Straight male, 38, married 16 years. With regards to your May 11th "Savage Love" column. I would like to help clarify some misconceptions that you and your letter writer WASSUP share about the situation WHAT found herself in. I have been on the giving end of accidental anal a handful of times. In fact; the first time that I had sex I accidentally rammed my cock into my future wife's rectum. Like WHAT, my girlfriend was in terrible pain. Like WHAT's boyfriend, I was embarrassed and mortified.

I can understand your unfamiliarity with intercourse involving the opposite sex, but WASSUP seemed convinced that every time accidental anal happens it is due to the uncontrolled urges of an uncaring and selfish man. I think WASSUP is projecting her negative experiences with men on all men and that isn't fair. Every time this has happened to me it was an honest and unintended accident. As I said earlier, the first time it happened was the night I lost my virginity. It happened most recently only six months ago.

The logistics: This most often occurs in the missionary position or a variation there of. It is a result of vigorous thrusting, and probably occurs more often with men who are "shorter" than average. In order to get maximum thrust the man needs to pull his penis out so that only the head is in the vaginal canal. If the man is on the shorter side of average, this can result in the entire penis being removed. Because the thrusting is fast and furious you are not always aware that your penis is completely out, and when you thrust back, the penis sometimes goes astray. This is exacerbated by the missionary position which can point the penis downward slightly. Accidental anal is a real thing. Characterizing it as always an intentional, selfish act that borders on sexual assault is wrong.

If a young woman took what WASSUP said to heart, she may view what was a clumsy accident as an assault on her body. That view could be emotionally damaging to both parties. If this happens to a woman, she needs to evaluate it from the perspective of her relationship. If her partner is a generally caring, compassionate, and truthful person, take them at their word. If her partner is generally a selfish, uncaring jerk and "accidental" anal happens then, to quote a wise man, the woman should DTMFA.

Only Understanding Can Help

To summarize:

#NotAllMenWhoHaveAnallyPenetratedTheirFemalePartnersWithoutAskingOrPreppingAnallyDidSoOnPurpose.

That said, OUCH, WHAT's partner has accidentally penetrated her anally four times in the space of a single year. Although WHAT says she likes vigorous/rough sex (a detail I shouldn't have omitted from her question), quarterly accidental anal seems like an awful lot of accidental anal. To paraphrase Lady Bracknell: To penetrate one anus accidentally, Mr. OUCH, may be regarded as a misfortune; to "accidentally" penetrate one anus four times in a single year looks like rapeyness.

WHAT is free to make up her own mind, of course, and she can and should take what she knows of her boyfriend's character into account. (Is he, per OUCH, a generally caring, compassionate, and truthful person?) This is advice, not binding arbitration. She should also, per moi, glue a tack to the base of a butt plug.

I thought your response to UPITT in this week's column was super on point. As a woman, I'm always on lookout for threats, specifically those with both X and Y chromosomes. As far as not finding a good bi girl, let UPITT know we are definitely out there. Maybe the problem is that I live in the Bible Belt, but finding a man who is open to MMF threesomes is nigh impossible. I don't know how many times I have resigned myself to good ol' fashion monogamy when what really want is an open-minded kinky bi man.

Hard Up BI Babe Answering

P.S. There is no accidental anal. Thanks for a the clarification on your part.

Since it's only been a guy that has defended accidental anal, how about from a woman's perspective? About once a month, my husband will accidentally anal me. I know it's an accident and he's learned to pull back when the slip happens.

You see, sometimes a woman gets wet enough that it's a slip 'n slide down there already. If you're having sex in missionary at the right angle, the guy's penis will rub against the back wall of the vagina. Take the above and add long, fast strokes where the head is barely between the labia, it's easy to see how a penis could follow the wrong slip 'n slide right in.

My husband LOVES that position and loves to fuck me with those strokes. I'm not a fan of the position, but I'm GGG of it. When he's really into it and just enjoying it, he slips. The first time or two, he did go in my ass. He felt terrible. Now if it happens, he'll realize it and move so it doesn't go in. Between both of us quickly moving, it'll only press against rectum. Still hurts and sex is still over (he doesn't get to finish), but I'm not getting fully penetrated.

My advice for the original lady is to talk to her boyfriend and set boundaries. Yes slipping happens, but there are consequences for it.

Not All Men Want Sneaky Anal

Really, Dan? You don't think anal happens by accident? I'm surprised and dismayed you're stuck in a mutually exclusive perspective (there is no accidental anal)—BOTH accidental and "accidental" happen! I can testify to a legit accident: roughish sex with vigorous thrusting, accidental full withdrawal, she zigged, I zagged right at the wrong moment of fast re-insertion. Oops. Trauma. Not fun. But an accident!

Raise Your Game

So, here's a thing: I'm a 37 year old hetero man, and I've had accidental anal. And not even realized it until after the fact. It was in the shower (soapy! slippery!), standing up (awkward positioning!), and I inadvertently tried to put my penis in a hole a little further back (i.e. closer to me) than I'd intended. My (long term, GGG) girlfriend at the time stopped me and repositioned, and we had vaginal sex for a bit, until I slipped out... and thanks to the awkward positioning (me behind her, both standing vertically), I inadvertently initiated anal AGAIN. This time, my GF didn't say anything until after we were done, at which point she said something along the lines of "After it didn't feel good the first time, I didn't think anal would work but that was pretty good." I was 22, and pretty embarrassed, so I played it off as intentional. But... when you're (relatively) young and (relatively) inexperienced, and things are already slippery, and you've been fooling around for a while, and you're in an awkward position already, and you've never had anal sex before and don't know what it feels like, and you're not really looking where you're going? You CAN accidentally slip it in there.

There's a long essay in here somewhere about how I was too ignorant of a woman's body to have any fucking clue what I was doing, and a critique of me for not checking in with my girlfriend regarding what she was feeling, and a critique of her for not saying something out loud about our "first attempt at anal," but I'm pretty sure that all gets filed under D, for Deplorable Sexual Education, or possibly B, for Body Shame. In any case, it's worth stressing once more that I didn't intend to have (or realize I was having) anal sex until after the fact, and that (as per the first time) I would absolutely have stopped had my girlfriend said something. This is also a thing that has happened once (that I know about, come to think of it...) in my entire life, in 20 years of on and off sexual activity. Which—well, you do the math. Not a common occurrence.

Other Orifice Penis Slip

To the girl and the people you talk to about accidental anal penetration, I must respectfully call bullshit. As a 54-year-old guy who has had sex with literally hundreds of women over my lifetime, I have enough experience to qualify as an expert. What they're saying is accidental is a really a ruse to get somebody to do anal. There is absolutely no reason to pull your dick completely out of a pussy while you're having sex ever and if you're going so fast that it accidentally pulls itself all the way out and you slam it back in you're definitely doing something wrong or at least something that's bound to hurt you or her. Everyone should be able to have enjoyable sex without the fear of some guy pulling his dick out so that it can "accidentally" go into somebody's rectum.

I think once they tried playing around with anal and she balked at it, he conveniently offers "let's use a butt plug as a protective measure", so she gets used to the anal aspect of having something in her ass, so maybe later they try using a real dick. Sounds like an elaborate ruse to get something he wanted in the first place but I'm just guessing.

Expert Dickerer

First time writing, but I wanted to add another vote on the accidental anal issue: Yes! It does happen! And, yes, I think it could absolutely happen four times in a year with no malicious intent. Just depends on the angle and amount of slipperiness, etc. Have loved your columns for DECADES now.

A.B. In S.F.

While I understand that many straight men are horrible creatures who are sexually naive and aggressive which makes a dangerous combination I also think it is dangerous to write off all claims of accidental anal as intentional. I've had accidental anal in that I didn't know I was having anal. The partner I was with and myself had talked about having it but in my experience the girls I have had it with did it more to please me than for any self satisfaction. I'm not into that because the thing that turns me on the most is my partner being turned on. I prefer to be dominant but don't mind being more submissive if that's what my partner is into. I digress.

I had just returned from a trip to Atlanta and pulled into my partners house and ran upstairs where she was sleeping. We hadn't seen each other in weeks and we're both sexually frustrated at this point. Very hot passionate sex followed. She was so wet and at one point pulled me out of her before putting me back in. We fell asleep naked and tangled. Fast forward a couple days and she brings up the anal we had. I thought she was joking. How could I have not noticed the difference? I honestly had no idea it happened, I probably would have showered had I known. Maybe not though.

Yes, many straight white men are the scourge of the earth but it's becoming a thing where they can be categorically made to seem so when it is not necessarily the case. I only say this because I've been written off in conversation simply for being a straight white man who could not possibly understand any progressive ideals from my position of privilege. I hadn't said anything offensive I only wished to be included in the conversation. I also hadn't read the original piece only WASSUP and your response to it. Four times does sound a bit odd.

Distracted In Cleveland

Another lady here to say accidental anal can be a real thing. Been with my love for 15 years. We both enjoy (non-accidental) anal so it's not like it's forbidden fruit. When we first got involved we used to have accidents up to every other month or more if we regularly did missionary. His erection is perpendicular to his body. This sometimes cause his penis to slip out of "the correct hole" and into "the wrong hole" while we are enthusiastically in the middle of missionary. He is always terribly embarrassed when this happened and it totally put a damper on sexy times for both of us as neither of us find pain to be a turn on (though we will make jokes later). As you can guess, we don't do missionary as much any more. There's plenty of other positions that work better for us (me on top, him on me when I'm on my stomach, etc.). I hope some of your readers understand this can be a genuine thing. There are probably some serious dicks with dicks who fake accidents, but there are genuinely good guys who's anatomy shaped more to be accident-prone.

Ms. M Loves Mr. L