Testing the Benefits of Anal Plug Sizes in Females
This article is a lightly-edited summary of our interview with Dr. Tomomi Kamakura.
While there can be kernels of wisdom in anecdotal evidence, scientific studies using rigorous methods give us a better understanding of the world. That’s the world of Tomomi Kumakura PhD, a researcher from Japan in the field of human sexual behavior. Dr. Kumakura was aware of the trend of more women wearing anal plugs frequently, and in larger sizes, and had heard various theories about the reasons and the effects.
“It wasn’t that I was skeptical, exactly, of the supposed benefits of extensive anal plug wearing. I didn’t know what to think either way, so it was out of legitimate curiosity that I began studies on the subject,” says Dr. Kamakura. “I had already done numerous studies on sexuality, sometimes on common sexual behaviors, sometimes on niche or fetish behaviors. It felt like a natural topic for me to investigate.”
In her first study, Dr. Kamakura recruited subjects for five different groups of women. One was a control group that did not wear any anal toys, while the other four groups were all frequent anal toy wearers, usually at least 12 hours per day. These four groups separated subjects based on the diameter of their anal toys, measured at the toy’s neck. “We could have separated based on diameter at the toy’s widest part,” Kamakura explains, “but I felt it best to use the actual dilation of the asshole as the main metric.”
Group 1. Control group. (0” diameter.)
Group 2. Diameter: up to 0.5”.
Group 3. Diameter up to 1”.
Group 4. Diameter: up to 1.5”.
Group 5. Diameter up to 2”.
DAILY ACTIVITIES BECAME SEXUALIZED
All four plug-wearing groups reported sexual thoughts and feelings in situations that differed from the control group. “It was a pronounced difference,” she explained. “Almost no women in the control group reported sexual thoughts or feelings while on the subway or at food market, for example, but this was common for all four control groups.”
Women often reported that movements, or even just sitting, caused various anal sensations from their plugs. It’s hard to know whether the sensations themselves gave rise to sexual thoughts, or if it was a reminder of doing a “kinky” thing, or if was the fear of being caught, or if it was simply reminding the women to think about their own assholes, which then turned them on. Studies like these have trouble determining such exact causes and effects, says Kamakura, but the data clearly showed that all four plugged groups were experiencing more arousal than the control group.
This finding caused Kamakura to survey the subjects about their boredom levels. She wondered how they would respond to questions about whether they felt they were stuck in a rut. “I expected that that experimental groups would be a lot less likely to feel stuck-in-a-rut, and the data bore that out clearly.”
NEW ANAL-RELATED SEXUAL BEHAVIORS
Most plugged subjects reported that they preferred their asses to be full when having an orgasm.
“We asked frequently-plugged women if they preferred orgasms with or without their anal plugs inserted, and the vast majority said the pressure felt when plugged increased the pleasure of the orgasm. Some, by contrast, said that the issue was they felt too empty without a plug and it was a bad, distracting feeling,” she says.
She surveyed the subjects several times to look for differences in sexual behaviors compared to the control group. One of the more pronounced differences was use of anal vibrators. The control group of unplugged women rarely, if ever, used anal vibrators. The plugged groups tended to use them much more often. Furthermore, the data showed that the groups who wore larger plugs tended to use anal vibrators more frequently.
“At first, I thought it was a false-finding that resulted from self-selection,” Kamakura explains. “Women who choose to wear plugs probably choose to use anal vibrators more, not BECAUSE they use plugs, but rather because of an underlying affinity to anal stimulation.” To investigate this, she gathered data on how often the four plugged groups used anal vibrators prior to their journey on wearing anal plugs throughout the day. To her surprise, the rates were almost the same. In other words, women in all groups rarely (or never) used anal vibrators, but once they started frequent use of anal plugs, they ALSO started frequent use of anal vibrators.
She found that plugged women had so much experience processing anal stimulation as sexual that they sought out arousal through more anal stimulation. The data showed that this effect increased as the diameter of the plugs increased. Kamakura speculates that it might not be truly linked to plug diameter (though she admits it’s possible), but rather it might be linked to how many years a woman has been wearing a daily plug. Subjects with larger plugs had also been wearing plugs for more years, so it’s difficult to disentangle those variables.
They still experienced vaginal pleasure, but the plugged subjects had a second, powerful alternate route to pleasure as well.
BIGGER ANAL PLUGS: BIGGER EFFECTS
Some effects were shared by all four plugged groups roughly equally, such as the plugged groups feeling less bored with life and having more daily activities sexualized. But use of anal vibrators was different in that it actually increased with plug diameter. Kamakura wondered if other effects increase with plug diameter as well.
She found two effects that did correlate to plug size: feeling of sexual empowerment and reduction of anxiety.
She asked subjects if they felt sexually trapped or controlled in an unpleasant way. The group that felt this way the most was group 2, the plugged women with the smallest plug diameters. This negative emotion was more prevalent in this group than in the control group. “It seems that newly plugged girls sometimes felt pressured into it by their peers, or by societal expectations. Over half of newly plugged girls reported that they were now wearing plugs entirely because they wanted to, a significant number felt they had to in order to fit in and meet expectations.”
Kamakura says she was briefly concerned at the implications until she looked at the rest of the data. This notion was completely absent from the other three plugged groups. Furthermore, the bigger the plugs, the more likely a woman was to report sexual empowerment in a positive way.
“The anal dilation process appears to embolden women. While some start skittish, anxious, and hesitant, they become more confident in time,” she says. “They gain confidence from being able to achieve the difficult goal of wearing larger and larger plugs, and they gain more confidence still from experiencing the pleasure it brings. Once they’re up to larger sizes, they know it feels good and fulfilling, they aren’t going to apologize for it, and they’ve gotten used to the recognition and attention it brings them.”
Reduction in anxiety was also correlated with larger sizes, but a bit less so than sexual empowerment was. Kamakura believes that constant pressure in a woman’s asshole is a calming factor once the body acclimates. Women with anxiety sometimes use prescription drugs for it, but it can be even more effective to have an object to focus on such as an anal plug and the pressure it creates. Another factor is that plugged women have a huge amount of experience relaxing to allow easy insertion. After years of this muscle-relaxing practice, combined with the calming effects of the internal pressure, most women with heightened anxiety tended to mellow out.
THE HUMILIATION FACTOR
“The result that surprised me the most was the humiliation factor. I expected some amount of anal humiliation from basically every plugged subject, and the data definitely showed that. But I also expected this to lessen and disappear with the larger sized plugs of the more experienced groups. It didn’t. It didn’t taper off at all.”
Virtually all the plugged women reported being embarrassed about several aspects of their situation. This included the fact that they were plugged at all, having to talk about it on the surveys for this study, knowing that other people knew and therefore other people were thinking about their assholes, and more. It also included embarrassment about their own (usually increasing) anal desires.
Usually, feelings lessen over time as something becomes familiar. This is called habituation, and it’s why drug users need stronger and stronger does to get a high. But somehow, girls were not getting used to anal humiliation in a way that made it fade over time. Kamakura has speculations about why, but feels more research is needed to fully explain it.
What she can explain though, is the effects. Only 1-2% of the plugged subjects experienced anal humiliation in a psychologically damaging way. She says she got that minority into therapy immediately in order to help their mental health. But the vast majority of subjects reported increased arousal from it. Some called it excitement, or “the wrongness of it,” or an adrenaline rush. The blushing such embarrassment causes was not confined their cheeks. Dr. Kamakura went so far as to measure vaginal swelling during episodes of anal humiliation and found a very clear correlation.
Women reported the most pleasurable orgasms while their vaginas were blushing and swollen. Dr. Kamakura believes this is the heart of the societal movement toward women being plugged. Even if any given woman is unable to articulate it, there is a “wisdom of the crowds” that we’ve stumbled on that eventually increases female sexual pleasure, satisfaction, and drive. And even if any given man is unaware of that, men are picking up on this instinctively. Men are programmed to want women to become more sexualized, so they can’t help but encourage this whole process.
“I think that’s why society is seeing more and more anally plugged women. It’s a virtuous cycle where men see plugged women as having higher social and sexual value, while women are finding more sexual arousal and satisfaction from it. Those two forces reinforce each other which has made it so mainstream.”
Dr. Kamakura reminds us that this analysis is her expert interpretation of the data, and not a scientific fact. We think it’s a solid analysis with empirical basis, so we thank her for her work and hope for more of it.