63.3% Of Women Like Anal Sex [1,260 Woman Study]

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We recently surveyed 1,260 women to answer the question:

Do women like anal sex?

To comprehensively answer this question, we also analyzed what factors lead to enjoyable or unsatisfying anal sex experiences for women.

Specifically, we looked at preferred anal sex positions, rate of orgasm during anal intercourse, ideal duration, and the actions the giving partner can take to increase the pleasure of the receiver.

And now it’s time to share what we discovered.

Summary Of Key Findings

1. 63.3% of women like receiving anal sex.

2. However, 77.6% of women have had at least one negative anal sex experience.

3. “It was painful” was selected by 66.7% of women as the leading factor leading to unenjoyable anal sex.

4. Despite this, 15.8% of women actually enjoyed the pain they experienced when receiving anal sex.

5. 51.9% of women have orgasmed when receiving anal sex. 39.0% orgasmed during their most recent experience receiving anal sex.

6. Doggy style is women’s favorite anal sex position with 42.9% of women choosing this position.

7. 21.4% of women selected cowgirl as their most disliked anal sex position.

8. 28.6% of women find receiving anal sex and vaginal sex to be equally enjoyable.

9. 13 minutes and 35 seconds is the average ideal duration that women would like an anal sex session to last for.

10. Women who’ve had anal sex also enjoy a range of other anal play, including being fingered anally by their partner (57.4%), using anal sex toys (38%), and receiving anilingus (37.7%).

11. 81.7% of women found their first time receiving anal sex to be painful.

Note: You can find our methodology section at the end of this study.

63.3% Of Women Like Receiving Anal Sex

We wanted to end the debate on whether or not women actually enjoy anal sex. To get to the bottom of this, we asked a simple question to women who have experienced anal sex:

Do you like receiving anal sex?

The results speak for themselves

63.3% or almost two-thirds of women who have received anal sex, reported that they like it.

While this is a high percentage of women who like anal intercourse, there is still a sizeable group of women (36.7%) who don’t.

Additionally, just because a woman reports that they like anal sex, it does not necessarily imply that every anal sex experience is a pleasurable one for her. In fact…

77.6% Of Women Have Had At Least One Unenjoyable Anal Sex Experience

When we asked our respondents if they had ever had an unenjoyable time receiving anal sex, over three-quarters of women (77.6%) confirmed that they had at least one negative experience.

This figure hints at one of the main issues with anal sex:

While the majority of women do like anal sex, without proper preparation and communication with your partner before and during the act, it can easily become a negative, unsatisfying one.

Pain Is The Most Common Reason For Unenjoyable Anal Sex

Based on this previous data point, we investigated the specific factors leading to unenjoyable anal sex.

Pain – As you can see from the chart above, pain is the leading cause of unenjoyable anal sex with 66.7% of women selecting it.

The next most prominent factor is “Started too fast/Not enough time to relax” (43.5%). This refers to the receiving partner’s internal anal sphincter, an involuntary smooth muscle [1]. This muscle can take a while to fully relax as it’s being penetrated/stretched. Stretching it too quickly without first allowing it to relax can be painful for the receiver.

Closely following this, is “Not enough lubricant/No lubricant” selected by 41.2% of women. Using inadequate amounts of lubricant leads to too much friction which in turn leads to pain.

As you can see from the data, the 3 main factors leading to unenjoyable anal sex experiences for women all involve some aspect of pain.

No orgasm – 22.6% of women had an unenjoyable time due to a lack of orgasm.

It was forced – Perhaps the most disturbing statistic from the study is that 20.5% of women selected “It was forced” as one of the reasons for not liking anal sex. No sexual act should ever be forced.

Big penis issues – 16.6% found that their partner’s penis was too big for anal sex to be enjoyable. A penis that is too big for the receiver is another potential cause of pain.

Small penis issues – Only 1.8% of women found their partner’s lack of penis size to be a factor leading to unenjoyable anal sex.

Some of our respondents also detailed other reasons leading to unenjoyable anal sex:

• I was not prepared for ‘poop dick’ and it was embarrassing.
• When we were doing a lot of MMF threesomes, I used to almost automatically allow the new guy to try anal after the first date. But I became much more selective about who gets the brownie after a few guys got abusive or simply didn’t know how to approach anal.
• He did anal then vagina[l] which give me infection after.

It’s clear that pain is the leading reason for unenjoyable anal sex, but we also felt it important to investigate the reasons why women like anal…

15.8% Of Women Enjoyed The Pain Of Their Last Anal Sex Experience

Wanting to learn why women enjoy anal sex, we asked our respondents to elaborate on what factors led to their most recent satisfying & pleasurable anal sex experience.

Our most interesting finding is that 15.8% of women reported that they actually enjoyed the pain.

We hypothesize that this ‘enjoyable’ pain is not a result of forced/non-consensual acts, but rather a consensual kind of pain given by a respectful and caring partner.

Physical pleasure – 70% of women who enjoyed their last anal sex session stated that liked it due to the “physical pleasure experienced”, making it the most common reason for enjoyable anal sex.

Attraction & Respect – “Attraction to partner” (57.8%) and “partner respect/communication during the act” (57.4%) were the second and third most popular choices, respectively for women who enjoyed their last anal sex experience.

Additional major factors include, “It pleased my partner and that pleases me” (53.9%), “Used enough lube” (42.5%), and “Position made it enjoyable” (41.4%)

Respondents were also free to include other reasons for their enjoyment:

• It was with a stranger and my husband did not know.
• Vaginal sex is too painful.
• I was in control. He did everything I asked of him. 
• Good foreplay. I was hella turned on.
• I trained my butt with smaller objects first.
• I used a toy at the same time to stimulate my clit. The combo made anal much more enjoyable for me.

We can see from the above results that there are multiple reasons why women like anal sex. It should be noted that most survey respondents choose not just a single reason, but multiple reasons why they enjoy anal.

51.9% Of Women Have Had An Orgasm During Anal Sex

A positive indicator that a sex act is enjoyable is if the receiving partner had an orgasm during the act. Naturally, we investigated this.

51.9% of women have orgasmed at least once during a previous anal sex experience, while 39.0% of women had an orgasm the last time they had anal sex.

It’s clear from these results that anal sex can be a great way for many women to reach orgasm, However, based on these results it’s less common for women to orgasm during anal sex compared to vaginal-penile sex [2]

Of course, the aggregate date from these survey results doesn’t necessarily apply to the individual, so proper communication is vital for those that believe anal intercourse might be a good way to reach orgasm for the receiving partner.

We additionally asked a question about female ejaculation.

16.9% of women have experienced female ejaculation/squirting at least once during anal sex, while 12.3% of women reported that it happened to them during their most recent anal sex experience.

Doggy Style Is Women’s Favorite Anal Sex Position

In an earlier section of our survey, we discovered that 41.4% of women found that the sex position used during anal sex contributed to it being enjoyable.

We suspected this may be the case when architecting our survey, so we included questions about sex positions.

We discovered that Doggy Style is clearly women’s favorite position for anal sex with 42.9% of women choosing it as their preferred position. This is three times more popular than the next most liked anal sex position, “lying down on my stomach” with 14% of women choosing it.

Respondents also included their own preferred positions:

• Being bent over [a] bench or counter.
• Over the arm of the couch.
• Doggy style on the sofa with my knees on the floor and upper body on the sofa.
• It depends [on] who he is, his cadence and his size.
• Doggy style with me on floor and partner sat on edge of [the] bed as it’s easier to control depth of penetration

Interestingly, we discovered that the most popular positions among women for anal sex involved facing away from their partner. These positions may be popular due to the angle they create or the depth of penetration they allow for. However, it could simply be due to the partners not being face-to-face.

Cowgirl Is Women’s Most Disliked Anal Sex Position

Naturally, we also investigated women’s most disliked positions for anal sex.

Cowgirl topped the list as women’s least favorite with 21.4% of women selecting it, followed closely by “lying on my back” positions with 20.2%. “Lying on my back” includes any position where the female partner is lying on her back, like coital alignment technique and missionary position.

Interestingly, both riding your man in the cowgirl position and lying on your back involve facing your partner. This is in direct contrast to our previous findings of the two most popular positions, Doggy Style and “lying down on my stomach” positions, which involve facing away from your partner.

1 In 4 Women Find Vaginal & Anal Sex Equally Enjoyable

In our very first finding of this study, we discovered that almost two-thirds of women like anal sex. Next, we decided to investigate how enjoyable receiving anal sex is when compared to penile-vaginal sex.

As you can see from the graph above:

• 68.4% of all women who’ve had anal sex prefer vaginal sex.
• 28.6% of women who’ve had anal sex find anal and vaginal sex equally enjoyable.
• 3% of women who’ve had anal sex prefer anal sex to vaginal sex. That’s a very small 1 in 33 women.

When we filtered our responses and looked at only those women who like anal sex, these figures change somewhat:

• 51.5% of women who like anal sex still prefer vaginal sex.
• 44.4% of women who like anal sex find anal and vaginal sex equally enjoyable.
• Only 4.1% of women who like anal sex prefer anal sex to vaginal sex. That’s just 1 in 24 women.

Perhaps the most interesting finding is that there are very few women who prefer anal sex to vaginal sex, even when we filter for those women who like anal sex.

13 Minutes And 35 Seconds Is The Ideal Anal Sex Duration (On Average)

We wanted to know if there is a perfect length of time for an anal sex session for women. Based on their responses, we got a mean time of 13 minutes and 35 seconds and a median time of 10 minutes.

Note in the above graph that these times include all respondents who have received anal sex, that is both those who like and dislike it.

Looking at the above graph, there is a huge variation in responses that ultimately makes these figures less practical when applying them to any individual relationship.

To gain more practical insight into the preferred anal sex duration for women, we filtered our responses to compare those women who like anal sex versus those who dislike anal sex.

• For women who like anal sex, the average preferred duration is 17 minutes and 52 seconds. The median time is 15 minutes.
• For women who do not like anal sex, the average preferred duration is 6 minutes, 12 seconds. The median time is 4 minutes.

These figures prove what we already suspected, women who like anal sex generally like it to last far longer than those who don’t. However, there is a wide variety of preferred times. This underscores the importance of good communication between partners to ensure individual desires are met.

37.7% Of Women Like Receiving Anilingus

Anal sex doesn’t exclusively mean penile-anal penetration, there are other kinky sex ideas that involve anal stimulation that women enjoy. We wanted to assess the popularity of anilingus, anal sex toys, fisting, anal fingering and other anal play.

1. Over half (57.4%) of women who’ve had anal sex also like being anally fingered by their partner, making it the most popular anal sex activity after penile-anal sex.
2. The second most popular anal sex activity is using anal sex toys with 38% of women who’ve had anal sex enjoying this.
3. Closely following in third place is receiving anilingus with 37.7% of women who’ve had anal sex enjoying this anal sex activity.

Over a quarter (26.9%) of women who’ve experienced anal sex do not enjoy any of these additional anal sex activities.

3.2% of women selected “Other” and their responses include:

• 2 cocks in my ass at [the] same time.
• Having my bum smelt by my partner.
• [I] love getting my anal area rubbed in [a] circular motion during 4play. It helps relax from [the] get go.
• Vaginal fisting is much often more enjoyable but I have taken small hands up my butt and enjoyed it a lot.
• I wish he would just let me peg him.

This data certainly illuminates women’s preferences for different anal sex activities beyond penile-anal penetration, but it should be interpreted with caution when applying it to individual relationships.

As with all sex acts, whether is giving a blow job or being dominant in bed, it’s best to talk to your partner beforehand to discover their individual preferences.

81.7% Of Women Found Their First Time Receiving Anal Sex Painful

Over four-fifths (81.7%) of women found their first experience receiving anal sex to be painful.

This is most likely a result of having their anal sphincter muscle stretch too quickly before it can relax or having it stretched too far.

Although such a large number of women found their first time to be painful, 41% of women reported that their first time having anal sex was pleasurable.

With 81.7% of women experiencing pain during the first time receiving anal sex and only 41% of women finding anal sex pleasurable, this may indicate a lack of adequate knowledge from the giving partner or inadequate communication between both partners.

Sex should never be painful unless you specifically communicate that you would like it to be.

Conclusion

We’ve been able to accurately answer the question, “Do women like anal sex?”

63.3% of women who’ve tried anal sex like it.

However, a large majority of women (77.6%) have had at least one negative anal sex experience.

If you’d like to know more about how we collected and analyzed the data, please check out the Methodology section below.

Otherwise, please leave a comment below to let us know your own thoughts on anal sex.

Methodology

We began this survey by collecting basic demographic information. Those who had never received penile-anal sex were disqualified, as were non-female respondents. All respondents were over the age of 18 with a mean age of 41. After this filtering process, we were left with a total of 1,260 respondents:

• 1,021 women identifying as heterosexual
• 182 women identifying as bisexual
• 6 women identifying as homosexual
• 17 women who specified alternative sexuality to heterosexual/homosexual/bisexual
• 34 women who declined to provide their sexuality

These remaining participants were asked a variety of questions to assess their sentiments and preferences on the topic of receiving penile-anal sex and other anal sex activities.

Our survey relied on the anonymous recollections and preferences of our study participants. While they were encouraged to tell the truth and accurately represent what they had experienced, the data is nevertheless self-reported and there is the possibility of some inaccuracy.

December 23, 2021