I believe that straight couples having anal sex is more a product of envy of gay men.
ProxyMusic: I don't think most straight people envy gay men. At least not naturally.
I think what's happened is that that over the past 30 years since the AIDS crisis of the 1980s-90s, gay and bisexual men and others into "sex positivity" in the Western world working and involved in the porn industry, journalism, publishing, the fashion and beauty industries, Big Pharma, entertainment, academia, gender and queer studies, LGBTQ health care, HIV-related activism, public health programs and messaging, sex education and so on have worked very hard to normalize, mainstream and popularize anal sex for everyone of all sexual orientations.
I think that this was done largely so that anal sex would no longer be seen by most of the world as a stigmatized and stigmatizing niche sexual activity mainly engaged in by males who have sex with other males. I believe it was done because many people of earlier generations such as mine (Boomers) took it for granted that disgust, disapproval and hostility towards male homosexuality and males who engaged in male homosexual sex acts were always rooted in the disgust, aversion, squeamishness and strong taboos about anal sex found amongst heterosexual people in a majority the world's cultures through much of history.
I believe the fields of "gender studies" and the "queering" of discourse in academia and activist circles have helped bring about the normalization and mainstreaming of anal sex for all by creating and promulgating the theory that the societal disapproval, hostility and hatred of homosexual men and male homosexual sex found in a majority of cultures around the world historically has always come largely or entirely from gay men being seen by others as "feminine" and as breaking or defying masculine "gender norms." That idea that homophobia against gay men comes largely or solely from people regarding gay men as "feminine" and "gender nonconforming" is a major departure from the theory held by previous generations (and still held by some of us today) that societal disapproval, hostility and hatred of homosexual men and male homosexual activity have traditionally been rooted in two things:
- the knowledge that homosexual males commonly fuck one another in the ass;
- the view that men fucking one another in the ass is inherently "dirty," disgusting, taboo, unsavory and generally not a healthy pastime that polite and "decent" society should promote because it literally involves men putting their dicks in one another's shitholes and thus coming into intimate contact with other men's shit and bowel secretions (and sometimes blood from their anuses/rectums too) during sex. Hence, the longtime use of "fudge packer" as a homophobic slur against men;
- the awareness, subliminal or overt, that the practice of men fucking one another in the ass is associated with a high risk and incidence of a number of infectious diseases (syphyllis, gonorrhea, HIV-AIDS, chlamydia,HPV, monkeypox) that have really awful and sometimes fatal effects. Even before germ theory was widely accepted, some people in some cultures probably had a subliminal sense that certain kinds of illnesses that appeared communicable/contagious occurred at unusually high rates amongst men who were known or suspected to engage certain kinds of sex acts with other men.
These norms were extremely important over most of the course of human history because prior to the modern era that started in the late 19th century, most people did not understand germ theory and most people on earth also did not have access to the things that have have access to the conveniences that have made frequent bathing, handwashing, cleaning the area around the anus after shitting, and other customs of that enable people to have and live up to high standards of bodily hygiene - such as relatively clean water piped into dwellings; automatic water heaters; plumbed toilets, sinks and tubs; dedicated and private or semi-private rooms for bathing and urinating/defecating; electric lighting; devices that do a good job of rinsing the ass after defecation; toilet paper/tissue; disposable intimate wipes.
At any rate, I don't think the normalization and mainstreaming of anal sex for all can be understood properly without viewing it against the backdrop of the AIDS crisis amongst homosexual/MSM in the Western world that scared the shit out of the general population and led to heightened homophobia against gay men in many quarters. This forced MSM to become hyper-vigilant against homophobia towards gay men and disapproval and disgust about the particular the kinds of sex acts they commonly engaged in - and the vast majority of them wanted to keep engaging in even after the link between HIV-AIDS and male-on-male anal sex became known and undeniable.
This forced gay men and those those who supported gay men and were heavily invested in the "sex positivity" movement, "raunch culture" and mainstreaming and normalization of porn that started to take off in the 1990s and early 2000s and have really ramped up in the current century - which were/are extensions of the ethos of libertinism that animated the "sexual revolution," "free love" and gay rights movements of the 60s and 70s - to devise new strategies for combating and undoing the heteronormative world's deep-seated, longstanding disapproval of and aversion towards the primary sex act most commonly associated with gay men in the popular imagination.
One strategy that the "sex positivity" crowd came up with was to destigmatize anal sex by promoting anal sex for everyone by inventing and spreading the fiction that anal sex makes just as much sense for heterosexual couples as for gay male couples.
Unfortunately, for this strategy to work meant denying, downplaying and papering over the fact that due to anatomical differences between the sexes 1) anal sex is as not pleasurable for women as it is for men; although some women enjoy it, other women find anal sex to be, "meh," mildly uncomfortable or extremely painful; and 2) being penetrated anally by a man's penis is much more much dangerous and potentially really damaging to health for women than it is for a man.
Gender identity ideology and the spread of "queer culture" helped with the normalization of anal sex for all by creating and spreading the myth that the human vagina is just a "hole" for males to penetrate, and there's no appreciable difference between the human vagina and the human rectum/anus.
This misogynistic myth is reflected and reinforced by such recent developments as:
- the new trend amongst gender ideology adherents of calling women's vaginas "front holes" and "bonus holes";
- the gross practice of "gender confirmation" and "sex change" surgeons creating fauxginas for TIMs using sections of their colons;
- TIMs' claims that bowel secretions and flora are the same as or very similar to vaginal secretions and flora;
- some especially young people today disparagingly describing what women do when giving birth as "shitting out babies";
TIMs and others into queer theory/gender identity ideology claiming that the asshole is "a kind of universal vagina through which femaleness can always be accessed" by men who get fucked in the ass by other men. Pulitzer Prize winning author Andrea Long Chu infamously expressed this view in his vile book, "Females":
At the centre of sissy porn lies the asshole, a kind of universal vagina through which femaleness can always be accessed. Getting fucked makes you female because fucked is what a female is.’
for this post but..
