Oral sex

What is oral sex?

Oral sex (Dutch: orale seks) is sex in which the mouth, lips and tongue touch the other person’s genitals. Dutch splits the act by anatomy: pijpen for a penis, beffen for a vulva. Four in five Dutch adults have done it at some point. Rimming, with the mouth at the anus, is counted under it in practice too.

How common oral sex is in the Netherlands

More often than people think, and with an age curve that runs the opposite way to what you’d expect.

Rutgers’ Monitor Seksuele Gezondheid 2023 surveyed 15,494 Dutch people aged 18 through 80. Of them, 81 percent had ever had oral sex, men 82 and women 80 percent. In the past six months that was 54 percent. At the last time they had sex with a partner (12,551 people), oral sex was part of it for 58 percent, against 85 percent penis-in-vagina sex, 73 percent fingering or a handjob and 8 percent anal sex.

The age figures are the most interesting. With the last sex partner, 75 percent of 18- to 24-year-olds had oral sex, against 56 percent of 40- to 54-year-olds and 30 percent of those over 70. For “ever done it” that order flips: 65 percent among the under-24s against 90 percent of 40- to 54-year-olds. So the youngest group does it most often and has done it least often.

Why Dutch has no neutral word for it

There is no Dutch word for the act as a whole. There are two, they split along anatomy, and both are younger than most of the people who use them.

Beffen appears in the Etymologisch Woordenboek van het Nederlands with the description “to stimulate the female genitals with the mouth” and an earliest source from 1972, in the supplements to the Woordenboek der Nederlandsche Taal. A later antedating brings that back to 1966, in Jan Cremer. The word comes from the slang bef for vulva, and the dictionary suggests that in turn goes back to beffe, ‘cap, collar’, just as the Dutch muts is also used for the female genitals.

Pijpen is much older, but not in this sense. As ‘to whistle’ it is already recorded in 1287; the sexual sense ‘to suck off’ was only recorded in 1976. That is how the clinical loan translation orale seks became the only term that covers both halves at once, and it explains why it shows up on forms and in research and not in bed.

Even the national guideline can’t get around it. The RIVM’s LCI guideline on gonorrhea describes the route of infection literally as “orogenital (pijpen or beffen) or oroanal contact (rimmen)”. Two words, because one didn’t cover it.

Why people enjoy oral sex

The appeal is in attention that goes one way.

In penetration, two people do something at the same time. Here one lies still and the other does the work, and that shifts the whole evening.

• For the one receiving, the payoff is that the attention is undivided: there is no second act to also keep in mind.
• For the one giving, the payoff lies in the pace. You can hear from the breathing whether you’re going too fast, much sooner than with other acts.
• For a couple, it is often the first form in which one of the two gets to receive without doing anything back, and that turns out to be harder in practice than it sounds.

Shame about how you look or smell doesn’t just go away with it. Often that’s exactly the reason someone holds it off, and then talking helps more than doing.

Misconceptions about oral sex

“Oral sex is safe sex.” No. The LCI guideline names orogenital contact in so many words as one of the main routes of transmission for gonorrhea, alongside genital and genitoanal contact. In the majority of throat and rectal infections, 70 to 90 percent, the infection stays symptom-free. So you notice nothing, and that is exactly the problem.

“If nobody comes, nothing happens.” Not that either. The same guideline reports that Australian research has made it plausible that gonorrhea is transmissible even through deep kissing, though it’s unclear how often that happens.

“It’s a warm-up.” In the figures it isn’t. Oral sex was part of 58 percent of the last times people had sex; for anal sex that was 8 percent. This is one of the most ordinary things people do.

What I see of it myself

I’m Victor, a gigolo, more than twenty-five years into BDSM and with a background as a psychotherapist. My own rule is set down in black and white on the page about the introductory conversation: a condom for penetration, and oral is allowed without. That’s a choice, not a safety guarantee, and it’s exactly why I get tested regularly and say so right away if there’s anything.

In conversations it’s almost always about smell and taste and almost never about technique. Someone who hesitates for weeks rarely hesitates over the act itself.

And it takes longer than people estimate. Ten minutes is too short. That’s not a performance demand, it only means you set the evening up for it instead of squeezing it in between.

What you can do yourself

• Get tested if you’ve had oral sex with a new partner, even without symptoms, because most throat infections give none.
• Say so if you have a throat complaint and ask for a throat swab, because a standard STI test doesn’t look there on its own.
• Use a condom or dental dam when you want to take the risk away; the LCI guideline names both.
• Agree whether coming in the mouth is okay, beforehand and not halfway through.
• Ask about smell and taste before you say anything about it. With this act that’s the most sensitive spot, not the technique.

More reading on oral sex

The separate forms are explained here on their own: 69 for giving and receiving at the same time, deep throat for the deep part, facesitting for the reversed position, rimjob for the oral-anal variant. The blog article the art of deep throating is about the technique.

Beyond this site, Rutgers’ Monitor Seksuele Gezondheid is the best Dutch data there is, and the LCI guideline on gonorrhea is free online for anyone who wants to read up on the medical side.

Where this fits on this site

With intimate togetherness, oral sex belongs there as naturally as the rest, with the time it needs. If you want to change something about this without it becoming a project right away, a conversation is the simplest first step. What comes up in that conversation, including the agreements about STIs and condoms, is on the page about the introductory conversation.

Sources

• Monitor Seksuele Gezondheid 2023. Rutgers, knowledge center on sexuality, 2024. Provides the figures for oral sex in the Netherlands. Ever done it 81 percent (men 82, women 80, n=15,494), in the past six months 54 percent, with the last sex partner 58 percent (n=12,551) against 85 percent penis-in-vagina sex, 73 percent fingering or a handjob and 8 percent anal sex. By age with the last sex partner 75 percent (18-24), 68 (25-39), 56 (40-54), 51 (55-69) and 30 percent (70-80); for “ever” 65, 89, 90, 83 and 59 percent.
• LCI guideline on gonorrhea. Landelijke Coördinatie Infectieziektebestrijding, RIVM. Adopted by the LOI-SG on 25 June 2024, published 29 June 2024, last amended 3 August 2026. Provides that the main routes of transmission are genital and genitoanal contact “and also orogenital (pijpen or beffen) or oroanal contact (rimmen)”; that in 30 to 60 percent of women with urogenital gonorrhea and in the majority of oropharyngeal and rectal gonorrhea (70 to 90 percent) the infection stays asymptomatic; that Australian researchers have made transmission through deep kissing plausible; and the recommendation of a condom or, for beffen, a dental dam.
• beffen. M. Philippa, F. Debrabandere, A. Quak, T. Schoonheim and N. van der Sijs, Etymologisch Woordenboek van het Nederlands, 2003-2009, with the antedating by J. Luif, via the Etymologiebank. Provides the meaning “to stimulate the female genitals with the mouth”, the earliest source from 1972 in the supplements to the Woordenboek der Nederlandsche Taal, the antedating to 1966 in Cremer, and the origin from the slang bef ‘vulva’, possibly via beffe ‘cap, collar’.
• pijpen. Etymologiebank, with among others Van Veen and Van der Sijs (1997) and Van Sterkenburg (2001). Provides the dating of pijpen as ‘to whistle’ at 1287 and of the sense ‘to suck off’ at 1976.

Related terms

• Sexual acts. The category above it, with all the acts side by side and the question of where the line of “sex” lies.
• Anal sex. The sister term, with the same Rutgers figures and a very different risk profile.
• 69. Oral sex in both directions at once, and why that is harder than it sounds.
• Deep throat. The deep part, with the gag reflex as the subject.
• Throat fucking. The same act with the roles reversed, and who is steering then.
• Facesitting. Oral sex from a position in which weight comes into play.
• Rimjob. The oral-anal variant, with a hygiene and STI story of its own.
• Queening. What the dictionary says does not fall under it.
• Safer sex. Why Thuisarts names pijpen and beffen in the same breath as vaginal sex.