularly enjoying it.

Yes exactly. The other side of "don't complain as least you have a man, love". Imagine it turned round so that of women complained about the orgasm gap men thought "they should just be thankful anyone wants to fuck them !". Some men do think this or course, sadly but they are total wankers.

If someone complained about vaginal dryness and discomfort caused by it, would you remind them they don't have to have sex ? Or would you advise them to use lubricant? People engage in anal sex consensually no matter how extreme you find it.

OK I should say I was sexually abused - extensively - as a teen and have had a few real life conversations about abusive relationships, mainly with older women (and I’m late 30s).

My view is that the % of abusive men has always been high but that the pattern of offending and recognition of the problem has changed.

A lot of the older women I spoke to married an abusive partner young - I’m talking under 20, and those men wanted to rape back and front, no doubt there. But the women were afraid, ashamed, and often by the time they were experiencing damage they’d already had a child, so even if they ended up in front of a doctor they were treated as broken from childbirth, and any abuse wasn’t discussed (because anyway, it’s a private matter).

I accept that it’s different now, with unmarried women getting anal sex injuries and presenting at doctors with it. Whereas women used to shut up and put up and pain and injuries from sex were not talked about, now women talk about it and reassure each other it’s normal.

I still hold true to the belief it’s the understanding and willing to talk about it that has changed rather than the fact of men doing the sex at women in any orifice they feel like.

The issue to be tackled isn't specifically anal sex, choking or whatever the latest pearl clutching problem is.

Oh I'm sorry if not wanting young women to be choked during sex is seen as pearl clutching. If caring about women being physically hurt during sex is wrong and prudish then I'm happy to be wrong and prudish.

Have the recent 'but she liked rough sex' in the defence of killing women cases passed you by?

"It's interesting how the current narrative is basically that girls are socially conditioned/influenced/pushed to think certain things are normal just by the mere mention of them."

Presumably boys have also decided that standard = shaved all over, slapping, deep throat, anal, come on the face etc all of their oen volition and independently as they are presumably also immune to outside influences.

In fact to lay it at girls door at all seems wrong - when I was a girl the boys would try for their list (the ones when I was older were the ones I was thinking of earlier, the school age ones were very list ticky) but the acts they wanted were less extreme. I think it's unlikely this has changed. The demand for this is from the men and boys and driven by the porn industry preesenting them with ever more extremel things to try.

Has anyone actually complained about this article to Cosmo? So many good points on this thread - I very much hope they’d ee it.

I don’t read Cosmo (who actually does) and didn’t when I was the target (at mid forties now), but historically it always was very ‘open minded’ with its agony columns - groundbreaking even. Perhaps they have continued on a route not realising they missed a fork in the road. Perhaps they need showing a map with directions via ‘comsent’

It's interesting how the current narrative is basically that girls are socially conditioned/influenced/pushed to think certain things are normal just by the mere mention of them. And yet there has been multiple pp on here also saying "messages can't be subtle! Girls need to be told!"
Jenala, so, you think that en masse, girls have decided that they LOVE being buggered, and that is why it is more prevalent, do you? If not, what is your explanation for the dramatic rise of heterosexual anal sex? We are cultural animals and we are all influenced by the messages in society around us. At the moment, as has been pointed out, the message, taking cosmo as one example, has changed from, own your sexuality and enjoy it, to suck up pain and tears and bleeding. Porn has gone from cheesy group sex when your clothes fall off when the builders come around, to violent pornography. I remember reading a 'fun' article in the metro when women sent in their 'funny' stories of men's 'bad manners in bed'. These ranged from borderline sexual assault to actual assault. Things I have never encountered and would, even as a 17 year old, have recognised as assault. Yet these young women, and the journalist and the Metro, were treating these events as 'funny, 'what are men like' anecdotes'.

You are also massively taking out of context the conversation that has been held here. A previous poster stated that the cosmo article was actually a subtle empowerment message against anal sex, when clearly it wasn't. Given the article, and the proliferation of violent porn, is all about women accepting pain in sex, yes we need clear messages to counter that. Not, apparently, articles telling young women they only need to worry if the pain lasts more than a few days.

Yes, we need women to be empowered and confident and able to recognise good relationships, but that is not to say we can chill about the overwhelming 'sex is violent' toxic shit targeted at our young people (did you know porn involving teens is even more violent that porn involving adults) and expect them to intuitively be able to see it for the shite it is, and deride them as helpless victims if they cannot. Because clearly, all this shite is having a massive effect.

www.thesun.co.uk/news/8206253/girl-sex-colostomy-bag-australia-porn-scenes/

And perhaps "grateful" isn't the right word as it conjures up an older era when the view was that sex was something women "gave" men as a favour, or bargained with it, while not particularly enjoying it.

But the fact remains that women risk more than men from sex. They risk pregnancy and are more likely to contract STDs like chlamydia that affect their fertility. They risk rape and/or serious assault on a one night stand with someone unfamiliar. It's not "pearl clutching" for women to be cautious and risk-averse, it's self preservation.

So it is nothing to celebrate when we hear that women are encouraged to think of previously extreme sexual stuff that most don't particularly enjoy as normal. Or that standards of grooming have become more rigorous and expensive. Or that a generation of men have been immersed in porn, an abusive misogynistic industry whose influence is now felt in every bed. It feels like a power shift, and a bad thing for women.

I despair for most adult women based on the relationship thread on here - tons of you are in shitty relationships where you are not treated with anything close to respect and kindness and yet apparently back in the day all messages to girls were positive hmm

See, that annoys me.

For every woman posting on here about a horrendous relationship, there are numerous women giving great advice about how this is not normal, not acceptable - women like me, who are in good, equal relationships.

Also needs to be said that women of all ages post here - and there are quite frequently young women posting their relationship woes here - and abusive relationships can happen to women of all ages, regardless of what is written in Cosmo.

I agree with pp that back in the day advice for women was very much about how women can enjoy sex - nothing ever about anal, choking etc, it just wasn't on the horizon. It's not pearl clutching to object to articles like this being targeted at young women.

I know exactly what you mean nothing.

sorry that was to elon

You don't think that it would have been better if they had mentioned STDs for example?

And yes men were grateful and it meant they didn't push. I mean some of them still did. That was fine by me. I suppose you could replace "grateful" with "treated me with respect" and part of that was not wanting to risk you not going back for more

i also mentioned that I was pretty damn pleased to get them there too, most of the time anyway!

This had changed to entitlement and ignoring when a partner is in pain (see teh stufdy of anal sex in young het couples) I can't see this as an improvment at all!

I too (40s) remember the days when sex was fun, blokes were grateful for you being in their bed, and that giving a woman pleasure was something they wanted to do. Hairless vulvas weren't a thing. Hetero anal sex, choking, facials and all the rest of it? Not things!

I do think giving blow jobs was the start of the expanded 'normal' menu though for my generation, due to porn videos. I'd like to know if that was a standard expectation of the generation before mine, if there is anyone 50s/60s plus on the board who can comment?

Men used to be grateful. They were so pleased to find a woman who'd have sex with them they weren't worried about that stuff

jeezo if any of my boyfriends had said anything approaching this I'd have booted them into the long grass. I hope my son never views a sexual partner in such a way. Pretty dim view of men.

Whereas I generally agree that there is a massive amount of boundary pushing going on, this is hardly anything to get worked up about. I doubt an advice column would be much use if just served to remind women they don't actually have to have sex at all. Don't want to get pregnant ? Avoid sex ! Next question.

OH has had prostate examinations and the turps operation. It is not bigger and is painful he said.

Clearly there is that, sweetheart. But no, men don't have looser bum holes.

Really does boil down to everything being the fault of women, esp feminsits.

Even when the topic is male behaviour.

Maybe their mums raised them wrong?

Worrying about boys coercing girls into a bit of light throttling is definitely pearl clutching

Thinking yikes at the incidence of girls going to hospital because of injuries due to sex is v v victorian

Where do you stand on men more or less gettign away with murder on the grounds of "rough sex"? Of ONLY those women had stodd up for themselves eh, had some boundaries...

Hmm, I'm not sure - clearly though the anatomy of that area is different for men vs women, as the presence of the prostate proves... HIV spread through the gay community via small cuts and tears in the anus area and I know my gay friends would sometimes use poppers to "relax" the area. However, men are bigger all over (does that include anus?!) I imagine there will be similar pressures on young gay men to allow their partner to have anal sex with them.

I don't think I have much if an issue with girls reading about it or discovering information for themselves to be able to make an informed decision (I agree there is much missing from the Cosmo article) I feel that the real understanding of anal sex along with coercion and consent needs to be directed at boys, both the fathers and sons. They are the ones who really need to understand what this is about.

"The issue to be tackled isn't specifically anal sex, choking or whatever the latest pearl clutching problem is."

You're awesome.

PLease do tell us more!

You could use words like
dried up
prude
"won't someone think of the children"

and so on

One significant problem with anal sex is that it is the perfect means of spreading HIV, especially if there is bleeding.

Not many gay men have anal sex. We're anatomically the same- arseholes aren't designed to comfortably receive a penis regardless of sexuality.
Some people do it, some don't.