Are blow-jobs feminist? Are shoes feminist? Are Cadbury’s Mini-Eggs feminist? Come on, feminists, get your fucking act together. There needs to be a Feminist List of things that are OK to do, and things that aren’t, otherwise we’ll be dithering around forever and will eventually be crushed under the weight of bikini-waxing strips we’re not entirely sure we’re allowed to use.

Every now and then someone publishes an article letting us know whether a particular thing is either feminist or not. We’ve had high heels, no make up selfies, Game of Thrones, any number of things. Basically there’s an idea that says feminism can be defined by a bucket-list of tickboxes, and if you check the right ones in the Buzzfeed-esque “How Feminist Are You?” test then you get a special golden hammer with which to smash the patriarchy.

It’s mostly toss.

I’m not an expert in high heels, or selfies, or any of that bollocks, but I am certainly pretty opinionated when it comes to sex. That’s why, when Any Girl Friday published a very balanced and interesting blog discussing the feminist merits (or demerits) of giving blowjobs, I was all over it like my own lips on cock.

Are blow jobs anti-feminist?

No, they are not. And you can probably tell that I’m not going to take quite such a balanced view as AGF, because I love giving blow jobs, and I am a feminist, so saying that they are an anti-feminist thing would be to brand myself a disgraceful hypocrite.

Blow jobs are ‘feminist’ in the same way as almost any other act: there is no inherent quality of ‘feminism’ that can be applied to a particular thing. I make breakfast every morning, and that breakfast gives me the energy to write angry feminist rants, but the act of making of it isn’t an inherently feminist one.

I think what makes an activity ‘feminist’ is mostly about the context: your motivation, the consequences of the activity, and so on. The act itself plays only a very tiny role. For example:

Susan stands outside 10 Downing Street holding up a placard that says “equal pay for women.” Is this a feminist thing to do? Yeah, probably. But what if I tell you that the reason Susan is holding the sign is because her mate has gone on a toilet break. Actually she’s not that bothered about equal pay for women, she just wants to help out her mate. Suddenly holding the sign isn’t a feminist act at all.

So, let’s apply this to blow jobs. Any Girl Friday says that:

It’s wrong to ignore that potential pitfalls of unequal power distribution involved in the act of giving head… For one, the giver is in a submissive, subservient position. They are often on their knees or in a vulnerable position – this is clearly a situation where trust is paramount. In addition, we have a whole misogynistic nightmare on our hands with regards to the language sometimes used in porn, rap songs, media. I’ve heard men say things like ‘choke on this, bitch’ and ‘I’ll force you down and make you gag.’ … Instead of being a mutually beneficial sexual act, revered alongside giant chocolate buttons and unicorns, it becomes another way of men claiming our bodies and rights to our sexuality.

I’m down with some (although not all) blow jobs having submissive connotations: I’m a sub, and to be honest I’m mostly interested in giving head as a means for my partner to use me in all kinds of horrible, consensual, utterly cunt-drenching ways. But even female submission itself isn’t ‘anti-feminism’ – it only appears so if you strip it of all meaningful context.

Expecting all women to give head like that, to ‘choke on this’ and ‘gag on it, bitch’? That’s pretty anti-feminist. But when you add in the context – that this is something I not only choose to do but that gets me off pretty hard? Then it’s actually pretty anti-feminist to tell me I shouldn’t do it.

A guy once asked me whether my desire for buttsex was letting down the sisterhood, and I’ll repeat what I told him: sex isn’t a University debate, and what you do in the bedroom doesn’t have to impact your life outside it. Just as you can enjoy getting spanked by your girlfriend yet refuse to take shit from your boss, it’s perfectly possible for your dick end to make contact with the back of my throat and for you to still respect my opinions, and live with me in an equal relationship.

Does head have to be reciprocated in order to be feminist?

AGF raises an interesting question about reciprocation: are blow jobs expected in a straight relationship while cunnilingus falls by the wayside? Obviously it depends on the relationship, but she does raise a fair few examples of people claiming that giving head to a woman is more intimate/difficult, thus it isn’t be a cornerstone of regular straight activity in a way that blow jobs are.

That’s a shame, it really is. Because, you know, if your partner likes getting head just as much as you do, and there’s an unequal balance of head-giving in your relationship, then that’s pretty crap for your partner. But likewise if your partner likes you to cook for them and you never bloody do it, that’s pretty crap for your partner too. Whether it’s anti-feminist or not depends on the context – in this case, the ‘why?’

Are you a straight dude who refuses to give head because you believe that blow jobs are more important/significant than female pleasure? Congratulations: you’re a twat. And you’re also not a feminist.

Are you a straight dude who refuses to give head because you just cannot stand the taste/smell/activity, and you’d much rather do something else? That is a sexual choice. And, while it might upset your partner, it is as legitimate a sexual choice as deciding not to do anal, or saying ‘no’ to hand jobs, or any of the other things that it’s totally fine to refuse. If your partner believes that oral sex should be reciprocal, then you might need to suck up the fact that you’re not going to get head if you don’t want to give it, but your partner cannot demand that you reciprocate just so that you don’t come across as a bad feminist. That’s shitty.

There is a huge problem with the way we talk about this stuff – the fact that in casual conversation blow jobs are often seen as a given, something that straight women absolutely must do if they want to be an enlightened, 21st-Century have-it-all kind of girl. I hate the assumption that if you don’t give head enough you’ll ‘lose your man’, the coy giggling way we pressure women to swallow spunk like they’re chugging tequila shots, and above all the occasional vague suggestion that giving head is a crucial part of a woman’s role in a straight relationship.

All of this is anti-feminist. All of this is shit. But it’s not the sexual act that’s shit, it’s the expectation, and the pressure. I don’t want that pressure on women to be replaced with a new, and equally unfair, pressure on men. If you don’t want to get on your knees and lick my chuff like I’m sponsored by Solero, then you never ever have to.

Which sex acts are anti-feminist?

I honestly cannot think of any. No, really. While almost any act, in a particular context, can potentially be good or bad for women, individual sex acts aren’t good or bad in and of themselves. Anal sex isn’t anti-feminist. Blow jobs aren’t anti-feminist. Giving your partner a hand job on the back of the night bus is not anti-feminist. As I’ve said before, sex is not the opposite of feminism.

What is anti-feminist is trying to dictate women’s sexual choices: tell them that they should or shouldn’t desire a particular thing in virtue of the fact that they’re a woman. Telling me I don’t have to give blow jobs if I don’t want to is entirely sensible and decent advice. Telling me I shouldn’t give blow jobs because I’m letting the side down is unnecessarily intrusive and repressive. Which brings me on to my final point.

Should feminists demand more cunnilingus?

In the article, AnyGirlFriday says this:

“I believe that women who give but don’t ask [for pleasure of any kind – not just oral] in return are contributing to a generation of men who believe they are entitled to pleasure.”

Which is a shame. We’ve chatted about it on Twitter and I struggled to explain why this sentence rubbed me up the wrong way.  In a few more words, and after a bit more thought, I think I’ve worked it out:

I don’t like getting head – it’s just not as fun for me as a hand-job or a shag, or any one of a million other things I do to get off. If I don’t like getting head, but I do like giving it, then it would seem that I can’t have the sex I like without ‘contributing to a generation of men who believe they are entitled to pleasure.’ I’m promoting sexual inequality with every dick I suck, and every time I pull his face up from between my legs and say “don’t bother, I just want you to fuck me.”

Luckily, though, that’s not the case at all. Because I don’t believe that an unequal distribution of head is anti-feminist, no matter how problematic society’s sexual attitudes may be. My individual sex life is about giving and receiving pleasure without being made to feel guilty about what I do or don’t want. It’s about enthusiastically sucking cock, and enthusiastically receiving hand jobs, and rejecting those things that don’t get me off.

In fact, let’s take this further: faking orgasms isn’t anti-feminist. Not getting much physical pleasure from sex isn’t anti-feminist. Choosing to have sex because your partner wants it even though you could take it or leave it this evening? Not anti-feminist. Again, these are simple acts, which only become feminist or not when given context. I’m never going to tell you that doing any one of these individual things is good, bad or ugly without fully understanding your reasons for doing them. You’re making a choice about what to do with your body. A choice that no one else gets to dictate. Not even feminists.

This blog post written with huge thanks to AnyGirlFriday for kicking off the discussion – please do check out her blog, which I’ve recently discovered. She writes on loads of interesting topics, and I hope she doesn’t mind my hijacking her thoughts to have a rant around the issue.

I’m not an expert on sex toys. I have some, I’ve had others, and as a general rule I buy a new one every few months, then use it until either I or the guy I’m with is bored of it, or until it accidentally gets lodged somewhere it shouldn’t and we never use it again.

However, what I am an expert in is ‘inadvertently fucking things up to create maximum embarrassment for those around me’. So, to go along with the genuinely useful guides on safe sex toy storage and how to care for sex toys to make sure they last as long as possible, I thought I’d chip in with some tips of my own, based on a few choice fuck-ups I’d prefer not to repeat.

How to store sex toys so your Mum doesn’t find them

If you’re reading this, you should be over 18. However, as the housing market turns into a pit of howling souls and burning money, and thirty year-olds find themselves priced out of even the most basic rented accommodation, there are probably a fair few of you who live with your parents. Should you find yourself going away for a protracted period of time, heed rule 1: lock your sex toys away in a safe place.

A good friend of mine went away to University and failed to heed this rule. A month or so into the first term, she got a phone call from her mother.

“I found something under your bed. It’s a battery-powered thing.”

“Oh, really?” She panicked. “I… umm… what were you doing under my bed?”

“Tidying. But don’t worry, I didn’t throw it away…” Pause for dramatic effect. “I cleaned it and put it back.”

Cleaned it.

Now, there’s nothing inherently wrong with having a relationship so close that your mother feels it’s OK to clean your sex toys, but this clearly was not one of those relationships. My friend’s level of embarrassment was so high that she dedicated the next weekend to a round-trip home so she could sort and dispose of anything that had previously been into contact with her vagina.

I’ve had similar panics myself – not from my own Mum, who would no more go through my drawers than she’d read my dirty sex book, but the mother of an ex-boyfriend of mine, who once found an item that we’d stored under his bed.

She never mentioned it to us, so we were spared the conversation. I could probably have coped with a “hide your sex toys better” conversation, but my fear was that the object we’d hidden might spark the far more excruciating “what exactly is this for?” question. We only knew she’d discovered it because, when he returned from his trip, not only had it been wrapped in a carrier bag and pushed right to the back, but she’d also hidden one of her own – ahem – personal items alongside it.

In case you’re wondering what the toy in question was, it was this.

How to store sex toys so your nosy flatmates don’t find them

You might think that, having moved away from home, you wouldn’t have to worry much about this stuff. No one’s going to come into your room and insist you pick your knickers up off the floor, and nor are they going to root around in your bedside drawers to see what’s inside.

You would be reckoning on housemates that were not like Steve. Steve (obviously not his real name) was a housemate I had at University. He was the kind of smarmy arsehole who would listen through paper-thin walls when you were having sex with someone then complain loudly in the morning that you had disturbed his sleep. How did I know that he listened through the walls? Another of my housemates told me, because he had been bragging to that housemate that holding a glass to the wall and listening to some of the things I got up to was “much better than paying for porn.”

‘Flattered’ doesn’t even begin to cover it.

One weekend I nipped back to my hometown for a couple of days to recharge my batteries by drinking gin with my Mum and caterwauling showtunes with her into the early hours of the morning. Unfortunately, being a trusting soul, I had neglected to clear away the toys I’d played with the night before I left, and there was something sitting relatively exposed in the middle of my bed.

When I returned home, Steve greeted me with a smug smile.

“That money I owed you – I left it on your bedside table,” he smarmed.

“Umm… OK. Why didn’t you leave it on the kitchen side, like we always do?”

“I just… I thought it would be safer in your bedroom.” There was a long pause, while he grinned even more greasily, and I knew exactly which question was coming next. “That thing on your bed. What exactly is it for?”

It was one something a little like this.

How to dispose of sex toys so your neighbours don’t find them

I was raised on a diet of lentils and The Guardian, so I’d always aim to recycle products if I can. However with sex toys this has been limited to taking the batteries out and putting them in one of those recycling bins you find in supermarkets.

I don’t really know how you go about recycling them responsibly. Perhaps I could just collect them, then glue them all together in some sort of fucksculpture for my living room. If I get enough, I could create a sex toy throne to sit on as I watch porn, reveling in all the rubber cocks I’ve vanquished during wanks past.

But when it comes to proper sex toy recycling, I’m at a bit of a loss. What I can tell you for sure, though, is that you should absolutely not seal them into cardboard boxes with a pile of other un-recyclable rubbish then leave them out overnight for the council to collect.

It turns out that:

a) the council is not as efficient in collecting stuff as they promise on their website and

b) mysterious boxes sealed and placed next to your bins are infinitely tempting to thieves.

I came home one afternoon to find ripped boxes and bin bags all over my front lawn, and jelly cock-rings and vibrating butt-plugs strewn liberally across the pavement. My humiliation was almost complete – all I needed was for a concerned neighbour to slip a note through my letterbox asking: “what exactly is this stuff for?”

UPDATE: if you do want to recycle your old sex toys, the excellent Nymphomaniac Ness has published a fantastic guide on how to recycle sex toys. Please do check it out, and make sure that your wanks have as low a carbon footprint as possible.

Do we need to say this? Really?

An article went up on IndyVoices today that discussed feminists “dancing on the grave of NUTS magazine” and lamented that “by outlawing lads’ mags we risk turning women’s sex into a taboo.”

It’s not the only thing I’ve seen that wants to pit Feminism against Sex in some imaginary battle of opposites. I’ve seen some bloggers saying that sex positivity is being pushed in people’s faces and that there’s pressure on anyone who writes about feminism to be simultaneously politically angry and coquettishly sexual. This is often taken to mean that if one wants to be a proper feminist – you know, one of the one’s who is really serious about it rather than one of the ones who just wears feminism the way they’d accessorize with a lovely new scarf – then one has to avoid being sexual.

Pro-sex doesn’t mean pro-the current sexual norm

The reason the IndyVoices article is a steaming pile of horseshit is that it assumes there is only one kind of sexuality: the kind that’s packaged by publications such as NUTS magazine, page 3, and anything that involves a lady showing her cleavage to get one over on weak men who are hampered by erections.

To say that this is a narrow view of sexuality is to drastically undersell the problem. Of all possible sexual worlds, this is a very very small one in a multiverse teeming with infinite possibilities.

So, you can be against this particular portrayal of women and still be pro-sex.

Being a feminist does not mean ignoring male sexual pleasure

Some men like sex. Some women like sex. It is not inherently anti-feminist to be a woman who enjoys pleasuring men, just as it isn’t anti-feminist to be a woman who’d rather not do that, thank you very much.

If you want to sign up to be a feminist (I’ve got a clipboard and a list of names here somewhere – every sign-up gets a free “YAY FEMINISM” badge), you don’t have to push back against anything that might make an individual man happy. You just have to want men and women to be equal. That means Cosmo and Glamour articles on ‘how to please your man in bed’, the ones mentioned in the IndyVoices piece, are not necessarily ‘anti-feminist’.

I know, I am sticking up for Cosmo – shock. That is literally how bad things have got.

What is anti-feminist is when these articles frame their version of sexuality as the only possible one. If these magazines are the dominant things that shape the discourse, with no acknowledgement that – hey! People are basically all individuals and the chances are that our generic sex tips won’t work on everyone! And some people don’t actually want to have this kind of sex anyway! – that’s when things are fucked. The problem isn’t that these articles exist, the problem is that they tell us a very specific story about how we all should be.

So: wanting sexual pleasure – to give it and to get it – is not anti-feminist. What is anti-feminist is claiming that everyone must give it and get it in exactly the same way.

Anti-page-3 doesn’t necessarily mean anti-women

The No More Page 3 campaign has taken a lot of stick. But it has taken a lot of stick for a pretty good reason: it comes across as pretty anti-women. Like, really. Although they are fighting against sexual norms that paint women as interesting baubles for men to wank over (and I am totally down with smashing that), some of the campaign rhetoric involves making women feel bad for displaying their bodies, and that’s not cool.

Going back to point 1 – there are many different types of sexuality. And Page 3 caters to one very specific type. In my feminist, pro-sex Utopia, there will be things that cater to this type of sexuality: there will be women who earn money by getting their tits out for lads who wank to them, and no one will hate on any of the participants in this happy exchange. However, it will all be happening in an environment that is very different to the one we have now: an environment in which this type of sexuality is merely one among many, one which is not the dominant face of ‘sex’ as society understands it, and which no one feels pressured to participate in or look at if they don’t want to, because we will all accept that this is not the only way.

Feminism is about not telling women what they should be. Or what they should not be. 

Pro-sex doesn’t mean pro-‘pushing your sexual desires onto other people’

This one’s the kicker, and it’s this view I’ve seen fairly frequently elsewhere. I’ve read articles and blogs by people I admire saying that they feel pressured to be overtly sexual in order to “keep up with the Joneses” of popular ‘sex-positive’ feminism. It’s the other side of the coin from the IndyVoices article.

In IV, the author claims that ‘feminists’ are in danger of turning ‘women’s sex’ into a taboo. I’ve heard other bloggers claim that – on the contrary – women who do not want to openly discuss their sex lives are made to feel like renegades and outcasts while the rest of us frolic in an online orgy of self-congratulatory masturbation.

I don’t think anyone should be made to feel like this. Sex positivity is not about all getting our tits out and smearing chocolate on each other. It’s not about wanking on buses, or making everyone tell us the intimate details of their sexual fantasies. It’s about accepting that everyone has different desires: I want to live in a world where I can openly enjoy sex, and talk about everything that I (and other people) do to my body that gives me pleasure. Other people might want to live in a world where they can enjoy sex very privately, or not do it at all, or sort of enjoy it sometimes but not shout about it from the rooftops.

Guess what? These people can all coexist happily! The reason I set up this blog is so that people like me who enjoy the kind of sex that I do can come and talk about it and we can swap stories with each other. Also, if I’m honest, because I like to boast and my mates are probably sick of me talking about this shit in the pub after four gin and tonics. However, I do not print it out and wave it in the faces of passing strangers, because not all of them will be down with it.

So, while I love talking about sex, I realise that there are many who would rather not talk about it, do it, or have it shoved in their faces. In a genuinely sex-positive world, all of us can live happily and equally no matter how much sex we want, what kind of sex we want, or whether we want it at all.

Feminism is sex-positive, but not sex-compulsory

To my mind, feminism and sex-positivity go hand in hand. However, ‘sex-positivity’ doesn’t just mean mourning the loss of NUTS magazine and insisting that Page 3 is totally fine – that’s being ‘positive’ about just one aspect of sexuality, and failing to acknowledge the huge problems with the fact that this type of sexuality dominates our discourse in a way that is often misogynist.

I think sex-positivity is about more than just shouting “YAY SEX” and fucking whoever I like. It’s about more than just what porn I do or don’t watch, or whether I buy sex toys. It’s not about whether I’ll flash my tits to get into a nightclub and call it empowering. To me, being sex-positive is about celebrating the diversity of human sexual experience. And with such a diversity, we are always bound to disagree. I just wish we could have those disagreements without having to pretend that sex is the opposite of feminism.

I appreciate there are problems to tackle, and I am happy to navigate the ethical path of my sexual desire and my feminist principles. But I will do that, because feminism and sex are not mutually exclusive. It’s a complicated relationship, but a close one, and ultimately I choose both.

Do I scare you? Do I? Go on, you can tell me. I will never, literally, bite.

An email dropped into my inbox this week linking to an article entitled “Are women intimidating to men?” and I nearly fell off my chair. I would certainly have actually fallen off my chair if I hadn’t heard this question before. If I hadn’t, on numerous occasions, been told to my actual, scary face, that I am ‘an intimidating girl.’

What makes a woman intimidating?

I’ll admit it – I’m not your average quiet type. Despite getting quakingly anxious when I have to meet new groups of people, for the most part I’m loud, opinionated, and usually ready to down two pints then give you an angry list of exactly what can fuck off.

I’m also tall, which I know doesn’t help matters. My tallness, broad shoulders, face piercings and angry frown combine to form a physical GOTN that is just as likely to blend into the background as the verbal GOTN: i.e. not.

So when people tell me I’m intimidating, I usually take it on the chin. I do not scream at them, I do not punch them, I do not launch a fly-kick at their face in the way I might if my life were directed by Quentin Tarantino. What I do is ask them: “why?”

Because more often than not their statement is only half-formed. They don’t think this dude to my right (a UKIP supporter holding forth on why immigration is a real problem for this country) or this guy to my left (a gigantic rugby player three pints into a game of pub golf) is particularly intimidating. Or at least, if they do, they have not decided to say so.

If you can tell me – to my actual face – that I’m intimidating, I am clearly not. What you really mean is: “you’re intimidating, for a woman, yet because you are a woman you cannot possibly scare me enough to prevent me from telling you.”

Women: know your limits

When I clicked on the article in question (I am not going to link to it), I expected to see a discussion of why people find women intimidating when they happen to display the same behaviour as men, possibly with commentary along the lines of ‘hey guys, equality isn’t scary, just chill the fuck out.’ But I did not find that, as you can probably tell by the steaming rage emanating from every single dot and pixel of this page.

What I found was a guide for women on how to appear less intimidating in order to get chatted up by more men. It included such advice as

“It’s a great sign if you are single and view yourself as smart, independent, happy, successful and fun. However these very traits can make you seem too intimidating for a man to approach you if you are not consciously acting open toward meeting a great guy.”

Oh, shit, sorry dudes! Did my independence scare you away? Are you twitching like a frightened rabbit because I am too fun and successful? I’d better start ‘consciously acting open’ lest my happy behaviour leads you to think I am a terrible, shrewish bitch.

It’s OK to be scared

I’m not saying it’s easy to approach someone. Talking to new people is hard, especially in an environment where your “hello” may easily (and often correctly) be interpreted as “you look like the sort of person I might want to get naked and roll around with.” You’re not a bad person because you’re intimidated by chatting people up.

But holy Christ, do I really need to point out that changing women’s behaviour is the wrong way to go about solving this problem?

Most of us are intimidated by chatting people up. But the solution is not to make the people we are chatting up less intimidating – to knock down people who are successful, funny, loud, or whatever. Because then we’d end up with a world in which all of us were quiet and demure and politely responsive and there’d be no variation in personality at all. Women would be a homogenous mass of smiling geisha, easy-to-please and inscrutable, yet never fully present or interested because they’re so busy worrying that their laughter might be too loud, their jokes too witty, or their opinions too different to your own.

Intimidating women

Are you a straight guy who’s thought to yourself that you’d love, for once, if women took the upper hand and asked the guys out? It’s not as common as I’d like it to be (although I’ve chipped in for my cause by stamping up to guys I like a few times and saying ‘fancy a fuck?’ to less success than even I expected) and if you’re a straight guy I imagine you’d like something cool like that to happen to you. But it’s rare, and for that you can thank words like ‘intimidating’, ‘bossy’, and all those subtle ways you tell us to sit down, bite our tongues, and laugh along with your jokes. Those times when you interpret “smart, independent, happy, successful and fun” as “intimidating traits” and call us scary for having the gall to be all of these things without your permission.

“Oh, but GOTN, you’re being scary right now. You’re doing that angry rant thing you do where you rip something to shreds then stand cackling at the sky like an evil feminist supervillain.”

Sure. I am ripping this ridiculous notion to shreds. But is that actually intimidating to you? Are these words so terrifying that you have to look away? That you’ll cross the street to avoid them late at night or cry yourself to sleep as you remember them? Bollocks. I’m having an opinion. I’m not wielding a samurai sword, backed up by a motorcycle gang, and – despite the wish I made when I cut my birthday cake – nor do I have an army of dragons.

Ironically, one of the things I find most intimidating is people who tell me that I’m scary in front of a large group of people, thus leaving me anxiously double-checking every statement, joke, and noise I make for the rest of the evening in case my scary self starts ruining everyone else’s fun. So, next time you meet me in a crowded bar, or even a dark alley, before you police my behaviour consider whether you are genuinely intimidated by me. Are you worried that I’ll punch you? That I’ll shout at you? That I’ll humiliate you in some way? Or, in telling me that I’m intimidating, are you actually just telling me to shut the fuck up?