Somebody came to the blog through the search of “ideology of oral sex.”
Geez, people, what’s next? The ideology of digestion? The ideology of blood circulation? Have it, don’t have it, whatever. Just stop looking at simple physiology through the prism of ideology.
The only question to ask about oral sex is “Do I want to engage in it, when, and with whom?” That’s the only “ideology” of sex worth analyzing. And whether you do or don’t want to have oral sex, there is no other reason or justification that you need for that. Just the desire or lack thereof.
Clarissa's Blog 
What about people who want oral sex but refuse to perform it? Isn’t there an ideology and/or philosophy about that? Just being devil’s advocate today…
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It’s just their sexual preference. Just like that of the folks who love to perform it but refuse to be recipients. Some people are into some sexual practices more than other sexual practices. “Maybe they are just not that into it” (c). 🙂
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Well, everything (eating ,working, pleasure..) is linked to ideology, but not just oral sex. I think is fine philosophizing about it, why not? Not thinking about it, would be religious: accepting a dogma, whatever others (parents, friends) said should be done or not done.
But if you’re going to analyze about oral sex, perhhaps you shouldn’t don’t stop there, and go on to analyze the rest of your behaviours….
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Sex is a physiological act. Working is definitely not. 🙂 As for eating, I don’t see how it can be ideological. It can be psychologically unhealthy (and don’t I know that?) but ideological? No, I don’t see that. Maybe you could expatiate?
“Not thinking about it, would be religious: accepting a dogma, whatever others (parents, friends) said should be done or not done.”
– Are there really people who don’t engage in oral sex because their parents told them not to? If so, then their issues have nothing whatsoever to do with oral sex per se. They have to do with an unhealthy symbiosis with parents.
Ideology and psychology are not the same thing.
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//As for eating, I don’t see how it can be ideological.
People talk of unhealthy farming practices, some others are vegeterian. Also religious restrictions.
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Farming practices and eating are two completely different activities. Vegetarianism and religions are, of course, ideological constructs. But the actual eating is not.
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Eating has an ideological side in that there are many rules governing when, what, and why do you eat. You don’t just eat whenever you’re hungry, probably not if you’re giving an important speech or if you’re practicing ramadan. You probably don’t eat meat if think cows are sacred, or simply if you dislike the treatment cows get until that meat gets to your plate.
Eating could be pleasurable or not, depending and how eating was experienced in your environment. The same thing goes for sex.
What I meant to say is that for humans, everything is associated with something. While we grew up, and even as adults we are conditioned to manage our instincts according to the ideology of the society or group where live.
Unless you’re philosphising about everything you do, you are very likely still acting and deciding by conditioning. If someone wants to analyze this, I think or she’ll find it useful.
Discussion aside receiving *good* oral sex for me is the next best thing!
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“Eating could be pleasurable or not, depending and how eating was experienced in your environment. The same thing goes for sex.”
– But that’s psychology, not ideology.
“Unless you’re philosphising about everything you do, you are very likely still acting and deciding by conditioning. If someone wants to analyze this, I think or she’ll find it useful.”
– I understand what you are saying bit this particular North American culture is so sexually repressed that it just talks, quantifies and analyzes sex to death instead of just having it. And the funniest thing is that North Americans see themselves as a raunchy culture because they verbally masturbate around sexuality. So I’m trying to send the message that sex is a physiological act above all, which is something that many people find impossible to process.
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Oh I think that there can be some ideology there: women who can’t manage to enjoy receving because it embarasses them to be “serviced”; men who think that performing is “weak” and only want to receive. Religious groups who think that any sort of non-procreative sex is evil. I think it can be (but doesn’t need to be) tied up with social/gender constructions.
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But the things you list are not really about oral sex, wouldn’t you agree? Oral sex is just a symptom of much larger issues here. Analyzing this symptom as if it had no deeper roots is, ultimately, a waste of time. If oral sex hadn’t been invented at all (:-)), nothing would change. These same issues would manifest themselves in other areas.
If a person thinks sex is dirty or their genitals are dirty, then this is so not about the actual practice of specifically oral sex.
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They were probably looking for that Schwyzer article about coming on faces. Or anyway something about how social attitudes reflect or influence laws regarding the kinds of sex people “should” be having and not. Like, Texas used to have sodomy laws that made oral and anal illegal, mainly because the fundy legislatures were all pinch faced about sex when it came to anything but making babies, and especially blowjobs and anal because they were associated with Those Evil Gays. Seriously. You could get 10 years to life if a cop caught you giving head back in the day.
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“They were probably looking for that Schwyzer article about coming on faces.”
– Ah, the mystery is solved! That has got to be it.
” Like, Texas used to have sodomy laws that made oral and anal illegal, mainly because the fundy legislatures were all pinch faced about sex when it came to anything but making babies, and especially blowjobs and anal because they were associated with Those Evil Gays.”
– I had absolutely no idea. I always wondered why oral sex was illegal in some states. Thank you so much for explaining! This is a cultural reality that is very new to me.
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Yeah, fundamentalist evangelical Christian religion just does not care for anything except babymaking. Everything else is immoral and really gross.
At least, that’s the party line. What individual fundies actually get up to behind closed doors is beyond me because as long as it’s all consensual I don’t give a good god damn about other people’s sex lives.
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“Yeah, fundamentalist evangelical Christian religion just does not care for anything except babymaking. Everything else is immoral and really gross.”
– I understand this theoretically but imagining that such people actually exist is next to impossible to me. Poor miserable creatures.
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