The remaining four unconvincingly argue oral sex isn’t that cool anyway.
Seriously though...A report released today says that one in five US teenagers have had oral sex, largely because they view it as less dangerous than intercourse.
Okay already; I get it! Everyone is all oral sex crazy these days. Teens are doing it all time and adults can’t stop talking about how teens are doing it.
What has annoyed me the most is that generally when folks discuss the prevalence of oral sex among teens, it’s always framed in this girls-are-getting-taken-advantage-of argument. This assumes (in a total hetereosexual context) that girls are the ones performing and that if they are giving oral sex, it’s a bad and victimizing thing. So annoying.
The report says however, that “it was more common for boys to have performed oral sex on girls than vice versa.” Huh. Now how many people do you think will argue that these boys are getting taken advantage of?
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This is great! Teen girls getting head is very low risk and highly likely to produce orgasm. The guys are learning female anatomy, strategies to pleasure women, and a broader repertoire than PV intercourse. What's not to like?
Well, I will only speak for myself here and say that in my experience, (plenty), what I didn't like when some guys were giving oral sex is that it really didn't seem to be about giving me pleasure at all. Repeatedly it turned out that with a new guy he was just proud of how far he got with me, or if we were in a relationship the guy was just determined to prove what a stud he was by getting me off that way.
Plenty of times when it was clear that I wasn't going to orgasm, and I really didn't care, and just wanted to kiss or whatever, guys would want to continue - FOR THEIR OWN EGO GRATIFICATION OF BEING ABLE TO SAY (OR KNOW)THAT THEY GOT ME OFF. It was clearly about THEM, not pleasuring ME. If they really wanted to please me, they would have stopped when I wanted them to and just kissed and cuddled, or whatever. I've even had them admit that it is about their own ego gratification and not me. (Although some admit that when I enjoy it that's nice too...)
So, for me, as much as sometimes I have enjoyed guys giving me oral sex, other times the above is "what not to like". I'm guessing with teenage boys these days it may be somewhat similar - more a notch on their belt of achievements, rather than a serious desire to please the girl they are with. ("Yeah Dude, I went down on her and I gave her FIVE orgasms!" Ie. A lot of boys and men brag about this sort of thing because they feel it makes them look like such a MAN. Yawn...)
Good point, Fiona. Belt-notching objectification in any form is patriarchal. From the stats, it's difficult to tell how much of sexual behavior is actual intimacy, i.e. two people _interacting_ sexually, and how much is just a man sexually acting on a woman.
Recognizing this problem, though, all we can really tell about the conduct is how much STI and pregnancy risk women are at from the conduct. On that front, I'm thinking that lots of men going down on women may be doing it for the wrong reasons, but they're exposing these women to a lot less risk than other sexual behavior would. So that's something, at least.
In this age of deliberately inadequate sex education and virginity pledges, I'm very worried about teens having unprotected PV intercourse and PA intercourse. In addition to all the emotional damage that comes of sexual relations among teens in a patriarchal culture, those activities bring significant physical risk to the table.
vagina rules!!!