{"id":3145,"date":"2012-04-13T10:35:33","date_gmt":"2012-04-13T15:35:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/citings\/?p=3145"},"modified":"2012-05-02T10:15:37","modified_gmt":"2012-05-02T15:15:37","slug":"anxiety-and-egalitarianism-in-the-bedroom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/2012\/04\/13\/anxiety-and-egalitarianism-in-the-bedroom\/","title":{"rendered":"Anxiety and Egalitarianism in the Bedroom"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Photo taken from the Sociological Images Blog<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I never thought I\u2019d be writing the words \u201cfellatio\u201d or \u201ccunnilingus\u201d for an academic purpose (or frankly ever), but here I find myself exploring recent musing on the decline of the, ahem, blow job. Near the end of March,\u00a0Esquire\u2019s\u00a0<\/em>Geoff Dyer reported\u00a0<\/a>that the act has fallen on hard times: in an informal survey of 10 of his male friends, 8 preferred pleasing their partners to receiving oral sex.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s easy for sociologists to pooh-pooh the methodologies of this \u201csurvey,\u201d as surveying 10 friends is hardly scientific.\u00a0 Further, an increase in cunnilingus does not necessarily signal a decrease in fellatio.\u00a0 But still, several intellectuals have recently explained why they think Dyer\u2019s article might be on to something.\u00a0 In an essay on his own website, Pasadena City College history and gender studies professor Hugo Schwyzer explained,<\/p>\n

In an era of rising male body dysmorphia, we know<\/a> that more men than ever before are self-conscious about their appearance; it’s conceivable that anxiety about their size (driven by comparison to well-hung porn stars) or even how their penises’ smell has some guys anxious to avoid the intense focus that comes with a woman’s mouth on their manparts.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In essence, Schwyzer thinks that cunnilingus has become a new way for men to demonstrate sexual competence and deal with performance anxieties.<\/p>\n

Sociologist Michael Kimmel<\/a> also believes that Dyer may be on to something, though he finds some fault with an assumption in Schwyzer\u2019s article<\/a>: that giving and receiving head mean the same thing.\u00a0 In fact, sexuality research suggests that the meaning of the act may not be symmetrical.<\/p>\n

When straight men describe their experiences with oral sex, they talk about power. This holds whether receiving fellatio: \u201cI feel so powerful when I see her kneeling in front of me,\u201d or<\/em> performing cunnilingus: \u201cBeing able to get her off with my tongue makes me feel so powerful.\u201d Heterosexual men tend to experience the giving and receiving of oral sex as an expression of their power. By contrast, straight women perceive both giving and receiving oral sex from the position of powerlessness\u2014not necessarily because they are forced into these acts, but because \u201cit makes him happy\u201d to receive oral sex and<\/em>\u00a0to perform it. So oral sex, like intercourse, allows him to feel \u201clike a man,\u201d regardless of who does what to whom.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So what happens to men\u2019s sexual experience when women desire reciprocity and<\/em> actually want to perform oral sex?\u00a0 According to Kimmel, in a traditional sense, sex was a conquest for men.\u00a0 But is there still victory if women like the \u201cconquering\u201d?<\/p>\n

It\u2019s difficult to say, though if the answer is \u201cno,\u201d perhaps we need to rethink what sex means to straight men.\u00a0 Kimmel asks,<\/p>\n

Can we both conquer and surrender to pleasure? Or can we dispense with martial metaphors\u2026 entirely, and simply pleasure and be pleasured? In other words, can heterosexual men embrace the liberatory promise of queer sex\u2014the freeing of sexual pleasure from gender inequality?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As Kimmel puts it, can there really be anything sexier than equality?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I never thought I\u2019d be writing the words \u201cfellatio\u201d or \u201ccunnilingus\u201d for an academic purpose (or frankly ever), but here I find myself exploring recent musing on the decline of the, ahem, blow job. Near the end of March,\u00a0Esquire\u2019s\u00a0Geoff Dyer reported\u00a0that the act has fallen on hard times: in an informal survey of 10 of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":337,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[39074],"tags":[120,176],"class_list":["post-3145","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sightings","tag-sex","tag-sexuality"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3145","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/337"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3145"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3145\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3210,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3145\/revisions\/3210"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3145"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3145"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3145"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}