Today I have a BONUS GUEST BLOG. I know. It is literally more excitement than I can handle and I have had to go for a lie-down. Luckily, I can hand over to the more-than-capable TNW, who is here to talk to you seriously about nude selfies.

I didn’t write anything about the recent ‘Fappening’ because, in all honesty, I found the whole thing so miserable that I just wanted to cry, and then punch internet twats, and then cry again while punching internet twats. As someone who has taken nude selfies before, and been torn with the panic that ‘oh God someone will find them’ as well as banging the drum of ‘it’s your right as an adult to take pictures of your body if you wish‘ I just couldn’t bring myself to wade into the murky mire of sex shame surrounding the debate. However, TNW has picked up the mantle, and written a comprehensive breakdown of just what is wrong with the ‘fappening’ and some tips for your own nude photos.

Editor’s note from GOTN: I don’t agree with his third tip, but that’s only because I have received so many cock shots in my time as a sex blogger that if I sent as many as I received I’d be the most documented person on the planet.

How not to be a dick about nude selfies

When I was 19 years old, I used to send off my camera rolls to a company who would process them, and post them back. They would send you a normal print, and a smaller print attached. My then partner and I decided to snap ourselves whilst having sex and we could split the photos like trophies with each other.

With some considerable pride, we got our photos back with a warning slip, which flatly stated that some of the photos we’d taken were illegal to send in the post, as it was tantamount to the developers “distributing pornography.” That was trophy enough for two little show-offs like us.

Later, with a different partner, we took some dirty photos and brazenly got them developed at the local camera shop. On picking them up, the developer winked “you might want to get a couple of those enlarged.” The absolute cheek. We later bought a Polaroid.

Of course, people wanting a record of their sex, proof they were good-looking or just the thrill of wanting to do something risqué, is nothing new. A lot of people have indulged in their exhibitionist sides, from sending photos to Reader’s Wives or fucking outdoors on the promise that there’s a chance they might get caught. People go dogging or attend sex parties. It’s all great if you’re into it and tutting in disapproval just makes you a shit-wipe.

The element of being caught has been a titillating thrill since someone invented shame.

When digital cameras became commonplace, things changed. People were now allowed to have some fun without the need of getting caught. There was no need to include anyone but yourselves. Computers with webcams, phones with camera’s built-in – there was now a whole new crop of people wanting to get naked and shoot the results.

Soon enough, everyone had an email address and rudimentary photo-editing skills. While many still hide under the bedsheets and fuck with the lights off, there’s an entire generation of people who now completely accept that naked photos are part of a healthy sexual life. You can now creep off to the toilets at work, take a naughty photograph and send it to the object of your affections through Snapchat or WhatsApp without anyone noticing you’ve been away from your desk. Couples can now make short movies with their phones and watch them back together.

Naturally, some of the more shy people get a flash of panic at the very idea of it, which is fine. Nothing is mandatory. The more conservative will wag a finger of disapproval at anyone who dare mention that they might indulge themselves in this way. Quite why, is something to scratch your head over.

It is with the latter that things get ugly.

With the ‘Fappening’ that took place recently, where a lot of young, female celebrities had their naked selfies stolen from them, there was an idea that they were somehow to blame. “If you don’t want people seeing them, don’t take them in the first place!” Of course, no-one ever applied that judgemental, dim-witted logic to having your money stolen from your bank account. “If you don’t want people stealing your money, don’t get a credit card – you should hide all your money under your bed where only you can get at it.”

What is particularly odd about this kind of Mary Whitehouse response is that there’s an incredibly positive thing in all of this. People are much less Catholic than ever, no longer believing that they have to be chaste and pure for no good reason. People are getting more and more expressive with their sexuality, which can only be a good thing.

There’s millions of Tumblrs where people proudly show off what their momma gave them. Some stay anonymous by leaving their faces out of shot. Other men and women don’t care – they’re proud of what they’ve got and are Teflon to any potential leaks because they were public all along.

However, for those more reluctant, there’s a very real worry. While the ‘Fappening’ was dismissed as only a problem for the famous, and celebrities deserve everything they get (they don’t), there’s been a dreadful rise in ‘revenge porn’. Sites are dedicated to bitter exes or flat-out arseholes who completely betray the trust of someone by sharing their naked bodies with anyone who wants to look.

Predominantly a problem among young men, there’s a competitive element to gathering naked photos. They’ll bark at people with sex Tumblrs, saying exactly what they want and throwing hissy fits when they don’t get it. They’ll slut-shame someone for not spreading their holes open, when they should’ve been grateful for the photos they did get. They’ll try and amass as many naked selfies as possible, rather than getting turned-on by the few who wanted to send them.

See, it isn’t the naked photo that’s a turn-on. We’ve all seen enough nude bodies online to be desensitised by that. The real thing that gets your blood moving more quickly is that someone actively wanted to send you a naked photograph. There’s many people who have a folder of pre-taken photos ready to send, because sharing cheeky photos is so commonplace in 2014. However, the thing that makes your heart leap and your groin tighten is when, after the initial flirt, they take and send photographs just for you.

Sadly, in all of this, a lot of men have an attitude that is utterly dumbfounding, and it goes like this:

“You’re a slut for sending naked photos and you get what you deserve if someone sees them and you’re a bitch for not sending me a photo of you out of your underwear and I’ll share these photos online if you piss me off… but please, please, please, please, I’m begging you, please, please send more nudes.”

One of the most fulfilling things about sharing naked photos together is the exchange of trust. I know that, should someone send me nudes, one of the things that makes me dizzy with excitement is that they trust me enough to do so. I won’t betray their trust. Partly because I’m a decent human being, but if I’m being brutally honest, I don’t tear their trust apart because I’m greedy. I’m greedy for more photos from them. I’m excited and want to send more back. I’m absolutely consumed by the experience. It’s foreplay. It’s the tease. We might never even meet up in real life, but there’s this thrilling, abstract intimacy with someone wanting to show me their tits or dicks. Two people, showing themselves off to each other. It’s incredibly exciting and no-one should ever be burned by it.

Through this, I’ve developed amazing relationships with people. With that trust comes bucket loads of other amazing things. Sometimes there’s a hook-up. Sometimes you end up being much closer to someone that you imagined you ever would. Often, because they trust you with their naked body, they’ll also load you up with enviable or embarrassing sexual anecdotes.

Sadly, the ‘Fappening’ has underlined that women are still treated with a huge unfairness when it comes to sex. Women are still not allowed to own their lust. Even in 2014, you’ll be drowned in clucks of disapproval from all sides. Women shooting other women down for having the temerity of being sexually confident. Men laughing along at a woman being violated, even though it actually makes them feel uncomfortable, but they’re blighted by an old-fashioned masculinity that really needs to die off now. Some of the men who have laughed in the face of women during these photo-leaks are the same shits that send ugly, badly-lit, unsolicited dick pics through Tinder. If someone shared those with their parents, you imagine they’d be suddenly more reflective of the whole thing (but alas, women are so weary of these types of messages that they simply delete them because getting revenge on them would be a full time job).

Collectively, humans have always wanted to show off to each other. They’ve always wanted reassurance that they’re vital objects of desire. The only difference now, is that the process and technology has changed behind it. For the most part, people play nice and quietly get off on each other without fucking it up. Sadly, for the Fappeners and the Dick Shot Crew, they’re taking the whole process two steps back. People will never stop taking nudes – I know I won’t – but sadly, we’re in a situation where it is going to take twice the reassurance to actually enjoy the process.

Here are some tips for nudes:

• Be grateful for what you receive and don’t pester someone for more than they’re comfortable sending.
• Never, ever, ever, ever share them with anyone under any circumstance. Seriously. There’s no reason where it is acceptable.
• Try and send as many nudes as you receive. It’s only fair. Don’t demand a dozen when you’ve only sent one.
• Only send sexual photos to someone you’ve struck up a rapport with and even then, ask. Sending unsolicited photos is akin to walking into a pub with your junk on show and saying “GET SOME OF THIS!” If you think that’s funny, try it in your local and see how long you last without someone smacking you in the mouth.
• Don’t shame anyone if you don’t get your way. Life doesn’t work like that and something as delicate as sex certainly shouldn’t. Tantrums never result in anything good. What are you? A baby?

Do you know what can FUCK TOTALLY OFF? This news story about the rise in strip club takings. Specifically, the very first four words of it:

“The City is back.”

Amid all the controversy yesterday of date-rape-drug detecting nail polish and a judge who reckons women need to stop getting drunk, there was one piece of fucked-up bullshit that seemed to slip through the net. When I read it my immediate thought was: hey! Look! A primer for all those people who try to tell me that equality has come on in recent years and there’s no such thing as male privilege any more. Can’t be arsed to read the article? Here’s a summary:

Smarmy club owning tossbag Peter Stringfellow has announced that takings at his strip clubs are going up, as a direct result of financial industry clientele flocking back. Apparently the recession hit these poor lambs hard, and they couldn’t throw down top dollar like they used to. The fact that Stringfellow’s takings are on the rise apparently indicates that the bankers are back in force, braying into their champagne and celebrating big-win deals by paying for people to take their clothes off.

So why am I angry? I mean, the recession’s bad, right? We see all those graphics on TV of wobbly graphs going down and scary sting music announcing that we’re all screwed. Surely a cast-iron economy-boost sign such as this should be cause for celebration?

Maybe. If you want to celebrate the end of the recession I’m not going to snatch the bubbly out of your hand, but fucking HELL. Fuck. Ing. Hell. If we live in a world in which an increase in strip club takings can be a sign of an improvement in any non-stripping-related industry, then I think it’s time the human race was sent to sit in a corner for a while and think about what we’ve done.

Do I hate strip clubs?

No. I haven’t written much about sex work here before, so I should probably clarify before I launch into this rant. I’ve been to strip clubs. I don’t have a problem with stripping or any kind of sex work. I do have a problem with exploitation. These things cross over sometimes, but I don’t think they’re necessarily dependent. You might disagree with me on this point, and I’m sure we could have an interesting and feisty debate about it, but please understand that when I have this rant, it’s not based on a fundamental problem with stripping.

What I have a massive and aching problem with is the fact that these outings are work related. They are so part-and-parcel of the job in a particular kind of industry that it is considered completely normal and not a little bit weird that the owner of a strip club is citing ‘increase in takings’ as an indication of that industry’s revival.

Naked people as job perks

Want to see tits? Fine. Tits are, I understand, quite popular with some people. Want to see cunt? Again, fine. Expect to be shown either or both of these things as a reward for doing your job? Then you’re a bellend.

I am a sex-positive motherfucker. I am so sex-positive that sometimes my enthusiasm for the sticky activities of consenting adults makes my clit ache. HOWEVER, no sexual activity happens in a vacuum. Much as I’d like to be the one dancing naked in front of you and scattering tit-shaped petals at your feet, I’m afraid if you go to strip clubs on work-related jaunts, I’m going to have to piss on your bonfire.

Giving hand-jobs to consenting strangers is totally cool. Doing it in the middle of your open plan office is not. Engaging in consensual BDSM is cool. Spanking your secretary at the AGM is not. Going to strip clubs – also cool. Incorporating strip clubs into your working culture? Utterly reprehensible.

Putting any kind of sexual pressure on anyone is unacceptable, and in a work situation it is very difficult to say ‘actually I’d rather not get a boner in front of my boss, thanks,’ especially when your boss is the one buying dances. On top of this there’s the obvious objection, which I’m sure you’ve thought of yourself: what about your straight female or gay male colleagues? For these people, watching naked strippers may not actually be a ‘treat’ but instead an awkward outing that they have to grin and bear in order to win the approval of a boss and/or client.

Moreover, given that a disinclination to watch female strippers is not always dependent on sexuality, what about your straight male colleagues who don’t enjoy strip clubs? Unless you’re the kind of person whose misogyny is generally seasoned with a large and complimentary dollop of misandry, and you therefore presume all men are  slobbering fuckdogs, you’ll agree that there are straight men who don’t enjoy strip clubs.

If you want to treat your colleagues or clients, get them a nice meal. Take them go-karting. Buy them tickets to sodding Disneyland for all I care. But if you work in an industry that has nothing to do with sex, and you make something sexual a standard part of your operating procedure, then you don’t deserve a job.

Women in finance

All of the above goes only some way towards explaining why the article I mentioned so many swearwords ago boiled my blood. What pushed me from silent fuming to a terribly un-British mutter of ‘fuck’s sake’ as I perused the paper on the train was the fact that strip club receipts were so unquestioningly accepted as a sign that the financial industry was ‘back on track.’

This tells us that the financial sector remains not only dominated by men, but dominated by the unconscionably banal and pathetic attitude that masculinity rules the world. The kind of macho ‘dicks-out, tally ho, woof woof, nice tits, I just made a million dollars’ culture that should have died well before Wolf of Wall Street was released.

I’ll get men commenting on this saying ‘we don’t all go to strip clubs, you know,’ and it will make me want to weep tears of actual blood, then smash through my computer screen with my weeping, bloodied face. Because this is not me saying ‘all men are dicks.’ This is a much wider problem – a culture that unthinkingly accepts that all men want X, where ‘X’ includes sexual service, a pile of money, and a BMW they can use to cut up cyclists in the city centre. There will always be some pin-striped arseholes who want to see tits on the company dime. As long as there are quarterly sales meetings there’ll be some twat called Henry who suggests they all trip down to Stringfellow’s as a reward for hitting their targets. Henry is a lubed-up prick, for sure, but shouldn’t shoulder all the responsibility. I hate him for acting like a swaggering piss-bucket, but I’m far more angry at the culture that lets him.

This pathetic world, which unthinkingly correlates strip club takings with a financial sector ‘bounceback’ and doesn’t go ‘wait a minute! Isn’t this fucked up on such a large scale we can see it from the top of the Chrysler Building?’

Get ready

I have a message for you, Henry, and for all your mates in the city. All the managers and bosses who turn a blind eye to this bullshit. To the people who’ll nod and smile and say ‘boys will be boys’ or talk about the ‘culture’ of finance and why it just HAS to be like this. My message is this:

We’re coming to get you.

We liberal lefty do-gooding bastards with our ideals and our rage and our charity-shop jumpers. We’re coming to get you.

Fifty years ago Mad-Men-style ad execs would think nothing of slapping a secretary’s arse. Twenty years ago you could bribe clients with strip club trips and claim it back from work. These days, things are different. Arseholes have to suppress their natural instincts – avoid sexual harassment, overtly offensive comments, and sticking their boners on expenses. It still happens, of course, but it’s rarer. It’s rarer because we’ve made it so: we do-gooding bastards are actually winning.

We’re winning for a number of reasons. Perhaps it’s because we’ve got better messages – ‘equality’ sounds better than ‘jobs for the boys’, doesn’t it? Or maybe it’s because time and again we’re proven right – women enter a particular industry (be it factory work, finance, or tech) and manage to equal and often outperform their male colleagues. My favourite theory, though, is it’s because we’re just fucking right.

Call me a starry-eyed optimist but I believe the UK, despite making spectacular and regular fuck ups, is tending towards greater equality, and a much lower tolerance for sexist shit. Don’t cry ‘oh political correctness oh woe oh the horror’ – it’s not a scary thing – it’s a good thing.

Henry, we’re coming to get you, and when we do I hope you’ll welcome us with relief and open arms. I hope you’ll cry ‘thank Christ for that, I don’t have to live up to this weird cut-out stereotype of masculinity any more.’ I hope you’ll realise that bringing women into an industry and kicking obligatory sex shows out of it is a net win for all of us. And I hope that in fifty years time you look back not on the ‘good old days’ of Pete from Head Office treating you to a lapdance, but the even better days of not feeling forced into some weird misogynist ritual just to prove your worth in the workplace.

We’re coming to get you. Roll out the red carpet, or get run into the ground.

I don’t want to depress you, but none of us gets to live happily ever after. It’s not just cynics like me who can’t sit still for five minutes: none of us does.

I talk about sex myths a lot – the idea that faking orgasms makes you a bad person, or that you can’t be a feminist and suck dick – but some of the most pernicious myths out there are around relationships themselves.

Happily ever after

Once upon a time there lived a little girl. She was slightly scruffy, very enthusiastic, and if you wanted to make her day you could either tell her she was great at ballet (she wasn’t) or offer to let her read aloud from her book of ‘101 jokes that only children find funny.’ If you asked her what she wanted, she’d probably have said ‘a pony’, but a rainbow-coloured one, because no one wants an ordinary old pony. She believed that one day her prince would come.

Years later, that little girl grew up to be a teenager. The rainbow pony was replaced with an overwhelming desire for a black motorbike, and the skill to ride it. If you wanted to make her day you’d tell her that the purple streaks in her hair made her look a bit witchy, or that – despite being nearly six foot tall – she was graceful like a ballerina (she wasn’t). She believed that one day her prince would come. This time, though, she was a bit more realistic. She thought the prince would be unlikely to wear armour, and imagined him instead in tight black jeans and a t-shirt that clung deliciously to his stomach. He’d probably play the guitar, and read Wittgenstein.

Now, though, that girl is thirty. You can make her day surprisingly easily – with a pint of cider or an offer to do her washing up. She loves fucking, reading, and being comforted when she thinks she’s made a dreadful faux pas, and she fancies the kind of guys who sit in dark rooms writing computer code. She knows there are no princes.

‘Settle down’ forever and ever

Of course there aren’t any princes – even William and Harry are probably twats behind closed doors (or sometimes even in front of them). Besides, I don’t actually want the kind of idealised partner the fairy tale offers. Someone riding into my life to sweep me off my feet, removing all of my responsibilities and replacing them with some a saccharine, loved-up suburban ideal makes me as uncomfortable as it does sceptical. If my prince actually did come, I’d be less likely to fall at his feet than to ask him what he was selling.

And yet the myth of a ‘happy ever after’ lives on in the way we talk about relationships. People have always told me – since I was that tiny girl doing rubbish pirouhettes in my tutu – that one day I’d ‘settle down’. Which, when you think about it, is a pretty odd phrase – implying that my entire life up until the ‘settling down’ point has been an irrelevant stew – nothing more than the bubbling experiment that forms me into a complete human being. One day when I’m not too hot, not too cold, and certainly not too adventurous, I will pledge my life to someone else who’ll live out their days with me in a tranquil, almost opiate joy.

Well, bollocks to that. Because even if it were desirable (which it’s not, in my opinion – imagine a lifetime of cotton-wool calm), it’s not even close to the truth. I’ve been in a few monogamous relationships and – while wonderful, enjoyable, loving things – not one of them would ever be described as ‘settled’, or even moving towards that.

If pushed, I’ll say we’ve sometimes been ‘comfortable’, in which ‘comfortable’ could be defined as ‘haven’t had any blazing rows/worries about money/collapsing bathroom ceilings and job losses and panic attacks’ for a month or two. But even with this level of comfort – even if you love each other – you’re bound to hit a dodgy patch one day that has you shouting at each other in the kitchen over who forgot to buy the milk. Or, to pick a less trivial issue, even if you feel like you’ve ‘settled down’, a day will come when you meet someone who isn’t your partner, but who makes your chest tight and your stomach flip and you wonder ‘Oh God Oh God what if…?’

And we’ll all be sixteen forever…

These examples are just a couple out of many things that happen on a daily basis. And yet the word ‘settled’ invites us to keep striving for something permanent and tranquil – as if any relationship is a lake, and if we wait long enough the fish will stop swimming and the insects stop landing, the wind will stop blowing and eventually the surface will be smooth like glass.

Well, it isn’t fucking true. There’s no such thing as ‘settling down’. There’s deciding, and committing, and loving, and there’s a sense of security and relief that comes from not having to wade through crap responses to your online dating profile any more, but ‘settling down’? For ever and ever amen? I don’t think it’s real.

If we pretend it is then we end up with billions of disappointed humans who strive for relationship tranquility, when what they should actually be striving for is enjoyment. Love, passion, fun, all that jazz. Sometimes it’s calm, sometimes it’s not. Sometimes it’s settled, and sometimes it’s shaky and nervewracking and the kind of thing that keeps you awake staring into the dark and wondering how you can make things right.

There are no princes: only humans. And I’m still quite shit at ballet.