Everyone has an anus. But everyone’s asshole, or “back hole,” does not receive the same treatment. Broadly, _anal_ refers to anything related to or involving the anus and its proximate area. As a keyword for gender and sexuality, _anal_ provides an alternative framework for social theory that decenters the phallus and reproduction as well as the normality these impose and imply. By centering the anus rather than the penis, the term becomes a critique of patriarchal values and social hierarchies (Hocquenghem [1972] 1993). The focus of analysis shifts from traditional masculinity to gender ambiguity, from obligatory labor to pleasurable experience, from the chaste to the erotic, from pride to shame. Anality as an orientation, an approach, and a practice seeks to evade heterosexist life-course models. The back hole is a site of intense anxiety, signifying heteromasculine penetration, power relations, and deviance. Scholars point to Freud’s anal stage of psychosexual development in children as the origin of anal thinking (Freud 1905). As the anus produces excrement, that part of the body and associated practices are regarded as dirty (Douglas 1966). Anal sex is aligned with homosexuality and improper heterosexuality, heavily regulated in many cultures at various times. While homosexual penetrative and...