msnbc, More Straight Couples Experimenting with Anal sex/play

According to results of a federal study released two years ago, 40 percent of men and 35 percent of women surveyed in 2002 said they have had anal sex with an opposite-sex partner. An earlier study published in 1994 showed that among heterosexuals, 26 percent of men and 20 percent of women had ever engaged in anal sex. And if anecdotes by experts are to be believed, the numbers have boomed in the last few years.

Why now?
The first and most obvious reason is the influence of porn, which is always trying to come up with new ways to titillate and to be naughtier. “Anal sex did not used to be de rigeur in porn and now it pretty much is even for mainstream porn,” explains Constance Penley, a film studies professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Since mainstream porn is so widely viewed, many more people have become exposed to the practice in a heterosexual, not just homosexual, context.
“There was time when [porn producers] were first going after the couples market in the late 1980s that nobody would think to have an anal sex scene in a movie labeled for couples,” Taormino says. “Now it is quite the opposite.”.......

Brian Alexander
MSNBC contributor