“It’s Time to Ease Your Fears—and Your Sphincter”: Gender and Power in Contemporary Media Discourses of Heterosexual Anal Sex

Heterosexual anal sex has become fashionable within popular culture, with unprecedented visibility in the media landscape. In this article I map the meanings ascribed to it across a wide range of media texts and platforms. I show that a heteronormalization of anal sex is grounded on plural and conflicting meanings, mostly shaped by the rhetoric of liberation that positions the popularization of anal sex as a sign of sexual liberation. At the same time, it often portrays anal sex as a male conquest and power enactment, simultaneously attributing women the role of sexual gatekeepers—which conflicts with another dominant discourse that endorses women’s sexual agency and empowerment. I argue that the confluence of these discourses restrains women’s sexual agency and produces conflicting gendered injunctions that set women up with a high chance to fail.