You Suck!
On rethinking pejoratives whilst pondering bottom shaming
You suck, dude. Chill.
That book totally sucks.
This movie is really sucking. Let’s go!
Ever say anything like that? I certainly have. I can’t say I’ve ever much thought about it, honestly. If something sucks, it’s bad.
Right?
But wait. Where does the expression actually come from?
Let me tell you a story.
I hate to admit this, but I was so sexually naive and uninformed when I was a newly out 17 year old, that I quite sincerely believed I was supposed to actually blow (at least part of the time) during oral sex.
Imagine me in a dingy motel room after a night out at the faux-fabulous Question Mark Bar and Grill in beautiful downtown Des Moines.
Imagine callow little me with an older, sophisticated man. Impossibly older and more sophisticated was he — at the ripe age of 19 or 20.
We shed our clothes with a certain urgency, fumbling around between long kisses and embraces.
I was not utterly inexperienced, but I’d never done that, that thing he clearly wanted me to do, given the gentle pressure he was applying to my mussed head.
I took it in my hands, eyes widening a bit, lowered my head a bit, puckered my lips, and whisper-blew on the corona.
“Oh, that’s so good, sweety,” he moaned. “Oh, yes.”
Yay! I’m doing it right!
This is what I thought. I had the vague understanding that actually taking it into my mouth would be part of the process at some point. Mostly, though, I thought I’d be blowing, tickling his jiggly bits with hot breath.
He corrected me after a few seconds, thrusting in deep as he moaned, “It’s only called a blow job, baby. Suck it!”
Oh!
Gotcha, I thought.
The sensation overwhelmed me. Something clicked. Something fiercely primordial possessed me, drove me.
Damn! This is the shit! This is what the fuss is all about.
I went to work with a passion, loving it every much as much as my lover did.
I haven’t looked back since.
Even though I was only 17 When I discovered the joys of receptive oral sex, I still hesitate to say the words.
See what I just did there? I lapsed into clinical language. It felt better. Less embarrassing. I didn’t want to write it the other way. I shied away from writing, “when I discovered the joys of sucking dick.”
Why?
It’s got to do with misogyny, misogyny’s misbegotten twin — homophobia, and with bottom shaming. People who receive, who are penetrated, who enjoy being the object of insertion are quite frequently looked down upon as being weak, as lacking agency and power.
That’s how You Suck! as an insult got started.
You suck dick.
You’re weak.
You lack power.
You’re either a woman or you’re like one. Be a man. Do the fucking. Be the one who penetrates. Don’t suck, because — you know — that really sucks.
Just something to think about. I’m not into badgering people to police their every utterance, but the more I ponder the message, the more it sincerely seems to me that insults about sucking are part of our cultural inheritance of subtle cues that promote both sexism and homophobia.
I think I’m going to make an effort to choose different pejoratives — even in jest.
