All Posts – Page 188
Valentine’s Day gifts to buy for yourself because you’re great
Every year I try to write something about how Valentine’s Day is mostly a bundle of gendered expectation and obligation wrapped in a parcel of guilt. That doesn’t stop it being fun for some people (and nor should it), but hopefully it does help people who feel shit about the whole thing to feel a little less shit and a little more like it doesn’t really matter. But I’m a sex blogger, so if I don’t write anything about Valentine’s Day I’ll get letters. So, as a compromise I’ve written a guide to things you can buy as Valentine’s Day gifts for yourself. Hoard them, enjoy them, publicly propose to them if you want to, just don’t give them to anyone else: there are other gift guides for that.
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Restrain me with door cuffs and make me fucking beg for it
I’m kind of obsessed with door cuffs at the moment. Simple velcro handcuffs that come attached to short metal poles, which you use by hooking them over the door. They mean you can effectively tie someone’s wrists up high while you tease them, and my partner uses them to make me beg for it.
Guest blog: Lines and letters – a poem
I’ll keep the intro to this week’s guest blog short and sweet, and simply tell you that I love poetry. The loveliest poems are the ones that make me laugh, cry or ache for something. This poem by James Mycroft makes me ache like anything…
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.