Sexual Competence
<p>Most of the participants in the recent blogospheric <a href="http://www.creatical.com/weblog/archives/00000791.shtml#comments"><br />
mini-flap</a> about a Yale Press Daily article on the fine points of<br />
<a href="http://yaledailynews.com/article.asp?aid=17519">fellatio</a><br />
either make crude jokes, dismiss the article as either a sophomoric<br />
exercise in tweak-the-fogies or shocking evidence of the depravity of<br />
today&#8217;s youth.</p>
<p>I think both are missing the real point.  Well, OK, the<br />
tweak-the-fogies camp is not completely off base, but there is<br />
something the Natalie Krinsky who wrote this item of tweakery<br />
understands that they don&#8217;t seem to.  And that is this: today,<br />
<em>sexual competence is a mainstream virtue</em> &mdash; part of the<br />
normal toolkit of adults, like table manners or choosing appropriate<br />
clothes.</p>
<p>And by &#8220;sexual competence&#8221; I specifically do not mean just the<br />
ability to get laid, but being good in bed once you get there.  Sexual<br />
competence includes the ability to give and receive sexual pleasure.<br />
It includes the ability to express one&#8217;s playfulness, affection, lust,<br />
passion, and love towards a sexual partner with physical acts; to give<br />
pleasure with behavior that is considered, purposed, and conscious,<br />
and which expresses pride in and enjoyment of one&#8217;s own sexual<br />
nature.</p>
<p>In the dark and backward abysm of time (that is, before about<br />
1973), nice people weren&#8217;t really supposed to <em>work</em> at being<br />
good in bed.  Only prostitutes, gigolos and sex symbols were allowed<br />
the privilege of treating sex as a conscious art of pleasure.<br />
Everybody else was, essentially, only allowed to be good in bed only<br />
by accident of endowment.</p>
<p>There was a limited exception for married couples and other people<br />
passionately in love.  They were permitted to improve their sexual<br />
competence as long as the goal was to affirm the relationship.  The<br />
idea that competence at giving sexual pleasure could be a good in<br />
itself, even in a one-night stand, was simply not part of our culture.<br />
The outraged critics of Ms. Krinsky&#8217;s article seem still to be living in<br />
that world.</p>
<p>But the reality around them has changed.  Alex Comfort&#8217;s <cite>The<br />
Joy of Sex</cite> was probably the breakthrough, nearly thirty years<br />
ago now.  Today&#8217;s college kids have grown up in an environment in<br />
which questions of sexual competence (and expectations about it) go<br />
way beyond &#8220;will-she/won&#8217;t-she?&#8221; and &#8220;can he avoid coming too soon if<br />
she does?&#8221;.</p>
<p>Today, even teenage boys and girls expect each other to cultivate<br />
sexual competence; those who don&#8217;t are simply not competitive in the<br />
dating-and-mating game.  Ms. Krinsky&#8217;s article may have been intended<br />
to tweak the fogies &mdash; but it also describes learning behavior that is<br />
perfectly adaptive for today&#8217;s environment, because oral sex is a<br />
gateway behavior for the aspiring hedonist.</p>
<p>That is, learning how to give good head is usually the first<br />
pleasure-giving behavior in sex that is not a straight-line<br />
elaboration of instinct.  Kissing, caressing, and intercourse are<br />
wired in; one can refine technique, but the behavioral basis is<br />
already present.  Oral sex is the usually the first behavior sexual<br />
hedonists acquire that <em>has</em> to be completely learned.</p>
<p>A significant and related fact is that taking <em>pleasure</em><br />
from giving head has to be learned, by a kind of transference from the<br />
pleasure taken by one&#8217;s partner.  Experienced fellatrices and<br />
cunnilinguists may learn to take direct sensual pleasure in the act,<br />
but that usually follows from and is conditioned in by the<br />
transference effect rather than leading it.  Thus, for beginners,<br />
giving oral sex is a particularly unselfish and adult skill.</p>
<p>Finally, for most pairs of partners oral sex is the most important<br />
method of orgasmic gratification other than vaginal intercourse.  So<br />
learning to give good head is not just a gateway behavior, it&#8217;s one<br />
that tends to remain central in the adult repertoire.</p>
<p>Therefore, a teenage girl teaching herself how to give a good<br />
blowjob is not merely learning how to give a blowjob.  She is<br />
declaring her intention to acquire the (now mainstream) virtue of<br />
sexual competence.  She is matter-of-factly reaching not just for a<br />
particular skill that she knows will be expected of her as an adult,<br />
but to learn the attitude and sensitivity that will take her<br />
further on the path of sexual ability.  She is growing herself<br />
up.</p>
<p>Looked at this way, it&#8217;s hard to see why anyone living in 2002<br />
should find Ms. Krinsky&#8217;s report of her self-training exceptionable.  One<br />
might just as well object to her teaching herself how to cook, or drive,<br />
or dance.</p>
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