Give and Take? Reciprocity in Young People's Accounts of Oral Heterosex

• In Event: 587 - Regular Session. Sociology of Sexuality: Young Adult Sexualities

Abstract

Ideas about reciprocity commonly occur in young people’s talk about oral sex between men and women, yet we know that oral sex is not always reciprocated: oral-penis contact is more common than oral-vulva contact and occurs in more varied types of partnership. In the context of evident non-reciprocal oral sex, this paper explores the role of discourses of reciprocity in young people’s narratives of oral sex. We show that ideas about like-for-like exchange are in tension with the simultaneous construction of oral-vulva contact as involving greater ‘cost’ than oral-penis contact, both for the ‘giver’ and ‘receiver’. We suggest that emphasis on reciprocity serves three purposes within young people’s narratives of oral heterosex: 1) it enables men to narrate oral-vulva contact in terms of expense, rather than out-and-out cost, by re-focusing attention back on their own gains; 2) it enables women to narrate themselves as challenging gender inequities in oral heterosex; and 3) it diverts attention from other gendered inequities in managing the embodied experience of ‘going down’.

Authors

• Ruth Lewis, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine

• Cicely Marston, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine