Starter sex: what's what?

I have a friend who's only slept with four people, he says. Unless you count blow jobs, in which case the number skyrockets to the mid-20s.It's a pretty freakin' big discrepancy, but apparently where he grew up, giving guys a blow job in a bathroom at a party was totally OK, but girls who participated in full-on intercourse too early were a bit "skanky."

He is incredibly bright, politically progressive, and apparently in the majority on this particular issue. A University of New Brunswick study published in the Canadian Journal of Human Sexuality last Saturday indicated only a quarter of university students considered oral sex to be, well, 'sex.'

C. attributes his belief to the climate he grew up in, a working-class Scarborough neighbourhood, where it was common among his friends to begin sexual activity at 12 or 13.

"It's very aggressively blue collar and kids are bored and drink a lot."

He attributes the preference for oral sex to fact that there's less of a chance of disease and zero chance of pregnancy.

"In many ways, it was the safe alternative," he says. "Even if you start to realize it [the distinction] is a bit silly, it sticks in the back of your mind as you enter adulthood."

Put that way, it seems almost rational, like training wheels for sexuality. It's not exactly risk free, however. Oral sex can transmit diseases including chlamydia, human papillomavirus, gonorrhea, herpes, and possibly even HIV. As well as disease, the whole concept is scarier when you consider that major decisions about sexuality are being made by 12-year-olds. Particularly in regards to the emotional consequences, does it really make all that much difference what sexual organ gets put in which orifice?

And not everyone concurs. L., who has walked into the room during our interview, makes a face when asked to explain why he disagrees.

"It's sort of obvious," he says. "It has the word 'sex' in it."

Rather than a precursor to 'real' sex, oral sex was considered risqu, even taboo well into the 20th century. While the Kinsey report said that 45 per cent of married women circa about 1950 had performed fellatio, as recently as 1963, the judge in a famous British divorce case said of a woman who performed oral sex on her lover: "She was a highly sexed woman who had ceased to be satisfied with normal relations and had started to indulge in disgusting sexual activities."

However, something has clearly changed recently, as studies indicate more and more young people think oral sex doesn't count. Many blame sex and abstinence education that focus on intercourse. Others blame a general breakdown in family values.

Even if you reject the fire and brimstone explanation, the issue is further complicated when considering anything beyond heterosexual sex. Does that mean, then, that most people believe lesbians never have sex? That it's 'sex' only if they use sex toys or other objects? That seems just plain silly, and more than a little arbitrary. Many gay men, on the other hand, routinely make a distinction between oral sex and full-on intercourse. "The little sex" and "the big sex" is how one friend refers to it. Making penetration the gold standard, however, does seem to be indicative of our male-dominated, phallocentric culture.

Another - female - friend, B., attributes the increased acceptance and popularity of the blow job to a world that's highly sexualized, focused on instant gratification, and directed at men's pleasure.

She sees a distinction between vaginal and oral sex, but says people are far too eager to put up a fake dividing line.

"It's the cach of being able to say, 'I'm a virgin'," she says.

She points out that anecdotal evidence seems to indicate more casual oral sex is happening with men as the recipient than the reverse.

"People in general are uncomfortable about grey areas, and try to work them to their advantage. If you've gone down a man, you know him in the biblical sense of the word. You know how sex works."

The best explanation I can think of is that the double standard is the result of the juxtaposition of an increasingly sexually explicit culture with the remains of patriarchal mores that place a premium on female virginity. While it's obviously nice for men to be able to have guilt-free sex outside of marriage, without the requisite responsibilities, it leaves a lot of questions unanswered about the boundaries of proper female behaviour. While some women may claim the right to be sexually aggressive, it certainly isn't culturally accepted.

The apparently special status of oral sex allows a bizarre halfway point, where women can gratify men's sexual needs, and maybe even occasionally their own, without having to do too much adjustment about conceptions of their own sexuality.

Putting the issue in perspective may be easier when considering what constitutes cheating. Many couples include any outside expression of sexual activity, and that definitely includes oral sex.

C. says - only half tongue-in-cheek - that he believes oral sex isn't really cheating, though he admits that explaining that to a girlfriend can be tricky.

"Only once have I tried that," he said. "It ended poorly.