LONDON: Owing to growing liking among men for anal sex, the women in UK are suffering trauma as well as injuries and scores of health problems, reports British Medical Journal.
As a result of engaging in unnatural sex, the women are facing incontinence and sexually transmitted infections (STIs) besides pain and bleeding, say the doctors in a write up published in BMJ.
In article, Tabitha Gana and Lesley Hunt argued that doctors’ reluctance to discuss the risks associated with anal sex was leading to women being harmed by the practice and letting down a generation of women who are not aware of the potential problems.
“Anal intercourse is considered a risky sexual behaviour because of its association with alcohol, drug use and multiple sex partners”, says the authors of article who attributed this eccentric phenomenon due to media and TV shows including Sex and the City and Fleabag making it seem “racy and daring”.
However, women who engage in anal sex are at greater risk from it than men. “Increased rates of faecal incontinence and anal sphincter injury have been reported in women who have anal intercourse,” the report said.
“Women are at a higher risk of incontinence than men because of their different anatomy and the effects of hormones, pregnancy and childbirth on the pelvic floor.
“Women have less robust anal sphincters and lower anal canal pressures than men, and damage caused by anal penetration is therefore more consequential.
“The pain and bleeding women report after anal sex is indicative of trauma, and risks may be increased if anal sex is coerced,” they said.
National Survey of Sexual Attitudes research undertaken in Britain has found that the proportion of 16- to 24-year-olds engaging in heterosexual anal intercourse has risen from 12.5% to 28.5% over recent decades. Similarly, in the US 30% to 45% of both sexes have experienced it.
Health professionals’ disinclination to discuss the practice openly with patients “may be failing a generation of young women, who are unaware of the risks”.
Claudia Estcourt, a professor of sexual health and HIV and member of the British Association for Sexual Health and HIV (BASHH), backed the surgeons’ call for doctors to talk openly about anal sex.
“BASHH strongly supports the call for careful, non-judgmental inquiry about anal sex in the context of women with anal symptoms,” she said. (Courtesy The Guardian)