Girl on the Net

A long time ago on Twitter @sexlovevideo and @onqueerstreet were discussing objectification (re: the bond-coming-out-of-the-sea scene) and asking whether just flipping objectification around could be a feminist act, or whether we should avoid doing to men what the patriarchy has done to women since time immemorial (I am simplifying heavily here – read the thread and post for more). I am firmly in the former camp, let me explain why objectifying men is a feminist act and also what’s hot about fat guys. Pull up a chair and your sex toy of choice.

Firstly, let us begin by objectifying some men. When I first started blogging I wrote an extremely clumsy and (in hindsight) terrible blog post called ‘why I like fucking fat guys.’ There you go – a link. It’s shit. Please don’t cancel me. It was fetishistic in the extreme and relied on some shitty tropes to try and get my point across. It also heavily implied that I might be one of very few women who actually fancy fat guys (in my now-more-extensive experience I can tell you this is bollocks).

Anyway. I’m going to try and do what I did in that terrible old post, but this time (hopefully) better and with a juicy side order of FEMINISM. Lucky you.

What’s hot about fat guys

The sex position in which I lie on my stomach and the guy lies on top of me, slamming his cock into my cunt while his whole body is pinning me down: it’s the absolute fucking best. It feels close and tight and restrictive, like bondage, but the heat and scent of the person adds at least twelve extra points on the ‘holy fuck my cunt is twitching’ scale. This position is absolutely at its best when done with a guy who is bigger than me.

One of the things I enjoyed doing most to my ex was pulling up his t-shirt and burying my face in the soft, hairy, comforting expanse of his stomach.

Skinny guys? You just can’t do that in quite the same way. Don’t get me wrong: skinny guys have their merits. Hipbones, for instance. Christ. I used to fuck a guy with hipbones you could cut yourself on. The casual way he’d lean back on the sofa to yawn and stretch, displaying those hipbones poking out from the waistband of his boxer shorts… unnnngh. There is no God, there can be no mercy.

Few things do it for me in quite the same way as those hipbones, unless perhaps it’s the bulges just above the waistband of someone’s pyjama bottoms at the hips – I think they’re called love handles? They’re perfect. Especially if I know that underneath the pyjama bottoms you’re not wearing any pants. You’re so close to naked that I could just walk up behind you, put my hands on your love handles, then slide my palms right around to the front, cupping the warm softness of your stomach and then inching inexorably down…

Men don’t get enough lust

There are some things in there that come across as pretty objectifying, and maybe that isn’t cool of me. Men, I know, are far more than just a collection of body parts for me to zoom in on in detail. While drooling. From my vagina.

But this kind of objectification has been – and still is, to some extent – somewhat lacking in our society.

Open a private browser and type the word ‘sexy’ into an image search. Go on, I’ll wait, then come back here. How many men did you see? Not many, right? It’s all women. That hasn’t changed much since I first used this example to make a similar point back in 2016. Society has a whole bunch of rules about what counts as ‘sexy’ and who is allowed to be it, and these rules tend to point to ‘slim, young, white cisgender women in their pants’.  We can unpack all the rest of these things another day, but for now let’s focus on the gender part.

Men don’t get objectified that much. And fat men even less, because on top of sexism you also have all the other societal prejudices about body type that I personally have to deal with too and therefore have banged on about a lot already.

So: here’s why I think objectifying men contributes something useful. First let’s cast aside the idea that we should objectify men to somehow ‘pay them back’ for patriarchy’s objectification of women (payback isn’t especially helpful, and the feelings I want to conjure in men I objectify are extremely far from ‘sadness’). Neither do I think we should objectify men simply because those of us who thirst after them deserve to have a turn at leering over the people we fancy (although, you know, that’s a handy bonus).

I think objectifying men is a feminist act because we’re essentially telling a story that doesn’t get told very often, to a society that has mostly been told something very different. And no, it’s not the most important story – compared to women who have tales of violence, transmisogyny, the grotesque ways that racism interplays with misogyny, etc – but it is still a story worth telling. ‘Men are actually extremely sexy, and we women ALSO experience horn/lust’ is a perspective that has only recently become acceptable to voice publicly. Not just from straight women, incidentally, but gay men too. Those of us who fancy men have not had the microphone for very long, which is why our idea of ‘sexiness’ is still so led by those who have traditionally had power (i.e. straight cis dudes).

If you want what I think is a super-neat example, go check out the (VERY NSFW) Eye on the Guy porn site. It’s straight porn but shot with a heavy bias towards showing the bodies/faces of the guys, and the women are often outside the frame altogether. I use this often when I’m trying to explain to straight men why their mainstream porn (which does this same framing but with women in the picture) doesn’t always work for me. Also: Small Hands. Pls ruin me. 

Don’t get me wrong, here, I am not saying that objectifying men is always a good or nice thing. Objectification by definition involves reducing people to less than what they are: to laser-focusing on specific body parts without acknowledging that those body parts belong to a full and rounded human being. But I said objectifying men is a feminist act – not that it’s always a nice one. Feminism isn’t about raising women above men, or pretending that we’re somehow inherently better or more worthy purely because of our womanhood. That way lies tedious GirlBoss feminism of the kind that enables establishment racists like Theresa May or Priti Patel to get plaudits purely because when they do their evil, they do it in lipstick. No, feminism is (at least in part, I think) about acknowledging women as people and giving us space to be people, rather than having to be specifically soft, gentle, feminine people who are always nice and never want to rock the boat. So we should also acknowledge that we can be sexually incontinent, tactless, shitbag people too.

I wanna dig my fingers into the flesh of a fat guy’s hips and feel him knock the breath out of me when he slams it in.

So yes. I think objectifying men is a feminist act. Showing men why and how they can be sexy tells a story that we haven’t always been allowed to articulate, even if that story is not always one that covers the storyteller in glory. It’s a nice bonus if these stories can also give some dudes a boost. Maybe this will help them to appreciate the things about them that are good, and if they can be happier in their own skin they’ll stop venting their anger via the medium of street harassment!

Joke.

But there are bonuses to talking more about the things we find sexy about the men we like, even if those things can seem objectifying or fetishistic. Maybe if straight men could understand more which of their physical attributes were appreciated by their target audience, they’d be able to relate a little better to the women who fancy them. Then perhaps they’d stop sending us blurry pictures of their dick shot from above, and instead send us images which include their faces twisted in ecstasy at the exact moment when they came.

Or short video files of them vigorously kneading bread dough.

Or wielding swords.

Or walking upstairs wearing elasticated flannel PJs that look as if they could slip down at any moment.

Sorry, I got distracted. But objectifying men is a feminist act, so I hope you enjoyed that brief diversion into feminism. Where was I? Oh yeah!

Why objectifying men is a feminist act

Objectifying men is feminist because it is a useful and (often) emotionally powerful way to flip the script we have been taught about who and what is sexy. And yes, I am using ’emotionally powerful’ there to encompass many things, like learning to love oneself and accept one’s own body for the flawed, beautiful miracle that it is, and also having a cheeky wank to the idea of getting fucked by a guy who’s deliciously overweight and pinning me down while he calls me his dirty girl.

There will be guys who read some of my perving above – or in any other blog post – and recognise their own body in there, and feel a bit sexy themselves. Hooray! Likewise there’ll be people who read it and think I am going A Bit Too Far when I tell you that one of my favourite things to do is bury my face in the soft, hairy tummy of a guy I deeply love, before getting railed by him over the arm of a sofa and feel his stomach slapping against me in a way that feels akin to getting spanked.

Objectifying men is feminist not because we need to make men feel bad, nor to make them feel pretty (although the latter is, obviously, always one of my side quests), but because we’re telling a true story that doesn’t often get heard. And no, objectification isn’t always a good thing – it can be a base, grotesque, instinctive and uncaring thing. But hey! What do you know? Women are sometimes callous, horny arseholes too.

This post has sat in my drafts for a while because I wanted to think properly about the Bond convo, then it fell by the wayside a bit. What prompted me to finish it off was a recent discussion with Billy Procida on his ManWhore podcast, where we discussed the impact that society’s default view of ‘sexy’ as ‘women’ can have on men. The reason I used fat guys as an example is because he specifically asked me about them, and I don’t think I ever give good enough answers when I’m on the spot, which is annoying because I’ve had sex with a lot of extremely hot fat guys, so this is one topic in particular where I really should be able to do better. 

As mentioned earlier this week, I am not confident in the blog posts I’m writing at the moment, so am more than up for hearing (respectful) critique and comment on this one. I’m fragile though, so be gentle.