# Deconstructing Blowjobs **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [June 21, 2006, 5:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/deconstructing-blowjobs/361543 "2006-06-21T05:12:23Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![astro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9dc877/32.png) [@astro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astro)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2006, 5:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/deconstructing-blowjobs/361543/1 "2006-06-21T05:12:23Z")
[Failry amusing article in Salon Magazine](http://www.salon.com/mwt/broadsheet/) - (requires 30 sec ad view) > [@](#): > > Blow-job blowhards > How did the feminist blogs get into a raging debate about blow jobs, feminism and the patriarchy ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2006, 5:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/deconstructing-blowjobs/361543/2 "2006-06-21T05:39:49Z")
I guess I’d have to be an idiot to ask what these women think about cunnilingus. The idea of getting a blowjob used to make me feel - among other things - a little bit guilty because of the “what am I doing for her?/she can’t be enjoying this” angle. But you know what? The writer is probably right about sex acts being ‘sacrosanct.’ A decision by one woman to give head does not degrade all other women. ---
**Author:** ![Malienation](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/4af34b/32.png) [@Malienation](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malienation)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2006, 5:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/deconstructing-blowjobs/361543/3 "2006-06-21T17:39:14Z")
See, now this is the problem with being overly respectfull of women’s “feelings”: since they’re often bullshit, by granting them too much attention, additional bullshit is encouraged. Who the fuck thinks it’s a good idea to drag politics, feminist or otherwise, into the bedroom? That’s what the “anti-gay marriage or anything else amendment” people do. I’ve always felt that leaving politics outside the bedroom is important in maintaining the spiritual purity of what goes on inside. Having blown a fair number of guys years ago, I can tell you that I never felt humiliated, degraded, or unmanly (to the contrary, I always felt proud and a little “extra male”). I’d never get involved with a woman who refused to blow me (on any grounds), and I’d never respect a woman who didn’t think she deserved to demand her pussy be eaten in turn for a job well done. _Weaklings…_ ---
**Author:** ![WhyNot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/c77e96/32.png) [@WhyNot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WhyNot)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2006, 5:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/deconstructing-blowjobs/361543/4 "2006-06-21T17:59:47Z")
Wow, I had no idea that I had no brain or sexuality of my own, outside of that determined by the patriarchy and some random bloggers. Oh, wait. I do. I’ve quite a few feelings of my own about blow jobs, and they change depending on a. the man involved b. my mood c. what has he done for me lately and d. any other damn thing I want. It’s my mouth, I’ll choose where to put it, thanks. Yeah, sometimes it feels like a chore. That’s when I don’t do it. (And if he has an issue with that, fuck him. No, wait. Don’t fuck him. Leave.) Sometimes it feels like a romantic gift I can give a man as a generous goddess of love. Sometimes it feels like a giggle tease. Sometimes it makes me feel like a powerful sexy bitch getting off on seeing her man helpless to the power of my tongue. So, which of these feelings are due to the patriarchy, again? I’ve overcome my cultural conditioning around monogamy, public nudity and wearing high heels. I somehow doubt I remain a victim of Fellatio Politics. ---
**Author:** ![Gorgon\_Heap](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/f475e1/32.png) [@Gorgon\_Heap](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gorgon_Heap)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2006, 6:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/deconstructing-blowjobs/361543/5 "2006-06-21T18:08:08Z")
**Deconstructing Blowjobs** Can’t … resist … BAND NAME!!! ---
**Author:** ![iampunha](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/74df32/32.png) [@iampunha](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iampunha)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2006, 9:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/deconstructing-blowjobs/361543/6 "2006-06-21T21:54:14Z")
> [@WhyNot](#): > > Sometimes it feels like a romantic gift I can give a man as a generous goddess of love. Sometimes it feels like a giggle tease. Sometimes it makes me feel like a powerful sexy bitch getting off on seeing her man helpless to the power of my tongue. Coincidentally, I turned on the AC before I read this. Good thing, too. ---
**Author:** ![WhyNot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/c77e96/32.png) [@WhyNot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WhyNot)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2006, 9:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/deconstructing-blowjobs/361543/7 "2006-06-21T21:56:32Z")
> [@iampunha](#): > > Coincidentally, I turned on the AC before I read this. > > Good thing, too. 😛 ---
**Author:** ![iampunha](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/74df32/32.png) [@iampunha](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iampunha)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2006, 10:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/deconstructing-blowjobs/361543/8 "2006-06-21T22:15:46Z")
> [@WhyNot](#): > > 😛 Oh, for a scratch’n’lick… ---
**Author:** ![Zulema](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/db5fbb/32.png) [@Zulema](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zulema)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2006, 10:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/deconstructing-blowjobs/361543/9 "2006-06-21T22:32:53Z")
Submissive? That’s certainly not a feeling I’ve ever had in that situation. ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2006, 11:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/deconstructing-blowjobs/361543/10 "2006-06-21T23:33:50Z")
I can’t believe a thread with “blowjobs” in the title has garnered so few replies. ---
**Author:** ![Eva\_Luna](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/e495f1/32.png) [@Eva\_Luna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eva_Luna)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2006, 1:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/deconstructing-blowjobs/361543/11 "2006-06-22T01:02:28Z")
> [@WhyNot](#): > > Oh, wait. I do. I’ve quite a few feelings of my own about blow jobs, and they change depending on a. the man involved b. my mood c. what has he done for me lately and d. any other damn thing I want. > > It’s my mouth, I’ll choose where to put it, thanks. Yeah, sometimes it feels like a chore. That’s when I don’t do it. (And if he has an issue with that, fuck him. No, wait. Don’t fuck him. Leave.) Sometimes it feels like a romantic gift I can give a man as a generous goddess of love. Sometimes it feels like a giggle tease. Sometimes it makes me feel like a powerful sexy bitch getting off on seeing her man helpless to the power of my tongue. > > So, which of these feelings are due to the patriarchy, again? Seconded, at least as far as the depths of my memory are serving :: sigh :: I mean really, how condescending is it to say that women don’t know or understand why they are doing something that personal? That we don’t know what’s good for us? As a diehard feminist, my first thought is that if you’re wondering whether you would be letting any given guy take advantage of you if you gave him a blow job, you are definitely in bed with the wrong guy. (By the way, I can’t seem to read the article - it says to click on the sponsor’s logo, but I don’t see any sponsor’s logo.) ---
**Author:** ![astro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9dc877/32.png) [@astro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astro)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2006, 1:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/deconstructing-blowjobs/361543/12 "2006-06-22T01:30:01Z")
> [@Eva Luna](#): > > Seconded, at least as far as the depths of my memory are serving :: sigh :: > > I mean really, how condescending is it to say that women don’t know or understand why they are doing something that personal? That we don’t know what’s good for us? > > As a diehard feminist, my first thought is that if you’re wondering whether you would be letting any given guy take advantage of you if you gave him a blow job, you are definitely in bed with the wrong guy. > > (By the way, I can’t seem to read the article - it says to click on the sponsor’s logo, but I don’t see any sponsor’s logo.) [Revised link -](http://www.salon.com/mwt/broadsheet/2006/06/20/blow_jobs/index.html) Part of article below > [@](#): > > Blow-job blowhards > How did the feminist blogs get into a raging debate about blow jobs, feminism and the patriarchy? > > Well, funny story. Heh heh heh. See, best I can tell, Twisty at I Blame the Patriarchy kicked it off by arguing, in response to a post on One Good Thing advising a letter-writer on how not to gag while administering oral sex, that “no woman, since the dawn of the patriarchal co-option of human sexuality, has ever actually enjoyed this submissive sexbot drudgery. There’s a reason that deep-throating a funk-filled bratwurst makes a person retch.\* (\*Reason, it’s fucking gross.)” Twisty got 230 responses, many of them from women who argued that giving head is an empowering act. And so she followed up, sarcastically opining that she is “chastened.” “I’d forgotten that when it comes to sex, it is the duty of the radical feminist to shut the fuck up,” Twisty wrote. “Sex, which, along with religion … is sacrosanct territory. It is anti-feminist to point out the ideological problems with certain patriarchal sexbot traditions because so many women enjoy patriarchal sexbot traditions … Like Germaine Greer always says, if you wanna nail your nutsack to a breadboard and call it sex, it’s A-OK with me! … It is a well-known fact that most women spring from their beds every morning singing, ‘O I hope I can blow some dude today!’” This post garnered 93 responses. > > Then Piny at Feministe weighed in, suggesting that perhaps Twisty was baiting her readers with her fightin’ words. Soon Amanda at Pandagon arrived on the scene, thoughtfully blogging about the anti-hummer sentiment and its empowerment corollary. “I don’t agree that blow jobs are inherently gross,” she wrote, adding that she does think it worthwhile to engage an argument about male privilege, power imbalances in heterosexual relationships, the eroticization of those power dynamics and the suggestion (not hers, but extrapolated from the discussion) that: “The blow job is especially marked in our culture as a submissive act. In porn, it’s routinedly filmed as inherently humiliating … Because the notion that it’s inherently degrading is so ubiquitious, it is de facto humiliating and opting out is no more optional than asserting that pissing your pants in public isn’t humiliating just because you say so.” Amanda agreed with Twisty that the empowerment line is flimsy. It’s an attempt, according to Amanda, “to argue that by reclaiming the blow job, you can subvert the dominant understanding of it as humiliating. The problem with that argument is that subversive reclamation has to be ironic in order to have power and while it’s technically feasible to do a sexual act in an ironic fashion, I doubt most people feel ironic about blow jobs at all, even the people who call them empowering.” Amanda has 160 responses so far. > > Since then, well, it’s pretty much been a pile-on. 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.” R. Mildred went on to explain that an anti-head stance actually hurts women. “Explain to me again why both this bullshit anti-sex ‘feminism’ of yours and The Patriarchy you talk about despising so much, both involve me, a woman, becoming abstinent? Why is everyone afraid of the horrors I may commit with my vagina or mouth if just left alone to challenge the patriarchy one cock at a time?” Amanda then responded to that rather admiringly. Jill at Feministe threw in her (rather nuanced) two cents, while Jessica at Feministing threw up her hands, noting that stepping into this mess is “just too much trouble” and that “I just can’t bring myself to talk about dick today.” ---
**Author:** ![Eva\_Luna](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/e495f1/32.png) [@Eva\_Luna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eva_Luna)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2006, 1:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/deconstructing-blowjobs/361543/13 "2006-06-22T01:44:06Z")
Ah, sex and the Patriarchy: [such fond memories!](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=112982) (Mods, no worries - Ms. Magazine doesn’t even have forums anymore, so no danger of another board war. I did hang around the Ms. Forums for a while after that episode, and whew! it taught me a LOT about why so many women don’t want to consider themselves feminists. But fuck if I’m going to allow the radical wackos to hijack the term.) ---
**Author:** ![Brainiac4](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/brainiac4/32/3534_2.png) [@Brainiac4](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Brainiac4)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2006, 1:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/deconstructing-blowjobs/361543/14 "2006-06-22T01:48:24Z")
What a ridiculous argument. It seems to me that some people are just plain angry and unhappy, and this informs their whole worldview to the point that they’re unable to see anything as good, no matter what anyone else thinks. How sad. ---
**Author:** ![WhyNot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/c77e96/32.png) [@WhyNot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WhyNot)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2006, 2:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/deconstructing-blowjobs/361543/15 "2006-06-22T02:07:28Z")
> [@](#): > > "The blow job is especially marked in our culture as a submissive act. In porn, it’s routinedly filmed as inherently humiliating … Can anyone name me a single sex act that ISN’T routinely filmed as inherently humiliating? For women, anyway. I think the proper beef (if there is one) is with porn directors, not with blowjobs. Personally, I think it all \*looks \*submissive 'cause we’re the innies, not the outies, if you know what I mean. Our bodies are meant to envelop and receive, not to penetrate. Emotions are a different matter. And, uh…sorry if what I wrote earlier was too…graphic. I was sorta punchy on caffeine this afternoon! ---
**Author:** ![Askia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/96bed5/32.png) [@Askia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Askia)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2006, 2:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/deconstructing-blowjobs/361543/16 "2006-06-22T02:23:33Z")
> [@Marley23](#): > > I can’t believe a thread with “blowjobs” in the title has garnered so few replies. Next time, call the feminists “Feminazis” and open it in the Pit. ---
**Author:** ![iampunha](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/74df32/32.png) [@iampunha](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iampunha)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2006, 2:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/deconstructing-blowjobs/361543/17 "2006-06-22T02:33:04Z")
> [@WhyNot](#): > > And, uh…sorry if what I wrote earlier was too…graphic. I was sorta punchy on caffeine this afternoon! I noticed no complaints, merely reactions:) ---
**Author:** ![Misnomer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/misnomer/32/14897_2.png) [@Misnomer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Misnomer)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2006, 3:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/deconstructing-blowjobs/361543/18 "2006-06-22T03:23:17Z")
> [@Twisty](#): > > It is a well-known fact that most women spring from their beds every morning singing, ‘O I hope I can blow some dude today!’ And here I thought I was the only one! 😃 ---
**Author:** ![SmartAleq](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/smartaleq/32/163_2.png) [@SmartAleq](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SmartAleq)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2006, 6:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/deconstructing-blowjobs/361543/19 "2006-06-22T18:25:56Z")
I read stuff like that and I get new insight into the causes of lesbian bed death. Every sex act is a leap of faith by all parties, trusting that the other one won’t hurt them or make fun of them during what is a pretty vulnerable state of being. Men are pretty helpless during a BJ, and it strikes me as bizarre that some women can cavalierly categorize the BJ as inherently humiliating and insist that it puts a woman in a state of powerlessness. Are we talking about the same jaw and teeth that have no problem taking down a tough, overcooked steak here? Who’s got the power? Sorry for the reflexive twinges, guys, I’m just making a point, okay? 😛 I’m sick of these condescending idiots telling us that we’re so brainwashed and manipulated by the patriarchy that we need an all wise matriarch to take over telling us what to do and think–meet the new boss, same as the old boss! :rolleyes: Get outta my bed, ya bitches! I’m busy having sex here… ---
**Author:** ![Troy\_McClure\_SF](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/troy_mcclure_sf/32/4150_2.png) [@Troy\_McClure\_SF](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Troy_McClure_SF)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2006, 7:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/deconstructing-blowjobs/361543/20 "2006-06-22T19:07:41Z")
> [@SmartAleq](#): > > I’m sick of these condescending idiots telling us that we’re so brainwashed and manipulated by the patriarchy that we need an all wise matriarch to take over telling us what to do and think–meet the new boss, same as the old boss! :rolleyes: This is exactly what I think when some self-proclaimed feminist starts ordering women around in the name of feminism or empowerment. Um… aren’t those two ideas at the core expressly _for_ freedom and _against_ taking orders from those who claim to Know What’s Best? [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/deconstructing-blowjobs/361543.md?page=2)