Teaching Men's Anal Pleasure: Challenging Gender Norms with 'Prostage' Education

Abstract

To help students critique sex/gender norms, sexuality educators should address men’s anal pleasure. Men’s anal receptivity blurs accepted binaries like male/female, masculine/feminine, and straight/queer. By suppressing men’s receptivity, the taboo against men’s anal pleasure helps legitimize hegemonic sex/gender beliefs—and the sexism, homophobia, and male dominance they encourage. Conversely, by deconstructing men’s anal taboo and creating a new language of anal pleasure—“prostage” (pro-STAHJ)—educators can help students challenge restrictive gender norms. We base this argument on an anonymous, online, mixed methods survey we conducted with 228 undergraduate men, as well as existing literature on men’s anal sexuality.

Keywords: men, masculinities, sexuality education, anal sex, gender norms