All Posts – Page 308
Is The Apprentice sexist? (warning: contains graphs)
Ah, The Apprentice. One of my favourite cheap telly treats, and a hotbed of ridiculous posturing, comedy reality-TV characters, and occasional gratuitously sexist remarks. Lord Sugar begins most seasons by splitting the candidates into ‘boys’ vs ‘girls’, as no other serious employer would even dream of doing, so the easy answer to this question is ‘yes.’
But I wanted to see if that made a difference to the end results. Yesterday was not only Equal Pay Day – highlighting how, despite appearances, there’s still a huge discrepancy in male and female pay in the workplace. It was also the day when Apprentice candidate Sanjay hauled two of his female teammates into the boardroom to face Lord Sugar’s interrogation when it was obvious to everyone that he should have blamed James.
While I’m sure Sanjay is a nice enough fellow, it got me thinking: are Apprentice candidates inherently biased? Is the show’s general knockabout sexism translating into boardroom appearances and wins? Luckily, there is 9 seasons worth of info on Wikipedia now, including names of project managers, who they brought into the boardroom, and who was eventually fired. So is The Apprentice sexist? LET’S FIND OUT.
Sexual fantasies you won’t find in the Journal of Medicine
So, that sexual fantasy list has been doing the rounds. A bunch of people did a study on sexual fantasies, asking another bunch of people to rate various desires on a scale based on how much they wanted to do them.
It’s great, because:
a) it’s allowed countless news outlets to go ‘OMG loads of people want to get fucked by a stranger!’ and
b) it gives me an excellent thing with which to gauge just how well my next blog about piss play will go down (not that well, but better than anything on goatfucking).
Essentially, it’s a long and indulgent list of some of my favourite things, many of which turn out to be more popular than I’d previously thought (well over a quarter of people fantasise about swinging, for example). It also – like most scientific and sexual things – gave me a thrill of joy to hear pervery discussed in the language of the academics. “Being masturbated by an acquaintance,” is up there as one of my favourite new phrases.
Problems with listing ‘sexual fantasies’
However, despite my feeling that it’s generally A Good Thing, I have a couple of problems with the sexual fantasies study.
Draw your orgasm: the entries so far
Want to know what an orgasm looks like? These are the entries in the ‘draw your orgasm’ comp so far, and I am beyond delighted with them. The rules state that you can enter anything visual – so photos, drawings, and anything else that you think might demonstrate what an orgasm feels like to you – one person even carved their orgasm into their Halloween pumpkin, a level of commitment and ingenuity that has bowled me over.
In defence of monogamy
Here is a can of worms. Please sit down, make yourself comfortable, and watch as I try to sort them into delicate piles without squishing any of them.
I’m in a monogamous relationship. For me, that means that my partner and I both lust desperately after other people, but we try not to do anything about it, save sighing and making the odd comment about how beautiful those other people are.
When I tell people this, often they’re surprised, and some of them make efforts to persuade me that I really should consider opening up my relationship. That it’d be healthier if my guy and I could see other people, or that polyamory is actually the best course of action for everybody in the human race. I like the sound of it: I do. I like the idea that there’s a hell of a lot of love in the world, and you get to share lots of different kinds of love with lots of different people.
Thing is, I’ve tried it, and it sucks for me. It really sucks. I get jealous, angry, upset, and anxious. I feel worthless. My rational brain tells me that he can fuck other people without it having any bearing on how he feels about me, and that if he goes for a drink with a girl he fancies with a view to potentially snogging her at the end of the evening, that act itself isn’t sapping any of the fun or love that he and I share together.
Unfortunately, my irrational brain is a tedious Iago – piping up and screeching “I like not that!”, and ruining everyone’s fun.
Guest blog: Sex with an ex
Some writing makes me horny, and some writing makes me cry. Some brings me to a weird horny-sad place where the only appropriate thing to do is curl into a ball of lustful anguish and imagine all those times I’ve felt the same.
This week’s guest blog does just that. I won’t give it a long build-up and intro because, to be honest, it speaks for itself. This week, Leo is going to tell you about sex with an ex.