In the January/February issue of The Atlantic Monthly, writer Caitlin Flanagan says–after lengthy analysis–that some young girls may be performing a brand of highly impersonal oral sex on boys as a last-ditch effort to appropriately postpone deeper experiences (like intercourse or arousal). And she casts a stern eye on our sexually distorted culture. She writes:

“The modern girl’s casual willingness to perform oral sex may–as some cool-headed observers of the phenomenon like to propose–be her way of maintaining a post-feminist power in her sexual dealings, by being fully in control of the sexual act and of the pleasure a boy receives from it. Or it may be her desperate attempt to do something that the culture refuses to encourage: to keep her own sexuality-—the emotions and the desires, as well as the anatomical real estate itself-—private, secret, unviolated. It may not be her technical virginity that she is trying to preserve; it may be her own sexual awakening—which is all she really has left to protect anymore.”

Flanagan, a staff writer for the New Yorker, and the mother of sons, throws hip jargon into an otherwise serious article. I know you’ll find it a joy to read (despite the forlorn topic).