Abstract
Forty years ago, researchers documented changes in vascular and muscular activity within the anal canal of women and men who engaged in sexual self-stimulation. Vascular changes were assessed using a photoplethysmograph that aimed to detect changes in pelvic vasocongestion. An important advantage of detecting sexual response within the anal canal is that the device, its anatomical placement, and the data output are identical for women and men, therefore facilitating gender comparisons of response patterns. In this study, the vaginal photoplethysmograph (VPP), the most common measure of genital response in women, was administered intra-anally as an anal photoplethysmograph (APG) to examine its validity and sensitivity as an indicator of sexual response. The final sample comprised 20 women and 20 men who were exposed to 12, 90-s sexual and nonsexual film clips while their APG responses were recorded. Participants also rated their sexual arousal and affective responses to the stimuli. There was evidence that APG responses were specific to sexual stimuli and were sensitive to erotic intensity in women. The degree of discrimination between sexual and nonsexual stimuli was lower in men. Unlike most sexual psychophysiological studies, the positive correlation between physiological and self-reported sexual arousal was stronger in women than in men. There was a relatively high number of data artifacts and the waveform morphology was uncharacteristic of that typically observed with VPP. The potential role of anal musculature interference on the APG signal is discussed, as well as avenues for future research.
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Notes
Gender refers to the behaviors or traits associated with femininity or masculinity in a particular culture, and sex refers to the genitals and secondary sex characteristics related to femaleness or maleness; van Anders (2015) recommended the term gender/sex in contexts when gender and sex cannot be disentangled.
Carmichael et al. (1987, 1994) also demonstrated that electromyography of anal musculature can be used to detect sexual response using the same methodology for women and men; however, more recent evidence suggests that anal electromyography is not specific to sexual stimulation and is sensitive to other emotional states, such as anxiety (e.g., Both & Laan, 2007; Both et al., 2012; Hannan-Leith et al., 2019).
A similar pattern of results was found when these analyses were performed with mean-minus-baseline for women: The High-Intensity Sexual stimulus elicited greater mean-minus-baseline APA than all four nonsexual stimulus categories, but there was less discrimination between the High- and Low-Intensity Sexual categories, and between the Low-Intensity Sexual and Nonsexual Interaction categories.
Given the large age range for men, age was included as a covariate in an additional ANOVA; controlling for age did not change the pattern of results. The overall pattern of results was also similar for men’s mean-minus-baseline APA, but the effect size of the interaction between Stimulus Category and Probe Orientation decreased to ηp2 = 0.12, 90% CI [0.00, 0.23].
A subsidiary analysis showed that continuous self-reported sexual arousal did not vary by probe orientation in men, ruling out the possibility that differences in APA patterns for the left and ventral probe orientations were related to differences in the felt experience of sexual arousal between probe orientation conditions.
When a similar question was asked in a recent VPP study in our laboratory (Sawatsky & Lalumière, 2020), women responded “not at all” (67%), “a little bit” (30%), and “definitely” (3%) uncomfortable.
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Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank Olivia Provost-Walker for her assistance as a research assistant and to Dr. Jonathan Huber for providing consultation on anatomy and participant inclusion criteria. This work was supported by a Discovery Grant from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC; Grant Number 385778-2010; MLL), a Doctoral NSERC Canada Graduate Scholarship (MLS), and the University of Ottawa.
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Sawatsky, M.L., Suschinsky, K.D., Lavrinsek, S. et al. Can the Vaginal Photoplethysmograph and Its Associated Methodology Be Used to Assess Anal Vasocongestion in Women and Men?. Arch Sex Behav 50, 3865–3888 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-021-02069-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-021-02069-7