How Common is Oral Sex?
What comes to mind when you reflect on your earliest sexual memories? Is this your first experience with penetration? Giving or receiving a subpar hand job in a car’s back seat? How about the first time you engaged in oral sex? It has been debatable over the years whether people perceive having or receiving oral sex as sex or as foreplay, with recent surveys revealing that 44% of Britons don’t see it that way. Here’s looking at you Bill Clinton.
Whether you consider it to be sex depends on how you define sex, however it is one of the most frequently mentioned sexual actions. No matter your age, sexual orientation, or location in the globe, you undoubtedly understand what oral sex is. Terms like “eating out,” “giving head,” “blow job,” and “eating ass” are all examples of oral sex. How prevalent is oral sex, though? If movies and porn are to be believed, then everyone engages in it.
In this post, Adult Business Consulting will examine how oral sex is defined and who is engaging in it.
What Is Oral Sex?
Oral sex is when a person stimulates their partner’s genitalia using their mouth and tongue. Depending on the type of oral sex that is engaged in, we refer to the act in modern contexts as “giving head” or “eating someone out.”
This definition has grown to include the following language as oral sex has evolved over time to encompass more than just a penis in the mouth: Cunnilingus: oral sex on a person who owns a vulva, Anilingus refers to oral sex on the anus, while Fellatio refers to oral sex on a penis.
Unless otherwise noted, this article will discuss cunnilingus, fellatio, and anilingus under the same topic.
General Prevalence of Oral Sex
We discuss oral sex a lot, from porn and movies to lingo and insults. Oral sex was often the first sexual action that many of us engaged in, but how frequently does it occur?
According to a 2018 survey with American participants, 82.2% of women and 82.7% of males between the ages of 18 and 54 had engaged in oral sex at some point between 2009 and 2018. According to the same survey, 60.4% of participants gave and 62.2% received oral sex, compared to 71.9% who engaged in penetrating penis-vaginal intercourse and 17.8% who engaged in anal sex.
According to a 2020 Bespoke study, people have oral sex on average five times per month (or once per week), which is comparable to the frequency of penetrative sex experienced by ‘regular’ couples.
In a study on sexual behavior in Melbourne, Australia, the forms of sex people engage in, which includes fellatio and cunnilingus, is more common than anilingus, which is performed at a far lower rate than the other acts. This is relevant to the sort of oral sex that is being performed.
We can see that regardless of sexual orientation, gender, or age group (although we will go into more detail on each of these in the following few pages), oral sex is just as common as penetrative sex. But does preference rely on factors like age, gender, sexual orientation, or even culture? We will examine who engages in oral sex the most in the paragraphs that follow.
Demographic Differences
Let’s start by examining which ages are more likely to engage in oral sex when it comes to who is having and receiving oral sex. Bespoke Surgical discovered that those between the ages of 18 and 24 are more likely to have it than those over the age of forty-five, with 76.5% reporting oral sex in that year compared to 54.3% of those between the ages of 45 and 54. But it doesn’t mean that elderly people don’t engage in oral sex. According to a British survey, 19% of women and 30% of men who are 65 or older still engage in oral sex.
Overall, the Bedible research center reported that, across all age categories, including 16 to 18-year-olds, individuals between the ages of 25 and 29 had the most oral sex.
You can make the case that factors such as age disparities, physical capabilities, sexual dysfunction, societal views about sex, and relationship satisfaction can affect how people feel about having oral sex. Oral sex is less common among those 65 and older, although studies have found that older people in happy relationships are more likely to engage in it. One may argue that oral sex increases in frequency as sexual maturity and confidence increase, comparing the late 20s and early 30s to teenagers. Compared to younger individuals who feel forced by society to satisfy specific sexual standards, most of us by this age have had a few partners, know what we prefer, and are eager to explore new things.
In a 2014 study on oral sex, it was discovered that White persons, particularly White men, received oral sex more frequently than their Hispanic and African American counterparts in America. Black girls (aged 18) were also found to be less likely to engage in oral sex, according to a study of young people in America.
These discrepancies may be the result of cultural variations among ethnic groups, with attitudes toward sex being more conservative in Black and Hispanic populations. There was no research on Asian societies’ attitudes regarding oral sex in comparison to those of other cultures.
Differences in Gender and Sexual Orientation
We can see that regardless of sexual orientation, gender, or age group (although we will go into more detail on each of these in the following few pages), oral sex is just as common as penetrative sex. But does preference rely on factors like age, gender, sexual orientation, or even culture? We will examine who engages in oral sex the most in the paragraphs that follow.
Overall, oral sex is as prevalent a sex act as porn and the media would have you believe.
Read more from the Adult Business Consulting blog.
Adult Business Consulting thanks you for reading this blog post. Please get in touch with us if you have any questions.