Category Archives: Ranty ones
On what all women want
If I were to distil what I’m trying to say in this blog, in my book, in articles and guest posts I write elsewhere, it’s this:
“Don’t make assumptions about sexuality.”
Don’t assume everyone’s the same. Don’t assume women are all looking for excuses to get out of sex, or that straight men are on a relentless quest to penetrate any female hole. Understand that people are complex, difficult creatures, and if we all acted the same not only would sex and relationships be seven billion times easier, but the world would be an unconscionably boring place.
And yet, when I write an article about female sexuality – that it’s complex, that some of us lust after dark and sordid things, that some women pursue sex with a drive that’s not easily explained by the ‘I’ve got a headache’ narrative – one of the most common responses is this:
“You obviously haven’t met my wife.”
Sigh.
My wife hates sex
I haven’t met your wife, and it’s likely that I won’t. It might be the case that your wife/girlfriend/mate/girl you met down the pub detests sex. It might equally be the case that she wants a very different kind of sex to the one you’ve got on offer.
But I’m not talking about your wife, because I’m not talking about all women. I never am.
I get this criticism a lot, and to be fair I understand why – the things I write here can sometimes sound a bit prescriptive. And I’m confident enough in my own experience to put forward arguments like “women don’t all want X” or “men aren’t always like Y.”
However, there’s a subtle difference here. Just because men and women aren’t all X and Y, that doesn’t mean I’m saying they’re all definitely Z. They might be A or B or even – if they’re particularly filthy – J. In order to agree with me you don’t have to think that all women want exactly the same – that would be illogical, terrifying, and clearly contrary to the experience of any person who has ever met women. All you have to understand is that people, bless their incomprehensible selves, are all different.
Although it might upset you, some women like sex more than your wife. Some women like sex less than your wife. Some women, if they were married to you, would be a bit pissed off with you moaning on Twitter about how infrequently they want to fuck.
Unique and beautiful snowflakes
Women aren’t all the same. We never have been. Some women will be pretty similar to me in terms of outlook, sexual taste, etc. Others won’t.
I know you know this, of course. Chances are if you’re seeing this just after it’s published you’re a regular reader, subscriber, or someone who follows me on Twitter. You probably understand well the vast spectrum of human sexuality, and that people – no matter what their gender, sexuality, etc – have vastly different and fascinating needs and desires.
I’m not writing this for the people who understand. I’m writing this so that I have a link ready for the next person who doesn’t. So the next time someone says ‘hurr hurr, you haven’t met my wife’ I can send them here, and try to explain.
Just because I like sex doesn’t mean everyone has to. Doesn’t mean everyone does. I might sometimes be clumsy with my words, I might conjure up images that don’t fit with your worldview, but – like every single other blogger out there – I am utterly unqualified to speak for everyone.
On why you should date a boy who travels. Or not.
If you haven’t yet read it, you might want to see this article first: “Date a boy who travels”
Date a boy who travels. Date a boy who has an Oyster card or a car or one of those Segway things. Watch his face light up as he successfully navigates his way from A to B. Sigh blissfully at his ability to do things that you could only dream of.
Date a boy who treasures experience over toys. Who wouldn’t be seen dead in a Rolex. Date a boy who cares about memories, and this one time in Thailand when he and his mates got off their tits on mushrooms and cavorted wildly in the sea.
You might find this boy in a bookshop, a Starbucks, a back-alley, or somewhere on the internet. Offer to buy him a drink. Make sure it’s something unusual so that you can please him, while simultaneously pretending you’re just as interesting as he is.
His twitter account will be riotously colourful, and will make you feel stupid for not knowing what ‘chai’ is. He’ll study books and magazines that you probably don’t like, but his excitement for these things is a tangible reminder of just how much better he is than you.
Listen to his stories. He’ll have shitloads of them, and they’ll all be a thousand times better than anything you could say. Feel warm inside as he regales you with yet another tale of something incomprehensibly exciting. Cross your fingers and perhaps one day he’ll deign to let you join him.
Date a boy so that you can live vicariously through him. He will teach you what excitement feels like, his stories of risk-taking will throb powerfully through your veins, and every single thing he introduces you to will be new and fresh and good and superior. Date a boy who tells you how you feel. And know that he is right.
Wait for him to propose, which he’ll do if and only if you’ve proved that you’re capable of living the same life as him. You’ll get married on a beach somewhere, or in the middle of a crumbling temple, or while bungee-jumping into a pool of understandably terrified dolphins. Embrace it. Enjoy it. Let this magical traveling wonder-boy show you how to live your life.
Date a boy who travels. Or not.
Or don’t do any of this. Because although this article has been shared around the internet like it’s a template for The Happy Life Of A Straight Woman, straight women are in fact not all identikit man-hunting machines. Nor do we languish in a chrysalis-like state, with no ambition or desire of our own save the hope that one day – one day – our prince will come and shape us into more exciting human beings.
Date a boy who likes you. Date a boy you like. Date a boy who watches some of the same TV shows as you. Date a boy who hates your taste in music but smiles indulgently when you drag him to a karaoke night. Date a boy who values experiences, possessions, trips abroad, Rolex watches, food, drink, politics, or whatever. Date a boy who values you.
Date a boy who sees you as an individual rather than a bucket into which he can pour his own ideas. Date a boy who knows you’re not a piece of clay to be moulded and shaped by someone who knows better. Date a boy who is interested in your stories, who brings you on his adventures and wants you to bring him on yours.
Date a boy who travels, a boy who sings, a boy who cries, a boy who skateboards, a boy who shouts at the TV when Question Time is on. Date a boy who eats nachos like a pig, who is teetotal, who drinks like a fish, who is a domestic wizard or who never does the washing up. Date a boy who teaches reading to children, or watches Game of Thrones with one hand down his pants. Who calls you ‘princess’ and won’t fart in front of you, or a boy who laughs when you dribble yoghurt down your chin. Date a boy who couchsurfs, a boy who holidays at Butlins, or a boy whose idea of adventure is a trip to the 24-hour supermarket with a printed discount voucher.
Date a boy who likes you. Date a boy you like.
On sex on a first date
How did it ever come to be accepted wisdom that if a girl has sex on a first date she’ll never see the guy again? This information, as well as being at direct odds with my own experience, doesn’t even seem to make any rational sense. Presumably if you sleep with someone on the first date it’s because you both want to sleep with each other. And wanting to sleep with each other is surely one of the best signs that a first date has gone pretty well indeed.
On public displays of affection, and getting a room
If we’ve all been taught one thing about relationships and affection, it’s that although it might be fine to snuggle your favourite person behind closed doors, doing it in front of others is as rude as blowing your nose at the dinner table. And yet they’re everywhere – these happy, affectionate couples – snogging and touching and holding hands and occasionally forgetting they’re in public and referring to the other one as ‘babycakes.’ Public displays of affection are enough to make you either vomit or masturbate.
On chatrooms
You don’t need pictures to get horny. When both I and the internet were young, I was a big fan of chatrooms. A chatroom, in case you’re too young to have ever needed them, is a place you can go on the internet to talk to complete strangers. You just log in, pick a generic name, and join in the discussion. Like Menshn, yeah?
I haven’t been in a chatroom for years, but when I was young (14, 15 ish) I thought they were the best thing about the internet. I’d log onto the main room, chat to people for a while (always with a name that made it clear I was a girl, but perhaps did not make it clear quite how young I was) and wait for the private chat boxes to pop up.
a/s/l?
19/f/uk
wanna cyber?
I was just old enough to know what ‘cybering’ was, and just young enough to think the very idea hilarious.
no, I don’t wanna cyber, but what’s ur name?
[For some reason I believed that correct use of spelling and grammar would see me hurled from the internet]
Short chats with lonely guys turned into longer ones. Some just wanted to talk, some wanted to do sexy chat, most of them were keen to know exactly what I looked like. I spent a fair bit of time listening to their woes, some time trying to describe – in explicit detail – nicely developed pairs of tits that definitely weren’t mine. But it was fun. You could log on, reach out, and within minutes be surrounded by words from horny guys, lonely guys, guys who wanted nothing more than to talk to you.
At the time I thought it was the best way to get off – kids these days won’t understand, but in the competition between jpegs of celebrity nipple-slips that loaded line-by-line over a shitty dial-up connection and chat rooms where perviness was almost instantly guaranteed, there was no contest.
Besides – I was talking to real men! Actual men! The joy of teenaged discovery doesn’t come better than knowing that even though you can’t get a boyfriend at school, there are thousands of men on the internet willing to pretend to be a half-hearted version of one for twenty minutes or so.
But naturally there has to be a moral to this story, because as an adult I look back on my teenaged self prickteasing horny guys in chatrooms, and I think: well, you were a fucking arsehole, weren’t you? Moreover, at no point do I want kids to read this blog and think that fucking about in chatrooms is anything more than a dangerous waste of time.
So here goes.
One day I gave a man my phone number. See? I was an idiot as well as an arsehole.
He seemed nice, though. I was young and stupid, and I thought I was in line for a 17 year old boyfriend. 17! Practically a grown-up! And he seemed… well … quite sweet. He wasn’t scarily pervy, just a lonely guy with a modem and some time on his hands.
When I turned off the internet (that’s right, kids, back in the day one had to do that) the phone rang straight away. My Mum asked why someone was calling this late at night, and I pretended I knew him.
She left me alone and I spoke to him. And it was at this point that I got a bit scared. Because despite my horny teenaged chatting, and my confidence that no guy could hurt me, I suddenly came to the terrifying realisation that this guy had actually phoned me. He’d called my bluff. And if he wanted to he could call me again, at any time, even if I told him to sod off.
As it turns out, there was no need to be scared – this guy was perfectly nice, and realised within about 10 minutes of our phonecall that I was not, as I had stated in my username, 19, but closer to 13. He said goodbye and hung up.
There are two morals here: number one – don’t give your fucking phone number to men you meet in chatrooms, because they will probably use it to call you. Most people know this, I didn’t.
Moral number two – teenagers will find porn on the internet no matter how and where you hide it. If it weren’t chatrooms it’d be pictures, or erotic words, or sexual health websites with stark and unerotic pictures of male genitals.
As an adult, porn usually consists of a high-quality video of two people going at it hammer and tongs, or six people lustily writhing together in a bucket of something that resembles lube or mucus. As a teenager, porn can be anything – when I was a teenager I would become aroused reading a certain section of the (kid’s book) Heidi, because there’s a moment when she gets spanked by her schoolteacher. Absent any other porn, I could probably crack one off looking at erotic book covers on Amazon.com. And I could certainly – certainly – find somewhere on the internet to hook up with lonely, horny guys.
Kids will find porn. There’s no reason we should make it easy for them, but we’ll never stop them finding it. The scamps.