We all know that communicating about sex is vital. Whether it’s sending a hot email with your filthy plans for the evening, or asking your partner just how hard they want to be spanked, sex cannot possibly be fun unless you know which bits the other person likes.

And yet for some reason people laugh when I ask the burning questions.

Are you sad that you can’t fit your whole fist in me?

Is it nice if I keep sucking for a bit after you’ve come?

Do the ‘blow-job-imitating cock sheaths actually feel like a blow job?

For some reason I am known as one who irritates – even pesters – gentlemen I fuck about the deep details of their opinions on anything to do with sex.

What’s the best porn you’ve ever seen?

Have you ever warmed up a melon and then fucked it?

Or their bodies…

When you hold your dick to stop yourself pissing, does the semi mean you stop needing to go, or just that you can’t go?

Do you like the taste of your own spunk?

Can you tell the difference between this [wanks off with right hand] and this [wanks off with left hand]?

The truth is that, while a lot of these questions are there because I’m just tingling with curiosity…

Is it more fun to jizz loads in volume, or to jizz with force and power?

What’s better: coming inside me or coming on my tits?

Many of them are there because the very act of him answering turns me on. Watching his eyes glaze over as he considers the implications – the details – of each question I ask makes my blood run hot and my mind run into overdrive.

If I rub my cunt on your feet while I’m sucking you, does that put you off your own orgasm?

When we first got together, did you used to wank about me?

Do you still wank about me?

As I ask about it, I like to think about him doing it. And I know that while he may not share my fantasies, he’s more than happy to play along with them for a few minutes – to give me that delicious sense of sexual hope that comes from his temporary uncertainty about the answer.

Would you suck another dude off and let me watch?

Do you prefer to come on my tits or my arse?

What’s the most wanks you have ever had in a day?

And I know it can sometimes be trying…

No, but hypothetically, if you were going to suck another dude off and let me watch, which dude would you pick?

Or clumsy…

If you could get a hand job from anyone, would you rather someone with huge hands so they could envelop your cock, or tiny hands to make your cock look massive?

Or downright bizarre…

If we were having sex, and I turned into a zombie halfway through, would you keep going?

But I love asking questions – I love it. I love that despite the oddness of my pillow-talk investigations, he takes this shit seriously. No matter what I ask. Whether it’s weird hypotheticals…

Any kind of sex you want with just one person, or only blow jobs forever but from as many people as you like?

Would you rather never wank again but get shagged once a month, or never shag again but can wank as often as you like?

If I transported you back in time, blindfolded, to different sexual encounters, could you tell who you were fucking just based on the shape and feel of their cunt round your dick?

Ridiculous scenarios…

If you saw me in an Amsterdam window, how much would you pay for a shag?

What’s five Euros in British money?

Tittilating possibilities…

What’s the weirdest thing you’ve ever shoved up your arse?

Which of these x-rated Tumblr gifs is your favourite?

Tentative suggestions…

Your opinion on spunk bubbles?

Could you come just from me doing… this? [does ‘this’]

Or genuine concerns…

Do I taste different at different times of the month?

Have you ever woken up when I’ve been wanking next to you in bed?

I love the questions – I love the chat. From the sublime, through the terrifying, to the so-ridiculous-he-can-barely-give-an-answer. Because it’s not the questions themselves that matter – it’s the fact that I’m asking them. That I’m saying “hey, I’m really interested in this. I’m interested in you. Now please tell me everything you can about your penis.”

I know it gets irritating sometimes, and when it’s late at night and we’re lying in bed, and I have his dick in my hand, often the last thing he wants to do is engage in a surreal sexual game show.

Pizza or buttsex? Blowjobs or throatfucks? Nancy Botwin or Danaerys Targaryen?

But he answers. Because he knows that the best way to give me a window into his desires is to give me the rapid-fire answers to sexual questions. If you asked me what I like sexually I could write two thousand words that passably reflect what goes on in my head: the thrusting, aching, wet desire that covers all the things I truly love. He, on the other hand, would sit in front of a blank page for half an hour and eventually scrawl “tits” before throwing it into the bin. But neither of us would come close to really nailing the nuanced and subtle things that push us into arousal.

He answers my questions because the answers paint the picture that neither of us can fully do with words. Because alongside zombies, time-travel, spunk-force and Amsterdam windows, what I’m actually asking is:

What do you like?

And that’s my favourite question of all.

 

Note: All of these are genuine questions I have asked my boyfriend at one point or another. He helped me write the list for this blog post, and there were about a hundred more that didn’t make the final cut. If you have any questions you’d ask your partner, chuck them in the comments and let’s see if we can get different people answering them!

I don’t have a guest blog for this week, so you get to listen to my inane Friday ramblings instead. Today, I would like to talk about having sex with robots. To be honest, on most days I would like to talk about having sex with robots, but I don’t normally get a good excuse to do so.

A recent OnePoll survey found that 17% of people questioned said that they would have sex with a robot. My initial reaction was: only 17 per cent?! What are these people having sex with at the moment?

Robots we fuck

Technically most sex toys are robots. I’ve fucked a few myself. I’ve put them in me, pushed them against my clit, and – in the case of one awesome-looking fucking machine – lusted after it like it was my high school crush on Viagra.

So, on a very basic level, most of us who use sex toys are already having sex with robots.

Of course, it’s impossible to know what kind of robot was envisioned by the survey respondents, because as with most survey press releases they never tell you what the exact question was. This frustrates me enormously, but I’ll leave my nerdy whining to one side for now and simply assume that they mean something android-y. Something humanoid. Something which can talk to you and carry out a reasonable conversation as well as hump you with all the stamina that comes with hardcore battery power.

Sentient robot sex workers

Apparently a lot of people said they didn’t want to have sex with a robot because it was ‘creepy’. I’ll be totally up front here: I would definitely have sex with a robot if that option were available. Because firstly I’d be incredibly curious, and secondly I feel like perhaps I could get away with it and it wouldn’t technically be cheating, in the same way as having sex with a filthy human male would.

Here’s what confuses me, though. The creepiness seems to be something that’s related to whether the robot in question is sentient. If the robot has thoughts, feelings, etc, then people feel like having sex with it would be a creepy thing to do. On the other hand, if the robot had no feelings or sentience, it might essentially be the equivalent of a fucking machine and therefore perhaps not so weird.

But as far as I’m concerned, it’s not the sentience or otherwise of the robot that’s a problem. After all, if the robot is sentient, sexy and smart, aren’t you basically a silicon-ist if you refuse to fuck it? A sentient robot can make a choice to shag me. Maybe I meet it in a bar and buy it a cup of oil, or perhaps I just hand it fifty quid and that special groin attachment it’s always wanted, and it agrees to hump me in exchange.

The problem would only come if a sentient robot (not something that’s going to happen any time soon, by the way – we can’t even create a programme that passes the Turing test) is one which is compelled to serve. If it is not just sentient but enslaved to human desires. So with hypothetical future robots, as with humans, what’s creepy isn’t the act of fucking them, it’s the idea of fucking something or someone that has no active choice in the matter. Which is totally the right thing to do.

Don’t hate the player, hate the game. Or, to be far more literal about it: don’t hate the silicon-based life-form, hate the programming that might compel it to shag you even if it doesn’t want to.

Top five RILFs (Robots I’d Like to Fuck)

5. R2D2 – Star Wars

Because, if it’s the humanoid thing that bothers people, R2D2 is basically as far from that as one could possibly get. Also, with enough lube, I reckon you could ingest him.

4. Gigolo Joe – A.I.

He is played by Jude Law. Not just any Jude Law, but Jude Law in a tight wet-look PVC jacket.

3. Robot Bill and Ted

Because threesomes. Also, each of them can remove their heads at will, which I think will make for exciting ‘watching a dude suck himself off with his robot head’ sex.

2. Kryten – Red Dwarf

He’s not as innocent as you might think. One of his happiest memories was when he accidentally welded his groinal socket to a front-loading washing machine. Filthy fucker.

1. Data – Star Trek

What can I say? Making shy, awkward love to Data, that gradually becomes rougher and more intense as he embraces his sentient side, and bangs me while insisting “I am not capable of love”? This is the pinnacle of my nerd fetish.

 Do you want to have sex with a robot? Which robot? Please join in the discussion in the comments which I expect will descend into nerdy infighting about sci-fi portrayals of artificial intelligence. If you would not like to discuss robots, feel free to talk to my friend Eliza, buy me a sex robot, or read this review of a totally dumb, unsentient robot I fucked in the past.

Earlier this week, something bizarre and horrible popped up in my facebook feed: the Metro’s list of “27 things men do in bed that women hate.” That link goes via DoNotLink, so shouldn’t give them traffic.

The article in question lists 27 things which women hate men doing in bed. Normally I’d expect an article like this to raise my hackles because it would probably tick off a few things that I bloody LOVE guys doing in bed but which don’t happen to float everyone’s boat. It’d be the universal generalisations that get me, and I’d probably give it a quick mention in passing, before stamping off to get enraged at HuffPo’s shit dating advice or something.

On this occasion, however, it was far worse than that.

Normally I’d write an angry, sweary rant about how appalling it is in the hope I could whip enough people up into outrage that they’d kick off about it. But I’m very tired and very ill and far too late to make a significant difference with this, so I’m kicking myself. A couple of people asked me to write it up, though, and I feel like perhaps a voice or two shouting into the ether might help a tiny bit in getting the message across that this is totally unacceptable, so here goes.

 The following content comes with a massive trigger warning.

Things not to do in bed because they’re annoying

There are some things in the article I agree with – things that guys have done with me in the past, and I can understand why they might be irritating to some. These include such side-splitting classics as:

“When you’re on top and they’re just staring at you and it’s like, ahhh what face do I pull?”

and

“Trying to remove underwear with their teeth.”

I’m quite partial to the latter, but I can see why it grates on people. I’ll still quibble about the idea that all men should stop doing it ever, but in principle there’s nothing appalling about this. Unfortunately, in its other tips, this Metro list takes a turn for the much more fucking appalling.

Things not to do in bed because they’re assault

These are all direct quotes from the article, sold alongside the points above. Sold as ‘irritating’ behaviour at worst. Presented as tricks that women have cottoned on to, and which they laugh about with their mates while wishing you’d just cut it out:

“Pulling your hair so hard you scream and your eyes water.”

“Being so aggressive with their hands during foreplay that they pretty much give you internal bleeding and bruising.”

What. The. Fuck.

These things are not annoying, as the article presents them. They are assault.

Now, as one who engages in BDSM activity a lot, it would be remiss of me not to mention that I play like this quite frequently. I can tell you without a shadow of a doubt that within the context of a trusting relationship, in which I am consenting, and in which my partner fully understands what I love him to do, neither of those specific physical actions is bad per se. However – and it’s a ‘however’ written in such gigantic flashing lights that you can see it from the fucking moon – this is not stuff that it is ever OK to just surprise your partner with. And, like any other sexual behaviour, it is never ever OK to keep doing it after your partner has indicated they don’t like it.

If you accidentally pull someone’s hair too hard: that sucks. If you deliberately pull someone’s hair so hard that their eyes water, if it is something that they explicitly hate and especially – as is heavily implied by the title of the article – you do it repeatedly?  Then that is assault, and you are an appalling, horrible gutter-scraping of a person.

You know this already, of course, but Metro clearly doesn’t, because it gets worse.

Things not to do in bed because they’re rape

“Casually trying to have anal sex without asking and without lube. It does not just slip in there.”

Yeah, that says what you think it says. Again, here’s the thing: I’m up for my partner having a go (although not without lube – he understands the laws of physics and realises that friction there isn’t sexy at all), but only because I have fucking told him I am. He understands what I like and what I don’t, roughly when I like it (and how), and because we have had lots of conversations before about the fact that I bloody love it when he slips my knickers down and lubes me up.

Most importantly, he knows all the signs I give that mean I’m not up for it on a particular occasion. The only reason I can trust him to play in the way we both enjoy, and the one reason I trust him to fuck me in the arse, is because on countless occasions in the past he has recognised my stop signs, abided by them, and put his fucking dick away.

There’s a subtle and nuanced debate to be had about safewords, hard play, bondage, and power exchange. I love having that debate with people here all the time. But this, Metro, is nothing like that fucking debate. It is an overt list of things that women have told you they hate, and I think in that instance you have a responsibility to present ‘unwanted sex’ not as an irritation or a frustration but as what it very plainly is – rape.

Things not to do in bed that you might not have realised were offensive

Here’s a more subtle one: can you spot it? Having listed the many different ways in which guys can ‘annoyingly’ assault girls, they throw this ‘annoying habit’ in:

“When they just stop, and it’s like, “hello? Did you hear me orgasm?” No.”

This is something women find annoying. Fair enough: it is a bit annoying. But the implication here is that men should stop doing that, and I’m afraid to say that is just not an OK thing to ask of someone. Why? Well, the speaker is essentially saying that it’s not OK to stop during sex if your partner hasn’t come yet. Still not sure why that’s dodgy? Let’s gender-flip this bad boy:

“Man, I was having sex with my girlfriend the other day and she stopped halfway through. I hadn’t come. How annoying. Obviously she’s obliged not to stop before I’ve come.”

Unfortunately, no matter how annoying it is not to come during sex, and how selfish it might be if a regular partner doesn’t put in the requisite effort to make you come, they are never obliged to continue having sex with you. No matter what their gender. No matter whether you’ve orgasmed yet. No matter how close you might be. Anyone has the right to withdraw their consent at any time. I shouldn’t have to say this.

Things not to write in the paper because they’re irresponsible

The Metro claims that the points on their list came when they ‘threw the question out to facebook.’ I’ve looked at their facebook page and can find no trace of them asking this question, so I’m a bit curious as to whether they asked, then deleted the answers. But that’s by the by.

The fact is that if you ask people what they ‘hate’ their partner doing in bed, and you’re fishing for amusing anecdotes, you have a responsibility not to lump assault in with those roll-in-the-aisle gags. You’ll make it look like it is merely an inconvenience – something that just happens to people, and to which the best response is a giggle, an eye-roll, or a quick click of the ‘share this article’ button.

The vast majority of men aren’t ignorant of these issues, but in publishing this you might make some men think it’s OK to surprise their partner with anal that she expressly doesn’t want. You might give more people the idea that their partner has an obligation to make them come. And you may well give women the impression that they should just put up with physical assault, and cross their fingers in the hope that their scum partner happens to chance across a Buzzfeed-style list of sex tips and eventually check his shit behaviour.

If you want some more informed advice on these issues, visit Rape Crisis, or any of these places that give support for men and boys.