All Posts – Page 186
The President’s Club, MeToo and a difficult conversation
Two things I believe to be true in the wake of the #MeToo movement. Firstly, that many men have been put in positions of power over women, which they have abused to varying degrees. Secondly, that this is at least partly a result of the way our society teaches men to behave. The former statement is accusatory: there are men who have done bad things. The second is explanatory: here is a reason why they do those things. The former sounds like a blanket condemnation, while the latter feels uncomfortably like an excuse. But if I believe both these things to be true, how do I go about having a conversation with men I love about sexual violence and consent?
This post will naturally discuss consent, sexual assault and other similar things. I’ve tried to avoid going into gruesome detail and simply linked out to full accounts/reporting where possible.
Let them pick the music
I hanker for a lot of things from my dating days and my youth. But one of the things I don’t miss is the awkward feeling, early on in a hook up, that the men I wanted to fuck were playing music at me. A fairly common scenario involved me sitting on my hands and trying not to lean in for a kiss too soon, while a hot guy commandeered the stereo, picked an album and told me: “you’re going to love this, I know it.” Few of my dates ever let me pick the music.
The meaning of ‘I love you’
I don’t want to say ‘I love you’ yet again. I only say it because I’m too lazy or too tired or too wrapped up in it to give you eloquent specifics. What I want, instead of these ‘I love yous’, is to be able to describe the shape and weight of your presence in my life. I’d like you to see yourself through my eyes.
Guest blog: Afferent fantasy
A week or so ago I wrote about perspective in sex fantasies, and asked people how they tend to fantasise when they’re masturbating. Do they make themselves the star of their fantasy, or do they tend to ‘watch’ the action as if they’re an outside observer? The answers were fascinating, and one of the ones that particularly struck me was Mrs Fever’s: although some of her fantasies are visual like the ones I was describing, many are based on other senses: scents, as well as tactile and auditory sensations. I asked her to do something that seemed to me impossible – could she describe these fantasies for a guest blog? Turns out that yes, she can, and the post she sent me was so evocative I could almost feel/smell/hear everything she describes. Check out her post below as well as her fabulous sex blog!
Reasons I have not replied to your message
We live in anxious times, soundtracked by the constant, incessant ping of phones and laptops. Notifications are everywhere, bleeping and flashing and demanding a response. So how do we deal with it? Some people probably just switch their phones off or put them in a different room. People like me, though, write blog posts trying to explain ourselves to others in a desperate attempt to either make them forgive me or make them leave me alone. So with good and bad, selfish and silly and paranoid and everything in between, here are a few reasons I have not replied to your message.