American Hookup by Lisa Wade

Author:Lisa Wade
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Of all of the parts of the female body, though, the one that men who like women seem keenest to access is the vagina. It is the veritable Holy Grail of heterosexual male sexuality. It’s “all the way.” In the 1600s they called it the “chapel of ease.” In the 1700s, it was “love’s altar” and “the shrine of Venus.” In the 1800s they described it as a “carnal mantrap,” and not in a bad way. One hundred years later it was a “knick knack” and a “ring-dang-do.” Today it’s “home base,” “happy valley,” and “the promised land.” And we’ve been calling it a “honeypot” for nearly five hundred years.

Men—at least men who are attracted to women—put extraordinary amounts of effort into getting into the vagina. Men’s desire for the vagina is half of why we exist as a species. And, in real life, there are lots of men who love cunnilingus. This is something that my female students, and the ones at Stanford and Indiana, are wrong about. In fact, according to the National Health and Social Life Survey, one of the largest, most comprehensive, and well-designed studies of American sexuality ever completed, men like performing cunnilingus even more than women like receiving it.

So, what is this cultural disgust at women’s bodies really about?

It’s quite obviously not about whether cunnilingus is gross. It’s certainly not any grosser than fellatio. I can still recall the moment that a male friend of mine first encountered the idea of receiving such a “genital kiss.” We were first-year college students, he from a very conservative Mormon background, and his immediate reaction was disgust. “But you pee through that thing!” he said incredulously.

It’s true. Men pee through that thing. And there are other reasons why someone might find fellatio unappetizing: the smell of a man’s genitals after being confined in a pair of pants all day, the difficulty of getting a penis in one’s mouth, pubic hairs caught in teeth, the effort to create suction that strains the muscles underneath the jaw, difficulty catching one’s breath, and the taste of precum and semen. In fact, when Jess Butler asked female students at the University of Southern California whether they liked fellatio, none of the more than two dozen she talked to claimed to enjoy it. As one said, “I’d rather not have to do it ever again in my life, but I feel like I have to.” “It’s gross,” said another. “Nobody likes it,” insisted a third in response. A person can truly and emphatically enjoy giving a blow job, but one has to be in the right frame of mind. Ditto for cunnilingus.

Yet, while the potential downsides of cunnilingus are front and center in the minds of heterosexual students of both sexes, the similar downsides of fellatio are almost never discussed and are generally considered irrelevant. “No one,” a student observed, “ever talks about what a penis is supposed to smell like or what ‘cum’ is supposed to taste like.” Noting that “scented

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.