At first, giving up anal didn’t seem like a big deal. It’s one of my favorite things to do in bed, but I figured there were enough other things to keep me and my partner occupied that I wouldn’t miss it. What I didn’t count on was the way my self-esteem plummeted once I stopped having penetrative sex.
Being unable to have vaginal sex has always left me feeling awkward and virginal, but anal sex seemed close enough to PIV that I started to feel sexually “normal.” Buying sex toys that I could actually use for penetration made me feel more sexually liberated than the years I’d spent reading sex-positive blogs and going to sexual health events. (I tend to feel out of place, sure I’m the one person in the room who won’t benefit from the buckets of free condoms or the discussions of g-spot orgasms.) Besides that, anal sex makes me feel good in a way that vaginal stimulation never could–the second time I was anally fingered, I came so hard I was literally seeing stars.
But now I’ve realized that I wasn’t owning my sexuality as much as I thought I was. Society makes it very clear that PIV is the only kind of sex that is considered real, going so far as to colloquially define “sex” as the insertion of a penis in a vagina. Since anal sex tends to be seen as PIV’s dirtier, sexier sister, after having anal, I could finally relax with the knowledge that I had an acceptable sexuality. I was buying into the ugly stereotype that every woman is a virgin until she’s been penetrated by a penis (one that isn’t a dildo, anyway), that lesbians can’t have real sex because there are no dicks involved, and that not having penetrative sex is somehow shameful.
“I don’t really see anal sex as sex,” a college boyfriend told me once. My first reaction was to brand him as a dick–sex involves two people, and as the receptive partner, I was placing too much trust in him to have my experience invalidated. But then he confided that he felt inferior to his friends who seemingly had PIV with a different woman every night, and that he’d be ridiculed if they knew he wasn’t having “real” sex with me. Regardless of whether or not he even enjoyed PIV sex, he was expected to have it, and have a lot of it. So society’s narrow definition of sex hurts men, too: I doubt most men who are shamed for being virgins have really never had any kind of sex.
Even knowing that society’s concept of sex is flawed, I still struggle with feeling sexual when being penetrated is out of the equation. I really enjoy giving oral sex: I’ve had more orgasms from giving blowjobs than from any other sex act. But for a while, every time I gave oral sex, I got stuck thinking that I was only doing it because I couldn’t have penetrative sex. Never mind that even if I could have PIV, I know I would still enjoy oral a lot more. So in some ways, I feel good about not being able to have PIV: I know that I’m really exploring myself sexually instead of sticking with a method of sex that probably wouldn’t have worked for me in the first place.
In short, penetrative sex is absolutely not the only real kind of sex. Defining sexuality as having PIV sex ignores everyone who can’t have PIV, or who simply enjoys other forms of sex better. If you’re meeting your sexual needs in a healthy way–whether this is through having penetrative sex, or giving a lot of blowjobs, or something else altogether–you’re having real sex. Period.
