Ask Beastly: How Do You Have Clean Anal Sex Without Douching?
Douching before sex is new. Gay sex isn’t.
Dear Alexander Cheves,
I recently read an article by you about how to be a better bottom. I was wondering if you knew how gay men/MLM can have safe and clean anal sex without access to lube, running water, dildos, etc.? Many people live in countries where not all of these amenities are commonly accessible. Also, many gay men/MLM men would probably like to have clean and safe anal sex during camping trips. Also, I’m just wondering how gay men/MLM men had anal sex during older times when many/ none of these modern amenities did not exist.
Sincerely,
James (he/him)
Hey James.
Douching before anal sex has likely only been practiced since the 1980s and ‘90s. If you talk to older guys who fucked a lot before then, like in the hedonistic ‘70s, many will say guys didn’t douche then and didn’t expect a douched hole.
Something happened since then. Or, rather, many things happened.
All these products gay men use now—douching bulbs, shower attachments, and the like—are new, and we still don’t know how healthy these things are. This isn't to say that anal douching itself is new. Evidence suggests that many cultures throughout history, including ancient Greece and Rome, practised anal rinsing and cleaning. Sex toys have an ancient history, too: one of the oldest insertable sex toys ever found is a phallic object made of siltstone, uncovered in the Hohle Fels Cave in Germany and believed to be around 28,000 years old. Dildos were used in ancient Greece, Rome, and China, often made of stone, wood, and leather. But douching before every anal sex attempt? That's new. Humans have probably enjoyed anal sex forever. In the past, they just dealt with the mess. They had fun and cleaned up afterwards.
As you say, many people don’t have bulbs, hoses, or even clean water. It is wrong to assume that our modern standards of cleanliness are necessary for good gay sex. They’re not and never were.
How did these standards come to be? We may never know fully, but I think the expectation of anal sex as a shit-free experienced happened somewhere between the advent of gay porn becoming widely available and, with it, multiple industries capitalizing on AIDS phobia and gay sexual insecurity for profit.
All those cleaning products and their adjacent products, from fiber pills to scented butt scrubs, seem to me like a big, clever marketing gimmick to make us buy things we hope will make us more confident in sex. And hey, if they do, they're worth it!
For most people, sex brings up a lot of insecurity. For gay men, this is doubly true because of all the shame so many of us have to muck through. It makes sense that toy makers and brands would capitalise on this insecurity, especially after AIDS blanketed the entire idea of gay sex in shame and death for generations. We are still living in the wake of that, still in that shame, and all these products enforce the idea that we are broken and maligned if we poop on a man’s dick. We invented an entire pathology, a community-wide phobia, around the natural processes of the body.
Shit phobia is an unfortunate thing for animals that do, in fact, poop. So, to answer your question: How did gay men clean before douching was common, and douches were everywhere? They didn’t. They used a towel and wiped off after, if needed—the same thing guys do in sex clubs and bathhouses across the world when a guy’s asshole isn’t 100% shit-free after good, hard fucking. If I go to Lab in Berlin any weekend, I'll see guys washing their dicks in the sink.
The ass doesn’t need to be douched before anal sex: many butts are naturally clean, especially if you consume a healthy, high-fiber diet. But many men these days like to douche because it makes them feel more confident beforehand, and that’s fine. But that’s not a requirement for good gay sex.
How do guys clean on camping trips? Unless they have access to body-safe water and a douching bulb, they don’t. They fuck and then hop in a lake. Easy.
Love, Beastly