{"id":70,"date":"2002-05-25T07:32:00","date_gmt":"2002-05-25T12:32:00","guid":{"rendered":"\/?p=70"},"modified":"2002-05-25T07:32:00","modified_gmt":"2002-05-25T12:32:00","slug":"sexual-competence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/?p=70","title":{"rendered":"Sexual Competence"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Most of the participants in the recent blogospheric <a href=\"http:\/\/www.creatical.com\/weblog\/archives\/00000791.shtml#comments\"><br \/>\nmini-flap<\/a> about a Yale Press Daily article on the fine points of<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/yaledailynews.com\/article.asp?aid=17519\">fellatio<\/a><br \/>\neither make crude jokes, dismiss the article as either a sophomoric<br \/>\nexercise in tweak-the-fogies or shocking evidence of the depravity of<br \/>\ntoday&#8217;s youth.<\/p>\n<p>I think both are missing the real point.  Well, OK, the<br \/>\ntweak-the-fogies camp is not completely off base, but there is<br \/>\nsomething the Natalie Krinsky who wrote this item of tweakery<br \/>\nunderstands that they don&#8217;t seem to.  And that is this: today,<br \/>\n<em>sexual competence is a mainstream virtue<\/em> &mdash; part of the<br \/>\nnormal toolkit of adults, like table manners or choosing appropriate<br \/>\nclothes.<\/p>\n<p>And by &#8220;sexual competence&#8221; I specifically do not mean just the<br \/>\nability to get laid, but being good in bed once you get there.  Sexual<br \/>\ncompetence includes the ability to give and receive sexual pleasure.<br \/>\nIt includes the ability to express one&#8217;s playfulness, affection, lust,<br \/>\npassion, and love towards a sexual partner with physical acts; to give<br \/>\npleasure with behavior that is considered, purposed, and conscious,<br \/>\nand which expresses pride in and enjoyment of one&#8217;s own sexual<br \/>\nnature.<\/p>\n<p>In the dark and backward abysm of time (that is, before about<br \/>\n1973), nice people weren&#8217;t really supposed to <em>work<\/em> at being<br \/>\ngood in bed.  Only prostitutes, gigolos and sex symbols were allowed<br \/>\nthe privilege of treating sex as a conscious art of pleasure.<br \/>\nEverybody else was, essentially, only allowed to be good in bed only<br \/>\nby accident of endowment.<\/p>\n<p>There was a limited exception for married couples and other people<br \/>\npassionately in love.  They were permitted to improve their sexual<br \/>\ncompetence as long as the goal was to affirm the relationship.  The<br \/>\nidea that competence at giving sexual pleasure could be a good in<br \/>\nitself, even in a one-night stand, was simply not part of our culture.<br \/>\nThe outraged critics of Ms. Krinsky&#8217;s article seem still to be living in<br \/>\nthat world.<\/p>\n<p>But the reality around them has changed.  Alex Comfort&#8217;s <cite>The<br \/>\nJoy of Sex<\/cite> was probably the breakthrough, nearly thirty years<br \/>\nago now.  Today&#8217;s college kids have grown up in an environment in<br \/>\nwhich questions of sexual competence (and expectations about it) go<br \/>\nway beyond &#8220;will-she\/won&#8217;t-she?&#8221; and &#8220;can he avoid coming too soon if<br \/>\nshe does?&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>Today, even teenage boys and girls expect each other to cultivate<br \/>\nsexual competence; those who don&#8217;t are simply not competitive in the<br \/>\ndating-and-mating game.  Ms. Krinsky&#8217;s article may have been intended<br \/>\nto tweak the fogies &mdash; but it also describes learning behavior that is<br \/>\nperfectly adaptive for today&#8217;s environment, because oral sex is a<br \/>\ngateway behavior for the aspiring hedonist.<\/p>\n<p>That is, learning how to give good head is usually the first<br \/>\npleasure-giving behavior in sex that is not a straight-line<br \/>\nelaboration of instinct.  Kissing, caressing, and intercourse are<br \/>\nwired in; one can refine technique, but the behavioral basis is<br \/>\nalready present.  Oral sex is the usually the first behavior sexual<br \/>\nhedonists acquire that <em>has<\/em> to be completely learned.<\/p>\n<p>A significant and related fact is that taking <em>pleasure<\/em><br \/>\nfrom giving head has to be learned, by a kind of transference from the<br \/>\npleasure taken by one&#8217;s partner.  Experienced fellatrices and<br \/>\ncunnilinguists may learn to take direct sensual pleasure in the act,<br \/>\nbut that usually follows from and is conditioned in by the<br \/>\ntransference effect rather than leading it.  Thus, for beginners,<br \/>\ngiving oral sex is a particularly unselfish and adult skill.<\/p>\n<p>Finally, for most pairs of partners oral sex is the most important<br \/>\nmethod of orgasmic gratification other than vaginal intercourse.  So<br \/>\nlearning to give good head is not just a gateway behavior, it&#8217;s one<br \/>\nthat tends to remain central in the adult repertoire.<\/p>\n<p>Therefore, a teenage girl teaching herself how to give a good<br \/>\nblowjob is not merely learning how to give a blowjob.  She is<br \/>\ndeclaring her intention to acquire the (now mainstream) virtue of<br \/>\nsexual competence.  She is matter-of-factly reaching not just for a<br \/>\nparticular skill that she knows will be expected of her as an adult,<br \/>\nbut to learn the attitude and sensitivity that will take her<br \/>\nfurther on the path of sexual ability.  She is growing herself<br \/>\nup.<\/p>\n<p>Looked at this way, it&#8217;s hard to see why anyone living in 2002<br \/>\nshould find Ms. Krinsky&#8217;s report of her self-training exceptionable.  One<br \/>\nmight just as well object to her teaching herself how to cook, or drive,<br \/>\nor dance.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/enetation.co.uk\/comments.php?user=esr&amp;commentid=76959124\">Blogspot comments<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Most of the participants in the recent blogospheric mini-flap about a Yale Press Daily article on the fine points of fellatio either make crude jokes, dismiss the article as either a sophomoric exercise in tweak-the-fogies or shocking evidence of the depravity of today&#8217;s youth. I think both are missing the real point. Well, OK, the&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/?p=70\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Sexual Competence<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-70","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sex","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=70"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=70"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=70"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=70"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}