Glamour Magazine has an interesting article on the popularity of blow jobs, which they put down several factors:
- Bad sex education in the US. We teach kids that coitus can lead to STDs, but don’t explicitly state that oral sex can, too, so some kids go away thinking oral is safe, or at least safer. Adding to this is the idea many evangelical kids have developed in the absence of quality adult guidance: that oral sex isn’t really sex (thanks, Bill Clinton), so they can do that before marriage without Baby Jesus weeping.
- Porn. Porn, the article contends, has created a blase attitude that leads to men asking, “Well, if you don’t feel like having sex, can you at least give me a blow job?” I mean, they’re entitled, right? And women feel that pressure.
- Empowerment. Oh, god, here we go again. Somehow, women have got it worked around in their minds that blow jobs are for their own pleasure and empowerment, not his. And hate is love and freedom is slavery. By the way, these women are talking about the obligatory first-date blow job, not long-term relationship blow jobs.
I’ve got to tackle this empowerment bullshit once and for all, because I just cannot stand it. What these women are saying is this: “When I give someone an orgasm with no consideration for my own pleasure, I find it empowering.” In that case, please immediately PayPal me as much money as you can afford. I’ll be thrilled, you’ll get nothing – won’t that be empowering for you! How lucky you are!
No, no, no and no. [ETA: I later wrote an article explaining clearly what "empowerment" actually means. It's not just "feeling powerful."]
If you’re in a relationship where there’s give and take on various levels, giving your partner an orgasm without any expectation of reciprocity can be a nice thing. Not empowering – nice, pleasurable, enjoyable. Not empowering. Outside of an established relationship, in that early dating phase where you’re still trying to work out whether this person has anything to offer you, offering a blow job screams, “Please, take from me! I like being used!” Empowering, my ass. It’s like prostitution, except you forgot to charge. He’s the empowered one, not you. He’s learning from you that he’s entitled to pressure every woman he dates to perform this service for him, no matter how she feels, no matter what she wants, no matter how completely incapable he may be of providing anyone but himself an orgasm to save his life.
I’m not saying oral sex is bad, or that there are no reasons for a woman to enjoy performing it. But seriously? Empowering? Under no circumstances is it empowering. He’s not grateful. He doesn’t feel he owes you. He’s not bewitched by you, since half the other chicks in the bar would do the same, and tops of heads all look pretty much alike. Where’s the power?
I think women are so confused about sexuality and their rights to it that they somehow (mistakenly) think blow jobs carry all the benefits of intercourse without the potential unwanted side effects, and performing blow jobs makes them fully sexual not-prudes who are in charge of and comfortable with their own sexuality.
I think you need only look at the behavior of men to see how far off the mark that is. Men don’t derive power from giving women orgasms. Sometimes they derive power from other men based on how many women have given them orgasms, but women having orgasms never enters into any part of the equation. True empowerment would be saying, “Well, if you don’t feel like having sex, could you at least go down on me, lover boy?” Now there’s a sex act that’s “safer” than the ones involving male ejaculation. There’s a sex act that involves whatshisname Mr. Friday Night on his knees, and little worry of repercussions for you.
I think a lot of people just don’t understand what power actually is. Really, the whole idea that sex has anything to do with power is a product of rape culture.
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Gabriella,
Maybe we should change the title of this thread to “Blow Jobs Can Be Liberating, They CAN NEVER BE Empowering”, that might clear things up (or cause a greater stink).
Casey(Quote) (Reply)
As a guy I’d hate to think that my engaging in cunnilingus was in any way dis-empowering. Is it empowering to give satisfaction to a women in that way? I suppose it might be, because I enjoy it and find the idea of mutual satisfaction uplifting.
If I didn’t enjoy it and a women demanded it, I might find myself dis-empowered if I were to feel forced to go down. Incidentally, in ancient Rome, it was considered unmanly for a free Roman man to engage in cunnilingus – an activity reserved for slaves apparently.
I guess I’m on the fence on this one.
Ryan(Quote) (Reply)
Going by a lot of the comments we didn’t allow through, there is one piece of massive confusion:
Saying something “isn’t empowering” does not equal saying it is “disempowering.” We keep seeing this word, and it’s completely irrelevant. “Not empowering” means it doesn’t alter your power in any way.
This happens a lot, with a lot of words, in a lot of contexts. Does anyone know why so many people immediately assume that if you’re saying something isn’t white, that means you are saying it’s black? It gets awfully tiresome, continuously having to clarify what you didn’t say as well as what you did say.
Jennifer Kesler(Quote) (Reply)
For the most part I’m with you, Jennifer, except this sounds too simplistic (and when we get simplistic we risk alienating people on the fence):
“The fact that it makes you FEEL POWERFUL is something else entirely. It’s psychology – it’s happening inside your head, and others are not necessarily aware of it, and typically aren’t affected by it. It’s like self-esteem – it’s a good thing, and it can make your life richer, but it doesn’t change the power dynamics in your life. A woman with great self-esteem can be just as oppressed as a woman with low self-esteem, because it’s outside forces unaffected by her inner landscape doing it to her.”
IMO, psychology affects /everything/. If you lack self-confidence, it shows to the people around you, and it could stop you from landing that job or making that contact or friend. I’m sure I don’t have to explain why it could stop you from gaining political power – if people see you as insecure or weak, you’ve lost them. The wrong psychology, over time, can completely ruin your life. Isn’t the power to lead a good life, a pretty important one? At least when you’ve got self-confidence you have one less oppressor, yourself.
In fact pretty much all feminist activity has to do with improving quality of life, though it focuses on groups of people in relation to one another. But those groups are still made up of individuals who are all seeking happiness for themselves, in all different ways. As individuals, I think it’s safe to say for most of us, our search for happiness as a human being comes first, as a feminist second. For us the former is probably deeply connected with the latter. But the former still comes first. We may do something that may not visibly help feminism in the way you define, but by making ourselves happy in a world like this one, we are helping feminism in a way. The more happy feminists there are, the more successful and productive we can be, and the more sway we may have over others. As long as our individual happiness isn’t achieved in a way that hurts feminism, which I don’t believe ‘feeling personally liberated at giving a blowjob’ does. Unless you try to tell other women to feel empowered by it too, taking it out of the realm of your own psychology.
Karakuri(Quote) (Reply)
Or well, at least it’s my understanding that we want power in order to achieve equality to achieve better quality of life for all. Power isn’t the bottom line, although it is the key to getting there.
Karakuri(Quote) (Reply)
Self-confidence doesn’t reliably improve your life, and can even work against people WHO BELONG TO A DISEMPOWERED GROUP (that’s the big problem with this line of thinking). Disempowered group members are not *entitled* to self-confidence. A middle class white woman may not run into this often, but try being poor or of color, and how dare you be self-confident, bitch. Let’s remind you of your place by abusing, bullying, harassing, cheating and/or ostracizing you. (I know these things firsthand.)
But let’s make it even bigger. Second wave feminism. Women get a little bit of political empowerment, but not enough to really protect what they have. Some go to school, get careers, start feeling better about themselves. What happens? Backlash! Republicans start chipping away at our rights. Rape rates soar, especially on college campuses and other male dominated places where women are not “entitled” to be. Because we didn’t have the POLITICAL power to ENTITLE us to be happy. So oppressors who don’t want us to be happy used the power they have over us to wreck it. With great success, in many instances.
Maybe I understand this better than some because I was abused by a misogynist in childhood, which gave me both a micro and macro view of the problem. Find a way to be happy, and your abuser will trash it. Find another way to be happy despite the abuse, and he’ll find a way to ruin that for you too. By the end, you are the world’s best poker face, and you know how to hide your happiness so deep that YOU can’t even find it… because if you can, so will he, and he will ruin it for you because he just can’t stand for you to be happy, and because he has the power to do that… and none of your self-confidence or happiness or anything else you’re feeling on the inside will change that dynamic.
Jennifer Kesler(Quote) (Reply)
Jennifer Kesler,
That REALLY clarified what the word “empowerment” means. I was taught it was a feeling, which is why in the past I would have called doing something like rockclimbing empowering because it gave me a sense of pride and self-confidence doing something like that despite my fear of heights.
But I now get it means more of a state of being, an actual change in one’s social or political place where they are given or take for themselves more power. So while rockclimbing makes me feel good about myself and that in and of itself is good enough to grateful for its existence, it isn’t actually empowering because it doesn’t change any power dynamics for me or any other marginalized person.
I used to think “empowering women” meant helping them feel better and more powerful and in control. I now see that it means changing things so they’re actually in a position where they have more control and agency, and that’s a very different, very complex and much more difficult thing to tackle than simply trying to feel good about something.
Lika(Quote) (Reply)
Lika, yes! I think women are taught that empowerment is a feeling so they won’t go looking for the real thing, which the patriarchy is hoarding to itself. We feel good/strong/powerful in some activity, and think we can check “get empowered” off our “to do before I die” list.
An interesting example of the difference between feeling powerful and actually being empowered is: there were a few times in childhood that someone abused their power over me, and I exposed their misdeeds publicly in a way that made it impossible for folks to side with the more powerful person and blame the victim, like usual. I felt SO powerful, of course. But those people still retained their power over me. They could just bide their time, wait for the ruckus to die down, and come back at me – maybe more subtly this time. Maybe too subtly for me to pull the publicity stunt again without looking like I was crying wolf.
It wasn’t empowering at all. I had temporarily manipulated the bullies’ social “betters” to knock them down a peg, but at the end of the day, the bullies were still one of their own kind, and I was still an underdog. I was learning how to use what little power I had, but I was still far from having enough power to protect my rights against quite a few people who were well-positioned to take them away from me – and seemed inclined to do that. So it felt powerful, and it taught me about power… but it wasn’t empowering.
Jennifer Kesler(Quote) (Reply)
This is gonna be really ramble-y/nonsensical but this discussion of the term “empowerment” reminds me of an episode of Celeb Sex Rehab where some guy said he wanted to “rape the shit” out of one of the women there ‘cuz they were flirting and he thought it would “bring her joy”; suffice it to say, she was triggered really badly instead. The sex-addiction doctor they had to monitor the situation basically chastised the woman for not “empowering herself” by setting up boundaries before hand.
Somebody at Shakesville said that nowadays “empowerment” is basically a buzzword that means “we’re going to exploit you and make you think it was all your idea”.
Casey(Quote) (Reply)
Casey,
Especially because it’s something that can be used to make women feel like they’re doing something wrong if they don’t want to comply. That’s one of the really sad things about hook-up culture on college campuses — if you’re a girl that doesn’t want to fuck around you’re suddenly the bad bad prude, if you’re the girl that doesn’t give head you’re frigid, etc etc.
Maria(Quote) (Reply)
Casey,
Ah, so “empowerment” means “responsibility to educate everyone around them on basic decency”. Gotcha.
Sylvia Sybil(Quote) (Reply)
Sylvia Sybil,
In this case “empowerment” also means “having psychic abilities that predict when and if somebody is gonna make a rapacious remark to you”. >_<
Casey(Quote) (Reply)
As a white heterosexual cis male wandering past this conversation, I feel it might be worthwhile for me to mention that I find it empowering to give oral sex and/or manual stimulation to my partners. That is, “empowering” in the “feeling powerful” sense, not in the sense of gaining actual power.
“Tom”(Quote) (Reply)
Except there’s no such thing as “empowering” in the “feeling powerful” sense, to be empowered means to literally gain actual power, legal or otherwise. I thought we’ve already hammered this out.
Casey(Quote) (Reply)
Casey,
I think he understands the meaning, and at this point it gets kind of just semantic. What I need to write an article about is: the 90s taught people, quite incorrectly, that “empowered” means “feelin’ powerful!” because that definition serves the empowered well. If you feel powerful, and mistake that for being empowered, you think you’re doing fine and society’s fair enough.
Jennifer Kesler(Quote) (Reply)
Jennifer Kesler,
I actually let his comment through moderation for two reasons…
1. I thought it was a useful illustration of how “feelin’ powerful” ISN’T empowerment because hello, he’s already in a position of infrastructural power because the identities he mentioned in his post
2. That if part of the argument is really BJs are empowering FOR WOMEN (I’m not agreeing just stating that’s what mags like Glamour say), why isn’t eating pussy something promoted as empowering FOR MEN? That it’s not, to me, highlights that this part of Jen’s argument:
I think you need only look at the behavior of men to see how far off the mark that is. Men don’t derive power from giving women orgasms. Sometimes they derive power from other men based on how many women have given them orgasms, but women having orgasms never enters into any part of the equation. True empowerment would be saying, “Well, if you don’t feel like having sex, could you at least go down on me, lover boy?” Now there’s a sex act that’s “safer” than the ones involving male ejaculation. There’s a sex act that involves whatshisname Mr. Friday Night on his knees, and little worry of repercussions for you.
Especially because guys will mention that they perform oral sex as though it’s something extra/makes them really awesome, and not just something their partner should expect (like how a woman who doesn’t give BJs is a prude whose fault it is if a man breaks up with her)
Maria(Quote) (Reply)
Random thought:
I wonder if the difference between empowerment and “feelin’ powerful” is part of the push back of movies like Sucker Punch. The main char dies in SP but her death helps dismantle an institution that was hurting other girls like her — but because she dies, a lot of people view it as being almost like torture porn or whatever, not a critique of rape culture. So, yeah, it’s difficult to feel powerful about a movie where a girl is raped and lobotomized… but it’s what I would say is an empowering film… at least more so than something like Girl, Interrupted, which doesn’t really critique the institution of the asylum.
Maria(Quote) (Reply)
Maria,
I think that’s a good explanation for the differing opinions on Sucker Punch. I was surprised at how sharply feminist opinions were split on that film.
Sylvia Sybil(Quote) (Reply)
Sylvia Sybil,
Yeah, after reading everyone’s analysis of the film on here I was disappoint to click on FeministFrequency call it a “Steaming pile of sexist garbage” or some such.
Casey(Quote) (Reply)
Maria,
ITA, too. I was wondering if it works in reverse (do people get overly excited about movies in which women are powerful but the system is still oppressing them), since that’s often a good way to test a theory, and it does. Sarah Connor is no more heroic than a lot of male “ordinary people in extraordinary situations” characters, but we see her as absolutely iconic because she’s so rare (a self-actualized, truly strong woman fighting a hopeless battle against oppression of everyone). Ditto on Ripley, who was originally written as a man, and as such probably wouldn’t have developed the cult following to the extent she did.
Jennifer Kesler(Quote) (Reply)
I agree almost entirely with the health ramifications of erroneously differentiating between oral sex and both vaginal and anal intercourse: it is a valid conduit for STD’s. I likewise compliment your eloquent and intellectually seductive tirade, but I can honestly say that you are negligent on several levels. I agree that consensual sex does not involve empowerment within the relationship. As a segue, consider men obsessed with hermaphrodites (and there are a lot of them to varying degrees). Most men with this obessission would like to be “pegged” as the Onion columnist Dan Savage would describe it. Even hermaphrodites aside, women pegging men often report that they “feel” empowered and “in charge” while having sex. Correspondingly, many of the men that are on the receiving end of this activity claim that they enjoy the woman’s feeling of empowerment, as well as the activity itself. While you claim that women are not empowered, nor disenfranchised by performing oral sex on a man, the matter is more nuanced. When performing oral sex on a man, the woman in question controls the pace of enjoyment, as well as the moment of climax for the man. In what way is this not empowerment if the man values this moment and the woman decides when and how the circumstance shall arise?I think I should add as a note that I am normally against cunnilingus unless I feel a rare and strong desire to do it. Personally, this arises not from a desire to control, but to experience and incite great pleasure on the part of the woman I am with. The ability to do that does give me power, even though I (for instance) was not originally seeking power. Coincidentally I do recognise the power I gain and ‘feel empowered’, although that is irrelevant for me. I should add that the circumstances of oral sex vary and that either party can feel empowered, as is true for any type of sex. However, the description given above assumes maximum commitment by both parties to each other’s enjoyment.
Benjamin(Quote) (Reply)
Benjamin, thanks to this comment thread, I realized that a stunning number of people didn’t actually know what “empowerment” means, and you seem to be one of them. So I wrote this article which explains it.
Jennifer Kesler(Quote) (Reply)
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