Column 11: Let’s Talk About Blowjobs

OK, everybody. Let’s take a minute to talk about blowjobs. I’m serious about this. Less perverted and/or closed-minded and/or weak-stomached people may want to bow out now, because the discussion that needs to be had about fellatio in mainstream porn these days is not going to be prim nor proper, nor particularly pleasant even for the more seasoned smut aficionados amongst us.

Here’s the thing: most straight porno blowjobs these days are not fun to watch. At all. Not even for me, a steadfast blowjob enthusiast who’s watched a lot of them. I feel like I’m already a pretty open-minded individual, and I have tried to open my mind up further—at least as wide as the throats of the women I’m watching. But there are some things that even I, a magnanimous raunch reviewer state, have trouble dealing with. One of these is watching a woman choke, literally choke, on a penis. Another is watching that woman having her head pushed down onto the penis that’s choking her. And another is hearing a women gag, catch herself before vomiting, gasp for air, slurp up viscous strings of spit (which are also not so fun to watch), and do it all over again. It’s just an all around unpleasant ordeal. By the end of most of the blowjobs I’ve watched lately, there is sweat, spit, mucus, and smeared mascara all over both the giver and receiver, not to mention other bodily fluids that get strewn about. A woman’s face, gag reflex, and dignity all laid waste in one fell swoop.

I understand, at least as far as a penis-less individual can, that deep-throating with lots of spit probably feels fantastic for the guy being blown. As Mr. Marcus, one of my favorite male performers, put it in a how-to DVD on advanced fellatio, “The back of the throat is a wonderful place to be.” From all accounts, it’s soft, wet, and pleasurable, so I can conceptually grasp the male urge to pull a woman’s mouth down as far as it can reasonably go. But that’s where the sticking point lies: the definition of “reasonably.” At some point between the release of Deep Throat in 1972 (when the idea of getting a cock past the gag reflex first occurred to the mainstream) and today, that definition has apparently broadened itself into an almost unrecognizable—certainly unreasonable—state. Where once deep-throating and the like were rare talents that surprised their recipients and glamorized their practitioners, they are now almost standard for porn performers and hoped for if not expected among young, porn consumers.

I’m all for the development of new sexual skills, and I think that for many women the discomfort inherent in deep-throating, gagging, blow-banging, and/or face-fucking (these are not all the same, but they do involve many of the same… er… skills) are seen as natural obstacles to their pleasure-giving capabilities. Obstacles that can be overcome and transformed into art forms. (No, I’m serious: that same advanced fellatio DVD I mentioned earlier has a section called “The Art of Gagging and Face Fucking.” I was skeptical, and indeed I still am, about the artistry in this area of sexual prowess, but then I have never successfully swallowed and entire penis for fear of vomiting, and I’ve never successfully completed a triple-Lutz, either. Who am I to say what’s art?)

But this is all beside the point. The pleasurable feeling of having one’s genitals entirely swallowed aside, and the pride that a woman may feel once having learned how to swallow them also aside, I do feel strongly blowjobs are not inherently demeaning to women. Long ago (i.e., before the late 60’s) they were considered a shameful act that only a woman void of self-respect would perform. There are still some people out there who feel this way, but I am not one of those people, and I’m happy to say that I haven’t met any of them for some time. I think that giving head is an expression of passion and excitement, perhaps even love, at its best. Most of it’s a way to give another person pleasure that, in its own right, can be pleasurable for both giver and receiver. (Insert standard Christmas proverb about the joy of giving here, and feel free to add some little funny quip about stuffed stockings, too. See? I’m a giver.) Fellatio and cunnilingus are both standard bedroom practices these days, and given the amount of pleasure they can bring to everyone involved, I think they are fantastic. So by all means, dear readers, give head like there is no tomorrow!

But at its worst, a blowjob still can be used as a tool of male domination and female degradation. There is a line somewhere between giving head because you want to and having your throat mercilessly pounded by a giant cock. At some point in the evolution of the public opinion on blowjobs, porn would have us believe that they’ve turned from bad things, into okay things, into good things, and then they just leaped over the remaining divide to become things that are so good that it’s okay for women to be filmed debasing themselves in order to give them, just as their grandmothers predicted.

A big part of me that is pro-sex and pro-porn would really like to say that there’s nothing wrong with the gagging and gasping and drooling. That a lot of women really enjoy it. And a very big part of me believes that that is true. Many of the women in these videos love giving blowjobs—even choking, gasping, spit-stringing ones—and their enthusiasm is a testament to the validity of that statement. But let it be said that when mucus and gagging and so forth are a part of the equation, too much enthusiasm in itself can be a problem. I recently watched a video of a certain female performer who shall remain nameless, but whose gusto for giving head exceeded all “reasonable” expectations. She went to town on this guy’s nether regions like a Hoover full of mucus, with sound effects to match, and I am not exaggerating. It was upsetting to hear and far worse to watch.

I don’t care how good it feels: when the soundtrack is akin to that of a vomitous wolverine going at an elk carcass, it ceases to be enjoyable for anybody. And while there may be a fine line of appropriateness between what is disgusting and degrading on the one side, and what is acceptable for the sake of pleasure on the other, any act that prompts a person like me to turn off the DVD in disgust is very far over on the degenerate side. Because the thing about being willing to give another person pleasure is that it should never be undertaken at the sake of one’s own safety or dignity.

When one person is willing to go through something that’s decidedly unpleasant solely for the sake of making someone else happy, that is a selfless act of… what, exactly? Most selfless acts are considered noble, but why would someone decide that she’s okay with letting a man jam his junk down her throat to the point of choking or passing out just because it makes him feel good? Is that noble? Or is it frightening? Why would she decide this? Is it because she’s concluded—via her own mental processes, a history of self-loathing, or societal cues isn’t relevant here—that his pleasure is worth more than her dignity or comfort? Is it because some women value their ability to please more than they respect their own bodies? I shudder to think it, and I don’t really like to make wild allegations like these, either.

But I know that in the next few weeks I will watch another scene where a girl spends twenty or thirty minutes getting “face fucked,” and as much as I want to believe that she is having fun for good, personally valid reasons, I won’t be able to turn off that part of my mind that says, “This is wrong.” Maybe I’m just not open-minded enough for all this; maybe I’m too old-fashioned. But let me tell you that if I were ever to be choked on a cock because a man held my head down on it, I would not be going back for more. He’d need to respect my physical limitations more than he’d need me to take him deep into my upper digestive system, and that’s the end of the story. Granted, I wouldn’t be getting paid to do it; and that’s where things get difficult.

The people blowing and being blown on camera almost always know exactly what they’re getting into. It’s not as if being choked on a cock comes as any surprise for most of the women who do these scenes, particularly if the film they signed up for was Throat Yogurt (yes, that’s a real title). They’re pros, or something like pros, after all. On an individual level, one can really only feel badly for the woman one occasionally sees who is obviously not enjoying it and who just signed up for the money. Poor thing. But then again, she did most likely know what she was signing up for. But then, look at her. Nobody should have to endure something that looks so horrific. For me, it’s always a mental battle between personal choice on the one hand and general human dignity on the other; which should prevail in a porno?

This is one more example of how pornography falls squarely into a moral grey area, where no one really has the authority to say if what’s happening is right or wrong, ok or not ok. It’s the kind of thing that, given it’s happening between two consenting adults, cannot be stopped, nor should it be. But when violent, degrading blowjobs like the ones I’m talking about are put on film and posted/distributed for the world to see, and when part of that world is an audience of young and impressionable people who might not understand what they’re seeing, then the issue becomes much murkier. Much like BDSM films, which are entirely ok as practiced between consenting adults, there’s nothing that can truly be called wrong with it. But when tweens with little grounding in gender power struggles or sexual morality see it online, one questions whether the message taken home is the “consenting adults” part or the “it’s okay to behave this way” part. I’m not sure where I stand, or if I have really anything to say about it. In the end, all I have to offer on the subject is a warning to those who haven’t seen many porno oral sex scenes lately: most of them are not very sexy.