The Cunnilingus Infohazard

There is no sex topic more hotly debated than cunnilingus--so here's more fuel for the fire.

Photo by Deon Black on Unsplash

As far as sexual discourse goes, cunnilingus is probably one of the most hot-button (no pun intended) topics. This is mostly because it basically contains the perfect storm of sexual strife. First, the orgasm gap exists because for most heterosexuals, the main event of sex is intercourse, which is much more efficient at providing male orgasms than female orgasms, and cunnilingus helps close that gap. Second, while most heterosexual men do perform some degree of cunnilingus, there are many who don’t (but still expect blowjobs) such as the infamous DJ Khaled.

Fellatio and cunnilingus are therefore treated very differently in the discourse. Perhaps as an overcorrection to the squeamish nature of some heterosexual men, we’ve taken to assuming, or at least pretending, that women only give blowjobs because they have to (and this is perfectly normal) but unless they are secretly gay, all normal straight men love to go down on women, perhaps even more than they enjoy having intercourse or receiving oral sex themselves. As the generalization goes, a straight man who doesn’t like to give oral sex is either closeted, selfish, immature, or evil. A straight woman who doesn’t like to give oral sex is “a woman.”

This generalization feels obviously untrue, mostly because countless women have stories about men who refuse to go down on them (or who are clearly reluctantly suffering through it on birthdays and anniversaries, which is probably worse than just refusing.) We readily believe that a straight woman can be “meh” about giving blowjobs, but feign outrage and disbelief when the same is true of a straight man and cunnilingus. Most of the male voices you see re: cunnilingus will be from the guys who are obsessed with it, or a few guys who hate it (and everyone is clowning on them). The first group of men will claim that any man who is wired “normally” would be forgoing all entertainment, sleep, water and food to do nothing but eat pussy all day. We applaud them for being “real men,” never stopping to ask just what percentage of men actually fall into this category, or what other motivations a man might have for performing it.

Recently, in the CHH paid subscriber chat, a subscriber posted a study that, at least on its face, seems obviously true—but it runs the risk of throwing all cunnilingus conversation into chaos.