I am not a weak person. I am a loud, angry, Siberian tiger of a woman who will tear you into a thousand rhetorical pieces if you even think of implying that I am incapable.

But people have power over me: men have power over me. Most of the time the power of men is used for good – men I love make me tremble and cry and beg with passion. Unfortunately, some men have the power to make me weak with fear by simply saying hello.

Men – do you know you have this power? I suspect a lot of you don’t. I suspect this because I have good friends, who would never knowingly terrify someone, who occasionally do things that they shouldn’t: loudly chat up girls at bus stops at 2 am. Push things a bit too far in a pub, and speak loudly and crudely to women who are shying away. Insist on hugs from women they barely know, who wince at the touch of an over-familiar stranger.

The other day a man said ‘hello darling’ to me on a night bus, and it became apparent that I am not the sabre-toothed bitch that I’d like to believe. The rational part of my brain was telling me that he was a perfectly nice, friendly guy. He didn’t mean me any harm. He was just being sociable, and I should be flattered by his attention. Then he got off the bus at my stop, and my heart beat faster. I put on my cold face and picked up the pace. He didn’t follow me – he’d never intended to. He wasn’t a rapist or a bastard – he was just a friendly guy who did not understand that by approaching me in the middle of the night he was wielding a certain power.

A long time ago…

When I was 16 I had a job at a corner shop. I’d spend Saturday evenings selling lottery tickets to drunk men, sweets to children, and cigarettes to any teenager with enough swagger to persuade me they didn’t need ID. At 8:30 we’d shut up shop and I’d head to the bus stop, and home.

The bus left at 8:55, but it didn’t usually feel like a long wait. In the winter it was cold and dark, but I was never afraid – I’d sit huddled in my denim jacket reading books and watching people go by. Occasionally, drunk youths would run past, taunting each other and shattering cheap bottles of alcopops on the pavement.

But I was never afraid.

One night a man came to join me at the bus stop. He was old – perhaps 40, perhaps 50, I’m not sure – all grown-ups seem ancient to a teenager. He sat at the opposite end of the bus stop bench and said hello. It was 8:35.

I said ‘hi’, and went back to reading my book. At around 8:40 he tried again. ‘So, what are you doing here by yourself?’

‘I’ve just finished work.’

‘You seem too young to be working.’

‘It’s just a part time job, in that newsagents on the high street.’

‘Oh, that’s good. Do you enjoy it?’

We chatted. It was fine. He was a friendly, lonely guy making conversation at the bus stop. I was polite. I put my book away so as not to seem rude, and we continued chatting. I checked my watch and it was 8:45. I wasn’t afraid.

I asked him where he was off to and he said he was visiting his son. His son had just had a baby, and he was going to see it. He paused. He shuffled a bit closer to me on the bench.

‘You’re very pretty.’

And all it took was that one short sentence, those three words, and suddenly I was afraid. I didn’t want this man to think I was pretty, I didn’t want him to talk to me like that. I didn’t want him to say things that I couldn’t respond to politely. I didn’t know how to not respond politely. So I said ‘thanks.’

At that, he shuffled further along the bench, so he was sat within about a foot of me. He slid his hand along the plastic seat and he touched my hand with his little finger. Just a slight touch, then a stroke. He was smiling. It was 8:50.

‘You’re very pretty to be on your own.’

In time honoured tradition, I told him I was off to my boyfriend’s house. He slid his hand on top of mine, and kept stroking. My hand itched and burned and I wanted to pull it away. I wanted him to stop touching me, but I didn’t want to be rude. I told myself it didn’t matter – it was only my hand, for crying out loud: not my tits or my arse. He hadn’t said anything sexual.

Maybe he was just confused, maybe he was just friendly.

Maybe I should just let him keep stroking my hand and then the bus would come and everything would be OK and he wouldn’t touch me anywhere else and oh God I was wearing shorts and I didn’t want him to touch my legs and I just wanted the bus to come.

It was 8:55.

‘The bus will be here soon.’ I choked a bit on the sentence and shifted away from him slightly – like I was making myself comfortable – I didn’t want him to think I was being rude. Above all – more than the fear of being touched – I didn’t want him to know that I was disgusted by him. He moved a bit closer – the side of his hand touched my thigh and I leapt up from the bench.

Never in my life have I been so pleased to see a bus.

I paid for my ticket and got on, sitting near the front in the well-lit section by the driver. The bus was my sanctuary and my safety, the driver had mirrors to look out for me behind him, and nothing bad could happen to me now that the bus was here. I breathed a ragged sigh of relief in that moment – I thought I was safe.

But then the man came and sat next to me.

He’d obviously misunderstood the point of the bus – for him it wasn’t a sanctuary, but an escalation – an opportunity for him to sit even closer. He touched my legs, he stroked the exposed upper part of my arms. He whispered in my ear that I was beautiful, and he kissed my shoulder. I, in the seat between him and the window, trapped in silence by my own misguided sense of politeness and shock that no one on the bus realised this was wrong, cried.

I sat there, mute. I let him touch me and kiss me and I cried.

You’ve got the power

Why did I write this? This blog is supposed to be sexy, ranty, and occasionally vaguely amusing, not an outlet for ancient, emotional stories that I should have got out of my system years ago.

But I wrote it because it’s clearly not out of my system. As I said at the beginning, a man said ‘hi’ to me on a night bus recently. Friendly, smilingly, he asked me how I was and where I was off to. And when I said ‘home’ he said ‘where’s that?’ and my stomach froze inside.

I’m old enough now to have learnt how to brush someone off, or where to run to if someone follows me. Most importantly I’m old enough to know men – I’ve known hundreds, I’ve fucked a fair few, and I’ve loved a couple too. And I know that the vast majority of them are good, and kind, and sweet. No man I know would ever deliberately give anyone that fear.

But the world isn’t divided into good men and bastards. There are the good guys, the bad guys, and then all of the real people somewhere in between. And as surely as I know that the original bus guy was a bastard – not just a bastard, a criminal – I know that there are men who say ‘hi’ on the night bus and mean no more than that.

I’m confident that the man the other night meant no harm – he was drunk, and keen, and friendly, and when I brushed him off he backed away. He got off the bus at my stop not because he was stalking me but because that was where he lived. He walked in the opposite direction, not knowing that I was looking over my shoulder every ten seconds to make sure he wasn’t on my tail.

Don’t be that guy

I don’t want to shame all the men in the world for the mistakes of the many and the evil of the few. I refuse to believe that a significant number of people are sexual predators – deliberately and carefully setting out to make women feel the way I felt on that bus.

But I have known men who, despite wanting to place themselves firmly at the ‘good guy’ end of the spectrum have, unthinkingly, done similar things. Pushed things a bit too far, approached women when it was late at night or when they were vulnerable. Insisted on a touch when they’re too pissed to notice that the girl is grimacing.

You have a certain kind of power, and you need to be aware of what that means for you: if you don’t listen, if you don’t look, if you don’t try to understand how the person you’re approaching feels, you have the power to turn into that guy. That creepy one.

It’s hard for me to admit that people have this power over me. If you corner me in the pub and ask whether I’d put up with being groped on a bus I’d laugh and tell you I can handle myself – I’d scream, or fight, or call the police. I’d invoke a tidal wave of righteous anger to sweep away any man who fucked with me.

But in reality I don’t know if I could. Because whenever men say hello to me on a night bus it’s 8:55 on Saturday and I’m sixteen again. I’m sitting stock-still under fluorescent lights while a man kisses my shoulder. I’m cold and alone and scared and mute, shuddering with silent sobs and waiting for someone to save me.

Update 2020: this post was written long ago, before I understood how Julie Burchill’s views really fed into the toxic debate on trans rights. I would not write the same thing today. 

What causes hate? Loads of situational things, of course. You might hate someone because they slept with your partner, because they blew up your car or used up the last bit of milk in the fridge and failed to replace it.

On a more significant and terrifying level you might hate someone because they’re different: blacker, gayer, differently-gendered, or because there’s some other quality about them that you just can’t get your head around. They’re different, and they do things differently to you and they’re swanning around this world just refusing to even make an effort to be a little bit the same as you, to fit in. How dare they.

At the root of it I think the vast majority of this hatred is caused by a failure to understand – to actually try and put yourself in someone else’s shoes and empathise with their situation. We’re suffering a massive fuckoff crisis of empathy, and it’s causing us to rip each other to shreds.

Let’s talk about privilege

I’m pretty bloody privileged: I’m a white, middle-class British girl with a job and a flat and shoes and a fridge full of Cadbury’s Twirl bites and at least four real-life friends. I’ve grown up with a family who are fucking spectacular and supportive and I’m more than aware that the shelter of my background and upbringing means I’ll never fully understand the troubles that other people, who haven’t been born with all the breaks I have, go through.

But I can try, yeah? I can give it a fucking go. I can listen to people’s stories and experiences and I can frown at the people who shout them down and I can try – try – to empathise. I may not be able to fully comprehend, because of my privilege. But I can listen, and I can try.

Let’s talk about words

I once wrote a blog post about female urinals that included the line ‘women don’t have penises’. As soon as I tweeted it someone tweeted back saying ‘hey, how about you cut out the nasty transphobia in your second paragraph, yeah?’

My reaction was a stunned, gobsmacked, horrified ‘what the fuck?!’ I re-read the blog and I couldn’t see anything that would lead people to think that I was phobic or hateful towards transgendered people. So you know what I did? Rather than call her a prick, or tell her to fuck off and leave me alone, I asked what she meant.

She explained: ‘some women, you know, do have penises. Gender vs sex.’ That made sense, so I asked her what I should change it to and she suggested ‘most women don’t have penises.’ The change wasn’t exactly a fucking revolution, but it made this person, and potentially others, a bit more comfortable with what I was writing, and also made me a bit more careful about the language I used from then on. I’m not asking for a medal, by the way – this is quite literally the least I can do to not be a dick.

In return, though, when I’d changed the piece, the lady in question apologised. Not for asking me to change it, but for her initial comment that had made it sound like I did it deliberately. Saying (and I’m paraphrasing, because I don’t have the tweet to hand) ‘sorry, I just see this stuff all the time, appreciate you changing it and realise you didn’t do it on purpose.’

And, pathetic though I sound, that made my sodding day. Her recognition that I’m not deliberately a bastard, just a clumsy arse, meant a lot.

Let’s talk about Julie Burchill

Earlier this week Suzanne Moore wrote an article that included an insensitive comment about ‘Brazilian transsexuals.’ Then some people picked her up on it. Then some more people hounded her for it. She defended her comments. They asked her to apologise. She left Twitter. Then professional controversialist Julie Burchill waded in with something so hateful that it made me wonder why the fuck any of us even bothers getting out of bed in the morning.

There are failures of empathy going on all over the place here – Moore’s initial lack of empathy and understanding for trans women who, you know, have enough shit to deal with without being casually mocked in the New Statesman. When she was picked up on her comments by people who tried to engage, and explain exactly what was wrong with the original comment, she failed to understand why they might be justifiably angry. Later on, some more vocal tweeters joined in, then seemed surprised that Moore might be upset at having had quite terrifying abuse hurled at her. Finally, Julie Burchill rounded the whole episode off neatly by demonstrating where a complete lack of empathy ultimately leads: to hatred.

Let’s just fucking talk, OK?

Privileged or not, we all have the capacity to understand and to try and empathise. But we cannot do that if we cannot talk to each other, and listen to what others have to say.

Sometimes I’ll say things you disagree with. Sometimes I’ll use words you don’t like. Sometimes (and this may be one of those times) you’ll want to hurl your laptop out of the window in frustration at the way I have callously dismissed or ignored something that’s precious to you.

But I promise you this: I will never deliberately say hateful, horrible things that ignore my privilege and make life harder for you. I will always try to empathise and – if you correct me – I’ll try to clarify what I’m saying, or apologise if I’m wrong. If you tell me about my mistakes I can correct and clarify. If you call me a hateful psycho bitch-whore, I’ll never fucking learn.

I’m just a girl, standing in front of an angry internet, asking you all to be a bit more understanding. That goes for the writers as well as the commenters and all of the people who retweet us and keep us afloat. Because as soon as we lose that capacity to understand, to try and empathise with other people’s feelings and troubles and mistakes, we’ll all turn into Julie fucking Burchill.

 

Someone once told me that sex without orgasm is completely pointless – like a party without booze. My response was that there are many different kinds of party.

Sex without an orgasm is like wine without cheese. Celery without hoummous. A massive fuckoff slab of cake without a cup of coffee to wash it down – these things might be better when they come together, but they’re undeniably fun to have even without the extra.

I don’t always come when I’m fucking. Likewise, believe it or not, guys don’t always come when they’re fucking either.

Almost every single thing we see and hear about sex tells us a story that begins with a male erection and ends with a male orgasm. From biology classes at school which focused on fucking as a disgusting yet crucial baby-spawning activity to the mainstream porn films which fade out about five seconds after someone’s jizzed on someone else’s tits/face/arse/knickers/feet. In fact, porn is a classic example – the fact that male porn stars who fail to ejaculate are nudged to one side by willing and jizz-ready ‘stunt cocks’ shows that we generally view orgasm (or rather – male orgasm) as a rather crucial part of sex.

How do you know when you’ve stopped?

I suppose the key reason we believe this is that a spunk-stream in your eye acts as a handy visual and physical point at which to show the coupling had ended. Like a full stop. It’s as good a point as any in which to roll over and fall asleep, because it’s trickier for men to keep going after they’ve come.

But although feeling someone’s prick twitching a couple of spoonfuls of jizz into your aching cunt is by all means a nice way to end sex, that doesn’t mean it’s the only way.

In the past I’ve had sex sessions aborted (or aborted them myself) because:

a) he’s just too fucking knackered to come. At which point I will either render blowjobs or solitude, depending on how pissed off he looks.

b) I’m too twitchy to continue. It’s often the case that if I come a few times in a row, my thigh muscles start contracting like some phantom clit-genie has attached electrodes to me, and my cunt freaks out. At this point any further sexual contact is a bit like being tickled, and not conducive to further fun.

c) my cunt is sore. No guy has ever been upset to stop for this reason – usually because he doesn’t want to inflict genuinely uncomfortable pain, but partly because it’s a well-earned badge of honour.

d) he just can’t come. Whether the mood’s not right or he’s fucking too soon after a wank or he caught a glimpse of my face in the wrong light and I looked startlingly like his sister – there have been a fair few occasions when a guy has just stopped and decided we’d be better off playing Scrabble for a wee while until he gets hard again.

In these instances, one or other party often feels the need to apologise. I’ve heard occasional apologies and, slightly rarer, admissions that ‘I’m awful’ and ‘you must be so angry with me.’

This is not in any way a sexy thing. Giving it ten minutes then guiding my head back down to your dick is a sexy thing. Growling in my ear that you’ll take your frustrations out on me later is a sexy thing. Spanking me to let me know that you’re displeased is a sexy thing. Begging my forgiveness? Not so much.

My orgasms aren’t 100% crucial either

Likewise, whether I come or not is not an issue at the forefront of my mind when you’re pounding seven shades of fuck into me. It’s something that will probably happen, because I’m lucky enough to find it relatively easy to come when I’m being fucked. But that’s not to say that if it doesn’t happen I’m going to cry in a corner until you see the hurt you’ve caused me – I doubt that would stand me in good stead for the next time I wanted to sit on your dick.

If I’m honest, I’m far more likely to actually come – you know, for real – if you chill the fuck out about it. I’d prefer a quick, messy, satisfying, grunting, orgasmless fuck which leaves us both grinning like teenagers in a sex shop than a long, drawn out shag during which I can feel you thinking ‘why won’t GOTN come? What’s wrong with her? What am I doing wrong? Oh Christ I hope she comes soon I’ve got cramp and my dick’s going limp and please please please just come on my fucking cock you fussy bitch’, at the end of which I might end up coming but only out of a weary desire to get things over with and put you out of your misery.

Disappointing parties

My opinion might be freakishly abnormal, though – I occasionally find I that it is. Being unable to enter other people’s minds I am depressingly restricted to judging solely based on what I think and what other people have said to me.

There might be people out there for whom sex without orgasm is a horrible, horrible thing. For them, sex without orgasm may well be like a party without booze, and they may think both of those scenarios sound completely pointless.

But for me there are many different types of party, and many different types of fuck.
Having sex without an orgasm isn’t pointless, odd, or even particularly unusual. It’s actually reasonably common – whether through a difficulty orgasming during sex, through tiredness or, most frequently in my experience, because I occasionally find it hilarious to edge a guy until he almost comes then leave him writhing in erect discomfort for a couple of hours until he begs me to suck him dry.

It’s not a party without booze, it’s a party which ends early: still fun while it lasts, and at least when it’s done you can rub one out in the kitchen.