Men are still using the patriarchy to deny women oral sex in 2018

DJ Khaled, producer extraordinaire, has been the subject of recent internet fodder after comments from his 2015 interview with The Breakfast Club surfaced, in which he revealed that while he doesn’t perform oral sex on his wife, she is expected to dutifully go down on him. According to Khaled, he abstains from blessing his wife with oral magic because there “are different rules for men.”

He’s right, yes there are different rules, and those rules are a part of the patriarchal manifesto that much of our society operates under.

It is one that uses gender stereotypes and toxic masculinity to reinforce the notion that a woman’s pleasure should come in second to that of a man’s…if the woman is pleasured at all.

Khaled chose to “justify” himself with the fact that he is the breadwinner, aka “the king,” in his relationship, thereby giving him a get-out-of-oral-sex-free card. But men have been using all kinds of excuses to avoid putting their mouths anywhere south of a woman’s belly button since women became hip to the fact that it feels good. Take this Vice article published in 2015, for example, in which the author cites all of the reasons why he absolutely hates giving women oral sex. He includes reasons like “…women are absurdly demanding during sex” and “…I never liked the smell.”

For any man who chooses to use any of these ridiculous excuses to avoid licking lady parts, know this:

When a woman is giving instructions during oral sex it is because they deserve to have it be done well. Be grateful for instruction. Teamwork makes the dream work.

And if your aversion stems from the immature belief that a vagina is smelly or unclean, know that there is an incredible amount of breathwork and contorting that goes into performing oral sex on a man — and that penises have never tasted like fresh fruit.

Khaled — and anyone else who is a student from the patriarchal school of thought that shames women’s natural bodies and denies themselves and their partners of pleasure from oral sex (giving and receiving) — is in need of a lesson in sex positivity.

This is not to ignore the fact that the decision to engage in sexual acts of any kind demands consent in order for sex to be a mutually positive experience. Men who have performed oral sex and are truly not fans of the act are valid in their feelings. But if you simply choose not to provide this pleasure to a partner under the guise of masculinity or vagina shaming, it’s time to do better.