My biggest question about this is that since a large percentage of the population in 1950s America was homophobic, how would a straight homophobic male feel about desires to engage in anal sex with his wife? Was it common? If so, what was the narrative used to reconcile one's personal desire with an overwhelmingly homophobic society? Would anal sex have been unfathomable and only reserved for the kinkier of couples?
Coming out of the victorian era, this sort of talk was very taboo. And research non-existent.
The first major survey/poll done was the rather infamous Kinsey study (1948-53). Kinsey of course was aware of people's reluctance to speak about sex so in an attempt to balance out the responses, he made leading questions which he asked in person, basically attempting to make each interviewed person admit their sexual habits. This obviously would be regarded as completely invalid today, but it had the amusing results suggesting that for instance over 1/3rd of people had had a homosexual experience.
http://www.kinseyinstitute.org/research/ak-data.html#analsex
Later studies showed lower numbers but they would have been dealing with the reluctance to speak freely about sex still.
Because of this it would be hard to give you any sort of accurate number. More recent numbers though are probably not too much higher and are more likely to be accurate.
(Amazingly Kinsey's work on sex continued through the kinsey institute through today)
http://www.kinseyinstitute.org/resources/FAQ.html#sexpractices
Hello everyone,
In this thread, there have been a large number of incorrect, speculative, or otherwise disallowed comments, and as such, they were removed by the mod-team. Please, before you attempt answer the question, keep in mind our rules concerning in-depth and comprehensive responses. Answers that do not meet the standards we ask for will be removed. In this specific instance, almost every deleted comment has made mention of the Kinsey Reports. It is doubtful that any answer to this question could be considered complete without referencing Kinsey's work, but simply linking to them, or quoting his work without providing context and analysis violates our rules here.
Additionally, it is unfair to the OP to further derail this thread with off topic conversation, so if anyone has further questions or concerns, I would ask that they be directed to modmail, or a META thread. Thank you!
There is an assumption in the question that has not yet been challenged by any answers. I am not here to answer the question, but to point out that there may be some tendency towards incorrect answers due to this unwarranted assumption. We currently associate anal sex with homosexuality, but I do not believe that this historically was the case. I seem to remember that this association came about as part of the gay pride movement in the 1970s. Could someone comment on this?
Follow up question, how many people who were of a sexually active age in the 1950's admitted to homosexuality or partaking in anal sex heterosexually versus those same people 20,30 or 40 years down the road?
I ask this because I know one of my grandparents who spent her entire life in the West said that though she didn't do anything at that time that her and a lot of other people (she was born in the lat 1920's) did experiment or more later in life as it became more culturally acceptable (she specifically mentioned polyamorous relationships being more popular with homosexual activity as a part of that). She's just one person reporting her experience with the people she knew so I have clue how true this was regionally or nationally.
Tl;dr: Did the same people who may have been adverse to alternative lifestyles at the time become more open and experimental as they aged?
The only kind of sex we have in Murica is butt sex.