Is It Selfish For a Woman to Declare That She's Done with Blowjobs?

• If a man doesn’t eat a woman out, but they have sex = man gets off; a woman very well may not.
• If a man doesn’t eat a woman out, but they have sex and she also blows him = man orgasms extra good; woman still may not.
• If a man eats a woman out and they have sex, but she refuses to go down on him = man STILL orgasms; woman likely orgasms, too.

If baseline getting off is the only criteria here, then—as you can see—the situation Alison Stevenson has devised is less selfish than it is equal. This woman is a hero, and hell, maybe even a mathematical genius? And I say that as a woman who likes blowjobs mighty fine!

Looked at in that light, when Stevenson takes the time to show how much she doesn’t hate penises—that she’s even jealous of their mostly worry-free existence compared to the daily trials of the vagina, she just doesn’t want to blow them—I think we should applaud how polite and considerate her refusal really is.

Unsurprisingly, the Internet does not agree:

At least this one guy gets it:

The point being: whatever any couple negotiates in good faith is their business. The whole thing sheds light on how oral sex is often seen as obligatory for the woman to give, and generous for the man to give; in any arrangement where the man is willing to eat pussy every time, this usually just means both people get off at every sexual encounter. Imagine that!

Anyway, Stevenson acknowledges that sexual pleasure is negotiable, and that she is partly responsible for not having asked for more orgasms throughout her life. But in her defense, men don’t have to ask to get off in sexual negotiations. In my experience with heteros, the expectation is that dudes will be coming, and women will be lucky to come. When everything is bookended by the man’s boner and release, women are generally going to lose.

To prove this, I tossed this essay to a dude I know to ask him what he thought. He wrote:

Well I hope she’s into open relationships because otherwise she’s destined to be cheated on.

Ha! I asked him to address the elephant in the room, the selfish lovers who’ve driven her to this madness:

But you know it’s not that simple. Some of those men might have been horrible, some just don’t know what they’re doing or intimidated by the likely failure to achieve the desired results. Look, I think any man who doesn’t go down on their woman or work to give her an orgasm can expect to be cheated on as well. But it is, unfortunately for you people, a much more complicated process than a man’s orgasm. There’s a learning curve that takes a long time and you people are not always helpful with that fact. I mean I didn’t really master it until my thirties. My point is I understand her frustration, but it’s just not always as cut and dried as men failing to get ‘er done. I mean, there have been times when women stopped me from trying to make them cum because they didn’t want to fool with it. Believe me, I think there needs to be a cultural change about this but it’s going to require a little proactiveness on teaching men and patience with our egos and confusion about the whole thing.

See? Proactiveness from women. Patience with male egos and confusion. But still making sure male needs are met in the hopes that one day female needs will be met.

It all sounds like women doing a lot more work to give men some extra pleasure—in the hopes that one day they will get some for themselves. Which come to think of it, is a lot like a blowjob. Cool arrangement. Perhaps until it’s all sorted out, a little collective pausing of the beej is in order. After all, if you add up a lifetime of hetero women sucking dick without getting off, I’d say we’ve earned a little break.

Illustration by Jim Cooke