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?

You’re not having the kind of sex you want with someone. So you talk. And you say “hey, I really like what we’re doing, but could I make a few requests? Suggestions?” And in all the happy stories and agony aunt columns we imagine a fictional partner who responds with enthusiasm and empathy and all that good stuff.

But real life isn’t always like that, more’s the pity. Here’s a guest blog from Brit Bitch Berlin about a gentleman she’s rather charmingly nicknamed Thor.

Re-Educating Thor: Sex without commitment

I had been sex-dating this guy for a few weeks, and was a bit unsure whether I was just so awed by his ripped body that I wanted to continue, or under some weird “gotta try everything once” kind of spell.

There was something about wrestling with his beautiful body, as well as perhaps enjoying the pleasure and power of wielding a butt-plug on a guy twice my size, and a decade younger, passive and bowed to my will.

However, I thought it was time to regroup, as our conversation had been limited. Very limited, till then. On the other hand, he had already enriched my vocabulary (and those of my friends, who are still reeling) by two words: butt-plug and cockslap. Did you know that you can buy butt-plugs that have diamonds inset in the heft?! And ones with a foxtail attached? Finally something for the girl who truly has everything.

Anyway, despite joyfully embracing new knowledge, I did also want to talk about boundaries and levels of intimacy. I was happy to try out new stuff with Thor and his hammer but I needed a level of intimacy that also included (for example) laughter, giggles and sensuality. I also needed to talk about contraception, because it is really tedious having to push a guy away repeatedly before he dons the plastic cape. I mean, c’mon, we are not in Kindergarten here. And unless he proposes (with a butt-plug-ring?) and swears undying fidelity, he will be wearing rubber. Ironic really that someone so into having foreign objects (made of rubber) inserted into orifices has such a problem with putting one teensy tiny flimsy layer of rubber over a small part of himself…

So having finally lured him to a public place where they served food and drink, after eyeing each other hungrily for a while, our conversation went a little bit like this:

Me: So, shall I just lay it on the line?

I would like to enjoy nights of passion with you, without being exclusive, but also with a certain level of intimacy. That means we sometimes do stuff outside the bedroom, like go out to eat, and get to know each other a little better. For me, good conversation and great food often equals good sex. Feed me well, and I will be a happy bunny between the sheets…are you getting that I am really into food?

And, I need you to use contraception always, without me having to push you into it.

Also, I don’t like it when you hit me in the face. With anything. Even if it is a soft part of your body. (OK, OK I made that bit up) Even though it doesn’t hurt. It’s not about that. It just doesn’t doesn’t turn me on. Also, when you spit on my back while you are fucking me? I don’t get it? OK your turn, what do you want?

Thor: Um well, I don’t really know…I haven’t really thought about it much. I guess I just want to relax and have a good time, without any pressure or commitment.

I felt like I was truly talking to Thor of Asgard, who had no concept of “our customs.” I guess he probably felt the same. I wish I could tell you we went back to mine and had hot sex. We didn’t. Suddenly his porn-bitch was talking back. And that was not part of the script. Oh and Asgard needed to be saved. Again.

Between you and me, I had planned to try and “make” my own personal sexual man-toy out of the raw materials at hand. It was either that, or head for Celibate-City. I failed. It’s ok. Maybe, just maybe, he will think twice before… or at least ask beforehand.

We all agree that sex is a lot of fun, and that anything consensual that makes it fun is fine. But what exactly is the POINT of a lot of these activities…? What does a man get out of, for example, cumming or spitting on a woman’s back? Isn’t it much more intense and pleasant to cum inside her whilst pleasuring her at the same time? When I was discovering my sexuality first time around, back in the 80s, men took pride in actually pleasuring you! It was about getting each other off. But now it seems like a lot of the time somehow I’m left out of all the fun. I felt like raising my hand and saying “Umm, hello, I am still here, can I have some stimulation too? Other than the visual eye candy of a man frantically wanking himself off, right in front of me??”

Call me an intellectual, but my brain needs feeding too. And not with reruns of “facefuck III”.

If you enjoyed that guest blog, you can see more of her writing at BritBitchBerlin or follow her on Twitter or Facebook. But in the meantime I’d be curious to know what you think of the above story. I think it’s a classic example of two people wanting very different things, but not realising just how different those things are until they have this conversation. I wonder if a lot of what we think is selfishness is often just a symptom of incompatible desires. If you’re a guy and you have time, I’d also love to know the answer to the question “what do you get out of cumming and/or spitting on a woman’s back?” – because, you know, I think I can guess but it would be lovely if you could explain it in a bit of detail for my personal research.*

*wanking

So, here’s an odd statement, which the guy who emailed me was kind enough to allow me to publish:

I sometimes want to try things out – I have zero or little experience and I worry about that. Would be wrong to use a girl as just like to practise on and improve?

The word ‘practice’ bothers me, and not just because of its context-dependent spelling of ‘s’ or ‘c’. This gentleman was asking, after my article on virginity, whether it was OK to find someone to practise sexual things with (kissing, oral, and other delicious non-penis-focused activity) without having to have actual sex.

The answer to this question is a wholehearted ‘yes’, but also a wholehearted ‘no’, because of the way it was phrased.

Not having sex is totally fine

If you meet someone and want to do sexy things but without having what you’d class as ‘full sex’ (i.e. train goes in tunnel) then that is not only fine but, if the other person you’re with is a fan of kissing, oral, frotting, etc, utterly delightful. There’s a deep and gutwrenching joy in having things that aren’t ‘full sex’, and although I am personally a bit of a penetration fetishist (I find it hard to get off if I’m not being pounded, or at least under promise of being pounded in the very near future), there are hundreds of other things that are fun.

However, the word ‘practice’, makes me shudder with discomfort, because it implies some things that make me sceptical of how you actually feel about your partner.

There is no sex Olympics

The key question, really, is what are you practising for? Is there some sex competition that I didn’t know you could enter? Are there skills and techniques you need to know in order to pass a shagging exam? Is this hard work going to pay off ten years down the line when you meet someone who refuses to sleep with you unless she can see your Doctorate in lovemaking? No? Then what you’re doing isn’t practice.

It’s an uncomfortable word because usually we practise on something that isn’t the real thing. We learn to drive with supervision, in cars that have a spare set of pedals so our instructor can slam the brakes on when we almost power headlong into a roundabout (and Colin, if you’re reading this, I’m really bloody sorry). We practise exam questions on past test papers. Above all, the results of our ‘practice’ don’t really matter, because the marks aren’t real or final.

But in bed, the person you’re with is real. They have real nerve endings, real emotions and desires. To reduce them to a GCSE test paper, in which the marks (i.e. their feelings) don’t really matter sounds deeply disrespectful. This, coupled with the word ‘use’ was what gave me shudders in this guy’s email.

There’s nothing wrong with having consensual sex fun with someone that doesn’t involve penetration, but there is definitely something wrong with viewing any individual sexual partner as just a stepping stone towards the amazing sex that you’ll eventually have with someone else. Heavily implied there is ‘better’. You practice on the not-quite-real person, then have better sex with someone… well… better.

Eww.

Sex practice doesn’t make perfect

Most importantly, the idea of practice implies that if you do enough of it you’ll eventually become ‘good’. This is one of those bullshit beliefs we hold because so many advice columns, sex books, and articles about ‘Ten Ways To Blow Her Mind In Bed’ insist on peddling the myth that everyone likes the same thing. That you can be, objectively, a ‘good shag’. This – and I cannot stress this enough – is bollocks.

Sometimes you’ll have sex with someone for the first time, and loads of your trademark moves will genuinely blow their mind. They’ll sigh, and writhe, and moan in delight as you rub, lick, suck, and fuck them into a glorious and delicious climax. But this is rare. Most of the time you’ll do some things they like, some things they love, and many things that make them want to say ‘left a bit’, ‘a bit softer’, ‘no, wait, a bit harder’ until you do something exactly the way they like it.

I’ve slept with a fair few guys as well as a few girls. Each and every one of them was slightly different, with some of them doing things in ways I’d never have anticipated but turned out to love. Others did things that worked well for their previous partners but turned me right off. I’m sure the same is true of what they thought of me, and generally with those people I was with for longer, we got better at pleasing the other one and knowing what they wanted. No amount of practice can prepare you as well as the knowledge that everyone’s different. So practice doesn’t make perfect – it doesn’t even make ‘good’ – the best revision you can do is to talk to the person you’re with, and listen when they tell you what they like.

Don’t ‘use’ anyone

You don’t owe it to any hypothetical future partner to be the best you can be in bed. It’s not the case that you can pick people who don’t matter to help you perfect your techniques so that you can wow the love of your life at some point. Firstly because the love of your life may well want something completely different, secondly because whoever you’re practicing with may turn out to be the love of your life, and finally because it’s just a shitty thing to do. If I had wild and sticky sex with someone and subsequently found out that they were just ‘using’ me for ‘practice’, I’d kick them out of bed before you could say ‘I am not an unfeeling shag-robot.’

I don’t think this guy is deliberately being mean, or callous. After a few emails back and forth I think he’s just under the impression that he needs to be the best he can be. But you can be at your best not by learning techniques or practising your cunnilingus skills, but by being empathetic, caring and considerate of what your partner needs and wants. Not a hypothetical future partner – the one you’re with in exactly that moment.

Sometimes guys ask me for my advice. Stop laughing at the back.

Although I’m as incompetent as the next person, feeling my way through sex and relationships like a horny blindfolded girl groping for the light switch, people occasionally email me and ask for help with their problems. The following predicament concerns a guy who wants to make his fantasy come true, and it struck me that there’s a theme which runs through most emails I get about this subject: whether it’s throatfucking, swinging, threesomes, or something beautifully sweet and simple like the one below, quite a few ‘how do I achieve my sexual fantasy?’ emails share a common theme. So, to try and kill a few extra birds with my stone of shoddy advice, I asked the guy for his permission to post the question, and my response.

Please chip in your own advice in the comments – I’m not an expert, and I am frequently wrong about things.

The problem: how do I make my sexual fantasy come true?

I am obsessed with girls and especially the female body. I absolutely love the female body and how it reacts to sexual stimulation.

I am 19, male and I haven’t had actual sex yet. I have been masturbating and fantasizing for several years now and really want to finally have some sexual action with a hot/cute girl. I don’t want full sex with her but I really really want to make out and pleasure her. I am very curious about how it feels for a girl and how close sexual stimulation feels with her body and words.

So as you can tell I am absolutely mullered by the fantasy of making out with and pleasuring a hot/cute girl who’s OK with not having actual sex.

The thing is: I live in a Christian community and I’m not really attractive or athletic and I don’t have a girl friend. I’m extremely introverted and so I think it’ll be while I’m in my mid or later 20s when I ‘d find a girl friend.

And my parents would wonder what I’d be doing (and against it) if I just went into town to hook up with a girl for a bit. I can’t be openly driving to people’s houses or strip clubs or whatever with my parent’s car.

So I think the best bet would be that I take a walk and have the girl pick me up while I’m doing that and us make out in the car or something like that.

But so far I haven’t found a legitimate website that I can find actual local girls to hook up with for free. I live [location redacted – somewhere rural in the US]. Do you know of any legit and free sites that will allow me to possibly find a girl willing to do this with me?

So far all I have found are scam sites and ones that I need to dumb paid membership for. And for me, I really can’t afford that risk atm. I’ve tried CraigsList but that’s all a bunch of scams..

Oh what am I to do?!?

Answer:

The good news (OK, the fantastic news) here is that what you want isn’t in any way unusual. There are lots of people who want to make out – they want the awesome touching, horny kissing, etc, but not necessarily the sex. Perhaps because they’re not ready for sex, or just because they don’t enjoy sex as much as the other parts. But I assure you, there are many people who want this. So you’re in a good position.

However, there’s a really big problem with your exact situation, and that is that you seem to want a very specific thing, and you don’t seem willing to do anything even vaguely out of your comfort zone in order to achieve it: you can’t drive anywhere, you won’t pay money, you won’t use free sites because of scams, you won’t speak to women because you’re shy. In short: your easily achievable fantasy becomes almost impossible because you need it to land directly in your lap with very little compromise or effort on your part.

If I knew what the effortless solution to your problem was, I would have bottled it, sold it, and be typing this on a gold plated laptop right now.

I don’t blame you at all – this is not my way of calling you a wanker. It seems that you are worried about so many things that all seem insurmountable. Instead of trying to overcome one, or all of these issues, you have made them conditions of your fantasy and I think that’s why you’re struggling to achieve what you want.

To sum it up, your ideal fantasy is one in which you kiss, touch, and generally have sexy fun with a girl without having penetrative sex. Big tick in that box: loads of people like doing it, so your pool of potential partners is huge. But you don’t want to have to speak to a woman much, or develop a relationship with her, because you’re shy (totally understandable, by the way: some of the guys I’ve been hottest for have been shy). You don’t want to pay for membership of a dating site (and who does? They’re pricey!). You can’t use a free site because you might end up getting scammed. You don’t want to have to drive and pick her up in case your parents find out (again, understandable, if you think that the consequences of that would be horrible for you). Basically you want all of your ideal conditions met. And that makes giving you advice almost impossible, because any advice I give would mean compromising on one of your conditions.

So, bearing that in mind, here are three advice options:

• Keep trying with free sites (I am a big fan of OKCupid, and I think you have that in the States, but if anyone else has suggestions please leave them in the comments!), and trying to weed out possible scammers wherever possible. Accept, though, that you will meet people on it who are either scamming you, who want something slightly different, who might want a relationship before makeouts, or who don’t have their own car: that’s just how humans work, and it’s impossible to recommend a site which can deliver you someone guaranteed to fill every aspect of your fantasy.
• Go pro. When I read the first half of your email it occurred to me that if you really want this specific thing, but without having to develop a relationship, then speaking to a sex worker could be ideal. Find someone in your area (on Twitter I see adultwork mentioned often by sex workers, so I’d recommend heading there first, unless any sex workers have better suggestions that they can leave in the comments, pretty please!) who you can have this experience with. This involves compromising on your ‘free’ rule, but it’s one of the simplest ways to guarantee that you can have what you’re looking for.
• If you don’t like the above ideas, then the only thing I can recommend is to compromise on the ‘shy’. Which I know I know I know is hard to do. Speak to women, and try to develop a relationship with one who would like to do this with you. You don’t necessarily have to be boyfriend and girlfriend if that’s tricky for you, it might just be a girl you get along well with who also wants to have a go at making out and touching: it’s fine. I know this is scary if you’re shy: incredibly so. But it won’t get any easier if you never do it, and if you don’t manage to find a girl who’s willing to do this with you, you may still have met some nice people and had fun with them.

And that’s it, I’m afraid: I don’t have any magic bullets. As I said originally, I’ve been asked similar questions quite a few times, and I struggle to give advice because often I think what the guy wants is for his fantasy to just happen. You’re luckier than others in that usually their fantasies are things that are a bit more niche or kinky, so their original pool of potential partners is limited by the fact that only a small slice of the population would be up for the act itself. But either way I’ve seen lots of variations of “I need X but I have to get it without doing A, B or C”. As with you, they’re all usually legitimate concerns, and understandable problems. The trouble is, when you add them all up, the only way the fantasy is actually going to happen is if a passing woman just happens to fancy making out with the stranger she’s driving past, and has the confidence to shout out of her car window and ask for it.

So, to summarise, my advice would be that you need to pick one of your conditions and either compromise on it or make some effort to overcome it, or you need to cross your fingers and hope really hard that the very unlikely happens, and do a hell of a lot of wanking in the meantime.

Oh, and worry about the car situation when you get to it.