A few weeks back, I gave the best blow job I’ve ever given. Apparently. I don’t like writing that down so starkly – it’s far easier to talk about how mediocre I am in bed, or how incompetent I am with certain sex toys.

But I’m writing it because the sentence itself will spin round in my head forever. I don’t want anyone to tell me that anything was ‘the best blow job ever’, because I’m primed to root through any compliment until I eventually find a negative. And so this week I’m tortured by this one simple fact:

None of my other blow jobs were as good as that one. 

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In my sex education classes at school, I was told that sex was this:

A man puts his penis in a woman until he ejaculates.

There was a lot of stuff surrounding that, of course, all of it important: how to avoid getting pregnant, or reduce the risk of an STI. How the sperm meets the egg. Why menstruation happens. But at the heart of it was that: a man puts his penis in a woman. Train goes in tunnel, you know?

Everything I learned was grounded in that train-in-tunnel thing. Sure, we got timetables, instructions on emergency exits, and a map to where the buffet car was, but we were still always focused on the train.

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I’m not ashamed of my gender, or any of the subsets within it. There have been plenty of women whose behaviour has horrified me – the obvious example being Thatcher (and I apologise, because mentioning her name has become something like a feminist Godwin’s Law). But of my gender as a whole, I’m not ashamed.

If I were to say I was, I’d probably be told I was letting down the sisterhood. Someone would sigh, shake their head, and repeat that old saying: “women: beware women.” Criticising women as a woman is seen as a poisonous thing, and is subsequently painted as exactly the kind of thing a woman would do: those backstabbing bitches who’ll claw through their sisters to make their way to the top.

I’m not ashamed of women.

However, one of the most common things I hear from guys when I talk about some men’s appalling behaviour is this:

“I am ashamed of my gender.”

I hate it, and I want to explain why…

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This post has everything to do with anxiety and nothing to do with sex. Except, of course, for the fact that both sex and anxiety are woven so tightly into the fabric of my life that they touch on everything I do. Except for that.

A while ago, someone sent me a link to this old article on stress and anxiety, and it made me stressed. But the good kind of stressed: annoyance that prompts me to write a long blog post about something. That kind of stress I like. It’s a refreshing break from the other kind of stress I have, which is a constant low-level hum of worry that I have done or said something howlingly awful, which at some point will be revealed to me via the medium of a friend or colleague telling me to get fucked.

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You’ve probably heard of Holly Brockwell – she has no children, and she doesn’t want them. She’s been trying (and trying and trying and trying) to get sterilised. Recently, after countless doctors appointments, refusals, referrals, more refusals and referrals, she was finally granted her wish, and is on the list for sterilisation.

Obviously, I am pretty damn impressed with Holly’s determination, particularly in light of the reactions to her decision. I’ve been watching the story with increasing horror as the ridiculous, patronising and tedious comments roll in: you’ll change your mind one day, aren’t you being selfish, who’ll look after you in your old age…

But the one I want to deal with here is this one:

Imagine actually believing this pic.twitter.com/Es2qFiwW0G

— Holly Brockwell (@holly) March 24, 2016

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