Category Archives: Ranty ones
Beware the Superdom, and other people who tell you they’re good in bed
There’s a man who is half-human and half-legend. He is fierce, strong, powerful. He can pick you up with his bare hands, flip you over his knee, and give you a spanking so perfect that it will transport you to a new realm of ecstasy. Afterwards he will fuck you so skilfully that you will become aware of a new level of orgasmic joy.
That man is the Superdom.
If you’re lucky enough to meet him, it will probably be on a kink forum somewhere. Perhaps he will write a post explaining to other, lesser Doms how to control a submissive, hinting that if you’re lucky you could be one of them. Maybe he slides into your private messages with an order to “Obey.” If you don’t immediately slick your knickers/pop a huge, granite-hard boner, then you are probably not the submissive for him. He does not want your questions or your negotiation: he demands only your unquestioning obedience.
Superdom, sadly, is all too real. I met a fair few incarnations of him when I was pretty active on the kink scene. He’d look at you with smouldering eyes, and tell you exactly what he was going to do. He’d usually let you know that you could only come if he ordered you to, and that you’d come at exactly the moment he specified (yeah, right). He’d give you lists of punishments and tasks and insist on you calling him ‘Sir’, even if you’d never agreed to submit to him.
He was a dick.
Biased, obviously, but I’m sad about the demise of FHM
I’m gutted that FHM is going to suspend publication. That might sound odd because I’m a feminist, and surely I should be ready to dance wholeheartedly on its grave, the way some people were accused of doing when Nuts magazine folded. It should also – to those who read FHM – sound perfectly natural for me to be sad, because for the last few months I’ve been a contributor.
I’m gutted on a simple level: I won’t be able to write things for them any more. But I’m also gutted for the other people who work there, many of whom were publishing some good stuff. Looking back on the FHM I first pored over in my teenage boyfriend’s bedroom and its more recent editions (October’s issue, for example, had an awesome feature on ‘rule breakers’ including interviews with a female CEO, a North Korean defector, and a 95 year-old sprinter), there’s a world of difference, although I appreciate that many of you might disagree.
I’ve been critical of some things FHM has done in the past (like their ‘sexiest women’ in 2012), but I’ve also been fairly open about the fact that I don’t think we should ban lads’ mags, or even imply that there’s no place for them in a society that has healthy views on sex. Sex is not the opposite of feminism, and being a feminist doesn’t mean ignoring or quashing straight male sexual pleasure. What it means, I think, is pushing for a broader representation of sexual pleasure – making it clear that the glossy magazine pictures are just one of a million things that might turn some people on.
Yes, you can run an anonymous blog and still be accountable
When I introduce myself to people, I use a different name. I have quite a few – I like them. One of them I wear so often it feels more comfortable than my ‘real’ name – I wrap it round me like a blanket, and it makes me feel safe.
Unfortunately, one of the questions I’m asked most frequently is: “is that your real name, though?” Like somewhere deep in my heart there’s a secret and special name, and the people I’m speaking to will be elevated above the status of mere acquaintance and into, I don’t know, God, if they can determine what the deep and immutable truth is. Problem is, knowing my real name doesn’t give anyone special powers, it just gives them a fact. And hand-in-hand with that fact comes a fairly big problem for both of us.
When I first started blogging I decided that anonymity was the best way to go – for a whole host of reasons, but primarily employment. We still live in a world where talking about buttsex on the internet and holding down a job at a company that gives a shit about your social media life is, if not impossible, at least tricky. As time wore on, there were more reasons, and then more. Recently, Kilted Wookie wrote a post about anonymity on his sex blog and it got me thinking about a lot of stuff. The primary thing was that there are far more reasons to be anonymous than I’d considered when I first began.
“I Call Bullshit” Man: the Superhero none of us deserve
Billy was an ordinary boy. He lived in an ordinary house, in an ordinary street, and every day he’d go out and play with his ordinary friends. Billy had a happy life.
But one day, as Billy’s friends took it in turns to swap brags about how cool their houses were and which level they’d reached on the latest Xbox game, Billy was struck by a bolt of lightning. Turning him from an ordinary, everyday boy into…
I-Call-Bullshit Man!
Now, in his superhero guise, Billy wanders the twisting corridors of the internet, shedding what he thinks is light into anything he perceives to be darkness. In comments and on Twitter he pops up, shouting that oft-heard phrase:
“I call bullshit!”
In which I try, and fail, to take a picture for Sinful Sunday
Sinful Sunday is a fun sex blogger meme whereby people take one photo and post it on Sunday – the photo has to be erotic in some way (although you don’t necessarily have to be naked). It can be of something you love, or of you, or whatever. But basically what happens is loads of people post really interesting, hot, personalised snaps that sum up what ‘erotic’ means to them, and I love it. I really wanted to join in, so I had a bash. Here’s how yesterday evening should have gone:
“Hey, I want to take a cool picture for this sex blogger meme because I’m trying to join in with memes and stuff at the moment.”
“Ooh, that sounds fun.”
“It is. I have to be sexy.”
“OK, take your pants off.”
“But I also have to be comfortable.”
“OK, I’ll get you a coat.”
Cue hours of fun while we got a bit fucked up, got semi naked, and took loads of snaps that fit the criteria of being ‘erotic’, without necessarily having to be explicit or naked, then another happy hour while we scrolled through the pictures and picked the best one to publish here.
That’s not what happened, though.