The Fellatio ‘Epidemic’: Age Relations and Access to the Erotic Arts

Abstract

Several decades after oral sex became an ordinary part of the heterosexual repertoire, anxieties about an ‘epidemic’ of casual adolescent fellatio have found public expression in several countries. We examine media reactions to the case of a high-school celebrity athlete accused of receiving oral sex from underage girls. We follow Foucault in arguing that sexuality is constituted discursively but reject his claim that the erotic arts are absent from contemporary culture. Access to such arts on the part of adolescents is at the heart of anxieties around fellatio.