Call it whatever you want: growling at the badger, eating out, gamahuche, going down, munching on a boxed lunch. This holiday season, give your female partner the gift of oral sex.

You know what? Stop. The fact that I have to even say that pisses me off. I was all set to write a column about anal sex. But in conducting my professional interviews and scientific polls on the subject, several heterosexual women I spoke with admitted that anal sex did not appear as a regular fixture on the menu (as I expected) — and neither did cunnilingus.

What the hell? Where have all the cunnilingus cowboys gone?

Once I started thinking about it myself, I realized I’m probably part of the coochi-snorching-starved contingent too. I can count the number of times a dude has gone down on me on two hands. For a girl who has as many notches in her bedpost as I, this seems to be a gross injustice. Egregious, even. To be fair, I don’t generally ask for oral sex, but why should I even have to? And why should I have to go down on you first, boy? Or at all?

Some of the women I spoke to were quick to point out that they rarely exclude performing fellatio during hookups or foreplay. It’s almost as if dudes expect a little oral action before engaging in intercourse, but reciprocation is not nearly as frequent as it should be. Where are your manners? Do unto others, write thank you notes (with your tongue, in this case), be gracious and whatever else your grandmother taught you should apply in the sack. And by the same token, my lady friends should never, ever hesitate to ask for oral pleasure.

Other significant barriers to cunnilingus besides your partner’s ungrateful attitude or bloated sense of entitlement? Many women are self-conscious about their vaginas and don’t want their partner’s face all up in there. I feel you, girls: I used to be all worried about mine too. The smell, the taste, the questionable grooming job, the look of the whole scene … I thought it was just, you know, yucky.

Get over it. Who cares what he thinks? If you put his peen in your mouth and are willing to deal with the smell of balls and the Herculean task of breathing through your nose while trying not to choke and die, he is obligated to be cool with your vagina. Plus, think about it: as a general rule, if he’s willing to stick his penis in something, there is no reason he shouldn’t be willing to stick his face in it. (Memo to guys: compliment her when you’re downtown!)

Just like your tummy and uneven boobs, your vagina is a part of your hot body and you need to accept it in order to allow a guy to so much as venture down to vag-ville, and you need to love it in order to enjoy what he’s doing down there.

Speaking of what he’s doing down there, let’s have a chat, boys. I know some of you genuinely enjoy giving oral sex. You like to make your partner happy; you enjoy the sounds she makes; you like the taste and to you, the clear precursor to intercourse is cunnilingus.

But where are you all hiding? Well, you know how Princeton’s alternative to sororities and fraternities are “eating clubs”? I can’t help thinking that somewhere at Cornell there is some kind of underground Eating Club of the sexual sort that we’re not supposed to know about. You know, like the Secret Order of the Y-Diners or something.

Wherever the members of this covert Eating Club happen to be, I want to give you some pointers. Don’t think you need them? Consider this: whether it’s scrawled across bar bathroom walls or divulged in guy-bonding sessions, some variation on “she gives awesome head” or “she sucks at BJ’s” appears frequently, right? If we suck at sucking, someone has probably let us know by now. But you rarely, if ever, hear a girl at Cornell casually remark, “Honey, don’t let him go down on you — he is no good at that.” It’s a big deal, apparently, when a girl is not up to par with her fellatio skills, but when a male partner gives crap cunnilingus, we are willing to let it slide for some reason. It’s just as important as intercourse — plus, your capabilities as a pleasure-provider are even more important since we can kind of just lie there and not worry about the pregs-monster (translation: we can easily replace you with a $5 vibrator).

First of all, ever heard of the clitoris? Because some of you don’t seem to know where to find the bald hooded lady. In simple terms, find the vagina hole and move up a bit and you should arrive at the money spot; Wikipedia actually has a pretty good labeled photograph for you to look at. Check it out. Essentially, the clitoris is a pleasure button — a bundle of 8,000 nerve endings — and you need to give it the majority of your attention.

And listen up, this is big: don’t bite anything. Please. Especially the clitoris. Just don’t use your teeth at all unless you are explicitly asked to do so. The clitoris is estimated to have twice the amount of nerve endings as the penis, so if you are considering biting down on our clit, imagine what is would feel like to have us bite down on your penis. Except twice as hard. OK?

Finally, don’t be afraid to move around down there! The clitoris should receive attention, but not 100 percent of it. There are a lot of other fun places for your tongue and fingers to explore during oral sex. And listen, while I was talking to a guy friend about cunnilingus, he told me he was always hesitant to veer away from the clitoris because he was terrified of accidentally licking his partner’s backdoor. My advice? Deal with it. If you’re doing it frequently enough, you’re going to end up accidentally encountering something that you didn’t plan to. And if you walk through Piazza San Marco frequently enough, you’re going to get hit with pigeon poop. It’s simple math, people.

And now that I mentioned math, let’s talk about addition. Specifically, the addition of a sexually transmitted disease to your life as a result of performing or receiving cunnilingus.

Oral sex can pass around STDs. You knew this already, but allow me to reiterate: if she has Chlamydia or gonorrhea, she can pass it along to someone giving her oral sex. And of course, you are at a big risk for the herp: according to Planned Parenthood, between 50 and 80 percent of American adults have HSV-1 (the strain of herpes that most often causes oral herpes), and about 25 percent have HSV-2 (most often causes genital herp). So if you or your partner has a herpes lesion anywhere, don’t even think about engaging in oral sex. If you receive cunnilingus from someone who has a cold sore on his or her lip, for example, you are majorly at risk for getting genital herpes. If your partner has a cold sore and you feel it is absolutely necessary to receive clitoral stimulation, get that $5 vibrator out.

Or call some other member of the secret Eating Club.