Anal play is about more than stretching yourself physically. Zane Henry talks us through their life-long romance with their butt…

Anal play can deconstruct our notions of pleasure, power and even gender, as is explored on this exploration of the author’s personal romance with their butt.

What Anal Play Has Taught Me About Myself by Zane Henry

Me, My Butt and I

I like my butt. It’s a good, solid butt. Chugs along. Gets the job done, you know. But it’s only recently that I’ve come to 

It’s been a slow-burning love affair; less like a torrid sexual thriller starring Ryan Gosling and Anya Taylor-Joy fucking the pain away and more like a gentle Nancy Meyers rom-com with Diane Keaton and Bill Nighy forming a deep connection through shared life experience over 

For context, I have a penis (#humblebrag) and grew up male, but have recently come around to the idea that I’ve maybe always been non-binary. I mention this because it’s become apparent to me how much my relationship to my ass is tied to my relationship with gender.

Men are raised to believe that butts are strictly for pooping and cracking walnuts, and that anything vaguely sexual going on back there will immediately fling you into the seventh circle of homosexuality – just below the rung where everyone wears brogues without socks. This virulent no-homo’ness cock-blocked any butt play when I was younger, and put a high wall around any considerations of ever having a penis up in there. Then, later, when I started experimenting, it was initially through a relatively heteronormative framework.

I’ve had primarily female partners in my life, so it was usually all about the pegging (a word that tries to distance itself from homosexuality so energetically that it kinda makes me want to hurl). I did it mainly in the name of experimentation or because my partners were into it, rather than a burning desire on my part.

While it was not always explicit, and possibly existed only in my brain, there was always an undercurrent of emasculation and submissiveness. Like, “Ooh, look at me being the girl, being penetrated by the penis.” This was often hella fun – because sex is fun – but it didn’t feel particularly authentic and, as someone prone to dissociation during sexual role-playing, could lead to me doing it primarily to live out my partners’ fantasies.

I have sex because I enjoy intimacy, and that kind of removal of self got in the way of me feeling a strong connection with the person rummaging around in my butt, and feeling fully present and engaged.

Also, it’s utterly ridiculous how little of a fuck I give about mess when I’m giving anal sex and how capable I am of assuaging partners about how natural it all is. I’m all like, “Fuck it, we’re playing with fire! We might get burned! Filth is the natural state of the human condition!” But when it’s my ass being pillaged, I turn into a bashful coquette who is FUCKING MORTIFIED at a hint of poop. I don’t really know 

! (Anyone with advice on this, please hit me up!)

 around the time I started fucking around with my understanding of gender. I realised that I could be entirely me, and not get hung up on ‘playing the girl’, and celebrate my masculinity and femininity at the same time, using the thing stuck up my butt as a lightning rod for empowerment. Pleasure is pleasure.

On a physical level, things changed when I realised that relaxing and leaning into that feeling of pressure on your prostate isn’t a need to pee, but is the actual good stuff, where someone can literally push the cum out of you in the hottest possible way.

Then, on a practical level, I tend to masturbate while engaging with 

 or porn on my phone, so having one hand on my dick and another fucking my ass can be tricky. But one of my partners got me a prostate massager that slips inside you and hits all the right spots just by clenching. It’s a fucking game changer.

I still haven’t had an actual fleshy dick in me yet, and while it’s very much on the cards, my butt and I are going to take it real slow. Light some candles, put on some Barry White, really get to know each other, you know, Nancey Meyers-style.