“When that happens, I wonder what this thing is. It can take 20 to 30 seconds. We hold the bed linen, we move in all directions, we have the body trembling. It was a real turning point in my life,” says Adam in a France Culture podcast. Prostate orgasm intrigues as much as it scares many men. At the core of this experiment, explosive enjoyment is promised, but many seem frightened to the idea of being penetrated.
The lack of a sexual culture that would assign gender-specific sexual practices: men give and women receive. Yet, as Martin Page pointed out in his short essay on penetration, “If sexuality were a matter of pleasure, women would be less penetrated and men would be more.” Because yes, this gland that makes the seminal fluid would have a lot of men climbing the curtain.
Injunctions and pleasure
If sexuality was only a matter of reproduction a few decades ago, it has now established itself as an activity of pleasure and enjoyment. Sometimes, you would almost be forced to have sex and love it. Many practices that seemed completely unacceptable to our ancestors (even if they were secretly) are now quite normalized, such as oral sex or sodomy. Prostate massage, however, still seems a bit shy: in 2021, according to an IFOP survey on European sexual practices, 22% of heterosexual women claimed to have penetrated a man with a finger, and 13% with an object. While this technique does not yet concern the majority, it is not marginal either.
No practice is to everyone’s liking, some like one in particular and categorically refuse another. The relationship to his body and pleasure varies from person to person and belongs to us. Only the case of prostatic pleasure goes beyond the notion of desire alone. For some men, if the desire to try is present, other factors hold them back. For Charlotte Tourmente, a sexologist, there is “a heritage that is almost cultural where anal penetration can be associated with homosexuality. But this is not at all the case, it is simply the search for a different pleasure, through the exploration of his body. It is not always easy to change your sexuality, you can ask yourself, for example, what it says about us, if I have one or another desire. Hence the importance of freeing oneself from sexual injunctions and getting as close as possible to one’s own lusts and non-envy.” As Maïa Mazaurette points out in an article dedicated to 2019: “This physical availability comes in conflict with certain social expectations: a man, it penetrates, and if it penets, it is not penetrated, hardly to see the penis fall into dust […] A small note by the way: “normal” orgasms cause prostate contractions – so, whether reluctant or not, all men enjoy their prostate.”
A practice that intimidates
The chronicler for Le Monde, however, continues: “H, no manicheism: in a heterosexual setting, some blockages come from women. Active penetration confronts them with problems from which they have been able to escape throughout their sexual trajectory: wrongdoing, hurting, taking the lead, taking responsibilities. It must be intimidating. Not to mention the lack of acceptability, the possible disgust, a culture of “potache” that constantly reminds of order, the sometimes aggressive reactions that these practices provoke.” Indeed, while the reluctance may come from a fear of her virility, the prostate pleasure also requires an interest in the anus, an area that can make it a lot uncomfortable as Charlotte Tourmente explains: “There is fear of the look and judgment of the partner in heterosexual couples. How will she accept this practice that the couple are not used to? And the taboo is also related to the area explored: the anus and the rectum are likened to dirty areas, through which the stools are exonerated. Sometimes there is simply the fear of daring, with one or all of the previous reasons as a filigree.”
For the sexologist, as for many things in sexuality, it is necessary to “adopt as much and as early as possible a fluid and open communication, where desires are expressed.” This climate of confidence allows each partner to evoke and explore their cravings without judgment, while allowing the couple’s sexuality to evolve over time.
