If blow jobs have become old hat for you, think: When was the last time you reciprocated oral sex? If you and your partner go 50/50, good for you. Great, actually, because that’s not the reality for most young couples, according to research by University of the Pacific and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
In the study, published in the Journal of Sex Research, researchers interviewed 71 men and women ages 16 to 18, then conducted follow-up interviews one year later. Both the men and women said that performing oral sex on women is a “bigger deal” than performing oral sex on men.
By “bigger deal” they meant it’s more “distasteful” for men than women, and that it is “easier” for men to receive. The whole give-and-take stance of you scratch my back, I scratch yours isn’t really happening.
“There has been a lot of research on vaginal intercourse but we know much less about young people’s expectations and experiences of other sexual practices,” sociologist and study author Ruth Lewis said in a press release. “This was an exploratory study to start to give us an idea of how young people talk about oral sex.”
The language men use to talk about women’s genitals isn’t pretty (though the press release doesn’t include the word choice for obvious reasons). This “highly negative” attitude obviously rubs women the wrong way. And, because they’re acutely aware of men’s perceptions, they’re less than thrilled to receive oral sex. What’s more, young men were much more likely than women to say they didn’t perform oral sex if they didn’t want to, while young women tended to give in, describing strategies they use to make giving oral sex more palatable.
