Is Cunnilingus a Submissive Act?

There’s a scene in Louis CKs brilliant non-comedy Horace and Pete in which crotchety misogynist Uncle Pete lectures Steve Buscemi (whose character is also called Pete) about the emasculating dangers of giving oral sex to women. For context you should watch the entire thing, but here’s the relevant snippet:

Uncle Pete: That’s disgusting.

Pete: What is?

Uncle Pete: Going down on somebody. You don’t do that.

Pete: What? People do that. Women like it.

Uncle Pete: A man doesn’t do that. What is it with people your age going down on each other? It’s no good.

Pete: Are you telling me you don’t like a girl doing that to you?

Uncle Pete: Yeah. Yeah, I like it. I don’t like her. And I’m not doing it to her. Not on your life.

Now doesn’t that feel familiar? Uncle Pete is a deliberately unlikeable ratbag from an age when tins came with little keys attached. But what he’s saying (that if you’re a real manly man you wouldn’t even consider cunnilingus) is a sentiment I’ve heard over and over again.

I’ve heard it said by adults. By people my age. By people who seem completely, actually serious about the words coming out of their mouths.

And, of course, it’s a belief that rife in the BDSM scene. The fear has its roots in the notion that going down on someone is an inherently submissive act. How, some people seem to wonder, can I still be dominant if I go down on my partner?

After all, giving oral sex to another human is prioritising thier pleasure. It’s focussing time and attention on them for a moment. It is, some people claim, giving them control.

On a superficial level, yes, I can see it. Imagine two humans fucking. The one giving pleasure with their face buried in the crotch of the other would look – to an outside observer and in that moment – like the more submissive of the two.

Some actions look more dominant (doggy-style, spanking, throat-fucking, et al) while others look vaguely submissive (giving oral, giving a massage, manual stimulation). The fear seems to be that if you do enough actions from the wrong list and your alignment will shift. You’ll lose control. Next thing you know you’ll be getting fucked in the ass while wearing your girlfriend’s panties.

But that’s not how things work in the real world. No specific acts are inherently dominant or inherently submissive. You can remain in control while giving your partner pleasure. You can give oral to a woman without losing Dom Points.

You can do this by restraining your partner before you go to town on their genitals. By teasing them and keeping them on the edge of an orgasm for hour after hour. By refusing them permission to come. By humiliating them as you lick their cunt. By forcing them to beg for more between each session.

Or you can just engage in some completely vanilla pussy licking because you enjoy it, and because you don’t care how it looks.

Whatever. The point is, despite persistent generalised mumurs to the contrary, you’re no less manly or dominant for giving your partner pleasure. Don’t fret so much about it. When you do, you end up sounding a lot like Uncle Pete.

Who is, to be fair, hilarious. But that’s not the point.