An examination of the specifically sexual aspects of marriage reveals that the aggressors vs. adults and minors are more inclined toward protracted precoital play than any other groups—for 36 to 37 per cent of them foreplay lasted for an average of a half hour or more. The incest offenders vs. children rank third with 30 per cent. The aggressors vs. children and the incest offenders vs. adults had the briefest foreplay—for slightly over half of them it averaged less than three minutes. The control group is intermediate, nearly two thirds of them reporting that their foreplay lasted more than three and less than 30 minutes; other groups had fewer members in this intermediate category.

What is the significance of this? We shall subsequently see that these same aggressors vs. minors and adults, and incest offenders vs. children are notable for their elaborate sexual techniques, and one may therefore logically conclude that elaboration of petting and coital techniques is generally associated with lengthy foreplay. We suspect that all this is not aimed at increasing the wife’s pleasure and response in marriage manual tradition, but that it is for the male’s own gratification. After all, these aggressors are scarcely famous for the consideration they show their sexual partners. The elaboration and duration of their sexual activity are foreshadowed by the emphasis on petting before marriage, when the aggressors vs. minors and adults reach orgasm from petting more than other groups and engage more in mouth-genital contact. At the other end of the spectrum are groups to whom petting and foreplay are less important, for example, the incest offenders vs. adults and the aggressors vs. children, who had rather limited petting techniques prior to marriage and little mouth-genital contact at any time. By and large, the homosexual offenders and some of the heterosexual offenders also show a tendency toward brevity of foreplay. In the homosexual offenders this probably stems from their lesser interest in heterosexuality—one does not elaborate on and prolong activity in which one is not strongly interested. The brevity of foreplay sometimes seen in the heterosexual offenders is due to no lack of interest, but to the crude and direct philosophy of sex held by many males of the lower socioeconomic level: one proceeds directly to coitus with minimal preliminaries.

Mouth-genital contact is a particularly useful activity for study. Other petting techniques are so common, although sometimes perfunctory, as to be of little value in differentiating groups. But the presence or absence of mouth-genital contact is a valuable clue to the degree of inhibition and adherence to social mores, and it is fraught with emotional content.

In marriage we find mouth-genital contact experienced by the majority of the aggressors vs. minors, aggressors vs. adults, and incest offenders vs. children; only these three groups have over half of their members with this experience. The fact that two of these three groups consist of sex offenders who used real violence and/or threat tends to support the psychiatric concept that- mouth-genital contact can have strong sadomasochistic implications. At the other end of the range we find the offenders vs. adults, offenders vs. minors, aggressors vs. children, and incest offenders vs. adults. In these four groups less than one third of the members had ever engaged in mouth-genital contact.

In the great majority of instances if mouth-genital contact occurs in a marriage, it includes both fellation and cunnilingus. Since about one fourth of the married men in both the prison and control groups used this technique, this figure may be regarded as a bench mark for lower and lower-middle socioeconomic level marital behavior. However, in a minority of cases the individual had experienced one sort of mouth-genital contact but not the other, usually when one spouse was willing to receive oral stimulation, but not give it. As we have mentioned earlier, some odd taboos attach to mouth-genital activity: to receive such attention is desirable, to give is despicable.

Taking first those who were fellated by their wives but who never reciprocated, we find the top four positions in the rank-order (7 to 13 per cent) occupied by the aggressors vs. adults and minors and the homosexual offenders vs. adults and minors. The presence of the homosexual offenders in first and third rank is probably due to their familiarity with fellation resulting from their homosexual activity—i.e., a technique which they enjoyed in a homosexual contact they would solicit from their wives. The presence of the aggressors in second and fourth rank seems one more manifestation of their marked interest in mouth-genital contact: if they could not have a mutual contact, they would settle for less. Among those who had cunnilingus with their wives but whose wives did not fellate them, these aggressors again rank high: second and fourth (7 per cent). Top rank (9 per cent) belongs to the peepers, but this may be an accident of smallness of sample.

Taking the above data along with the premarital data presented earlier and the postmarital and extramarital data to be given later, we may make some important general statements concerning heterosexual mouth-genital contact:

It is emphasized by the heterosexual aggressors and incest offenders vs. children in general. In brief, force and incest (which often has overtones of duress and force) equate with mouth-genital contact.

It occurs least often among heterosexual offenders vs. minors and adults.

There is more mouth-genital contact with wives than with any other female companions before, during, or after marriage.

A larger percentage of males who pay a female for sex are fellated by the paid female than males who marry are fellated by their spouses.

In both the control and prison groups the proportion of males experienced in cunnilingus increases more when they marry than does the proportion experienced in fellation; this is not consistently true of the sex-offender groups.

Marriage tends to equalize the proportions of men experienced in cunnilingus and in fellation. This tendency carries over into both extramarital and postmarital activity so that the predominance of fellation over cunnilingus is either absent or less marked than it was in premarital life.

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