So by and large, and in roughly equal numbers, both men and women report they enjoy receiving oral sex. It’s not universal — some people think it’s nasty, some people freak out at the idea of receiving that much erotic attention, some people it just plain doesn’t do anything for, etc. But then of course nothing about human behavior appears to be universal. But it’s pretty generally true: even if it doesn’t get you off, when done with good will and intention it it generally feels very nice.
So as I was drifting to sleep, thinking about, of all unrelated things, the economics of gendered microlending, it popped into my head that it seemed odd that cultural narratives assume that, when spontaneously offered, men are generally expected to enthusiastically accept offers of blowjobs whereas women are generally expected to decline.
I totally get that in terms of accepting such offers the distributions of rewards and consequences, of assumptions about reputation, of physical and social vulnerability, and all that are heavily skewed in favor of men and to the detriment of women. So this isn’t, at all, about whether it’s right or wrong, good or bad, or even (I think, importantly) true or false that men are more likely to spontaneously say yes than women. I even understand, very well, that men are generally expected to pretend to be enthusiastic even if they’re not comfortable or not interested, and vice versa for women. And it’s definitely not that I think all women should say yes or all men should say no. Nothing like that.
I’m just wondering if that would be a good index of just how out of balance we are when it comes to social expectations for men and women.
Thoughts?
Okay, terms need to be
Submitted by SnowdropExplodes (not verified) on Thu, 2010-08-05 13:14.Okay, terms need to be defined in this piece, I think: you’ve said “oral sex” and “blow job”, but not “fellatio” or “cunnilingus” (and in my understanding “blow job” is a synonym only of fellatio, not of cunnilingus?) so it’s a bit confusing here – who is offering what, and who is accepting what?
I could assume that you mean women accepting cunnilingus and men accepting fellatio offers (which is implied by “receive” in the first sentence), but equally you could get the offer “would you like to suck my cock?”/“would you like to lick my pussy?” so nothing is guaranteed about that assumption. And I think the type of offer might make a significant difference (it would be interesting to know what the ratio of “yes” answers by gender would be to those offers).
Doh! Actually of course
Submitted by figleaf on Thu, 2010-08-05 13:33.Doh! Actually of course you’re right about the terms, SnowdropExplodes. I was thinking about responses to invitations to receive fellatio and invitations to receive cunnilingus.
I could have been less vague.
fl
Personally, performing
Submitted by Ckazaal (not verified) on Thu, 2010-08-05 14:53.Personally, performing cunnilingus has always been somewhat more intimidating than performing fellatio, and perhaps I’m not the only one. Perhaps it’s not that cunnilingus is more likely to be turned down, but that fellatio is more likely to be offered? I know that over time I’ve certainly had more opportunity for giving fellatio, and so I feel reasonably assured that it will be well received.
Maybe it’s a chicken-and-egg problem with cunnilingus. Lack of practice breeds lack of confidence breeds lack of practice, etc.
But then again, I’ve heard horror stories from men about receiving oral sex from people who had no idea how to smoke pole. I trysted once with a guy who claimed to never have had a decent blow job. Though now that I think about it, I suppose that was likely a pick-up line that I, in my youth, naively fell for. Ha. Little did he know that such subtlety was not strictly necessary with me. ;)
I think I would have a hard
Submitted by chingona (not verified) on Thu, 2010-08-05 17:21.I think I would have a hard time believing that it really was a no-strings-attached offer. And once out of my pants, I’d be pretty vulnerable. Men, of course, are also vulnerable when someone has their manhood in their mouth, but I don’t get the impression that men think much about potential danger when deciding whether to take up an offer.
Maybe I just didn’t get the
Submitted by Sungold (not verified) on Thu, 2010-08-05 20:24.Maybe I just didn’t get the memo, but I had slightly more offers of cunnilingus (in my adventuresome youth) than my own offers of blowjobs. I always said yes. (Why not? Well, one was an ex-boyfriend, and prudence would have dictated keeping my distance, but actually he knew what he was doing and …)
We all had fun and I don’t recall ever being slut-shamed. So I don’t know where you get this notion of gender imbalance. At least for a magic moment in the early ’80s in California, a gal could receive pleasure as shamelessly as a guy.
Maybe I was luckier than the young women you knew back then?
In my personal experience and
Submitted by Clarisse Thorn (not verified) on Thu, 2010-08-05 23:51.In my personal experience and that of many people I’ve read (ever see Caitlin Flanagan’s hysterical blowjob articles?), I’ve found that oral sex expectations are seriously out of whack, and yes, I think it is gendered. The stories of young women being expected / pressured / pressuring themselves out of societal mores to give blowjobs, while there is no parallel expectation of young men, are so numerous that I’d believe it was happening even if it didn’t match up with my experience.
I’ve thought about this a lot — it had a profound impact on my early sexual experiences and continues to have a minor one today. But I’m not sure what the cause is. It may partly be lack of practice / confidence as suggested by the second commenter, but that doesn’t really answer the question of why this dynamic exists, because fellatio isn’t really easier to figure out than cunnilingus, and there are zillions of easily Internettable resources available to instruct on both — so why should men have less practice, less confidence, etc?
Perhaps it partly arises from the fact that most young women communicate about sex and relationships with each other all the time — we’re socialized to be trading information pretty much constantly — and men aren’t. (This is one of those cases where I think men generally get the short end of the stick, for the record.) Perhaps it partly arises from the fact that young women are socialized to believe that we need to give men some form of sex if we want them to be interested in us, and so even women who don’t like or feel very unconfident about blowjobs are more likely to offer them than men, who feel less such pressure. And perhaps it arises from the fact that men are socialized to believe that they deserve sex and orgasms in a way that women aren’t. (This is one of those cases in which women get the way short end of the stick.) But going deeper than those causes? I don’t know.