Communication: it’s bloody hard, right? You just never know what’s going to offend people and whether your words will be hurled back at you in a storm of rage and misery, leaving you cowering in a corner nursing your hurt feelings.

The above is only semi-tongue-in-cheek: I know that words – while they’re sometimes our friends, are often crude tools with which we dig ourselves a massive hole into which we accidentally spew things that we probably shouldn’t have said. Hence: communication’s important, but we all get it wrong sometimes.

It’s hard to give advice to people on the right things to say – although plenty of Pick-Up Artists will try, and tell you that there are specific rules and lines that are scientifically proven to impress strangers. However, usually the only thing anyone can advise is to try and be empathetic, listen to the other person, and for the love of God don’t say anything awful like this. To cover this last category, I’m handing over to the excellent @halfabear, who has some very strong and hilarious opinions on the questions people ask about her sex life.

Sexual questions

Since becoming paraplegic I’ve become very used to being asked questions about my health; friends asking how I’m getting on and if I’m in pain, strangers gently prying and trying to find out what’s wrong and how it happened. Nosey but innocuous questions that I generally don’t mind answering, providing that it’s not done insultingly and they understand I won’t answer if a line is crossed. I’ve been quite endeared over the years by the sensitivity that people have approached the subject with.

Well, most of the time.

There is one subject where it appears that all boundaries and sensitivity go out of the window in a heartbeat. Be it friend or stranger, it’s a subject which arouses such curiosity that no answer is simply not good enough, and there really is no way to tread carefully. Sex.

Read about awkward sexual questions, and the hilarious answers she gives people, over on her own blog…

There’s a lot of bullshit spoken about lots of things, and never is the quantity of bullshit larger than when it comes swiftly behind a statement that ‘all’ people of a certain type are a certain way, or have certain problems. Sure, catch-all statements are often a handy shortcut, but the more you try to crowbar into that statement the greater the chance of it stinking like a dungheap.

So, in light of Some Things I Have Seen On The Internet Recently, I feel compelled to highlight a few things about feminists. Specifically, things that – while true of some of us – are categorically not true of all of us. Here are some things that ‘all feminists’ are not:

Subject to unrelenting abuse

Some people are showered with quite horrific and appalling abuse on the internet. One of the many things that ignites the ire of a miserable and hate-filled human is a woman who not only has some opinions but has the temerity to actually say them out loud. Why, it’s enough to make them want to commit a criminal offence on Twitter. This behaviour is, naturally, disgusting.

However, I’m worried that the total shitstorm of the last few days, while fantastic at highlighting what is a genuine problem for many people, has been painted by the media as a problem for ‘feminists’ (as evidenced by the fact that articles on the topic nearly all seem to refer to a ‘feminist journalist’ or ‘feminist MP’, as if a feminist is a surprising and unusual thing to be). People behaving appallingly to each other is not just a problem for feminists – it’s a problem for our entire society. Moreover, although many of the most prominent victims of Twitter threats are loudly and proudly feminist, there are many people who receive this kind of abuse who are not.

Additionally, I want to point out that although being a loud, stampy feminist might mean you’re more likely to be targeted by a subset of antisocial cockwipes, you aren’t guaranteed to get this treatment just because you are a feminist. Why is it important to say this? Two reasons:

– I don’t like the implication that you could make the abuse stop by just calming your feminist views down a bit, or shutting the hell up.

– I don’t want to think that there are people who’ll be too scared to talk about their opinions because a few unconscionable cunts fire all-caps hate-tweets at prominent women.

You might get shit: you might not. I just want you to know that it’s not guaranteed, and it’s not something you can prevent just by not having an opinion. On to the next thing ‘all feminists’ are not:

Women

Some of my best feminist friends are men, and all that. More importantly, these feminist men fall into the same camps as the people in the previous category: some of them get awful abuse and threats on the internet, others don’t. There is no way of predicting or preventing this stuff on an individual basis. Whatever your views on how we, either technologically or as a society (or both) deal with the problem of online harassment, there’s never a way that you, as an individual, can prevent this.

Fighting all of the time

Another thing ‘all feminists’ aren’t doing. There’s a big discussion going on about how we deal with internet harassment. I’m undecided on the best solution because – as with most complex issues – there is nothing that leaps to the front of my mind and screams “BUT THIS IS SO OBVIOUS AND HAS LITERALLY NO DRAWBACKS.” Naturally, there’s debate – sometimes heated. However, it depresses me that the nuanced, carefully thought through arguments from a number of intelligent people have been boiled down into either ‘feminists are fighting with each other over a Twitter button’ or, even more worryingly ‘feminists are fighting everyone else over a Twitter button.’

It’s a fucking debate – we’re all supposed to be fighting. And I think, when this many people are involved, you can reliably say that this isn’t a ‘feminist’ issue – it’s a ‘people’ issue.

The same

As evidenced by the fact that a feminist can be male or female, pro- or anti-Twitter button, troll, trolled or indifferent, it’s fairly safe to say we’re not all the same. I appreciate that ‘feminist’ is a handy catch-all for some issues, but this definitely isn’t one of them.

It’s a people issue. It’s not a niche interest or campaign that we can cheer on from the sidelines but ultimately will never affect us: it’s about how we as a society behave towards each other, and we all – feminist or not – need to get stuck in.

People disagree with me on lots of things. Like all people, I am occasionally offensive, often unknowledgeable, and far too frequently wrong. But one of the things people disagree with most often is the words I choose to use.

Language is an intensely powerful thing when it comes to sex. One person’s ‘hot’ is another’s ‘horrible’, with the result that despite having polite disagreements on sexual politics, one of the most heated rows I have is over my preference for ‘cunt’ over ‘pussy’.

I think it’s one of the biggest challenges for erotic writing. You don’t want to go too bland and be unable to conjure anything hotter than his ‘length’ penetrating her ‘sex’. Likewise you don’t want to go so hardcore that you put off readers who’ve warmed themselves up during the written foreplay, then fling your book/blog to one side if you get too gynaecological.

How much does a fuck cost?

My favourite sex words and swear words are the ones that have power – the ones that sound punchy and strong, and evoke that same passion as the kick you get in the bottom of your stomach when someone you fancy says something hot. Fuck, cock, prick, cunt. I know they’re not for everyone, but I think you can tell a lot about a writer by the words that they favour. So, I did a few quick calculations.

My book (which is currently on a 99p deal at Amazon, and that means it’s also cheap in the US too – at the time of writing this it’s $1.51) is 95,000 words long. It contains 499 instances of the word ‘fuck’. This includes words like ‘fucking’ and ‘fucked’, and to be fair some of those will be used in a non-sexual context, so fuck that for useful science.

More pertinently, there are 342 counts of the word ‘sex’. I think sex is a generic enough word that if you’re reading a sex book, you expect it to appear quite frequently. Perhaps slightly less expected is that there are 23 bastards, including one ‘weapons-grade bastard’. When looking into verbs, there’s one instance of ‘splattering’ that involves magnolia paint, as opposed to one of the more obvious substances:

Better, perhaps, as an indication of what I like, here’s a penis chart:

And one for the cunts:

There’s no real conclusion to this other than that I’m sweary and I like it. I think words that are traditionally considered ‘offensive’ are hotter when you’re talking (or writing) dirty. Not because there’s an extra frisson of excitement contributed by the fact that they’re usually taboo – there are plenty of other things that are taboo which we leave firmly out of the bedroom. No, I think their power comes from the same thing that got them on the ‘taboo’ list in the first place – namely the plosive, punchy, staccato kick when you say them. They’re frowned upon because they’re often used with power, in hatred. They’re hot because they’re used with power, in love.

Some people agree with me about that sexy kick, where others prefer softer, mellower words with their wanking. As with everything sexual, to each his own. But I hope this has given you some explanation (if never an actual excuse) for why I swear so frequently. Like the groaning of horny men or the slapping sounds of skin-on-skin, without which I can’t enjoy a dirty video, swearwords are the soundtrack to the porn that I write. Without them I couldn’t get aroused.

To close, I’ll answer my original question: how much does a ‘fuck’ cost? It makes up 0.5% of the words contained in my book, so at a current bargain price of 99p in the Kindle Summer Sale, one fuck will cost you around half a penny. In the US, it’ll cost you 0.8 cents. Cheap as fuck.

I’m an online dating evangelist – I think meeting people on the internet and then going for drinks with them (in a safe public place, etc) is one of the best ways to meet likeminded and potentially shaggable people.

As an evangelist, however, there’s a conversation I’ve ended up having a few times that makes me incredibly uncomfortable. It goes something like this:

“Remember you told me to go on OKCupid?”
“Yeah. How’s it going?”
“Well, I’ve had a couple of quite good dates. But I’ve also been sent some hilarious and awful messages. And oh God this one person had a profile so bad it was hysterical. I’ll send you a link…”

Please don’t show me the money

I don’t want to see your links. I don’t want to see the people you think are so funny that it’s worth going to the trouble of finding their profile again, copying the link and then emailing it to me. I’m human, of course, and so naturally I find the flaws, foibles and fuck-ups of other humans inherently funny. There’s nothing I like more than hearing how unrelentingly shit other people can be, because it makes me feel like less of a blundering oaf.

Tell me about it, by all means. If you’ve spotted a dating profile where someone’s used a UKIP quote in the ‘things I like’ section, then that’s well worth a pub-time anecdote. But I don’t want your links.

There’s something so deeply personal about an online dating profile that even the idea of other people seeing mine (I’ve wiped it now, so don’t go looking) makes me shiver with cold dread. Like showing your CV to a work colleague who has known you for years – someone who knows that most of what you’ve written is – at best – rose tinted and – at worst – bordering on fantasy.

Mistakes, misogyny and mockery

I don’t like it when people lie on internet dating profiles. When they send messages that are presumptuous or rude. I don’t like it when they make sexist statements or offer arrogant critiques of people’s profile photos. There are many things that I not only don’t like, but that will have me wishing slapstick comeuppance on anyone who comes across as vaguely right wing.

But I don’t want you to show it to me. There are two reasons for this:

1. I have probably seen it, or something like it, already. No, really. I’ve done a lot of internet dating, so if you send me someone’s profile picture along with an amused email about how he’s odd because he included a photo of his dick, the best reaction you’re going to get from me is ‘so?’ I’ve seen quite a few dicks – attached to profiles, emails, and (if I’m really lucky) actual men. I’ve also seen messages where people just say ‘how r u sexy’, or write clumsy erotica, or offer to be your slave forever. Unless it’s a spectacularly unusual message or picture, my reaction is likely to disappoint you. If you want someone to be shocked by it, you’re better off sending it to your mum.

2. I’m uncomfortable laughing directly at people. Sure, if a friend trips on the way to the bar and accidentally spills a beer over someone I didn’t like much, I might have a bit of a snigger. But there’s a world of difference between the odd giggle at someone’s flaws and an anonymous shredding of someone who has laid themselves bare for you in the hope that you’ll approve. The shredding is fine, but when you’re shredding someone and I have to look into their eyes – even if they’re separated by a net connection and the knowledge that they’ll never hear what I have to say about them – there’s a feeling of discomfort that just isn’t enjoyable. If you asked me to kick a kitten I wouldn’t feel comfortable doing it just because you assured me it was dead and wouldn’t feel a thing. It’s still not a fun thing to do.

I’m not saying people on dating sites are all amazing and wonderful, nor even that in mocking them you’re a horrible person. What I am saying is that if you want me to join you in appraising and critiquing, I don’t need to see who they are.

Knowing me, knowing you

This brings me on to my final point – and it’s a very important one. Be wary of being too judgmental about people when you’re telling someone else about them. Recently a friend of mine (a new member of OKCupid, on my wholehearted and overenthusiastic recommendation) sent me a profile of a guy she thought she liked, and told me that he’d ruined things by having ‘massive sex issues.’ Meaning to incite a good old giggle and a session of bitching, she invited me to offer judgment about his ‘freakish’ foibles.

Unfortunately for her, his ‘freakish’ foibles sounded pretty hot to me. Moreover, based on a slightly blurry picture and his style of profile writing, I had a sneaking suspicion that I’d already sampled them.

She didn’t reply to his message.