All Posts – Page 300
How to initiate sex with your partner
When I was young I thought sex was probably quite a rare occurrence. From what I’d seen on TV and in films, it looked like sex within a straight, long-term relationship involved a fair amount of rigmarole. You have to shave your legs, wash your hair, put on makeup and look seductive. If you’re a dude you’ll probably have to do a different kind of groundwork: snuggling in front of a film, and inching your arm along the back of the couch painstakingly slowly until it finally comes to rest on one of your partner’s breasts.
I’ve never seen a TV couple start fucking the way we usually do.
“Do you want to shag? We haven’t done it for a while.”
Or seduce each other with the kind of lines you can only get away with if you know the answer will be ‘why not?’
“Do you want to touch my freshly-shaven cunt?”
What an orgasm looks like: a weird and pretty cool competition
A while ago I ran a competition to get people to describe their own orgasms. The results were arousing, amazing and delightfully varied. One of the most difficult things about sex is that it’s such a personal experience. What turns you on might make me run in horror, and vice versa. Likewise my own experience of hotness probably differs pretty greatly from yours – even if you’re into the same things as me and have the same configuration of genital equipment, I can never see inside your head when you’re coming. That’s probably lucky, because if I could I suspect you’d call the police.
Which is why I felt a bit harsh when, a while ago, I challenged Stuart – who provides the gorgeous illustrations for this blog – to ‘draw a picture of an orgasm.’ That intangible thing that you feel but never see.
He did a pretty bang-up job (see left), and lots of people got in touch to say ‘oooh, that’s evocative! I would like to see more!’
So with the help of SexToys.co.uk, and Bish, who runs an excellent sex ed website, I’m launching a competition to see how other people do.If you fancy having a go at drawing pictures of orgasms, I have some ace prizes up for grabs: £100 voucher to spend at sextoys.co.uk, a copy of Bish’s excellent book, and a print of Stuart’s fantastic orgasm picture. I was going to split them into ‘first, second, third’ prizes, but to be honest I’d rather give them all to the winner, because I’m crap at admin and I like the idea of showering gifts on someone: a bundle of orgasmic gifts.
The rules are:
- you can use any visual media as a means of showing what an orgasm looks like (so photos/graphics/crayon on the back of an envelope are all fine).
- it mustn’t be an actual picture of your genitals. Your genitals are probably lovely but seriously, you’ll get no marks for initiative.
- you have to be over 18.
- you can submit your picture from basically anywhere – post it on Twitter/FB/your own blog, and then just drop me an email with a link to where I can see it, or email me the pic directly [hellogirlonthenet at gmail dot com] if you’re shy. Mark your email ‘OMG orgasms’ so if it gets lost in my spam folder I can fish it out it, and let me know how you’d like to be credited when I publish the pic (by your name/blog name/pseudonym or just ‘anon’).
- on 11th November I’ll publish a shortlist of the entries on this blog along with a voting thing, so you can vote for the ones you like the best.
- on 21st November the judges (that’s Emma from SexToys, Stuart, Justin/Bish and I) will take the entries with the most votes, and pick an Ultimate Winner. The winner will be announced on November 24th.
- I’ve added this last bit for clarity – because I’ll publish the shortlist on the 11th, your entries need to be in by 10th November (UK time), and you need to be happy for me to share and publicise your entry, but obviously it can be marked anonymous if you’d like.
Sounds good? Of course it does. And the best thing is you don’t have to be amazing at drawing. I’m about as artistic as a donkey with a paintbrush in its arse, but the main criteria for winning should be that your pic is interesting and evocative. If we look at it and go ‘ooh, that’s a nice way to represent an orgasm’ then whether you can draw or not, you’re in with a chance. To give you some inspiration, here are a couple of excellent pictures: one shows the tingling waves of orgasm as they run through someone’s body, and the other’s a visual image produced by the sound waves recorded as he came.
Amazing.
What the sound of an orgasm looks like, by SoundlyDrawn
Tingling orgasm by anonymous.
Messy sex, splosh and a dirty thing I never got to do
All hail people with cool fetishes. Splosh fans: I’m talking to you.
In case you’re not aware of the utter and delicious beauty of splosh, it’s essentially a fetish that involves getting extremely messy in gunge, custard, cream cake, and anything that takes your fancy.
Smearing it all over yourself, sitting in it, pouring thick gloopy liquid over your face and neck, and generally making the kind of mess you haven’t been allowed to make since you were two years old and smearing banana all over your high chair.
Amazing.
YKINMK but fuck me splosh is sexy
I have a mental list of fetishes which I’ve never partaken in, yet which I find deeply hot and really want to have a good go at. Splosh is one of them. Pony play is another. Furries…? Maybe not for me, but I’d love to watch someone who was really into it have a satisfying wank through a blue fuzzy costume.
Splosh is top of my list though, because not only does it often involve custard (second only to rice pudding as one of my favourite things) it also has an awesome air of genuinely gleeful play. When I ‘play’ it’s usually pretty dark: serious, straight-faced stuff where guys will stand sternly over me and I’ll pretend to cower as they whip me with belts and tell me I’m dirty and wrong.
Splosh, on the other hand, feels genuinely ‘playful’. Like, the actual point is that things just feel good, and damn whether you’re presenting yourself properly or maintaining the proper straight face: your face is probably an inch thick with cream anyway, so no one will notice. What’s more, it has overtones of the kind of messy sex that I rarely get to indulge in but that makes me properly happy.
I like sex where I get fucked up. Hair messed up, clothes stretched or ripped, eyes red from watering and jizz dipping from whatever bits of my body are available to squirt on at the time. Messed. Up. I like kneeling in the mud to give stealthy outdoor blowjobs, drooling spit down my chin and the front of my clothes after a throatfuck.
So when I met a guy who was into messy sex, I wanted to do something awesome.
Messy sex
“If you’re on your way over, drink some water,” I told him. “One hour before, then again half an hour before. Get really desperate.”
This dude was into mess, and the idea of getting to cover me with piss pushed a fair few of his buttons. He turned up at my door horny and bursting, so I led him into the bathroom.
“Kneel down,” he told me, between slightly bitey kisses. I stripped to my underwear and did. Staring up at him with a grin I couldn’t suppress. Maybe he wanted me to look more nervous.
“Are you ready?”
“Of course.”
I waited. Then a bit more. Then more. He held his stiff cock in one hand and a bottle of water in the other, and with my tits out and a weird grin plastered across my face, I couldn’t help but feel a bit of a dick.
“It’s hard to piss with a boner,” he told me, unnecessarily.
We fucked instead.
But because we’d failed so hard at the messy-fucking-while-covered-in-piss plan, I wanted to do something a bit cool for him at a later date. He loved messy things, and wanted to watch me get covered in something – piss, mud, custard, it didn’t really matter. The key thing was that he’d watch me as I tore my clothes, poured gunk all over myself, and touched myself until I was smeared and covered with slime.
Sweat, spunk and custard
Initially I thought a paddling pool might be a good purchase. But apart from the fact that I have no rooms big enough to accommodate even a small one, I think I’d end up worrying about splashing stuff outside the pool and ending up spending half the day after shampooing the carpet. The only option: a wet room. I looked online for hotels nearby that had proper wet-room bathrooms. I wanted to make a proper fucking state of things and be able to hose it all down with the shower head so the cleaning staff wouldn’t know, or hate me.
I found one or two, and began saving my money. For the room as well as a whole crate of Ambrosia custard – the stuff that comes in cardboard cartons and pours all thick and gloopy. I knew exactly what this guy wanted: he wanted to touch himself while he watched me, in knickers and a tiny top, pour custard from the cartons onto my face, my neck, my tits. He wanted to watch me writhe on the bathroom floor and squish around in it, getting sticky mess all over my body, and slipping in the splodgy stuff.
Watching from nearby, he’d sit touching himself, getting harder as I got dirtier. Pulling his dick out of his trousers as I opened the first carton, and gripping tighter as I poured. Frantically rubbing at himself as he watched the mess slip down my skin, and tangle up in my hair. As I sat in puddles of it and felt it squish between my thighs and in my crotch.
When I was good and sticky he’d stride across the bathroom, barking orders that I shouldn’t touch him: I was far too filthy.
‘Put your hands behind your back,’ he’d tell me, as he pushed his cock into my mouth. He’d grab my mess-streaked hair with one hand, keeping the other hand far away from the dirty creature he was holding, and face-fuck himself to completion, pulling out at just the right moment. Squirting come onto custard, then rubbing it in with the one hand he was willing to get dirty.
Then he’d push me back onto the floor, where I could lie satisfied, feeling humiliated, degraded, sticky and spent. Licking my fingers and squeezing my legs together, and running my hands through a mixture of sweat, spunk and custard.
If you’re wondering why this story is peppered with ‘would haves’, it’s because the guy dumped me before it happened. I still haven’t fulfilled this fantasy, and I often think of it with one hand down my knickers, and a sense of overwhelming regret. Still, it’s hard to get really sad about a break-up when you’re surrounded by delicious cartons of leftover custard.
Guest blog: Your pathetic cock – orgasm denial and female domination
She didn’t just have me at ‘hello’, this week’s guest blogger had me at ‘we won’t be needing this pathetic cock…’ Some people seem to have a natural knack and talent for domming, and I can’t help but watch in semi-envious arousal. This is one of those times.
Please welcome @EuclideanPoint, with an intensely hot guest post on orgasm denial…
Porn censorship, and the worst kind of ally
The other day I watched a TV show that contained irritating gender stereotypes. I tutted, turned to the friend I was watching it with and said:
“Bloody hell, mate, this is some godawful sexist shite.”
He replied:
“Oh my CHRIST GOTN, why are you trying to CENSOR ALL OF TELLY?!”
This didn’t happen, of course, that would be ridiculous. But this happened instead:
Branding anything “misogynistic” is a fine way to gather support for censorship. How long before racists use this trick to attack hip hop?
— Sex and Censorship (@PornPanic) October 20, 2014
Porn and censorship
I started following PornPanic on Twitter because they were having interesting discussions around the censorship of adult material, and campaigning against the UK’s utterly ridiculous attempts to take a red pen to half of the internet. I am pro-porn: I do some freelance work for a spanking porn site, I write a hell of a lot of dirty stuff and I have a vested interest in the UK government not implementing sweeping porn filters. I’m sure some of you disagree with me on this stuff – it wouldn’t be a decent world if we all agreed on everything – I just say this so you know that I am very much in the general Down With Porn Censorship camp. Which is why I was a teeny bit surprised to see an organisation that I thought was an ally in the fight against porn censorship saying something that seemed so wholly against their interests. The other day, PornPanic tweeted this:
Sadly, many of those who can see the bullshit in anti-sex propaganda have fallen hook, line and sinker for anti-gaming propaganda — Sex and Censorship (@PornPanic) October 16, 2014
A bit of discussion opened the can of worms, and we established that this was a reference to feminist critiques of gaming. The account owner is offering a ‘thin end of the wedge’ type argument, and claims that calling out sexism and misogyny is a fine way to sneak in censorship by the back door.
@girlonthenet @anandamide Screaming “misogyny” is no kind of analysis. Moral panics are created for one purpose only — Sex and Censorship (@PornPanic) October 17, 2014
What’s more, @PornPanic seems to believe that – as a direct result of feminism – anti-porn arguments have increased since 1980.
@C_Halestorm @Baronesa1980 @girlonthenet Perhaps, but most of the anti-porn arguments/language originate post-1980
— Sex and Censorship (@PornPanic) October 17, 2014
*cracks knuckles* *gets stuck in*
Critical analysis is not censorship
This is a really obvious point, isn’t it? Saying ‘this is misogynist’ is not a euphemism for ‘this should be banned.’ I call shit misogynist all the time, and yet I very rarely support banning anything. As a general rule, where something is a massive and ingrained cultural problem, I think the best solution involves massive and long-term cultural change, which is best achieved by discussion, critique, and generally Making Things Better. I know, right? Pour me a cup of organic tea and knit me a lentil jumper, but that’s just what I believe.
Because of that, it’s screamingly obvious to me that critical analysis is not censorship, or a ‘thin end of the wedge’ towards censorship. As I can turn to my friend and tell him that the programme we’re watching is a load of old shite without demanding that we rip it from the schedule, I can point out that there are massive and systemic issues withing the gaming community, or the porn industry, without at the same time demanding that everyone in it is locked in a soundproofed room forever.
Sure, my ultimate goal is that there will be no more misogyny (hooray!) but that’s literally never going to happen in my lifetime, and it’s certainly not going to be achieved by censoring everything, and giving angry misogynists something genuinely unjust to weep publicly about. By criticising a thing I’m not saying ‘get rid of it’ I’m saying ‘hey, you could do this better. Please can you make more of this, but better?’
It’s not only a cry for improvement, it’s actually a compliment to the form itself…
Critical analysis legitimises certain media
If Banksy had just been a guy with a paintbrush, and no one ever went ‘hey that’s some pretty political artwork I reckon it’s making a comment on the nature of our surveillance culture’ then the dude wouldn’t have had even half the publicity he’s received, and his work would currently languish beneath six layers of other people’s graffiti tags.
Criticism is not only important – it’s vital in order for an art form to survive. I’d argue that video games are (or can be) art in the same way that films and books can. If no one ever discusses the themes and the flaws, video games will only ever be seen as an idle way to pass time until you die, instead of the rich and varied mix of the groundbreaking and the godawful that they actually are.
Humans live off discourse, and word spreads about a particular video, game or blog post because people discuss it. It’s one of the reasons I write a bunch of stuff here – not just erotica. People will share and discuss this far more than a post about a spreader bar, and although this will probably see fewer actual visits (a lot of my traffic comes from searches for dirty stuff), the people who do see it will remember it – whether they agree or not. What’s more, I wouldn’t be human if I didn’t occasionally get riled by stuff.
Porn deserves criticism
So there we go. Porn deserves criticism just as any other media does. But my curiosity piqued and my hackles raised by the ‘misogynist’ comments, I took a punt through the rest of PornPanic’s twitter feed to see whether they were engaging in the kind of interesting critiques and thoughtful analysis that will help porn thrive. The answer is: not really. They’ll retweet anything that’s pro-porn, and very little that involves a deeper and more interesting discussion of the porn industry.
It would be remiss of me to write such a long diatribe about porn and not add some criticisms of my own, because I genuinely care about the people who make excellent porn, and those who are challenging the industry and coming up with some excellent stuff. So here are a few issues:
- Performer conditions. When people say ‘the porn industry’ they are often referring to what I’d call the ‘mainstream porn industry’, and I have a lot of problems with that industry. Exploitation of workers, lack of respect for performers, poor pay and conditions – the list goes on. Pandora Blake has written some great stuff on this, so do check out her posts on fairtrade porn.
- Lack of diversity. Just as I get hacked off with erotica covers that only ever use gym-toned muscle men, so I get annoyed with mainstream porn that depicts a world populated by slim, white, cis, beautiful people. Where anyone who differs from this norm is specifically fetishized for their body type, and often demeaned by it as if they’re no longer a person, they’re a ‘BBW’ or similar.
- Horrible language. I’m a words person: as a general rule I get more turned on by reading than watching (or sometimes ‘listening to sexy guys read stories about fucking – there needs to be more audio porn, imho). Porn talk is often deeply unsexy, and I hate the way that a lot of porn marketing a) is aimed only guys and b) assumes that guys are slobbering twats. I know straight guys who love creampie videos, and will happily watch something that’s labelled ‘cumsluts’, but would never actually use either of those words: it’s porn shorthand and it can kill arousal, as well as prevent us from using words in beautiful ways. When I write for Dreams of Spanking I sometimes agonise over the perfect word to use for something. Is this a smack, a slap, a whack or a stroke? Words are important. That’s just my personal bugbear, though.
Raising these issues doesn’t make me anti-porn, though, any more than saying ‘I can’t stand Clara’s boyfriend’ makes me anti-Doctor Who. None of this means we should ban porn: it means we can and should make it better. Fight for better pay and conditions for performers. Boycott studios that don’t treat performers fairly. Avoid pirating material that people have put their heart, soul, and sex juices into. Make porn more diverse – more interesting. At the end of this blog post there are some links to performers who I think are doing just that.
The point I’m making is – if what you want is to avoid porn censorship, it’s much more damaging in the long run not to acknowledge problems with the industry, or ways in which great producers are improving performer pay and conditions, diversity and other things. The only industries that will collapse because they get called out on misogyny are industries which are inherently misogynist. By knee-jerking to defend porn against all these criticisms, you weaken your arguments by implying that it cannot possibly stand up to this scrutiny.
Are anti-porn arguments on the rise?
So, what of the claim that anti-porn arguments are on the rise? That since the 1980s there’s been a growing wave of angry feminists being outraged about porn and calling for a ban? Are feminists getting more sneaky, or is there something else going on here? If you thought the answer was a), you’re going to kick yourself. Take a look at this strange device.
That’s right – it’s a VCR. For those unfamiliar with them, they’re basically a primitive version of Netflix, only they had porn on. Lots and lots of porn. In fact, VCRs were the driver for a massive and significant spike in the porn industry. Before VCRs people either had to go to a porn theatre (and risk getting seen by their mum/coworkers/friends), buy magazines with naked photos in them (they’re a bit like gifs, only they don’t move and the pages get sticky). Desperate times.
So when VCRs came in, and people could rent, buy and swap hardcore movies, suddenly porn was easily accessible and far more common. Of course we saw more anti-porn arguments: we were watching fuckloads more porn! Technology brought material into people’s homes that was previously hard to get hold of without an ID card and a huge dollop of courage. Saying that anti-porn arguments have increased since the 1980s is as meaningless as pointing out that no one called for video-game bans before the NES: there were barely any sodding video games to ban.
So yeah, anti-porn arguments will increase when porn becomes more easily available. We saw a spike in the porn debate when the internet became available in people’s homes, again when torrenting became common, and we’re in the middle of one now because new forms of porn distribution (Tube sites, etc that crucially require no credit card verification) are bringing more porn to the masses. Some of these arguments are based on criticisms of misogyny in the porn industry and material which exploits women. Others (and I’d argue a much more significant proportion) focus on the fact that, with better tech and easier accessibility, children are more likely to find content which is inappropriate.
If you want to say anti-porn arguments are on the increase, that’s fine. But if you want to use that as a means to claim that nasty feminists are getting more insidious in their attempts to ban porn, then you’re on your own, sunshine.
“Shutting down debate”
The final point I’ll make before I fuck utterly off is this: there are a number of different ways to shut down a debate. Censorship is one of them: I can stop you every time you try to make a point. If I’m a government I can put you in a prison. If I’m a politician I can potentially make a law to ban you from spreading whatever your message is.
But if I tell you that I disagree, or that I don’t like your art, or that the way you make videos goes against certain other of my principles, am I really shutting you down? Are your principles so pathetically weak that they’ll crumble if I examine them? Or am I, in fact, giving you the respect that you deserve by treating your work as if it’s worth critiquing?
If you want porn to be accepted and acknowledged as an entertainment or art form, you have to accept that it’ll get critique. The only reason we’d stop talking about porn is if there were no more porn. And you wouldn’t want that now, would you?
As promised, here are some independent porn producers/performers who are doing some interesting and excellent things. This is very far from an exhaustive list: Courtney Trouble, Pandora Blake, Kitty Stryker, James Darling, (Kitty and James are currently promoting Fisting Day as a protest against obscenity laws), Cindy Gallop, Ms Naughty, Jiz Lee, Nimue Allen (Nimue’s just relaunched her website, Nimue’s World, which is well hot). There are many more, and this isn’t a long enough list. It’d be great if @PornPanic could contribute similar recommendations, because just saying ‘all porn is great and if you disagree it’s censorship’ doesn’t quite cut it.