Category Archives: Ranty ones
On why you should pay for dates
That ‘you’, in the title? It refers to everyone, including women.
This week a minor row kicked off between DickGraceless and Katy_Red – two people who write a funny and occasionally offensive blog over at Honey and Cream. The row began when Dick said women who insist that men pay for dates are prostitutes. Anger occurred, responses happened, and Katy_Red then outlined why she thought that – on a straight date – the man should pay, at least on first dates, special occasions, and if he’s asked the girl out.
I don’t intend this to be a personal attack on Katy_Red – she writes funny blogs and seems nice, and no one ever deserves the full brunt of my rage. But there are a number of women (and men) who believe that men should pay for dates – an idea which I find horribly offensive. So take cover, because this one might be a little bit angry.
What women want
Are you on this date because you fancy this person? Because you think you’ll have a nice time? Then cough up – pay half of the bill. Get your fucking round in. Because otherwise you’re perpetuating the ridiculous idea that men have money and women don’t. That men want women and women want free stuff.
You’re on the date – you wanted to be there, you attended because you thought you’d have a good time. So chip the fuck in.
Katy_Red says that she doesn’t find the idea of splitting the bill all that sexy. It’s not supposed to be sexy. That bit is not the key element of the date. The sexy elements come elsewhere – long sultry glances across dinner, talking about the filthy things you want to do, squeezing his dick under the table. In fact, the sexiest thing about a date is knowing that the other person really wants to be there – that of all the things they could have done tonight they chose to spend it in your company. So congratulations – by insisting that your date buys dinner in exchange for your time you have just killed the sexiest fucking bit of the evening.
What exactly do you want out of this date? Do you want to have a relationship, or sex with this person, or do you just want free stuff?
Everyone has different needs and desires, but I’ll tell you what I want – I want to find men I like and then fuck them. I want to go out with interesting, funny, nerdy guys who’ll share a pint with me, take the piss out of my stupid bits and compliment my good bits, and I want them to take me home at the end of the evening and present me with a nice, hard dick. If you fancy me and I fancy you then what I want from you is sex – not dinner. If you gave me the choice between an expensive meal out and a hand job I’d be cancelling reservations and pulling my knickers down quicker than you can say ‘manual relief, please.’
Are these women prostitutes?
No. Absolutely and conclusively not. When you fuck a prostitute it’s pretty straightforward – you agree a price for certain services, he or she performs those services, and you hand over your cash. A professional, honest transaction.
Insisting that someone buy you dinner on the potential promise that at some point you might have sex with them is not a straightforward and honest transaction, so it doesn’t make you a prostitute. It makes you an arsehole.
In her blog on the topic Katy_Red asserts that men are more likely to get a snog, or a blow-job if they’ve ‘flashed the brass a bit.’ Apparently men are just sexier if they’ve poured expensive wine into your face.
Forgive me if my opinions on this fall beyond the line of acceptability, but I don’t find men more attractive if they have money. Money is, in fact, something that any man could potentially acquire – it doesn’t turn them all into Colin fucking Firth. A rich Joe Bloggs is the same as a poor Joe Bloggs, just with more accessories. Money does not maketh the man – being funny, hot, and willing to fuck me till I cry maketh the man. No matter how much cash you’ve got you can still be unshaggable or unattractive in other ways – I mean, Christian Grey had a private helicopter and he was still a gigantic bellend.
Exceptions to the rule
As with all good rules there are exceptions. I’ll pay for the whole meal if, say, it’s someone’s birthday or if they’re broke. I’ll let them pay if they’re taking me somewhere really posh that I’ve told them I can’t afford, or if they just feel like treating me. But these are the exceptions, and that’s as it should be. Buying dinner should be a nice thing that you do for someone, not an expectation based on weird ideas we have about which gender should be the ‘giver’ and which the ‘receiver.’
Men – stop fucking doing it
I’ve been on dates before where men have not just offered to pay, but insisted on paying. Taken the bill, refused to show it to me, even handed my credit card back when I’ve placed it down on the saucer with the mints. People wonder why I’m offended, and I’m even more offended that the answer isn’t fucking obvious – is there any better way to belittle me? To show me that you’re the powerful one?
Gentlemen – in hiding the bill for me you’re forcing yourself into the role of my provider. And, in a situation where I offer to pay and you refuse to let me, I don’t hear ‘I’m great boyfriend material because I am generous and have loads of money’ I hear ‘there there, sweetheart – don’t trouble your pretty little head about cash – I have plenty for both of us.’ Well bully for you, but fuck off.
I trouble my pretty little head about cash every day – when I pay my mortgage, when I pay my bills, when I buy my food, when I splurge ridiculous sums of money on nights out that end in miserable hangovers and – listen carefully – when I decide whether I can afford to go out on a date.
You’re not my provider – I am. The only thing I want in exchange for my company is good company in return, and someone who respects the fact that I am an autonomous individual capable of making my own decisions. If you insist on paying even after I’ve vehemently protested, you’re not being generous, you’re being controlling. You’ve stripped me of the responsibility I have over the money that I work fucking hard to earn.
Sex in exchange for dinner
The absolute bottom line, of course, is that dates and relationships are never transactions. A girl doesn’t ‘have’ to fuck you because you’ve taken her somewhere with a Michelin star. Nor do you ‘have’ to buy her presents because she gives you head. No matter how much you spend on a date, a girl is never compelled to fuck you – it’s her decision. So why are we still pretending that you have to open your wallet before she’ll open her legs?
I want to live in a world where I fuck people because I want to, not just because they’ve bought me presents or dinner. So – men, women, everybody – please stop perpetuating the idea that the relationships we have with each other are some sort of weird exchange of unequal commodities. I’ll give you sex in exchange for sex. I’ll get my round in if you do. And if I want fucking dinner I can buy it myself.
On female urinals
Note this post was written in 2012 so it’s very cisnormative, I wouldn’t write it the same way today if I had another crack.
Heartbreaking though it is, I don’t have a penis. I’d love one, because there are so many things I’d like to be able to do with it: find out what wanking’s like for boys, spurt jizz out of it into someone’s mouth, and – of course – piss in great powerful jets while I’m standing up.
On Femfresh, Freshballs, Fellaswipes and scented tampons
Gentlemen, start your engines, because it’s your turn now. Pull down your trousers, hold your dicks aloft, and start wiping them with special cock-cleansing wipes.
That’s right – worry no more. Having ridiculous expectations about your body is now no longer confined to women. And in case you were wondering, there’s also a product for your balls.
Femfresh social media fail
Last week I wrote about Femfresh – that delightful ‘feminine hygiene’ product that purported to ‘woo hoo your froo froo’ with ‘PH-balanced’ wipes, cleansers and sprays. Lovely.
Since then they’ve had something of a PR nightmare, as the Femfresh facebook page has suffered an onslaught of mockery dished out by a human race which, thanks to this, I now have a lot more faith in. Ladies and gentlemen of facebook: I salute you.
If they’ve taken it down, the Wallblog has screenshots.
What’s the point of shouting?
I feel a bit sorry for Femfresh now – yes, they’re peddling a hatefully unnecessary product. But then, so are Tampax – they sell scented tampons. So are Vagisil and Carefree. And yes, so are Freshballs and Fellaswipes.
While it’s great that one of these companies has taken a bit of a battering over a product that is designed to make us feel shameful about the natural genital smells humans produce, the reporting has been a bit confused on the issue.
The lead story (on blogs like The Wall and HuffPo) has been ‘Women start a backlash because a marketing company called their fanny a ‘la-la.” And that’s not strictly the case.
Firstly, it’s not just women. Men are offended by this shit as well – and why wouldn’t they be? Men no more call it a ‘la-la’ than they’d call their dick a ‘dinkle.’ Just because the childish words used in Femfresh’s campaign are about vaginas, that doesn’t mean that you need to have a vagina to recognise how ridiculous the campaign is. There were plenty of men on their facebook page too.
Secondly, people aren’t just angry because a company referred to vaginas as ‘la-la’s. Or ‘nooni’s or ‘kitty’s, for that matter. This language is offensive and patronising, sure, but most of the comments on the page seem to be surrounding the product itself. The misery of discovering that there was yet another thing we were expected to do to our bodies to sanitize them and prettify them before we’d be allowed out in society.
The bright side of Femfresh
I am disgusted by these products – vaginal sprays, dick wipes, scented tampons – and I am disgusted that we live in a world where people are paid to persuade us that they’re necessary.
But I’m actually pretty happy that this happened. We could have watched the next few weeks go by, occasionally making angry comments about the ads plastered on phone boxes or facebook updates about being ‘proud of your pom-pom’, but we didn’t. A huge bunch of people stepped in and gave what Femfresh – in their characteristically euphemistic way – calls ‘feedback.’ They started a massive, angry, stamping kickoff, and told them that we don’t need their bullshit.
So whether you’re male or female, the next time you see an ad or a website for ‘intimate hygiene products’ that tries to persuade you your body is disgusting and unnatural, remember that you’re fine as you are. Not only do you not stink, but the people who think you do just got utterly owned on facebook.
God bless the internet.
On the smell of your vagina
Listen up, ladies, you stink! It’s awful. Did you know that you constantly exude vaginal juices? Have you ever taken the time to just… smell yourself? Sheesh, it’s gross.
We wouldn’t mind, but this repulsive stench isn’t something you confine to the comfort of your own pathetic hovel, you’re out there amongst us in society – at the bus stop, in the office, on the tube – leaking.
You disgust us.
The considerate amongst you will by now be thinking: ‘What’s the solution? How can I prevent the unsavoury odour of my womanhood from penetrating the delicate nostrils of a general public which – completely understandably – thinks I am foul?’
Well, you need to clean yourself up, for a start. Not only should you shower every morning and wash those natural cunty juices away with a special vaginal soap, but ideally you will be aware of your potential to stink during every single waking minute of your day.
Showering in the office can be impractical, but luckily for you we have a solution. A solution to that disgusting thing that your body does. A solution that means vaginal cleanliness is not just something you need to worry about when you’re in the shower – it’s something you’re free to worry about whenever you get within sniffing distance of another human being.
Congratulations, you can ‘woo-hoo your froo froo’ with delightfully scented wipes.
And by ‘woo-hoo your froo-froo’ we mean ‘wipe your cunt.’
You, yes – you. Wipe your cunt, you disgusting bitch.
Or if you – like us – think it’s horrible and can’t bear to touch it, try spraying it with something.
There’s only one thing more abhorrent than the smell of a woman’s vagina, and that’s the smell of a woman’s menstruating vagina. Just the very idea of it has me dry-heaving. So for crying out loud if you’re on your period, have the common decency to buy some scented tampons.
Please don’t buy this shit
It is completely natural to smell of something. It is natural for your vagina to leak, and it is natural for your vagina to smell like… well, a vagina. It isn’t minty-fresh, it isn’t strawberry-flavoured and it certainly isn’t a fucking flower. But every single day marketing people will try and persuade you that it should be sweet-smelling, inoffensive, and as unnoticeable as possible.
So, from the centre of my brain right down to my post-wank musky-scented cunt – I implore you not to buy this shit.
This is important – so important – because over the next ten years this will only get worse. This post was prompted by creepy adverts that appeared in London asking women to buy products that are ‘woo hoo for my froo-froo’ – a noxious spray of marketing pisswank that doesn’t even have the courage to call a vagina ‘a vagina’.
In the future we’ll be asked not just to wax as much hair off our bodies as possible, wear makeup, conform to a certain shape, and have our tits lifted when we have the temerity to age, we’ll also be expected to panic constantly about whether our cunt smells like cunt. And woe betide us if it does.
So don’t buy this shit. Tell your friends not to buy this shit. And most of all, please remind your teenaged daughters why they don’t need to buy this shit. Because over their long lifetimes their cunts will ooze gallons of discharge and girlwank. If they grow up thinking that this is a ‘hygiene problem’ that requires a ‘solution’ we condemn them to an impossible task – making sure that, for as much of the day as possible, their cunts smell like anything but cunt.
It’s miserable, guilt-laden bullshit created by people who want your money. They are not providing a ‘solution’ to your ‘hygiene problem’, they are inventing a problem and a new way for you to feel small, then offering to take your money to make the pain go away.
In case you think I’m being too harsh, in case you’re thinking ‘yes, but some women want this’ – fine. Some women might. I’m not going to dictate whether you should or shouldn’t wipe your cunt with expensively-packaged rags. But what I am saying – no, screaming wildly as I smash my head into the keyboard – is this:
Do it if you want to, but don’t ever let anyone persuade you that you need to.
On 50 Shades of Grey, and other people’s porn
As a purveyor of dirty blog porn, I have an inherent bias towards masturbatory material that involves words instead of pictures. Bottom line: I want more people to read more porn.