PREMARITAL HETEROSEXUAL PETTING: PETTING TECHNIQUES
While the numbers of partners provided one measure of involvement in petting, it is important to examine the extent of the techniques involved. Young people themselves distinguish between “necking” (above the waist stimulation) and “heavy petting” (below the waist stimulation). The majority of all our comparative groups had engaged in “heavy petting” prior to marriage; in fact, in seven of the 16 groups over 90 per cent were thus experienced—a proportion in keeping with the accumulative incidence of premarital coitus. Those with the least “heavy petting” (64-84 per cent) are the homosexual offenders, the control group, the peepers, and inevitably the incest offenders vs. adults (64 per cent). Those with the most include, as usual, the prison group and those convicted of offenses against unrelated females aged twelve and older.
The most intimate petting technique (aside from anal contact), and also the most taboo, is mouth-genital contact. Here many of the associations we have previously noted no longer appear: a male with many sexual partners and high coital frequencies does not necessarily have liberal attitudes toward mouth-genital contact. Similarly it is not uncommon for a male to have opposite attitudes toward fellation and cunnilingus, accepting one and rejecting the other.
In the matter of mouth-genital contact it is considered more taboo for a male to put his mouth on female genitalia than to allow (or encourage or pay) a female to put her mouth on his. Consequently, among males, being fellated is usually commoner than performing cunnilingus. Of those who had ever experienced fellation by a female, the incest offenders vs. children lead with 73 per cent, followed consecutively by the heterosexual aggressors vs. children, aggressors vs. adults, and aggressors vs. minors; the aggressors standing as a unit typified by a large number with such experience. It must be added that fellation was often a part of the behavior leading to their conviction. The exhibitionists rank fifth, and, at the end of the scale, the heterosexual offenders vs. adults and minors have the smallest proportions with experience, topped by the incest offenders vs. adults, the control group, and the homosexual offenders vs. adults with 38 per cent.
It would seem, then, that the offenders who use force and heterosexual pedophiles tend to seek fellation, whereas those whose interest and/or offense concerns willing older females are less interested in it or more inhibited about it.
This generalization is strengthened by studying the data on cunnilingus. Here once more we see that the most experienced groups are the incest offenders vs. children (66 per cent), the three heterosexual-aggressor groups, and the heterosexual offenders vs. children. The least experienced in cunnilingus are the heterosexual offenders vs. minors and adults (11 per cent) and, not unexpectedly, the homosexual offenders.
One must, however, realize that where taboo behavior is concerned all manner of rationalizations and the factor of availability come into play. For example, some males avoid certain types of sexual behavior with their companions or wives, but seek it with prostitutes. Other males may be inhibited about a particular act until they find themselves in the repeated intimacy of marriage or a protracted love affair which tends to erode the inhibitions. Some males are uninhibited about having coitus, but definitely inhibited about specific sexual techniques (the offenders vs. adults are a prime example), while others (such as the incest offenders vs. adults) are inhibited about sex in general. Consequently, it behooves us to look at the situations in which mouth-genital contact occurred.
First of all, let us examine mouth-genital contact prior to marriage with companions (i.e., nonprostitutes). In a rank-order of fellation experience, the three heterosexual-aggressor groups occupy the first three places (28-34 per cent), followed by the prison group and, oddly, the homosexual offenders vs. adults. The high rank of the aggressors is in keeping with our earlier findings, the fourth ranking of the prison group may be an expression of their disregard for social regulations coupled with their unusual amount of heterosexual activity, and the fifth ranking of the homosexual offenders vs. adults may simply be the result of transferring to a heterosexual relationship a technique common in homosexual relations. The groups with the least experience of fellation are the incest offenders vs. adults and minors (8-9 per cent); also low in rank-order are the three heterosexual-offender groups and the control group.
Cunnilingus with companions prior to marriage presents a roughly comparable picture in that the heterosexual aggressors vs. minors and adults rank first and second (25—33 per cent), while the heterosexual offenders vs. minors and adults, the control group, and the incest offenders vs. adults occupy the lower ranks (4-8 per cent). Inexplicably the heterosexual aggressors vs. children are also low while high in the rank-order of fellation experience—a tendency seen in less pronounced degree among the prison group.
From this rather confusing mass of premarital data we can conclude that premarital mouth-genital contact is commonest among the heterosexual aggressors and least common among the heterosexual offenders vs. minors and adults and the incest offenders vs. adults. It does not seem to be associated with pedophilia; the offenders and aggressors vs. children usually appear in the central portions of the rank-orders.
In premarital life fellation is more predominant over cunnilingus than in later life. In only three groups were more of the members experienced in cunnilingus than in being fellated, and in only two groups were they equally experienced in both.
Mouth-genital contact with prostitutes before, during, or after marriage involves a problem at present insoluble, but we shall discuss it here since most contact with prostitutes is premarital. The difficulty is that while males rather freely admit having been fellated by prostitutes (a standard offering), they are extremely reluctant to admit having placed their mouths on prostitutes’ genitalia. Very few report it, but the prostitutes we have interviewed state that a large proportion of their clients do perform cunnilingus. Consequently, we are inclined to believe our percentages are much too small.
Confining the calculations to those who had ever paid a female for sexual activity, in a rank-order of fellation by prostitutes the upper three positions are held by the aggressors vs. minors and adults and the exhibitionists. The lowest ranks (28-32 per cent) contain, as usual, die heterosexual offenders vs. minors and adults, and also the incest offenders vs. adults.
In summary, about all that can be said regarding commercial heterosexual mouth-genital contact is that it is an activity involving many of the aggressors and relatively few of those whose willing or acquiescent sexual partners were postpubertal females.
This correlation between mouth-genital contact and heterosexual aggressors, a phenomenon fitting the psychoanalytic concept of “oral aggression,” led us to tabulate those who had bitten (usually gently) their sexual partners. Such biting is commonplace as a sexual stimulus in many mammals, and hence not unexpected among humans. We found a high association between mouth-genital activity and biting. Unfortunately, in the case of the homosexual offenders we cannot differentiate the sex of the bitten partners, and hence we shall ignore them in this discussion after stating that they seem rather prone to such oral stimulation, ranking second, fourth, and eighth. We also did not differentiate biting on the basis of marital status, but since in the bulk of our cases it occurred prior to marriage we shall discuss it here.
An “ever vs. never” tabulation of biting is not very illuminating except that, as with mouth-genital contact, few of the heterosexual offenders vs. minors and adults bite. A rank-order of frequent biting (omitting the homosexual offenders) shows the heterosexual aggressors vs. minors in first place (26 per cent), the prison group second, and the heterosexual aggressors vs. adults third (see Figure 7). Again, oral stimulation seems equated with the use of force. All three incest-offender groups and one aggressor group (vs. children) occupy the lowest four ranks (4-6 per cent). This is not surprising; the incest offenders are not sexually aggressive, hence their mediocre or poor heterosexual record and their consequent seeking of sex within the family. The heterosexual aggressors vs. children are, by and large, not so aggressive as those vs. adults; they were insufficiently enterprising to obtain older females and turned to children where less effort was sufficient to achieve their aim. The fact that the aggressors vs. minors and adults rank high in biting while the aggressors vs. children rank low may relate to our finding that the former two groups rank first and second in the number of men with sadomasochistic masturbatory fantasy, whereas the aggressors vs. children rank lowest in this respect.
A rank-order of occasional (as opposed to frequent) biting reveals that the incest offenders are now all within the first four ranks, and die heterosexual offenders occupy the lower four ranks. Virtually all groups had more members who bit occasionally than frequently; the aggressors vs. minors and the offenders vs. adults are the only exceptions. However, in some groups the occasional biters were nearly equaled by the frequent biters: the prison group and the peepers.
In all three measurements, ever-never, occasional, and frequent biting, the control group occupied an intermediate position in the rank-orders.
*295\161\2*
