In which Cosmo is surprisingly enlightened, while still managing to spectacularly Get It Wrong
So, this article showed up on my Facebook feed today: Girls Who Say They Love Blowjobs Are Ruining My Life
I was prepared to be really annoyed as soon as I saw the title. Then I actually read the article, and my feelings got a lot more complicated.
What amazed me is, it seems the point that the article is really trying to make is about societal pressures for women to perform sexuality. Honestly, what the author is railing against seems to be the pressure for women who want to be seen as cool/not prudish/sexually liberated/etc to put on the shell that Clarisse Thorn spoke of in The Myth Of The Sex-Crazy Nympho Dream Girl.
However, this is still Cosmo we’re dealing with, so it’s not surprising that the piece went on to fail spectacularly. Because the author’s response to this phenomenon is to put the blame on the women who succumb to those social pressures, accusing them, essentially, of being attention-seeking sheep who want to think they’re speshul (“unicorn” is the exact term she uses) and telling them they’re responsible for making life harder for women everywhere.
Moreover, she declares that any woman who claims to genuinely enjoy giving oral sex is either self-deluded or blatantly lying.
Now, you know me. I have a bit of an oral fixation, and I’m not exactly shy about admitting it. So I rather take exception to this assertion.
Why does she believe that I and all the other women like me are liars? Because “there is not a woman in the world who physiologically gets her rocks off on unreciprocated, random dick-sucking” (emphasis hers).
Now, this statement might well be true (though I’m not 100% convinced, because just how much of an erogenous organ the brain is can be pretty incredible sometimes). But it’s completely missing the point! There are more reasons to like, even love, something than that it makes you come. Yes, even when it comes to sexual activities. Making “physiologically getting your rocks off on dick-sucking” the criteria for legitimately “loving giving blowjobs” is a huge leap and conflates two concepts that are very much not the same. (All other psychological possibilities aside, it doesn’t even consider the difference between what gets someone off and what turns them on. I have never and would never claim that sucking cock gets me off. Sure makes me horny as hell, though.)
And why is that “unreciprocated, random” part necessary? For one thing, it seems to imply that those criteria are required for legitimate enjoyment of anything sexual. Personally, it doesn’t matter how much an activity might make me come, or how supremely physically pleasurable it might be to me, I wouldn't be comfortable doing it with a random stranger. Does that mean I can’t legitimately like anything sexually? (As it happens, I’ve never actually had an orgasm. And I’m not horribly bothered by that. I’m sure there’s no end to the ways the author would de-legitimize my experiences.)
I was prepared to be really annoyed as soon as I saw the title. Then I actually read the article, and my feelings got a lot more complicated.
What amazed me is, it seems the point that the article is really trying to make is about societal pressures for women to perform sexuality. Honestly, what the author is railing against seems to be the pressure for women who want to be seen as cool/not prudish/sexually liberated/etc to put on the shell that Clarisse Thorn spoke of in The Myth Of The Sex-Crazy Nympho Dream Girl.
However, this is still Cosmo we’re dealing with, so it’s not surprising that the piece went on to fail spectacularly. Because the author’s response to this phenomenon is to put the blame on the women who succumb to those social pressures, accusing them, essentially, of being attention-seeking sheep who want to think they’re speshul (“unicorn” is the exact term she uses) and telling them they’re responsible for making life harder for women everywhere.
Moreover, she declares that any woman who claims to genuinely enjoy giving oral sex is either self-deluded or blatantly lying.
Now, you know me. I have a bit of an oral fixation, and I’m not exactly shy about admitting it. So I rather take exception to this assertion.
Why does she believe that I and all the other women like me are liars? Because “there is not a woman in the world who physiologically gets her rocks off on unreciprocated, random dick-sucking” (emphasis hers).
Now, this statement might well be true (though I’m not 100% convinced, because just how much of an erogenous organ the brain is can be pretty incredible sometimes). But it’s completely missing the point! There are more reasons to like, even love, something than that it makes you come. Yes, even when it comes to sexual activities. Making “physiologically getting your rocks off on dick-sucking” the criteria for legitimately “loving giving blowjobs” is a huge leap and conflates two concepts that are very much not the same. (All other psychological possibilities aside, it doesn’t even consider the difference between what gets someone off and what turns them on. I have never and would never claim that sucking cock gets me off. Sure makes me horny as hell, though.)
And why is that “unreciprocated, random” part necessary? For one thing, it seems to imply that those criteria are required for legitimate enjoyment of anything sexual. Personally, it doesn’t matter how much an activity might make me come, or how supremely physically pleasurable it might be to me, I wouldn't be comfortable doing it with a random stranger. Does that mean I can’t legitimately like anything sexually? (As it happens, I’ve never actually had an orgasm. And I’m not horribly bothered by that. I’m sure there’s no end to the ways the author would de-legitimize my experiences.)