So there is this huge debate going on in the feminist blogosphere. It started at Twisty’s and has hopschotched all fricken over. I weighed in at Twisty’s originally and then got caught in the “holy fuck I have to work 18 hours a day for the next month” mode and didn’t realize it had become such a big fucking deal.
What is the big fucking deal about?
Blow jobs. Or specifically, whether or not the act of delivering a blow job is an act of submission and humiliation to the patriarchy.
Those of you who know me in real life know that I am one of the most outspoken supporters of any act designed to lead to orgasm, and my blow job skills are legendary. I do not consider it an act of submission as long as I get to choose to do it. And I get a big fucking sense of power in getting anyone- male or female- off. It’s not a submissive thing at all to make another person’s knees shake and head explode. It is not a submissive act to willingly hold someone’s most sensitive parts between your teeth. And anyone who doesn’t understand the power received by giving someone else an orgasm is a selfish lover who I would never let in my bed. I wouldn’t be insulted by someone yelling “fuck yeah” and giving me a high five after they had just given me the be-all-end-all-multiple- multiples orgasm (someday I’ll tell ya all about why I call it going to Switzerland- but another time). They should feel fucking awesome.
And I feel the same way about blow jobs. If I can make someone fall at my feet and stutter incoherently for a good long time afterwards- I feel fucking awesome.
This is not to say it is a requirement, but I would never fuck a guy who isn’t willing to go down on me with enthusiasm regularly. Some guys don’t enjoy blow jobs. Some girls have horrible experiences of being forced to gag on a cock when they didn’t want to. Neither one should be required to do something that gives them no pleasure and no one should ever do it because they think they fucking have to. But I will be damned if someone is going to tell me that I shouldn’t like sex or a sex act because I am a girl. Whether they mean to or not- the anti-blow job brigade is just as much a tool of the fucking patriarchy as the anti- sex before marriage people. It’s just one more excuse to make girls feel bad about doing something they might fucking enjoy.
Yeah- I wrote fucking a lot in this post. I really hate it when people tell me what I should or shouldn’t be doing for pleasure. Asswipes.
My place of employment isn’t going to be happy with all the colorful language and topic choice, so I have to comment before I go to work… and I won’t be able to read any replies until I get home. Boo.
anyhow…
How is the anti-blow job brigade a tool of the patriarchy? It seems like it’s more of a hyper-conservative religious-right agenda and their “missionary-only” mindset that would be involved with something like that. The patriarchy, it would seem, would be generally VERY supportive of an increase in blow-job frequency, on account of the domination mindset often associated with male supporters of the patriarchy.
And do you not think that the anti-sex-before-marraige mindset targets young males as much as it targets young females? Having grown up in the right-leaning protestant culture, I can contend that it’s an across-the-gender-line issue. In the church culture, you can be made to feel guilty about sex whether you’re a boy or a girl.
Sure- both can be made to feel guilty, but only girls are dirty whores for enjoying sex. Boys are supposed to enjoy it and then feel bad about it. Girls are supposed to feel bad the whole way through, unless they are having sex with their “one true love who they give the gift of their virginity to” load of crap.
The reason why it’s a tool of the patriarchy is that the patriarchy likes it’s girls to stay fresh- like using a pussy for what it was intended to do will somehow wear it out. People will still follow their biological programming to get pleasure wherever they can, so it won’ty stop blow jobs- it will enocourge blow jobs in the most demeaning way because it will make girls feel really awful about themselves, and when they feel awful it’s so much easier to control them.
I have never seen myself as degraded when I go down on a woman. If a woman I like likes to give head, I will tend to want to keep her around. Yeah, its kind of a relationship decider for me, but not the only one. But I will also end a relationship if a woman doesn’t like foreplay. Bottom-line, I like women who like sex.
I can’t speak for everyone, but I think the whole stigma about being a slut is changing. Some people, men and women, are seen as irresponsible, desparate or otherwise if all they do is think about and pursue sexual interaction. I also think that women who choose to sleep around, at least the ones in my circle, are just women who choose to sleep around.
The whole feeling degraded about the act is a leftover that we all need to get over. Just because your a leftie, doesn’t mean you cannot have righty guilt.
Love this line!
R. Mildred at Punkassblog opened her response with a succinct, “Do you know what Twisty? Bite Me” and went on to excoriate the anti-oral argument, noting that “those of us with two brain cells to rub together and an ability to actually connect in a sexually intimate way with other human beings of a male persuasion tend to be able to find ways to invite men into our beds without turning it into a threesome with the patriarchy.”
Wonder – I think your boy/girl definitions might come from the fact that you’re a girl. Girls regard other girls as suspect, on account of potential competition. I think guys (myself) included instinctively view an outgoing popular girl as being level headed and cool, whereas I view guys that get along well with the girls a bit of a player, and the kind of guy from which I would warn my female friends to stay away.
That’s a bit of some internal sexism in both of our cases, right? We prejudge members of our own sex that we view as competition. But my experience with the church is still that both guys and girls are given the same line regarding sexuality, specifically sex outside of marriage.
Jovial, yes, internal sexism may play a part…
but a few years ago, I read an article where the leader(male) of a prominent Christian ministry expressed his policy that to avoid “temptation” or “the appearance of evil” he would never meet alone with a female business associate, even though he would meet alone with a male.
I emailed this article to some Christian men whom I considered friends, and their response was something along the lines of “well, of course”
it didn’t even occur to them that there was anything wrong with that line of thinking.