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The Dartmouth
March 28, 2024 | Latest Issue
The Dartmouth

Patriarchal Head Games

While I agree with Liza Williams' main point regarding the externality of binary service-based relationships as a hindrance to the overarching objective of equi-personal concomitant sexual relationships ("Sex, Solicitation and Sororities," The Dartmouth, October 26), I believe it is incumbent upon us to delve further into her conception of the nurturance of masculinist gratification rituals cast in the sorority "framework." Clearly it is not a point of anisotropic indifference that feminine "performance" from the fellatory perspective as judged by an omnipartial male "audience" (as it were) is a hampering factor toward the concomitance of relationships; indeed it has been instrumental in bringing untold numbers of otherwise flourishing partnerships to their knees.

The "objective disorder" in Williams' thinking, however, is the fallacious notion that relationships constructed on a quid pro quo oral paradigm are therefore paradigmatically unsound -- or, to put it more succinctly, that they fail to pass a "global test" of paradigmatic functionality while instead perpetuating the trope of vicissitudinal subservience in the more female of the two partners. This, on its face, is ludicrous! The suggestion that female-identifying individuals should feel their sexuality subjected to such commodification as Williams' argument seems to imply an inherently and categorically anti-menstruationalist world view. When we reject the traditional archetypes of "the giver" and "the receiver" in either a sexual or pseudo-sexual context, we retain the viability of mutually altruistic oral intercourse without having obsolete and sexist mores shoved down our throats.

Therein lies the obvious distinction: should our reverence for these exchanges be one of silently sacramental penetrationalism, whispered on bended knee, or should we boldly thrust the issue more deeply into the public sphere (or, as Foucault would suggest, the "spheroid of publicity" -- but that is a discussion for another time), engendering a more open discourse, a "dialogue of mouthfuls," if you will? I, for one, find the issue to be one of magnitude (though, of course, depth is important too), as the dimensions of the prototypical hetero-binary system are continually hardened and reforged in the fires of coeducation, and especially the sorority enclave.

It is this very heteroflexibility, wrought by our fertile sexual imaginations and undifferentiated quasi-orgasmic impulses, that the backwards, oppressive, religio-political patriarchy finds so hard to swallow. The knee-jerk systemic relegation of liberated, free-thinking "womyn" in favor of supine-inclined hypermammiferous blonde tarts undermines the tenacity of Williams' claims of sexual solicitation. To narrow the sexual (not to mention racial!) "spaces" of heterosexual women performing cunnilingus to their mere "newsworthiness," as Williams attempts to do, betrays an obvious veracity snafu, fueled, of course, by a vicious anti-fallopianism.

Perhaps the most penetrating aspect of Williams' article, however, is her treatment of "inadequacy," a concept that is nonetheless well hung within her larger framework of "idiosyncratic beneficence." Her starkly personal portrayal of Griffin, Swanson and the other Sigma Delts results in a shocking clarity toward their victimhood, a near "facialization" of their very humanity that is like a long-awaited breath of fresh air.

The obvious solution, then, is for defenestrated patriarchs to assume a more liminal position in the sexual spectrum, one that bifurcates the necessarily polysynthetic facets of the "coital approximation" from the more nugatory and ancillary ones, and does so without getting too choked up about it. While a certain amount of informed, Socratic dialogue can provide reprieve from Williams' trope of the "completely silent" penile encounter, one wonders in the wake of her article if a sensible degree of aphasia is indeed in order. Perhaps a more pacific, "nuanced" approach, absent feministic chatter, might help to mitigate the more vituperative, bombastic overtones that presently dominate the Dartmouth fellatio scene. If Williams were to adopt the more philanthropic position of Griffin, then the whole idea might not leave her with such a bad taste in her mouth.