There can be no doubt that anal sex is most common among children of both sexes during the pre-puberty period and, up through the ages of twelve and thirteen, when adolescents are particularly experimental. By sixteen the majority of youngsters have turned to normal genital sex interests in the context of boy-girl relations, social activities, and the purely sexual element has become somewhat sublimated into the forming of pair bonds or even group sex in which the social aspect is more important than the physical. The minority who remain fixated in the earlier desire for purely physical sex and sex play now become deviants where previously their activities, the same activities, were normal. Experiments, including anal experiments, seem to occur most commonly between the ages of ten and fourteen. Prior to that time the interest is more latent than actual, and later it diminishes except among those who are highly regressive.
As mentioned before, there is one principal reason why anal eroticism occurs, and this is the enema. Young children are often given enemas by their mothers, or in the hospital by nurses. They also indulge in sex games like “doctor,” and usually enjoy such situations. Although these activites are “naughty” there is seldom much guilt, and the naughtiness, of course, adds considerably to the pleasure.
No childhood form of sexual behavior is deviate or perverse. Experiment is natural to children, and almost anything the child does is, in that sense, innocent. This, in itself, gives prepuberty sex a certain quality which the adolescent loses and which many adults recall with regret. In certain respects childhood is the happiest time of life, at least for those fortunate enough to be born into reasonably affluent and stable homes, and who enjoy the affection of devoted parents. At heart, the perennial cult of deviant sex is really a yearning to return to the bright golden world of childhood, and the sexuality of the child.
What is attractive about early sexuality is its simplicity and the fact that it is nonreflective. Children merely propose that they disrobe and examine each other's bodies, touch genitals and buttocks, perhaps probe a little with fingers or other objects, and press one against another. The fun and excitement is in the secretiveness, the anticipation of an unknown and presumably enjoyable experience, the act of exposing buttocks and genitals, the bodily contact, and, above all, the ritual play. The very absence of courtship and the total noninvolvement of sex with moral and spiritual values add immensely to the joys.
A little boy takes a little girl into the attic or the garage, invites her to raise her skirt and take down her panties, promising that “he'll show her his if she'll show him hers.” Like as not she will agree, without in the least feeling that her honor or anything else is being compromised. She knows that it's “naughty,” and that they must not be caught. The taboo is imposed from without later. Like as not, it is not yet within her mind, as it will be in just a few years.
When they have both undressed, and perhaps she has initiated the whole thing herself, they will want to do something. She might even ask him to “fuck” her, using a term which she has heard somewhere but knows not the complete meaning of. Neither child will probably have a clear idea of what it is all about or what they are supposed to do. The boy will probably be a little more experienced. Perhaps he has been to a summer camp where an older boy has taken him into the woods, made him take his pants down and bend over, and then pushed his penis up his rectum. This is what “fuck” will mean to the boy. It may have hurt a little, but it was exciting, and, on the whole, he liked it, and quite willingly allowed it to happen again. Now he will suggest the same to the little girl. She must bend over. But he is too young to have an erection, and so he can only press his penis between her buttocks. This is frustrating, and especially to the girl who wants to know what it feels like. She will ask him to stick his finger up her anus or perhaps a pencil or toothbrush handle. And, perhaps, she will do the same for him.
They may also experiment the same way with genital contact, using fingers and other objects when they fail to achieve intercourse. Usually it will all take place in the context of “playing house” or “playing doctor.” They will not attach any particular significance to the anus or the vagina; either will do as well.
Children sometimes engage in group sex as well, again, usually in the context of some game. They will all strip and examine each other, or perhaps take turns going into the darkness of a closet in pairs while the others wait outside. They will touch and examine each other's buttocks and genitals, try to “fuck,” insert things into one another.
These experimental sex games are a major cause of anal eroticism later, especially if the fascination with some of the experiments turns out to be greater than adolescent sexuality with its emphasis on socialization. The same is true of homosexuality, which is, in some respects, arrested development, and also of exhibitionism and voyeurism. Most forms of sex deviation are actually attempts to cling to subteen patterns.
Adults often introduce children to anal eroticism. Sometimes this occurs quite deliberately when child molesters perform anal intercourse on youngsters. When, as is sometimes the case, the child enjoys the experience, he may want to repeat it and, in later life, develops certain fixations.
Most frequently, however, young people become anally erotic because of enemas given to them by mothers or nurses. To the nurse or mother, giving the enema is an unpleasant but necessary medical treatment which has been ordered by the doctor or else occurs because the mother is oversolicitous about her child's bowel movements.
To the child an enema is an assault upon a private part of his body, an embarrassing, undignified experience, also perhaps frightening and painful. He will probably rebel, and the operation may well acquire the proportions of drama with the child's father or perhaps an older sister participating. Realization of the enema's sexual aspect has, in recent years, caused doctors to advise giving such treatments less frequently than in the past, and the Fleet Enema, which is a simple disposable bulb syringe, has very largely displaced the older apparatus with bag and long tubes. Even when the more traditional equipment is used, nurses seldom give “high” enemas any longer, there being no particular advantage to having a colon tube inserted up into the bowel.
It is likely, therefore, that anal eroticism caused by enemas given in childhood will be less common than formerly. There are many middle-aged and older people around, however, who were given frequent enemas when they were children, and not a few of these continue to have anal tendencies. Proof of this is in the fairly large number of middle-aged and older people of both sexes who go to naturopaths for colonic irrigations, ostensibly for therapeutic reasons, but very often for erotic gratification.
But sadomasochistic tendencies are also important. As Louis London and Frank Caprio suggest in Sexual Deviations, (1951), “Many woman patients who are referred for psychiatric treatment because of a conversion neurosis complain that they are subjected to rectal intercourse.” One woman reported that her husband preferred sodomy to normal intercourse and that “she had to bite the pillow in order to endure the acute discomfort she experienced during the insertion of her husband's penis into her rectum. Analysis of her husband disclosed a pronounced sadistic component which was traced to sexual excitement during childhood with acts of cruelty involving domestic animals.” Not a few women actually enjoy the pain of anal intercourse much as other masochists enjoy flagellation. As London and Caprio suggest, “Some women enjoy being subjected to sodomistic practices because of their strong masochistic component.”
Finally, fantasy and partialism are also usually involved. Anal erotics of both sexes are usually buttocks fetishists. The sight of naked buttocks, of a child being given an enema, perhaps, or a woman submitting to sodomy will be highly stimulating. Anal erotics are usually visually oriented, respond to pornography, or have their anal impulses triggered by it. As Roger Blake notes in Sex Gadgets, one woman commented that she liked pictures. “I wish I had a picture of [a rectal vibrator] sticking in my rear when I was coming, so I could see my face, too.”