Writing for the Good in Bed column at Lemondrop, Ian Kerner has a pretty good take on a common anxiety about receiving oral sex. This one’s from a woman but it goes both ways. Here’s the question and the beginning of Kerner’s answer:
[Q] I’m afraid to let a guy to go down on me because I’ve heard men don’t like performing oral sex. Is it true?
[A] This couldn’t be further from the truth. As the author of “She Comes First” (an entire book that’s basically one long ode to the joys of cunnilingus), I can honestly say that the vast majority of men that I’ve spoken with (and I’ve had the chance to speak to thousands of ‘em) take a gung-ho “viva la vulva” attitude when it comes to going down on their female partners.
In fact, many men complain that they’re not the ones with the issue. As it turns out, many women, like yourself, worry that guys don’t really enjoy going down, or you worry that you’re taking too long, or that your smell/taste might be unappealing.
Source: Lemon Drop
I think a more nuanced way to put this is to say that while there are certainly some men who don’t like to eat their partners there are more women who are anxious enough about their partner’s experience of eating them to not enjoy it themselves. And while fellatio’s near-universality in porn creates a buffer I happen to think the same thing is true for a lot of men and fellatio.
This is another one of those intuition-only hunches but I’m curious whether concern about being eaten is more common among heteros. I wonder because I’ve been thinking about frames of reference lately and it seems like it would be pretty easy for a straight person to project their own ambivalence to eating someone of their own sex into an assumption that everyone else (whether male, bi, or lesbian) would share their ambivalence.
I wonder further that self-referencing ambivalence in hetero men accounts for the unfortunate tendency to associate blowjobs with denigration, as in the epithet “cocksucker.” Which for some reason I don’t think is as common either among hetero women or bi and gay men.
As always your thoughts are welcome. I’m not sure what field of study this would fall under (linguistics? psychology? gender studies?) but if you’ve got links or citations I’d love to know more.
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A simpler explanation, if
Submitted by ozymandias (not verified) on Tue, 2010-11-02 16:51.A simpler explanation, if this GLBT-people-tend-to-be-less-freaked-than-straight-people-about-receiving-oral thing holds true, could be (a) that it is easier to have a heterosexual sex life with no oral than a gay or (especially) a lesbian sex life with no oral and (b) that people who are queer almost have to analyze sex (if only to work out that they have a non-normative sexuality— the same would hold true for kinky and polyamorous people) and are more likely to find sex-positive communities, whereas straight people, particularly if they're not the overthinky type (and not to cast aspersions on any straight people reading this), are more likely to find themselves, in Neal Stephenson's piquant phrasing, in "a gallimaufry of primal impulses, dim suppositions, deranged theories, overheard scraps of conversation, half-remembered pieces of bad advice, and fragments of no-doubt exaggerated anecdotes that amounted to rank superstition"— such as the belief that "all men hate giving oral."
I've met guys who love giving
Submitted by Plymouth (not verified) on Tue, 2010-11-02 21:18.I've met guys who love giving oral and I've met guys who refuse to do it. But none of that really matters to me 'cause I'm just not that into receiving it. It's kinda fun, sometimes, when I'm in the right mood. But most of the time I could take it or leave it and would probably rather leave it.
But sucking cock? Is my favorite kind of sex ever such that if I had to pick only one kind of sex to have for the rest of always I would pick that. If I ran into the male equivalent to me we would be COMPLETELY INCOMPATIBLE as partners.
I've run into a fair number of guys who are surprized by both of these things but I seem to have a harder time convincing them of the former than the latter. Once they see my enthusiasm they totally believe me abouyt how much I love sucking cock (it's pretty easy to demonstrate) but when I say I'm not into getting oral a number of them have wanted to PROVE to me that, no, really, it's good when it's done right. I HAVE had good oral. It's just not my think. It's hard to prove a negative.
I'm not sure that really answers the question you asked, but it's what it made me think.