There are some things that you deserve in virtue of the fact that you fulfil a set of criteria: get all the answers right in this test, you deserve an A. Spend fifty quid at a nice restaurant, you deserve a decent meal in exchange for your money.

There are certain things that you deserve simply for being alive, and human: the right to liberty, equality before the law, a certain level of privacy, etc.

Into which of these categories does sex fit? Is it something you have a human right to, like justice, or is it something that you deserve if you have done certain things to earn it?

The right to sex

If you answered ‘neither’ then you are correct. The problem is that while on the surface most decent people can see why sex is not a human right – it’s blindingly obvious that you don’t ‘deserve’ sex just because you are a living human who wants it – there are many people who feel like it falls into the first category – that if you do X, Y and Z you somehow deserve to get laid. Someone withholding your justly earned sex is like a teacher withholding an A, even though you got all of the answers right.

Something awful happened recently that caused a few things to fall into place in my head. I’ve long had a sense of creeping dread about pick-up artists, Nice Guys, and a whole host of other things that I want to put under the blanket label ‘misogynist’. They make me uncomfortable, not just because they are misogynist, but because they have a skewed and unusual view on sex that I’ve struggled to put into words.

You’ll probably have seen the recent news that a young guy went on a shooting rampage after having pledged to punish women for not sleeping with him. Please read the story if you haven’t already, but here’s a quote from the shooter:

“College is the time when everyone experiences those things such as sex and fun and pleasure, but in those years I’ve had to rot in loneliness, it’s not fair … I don’t know why you girls aren’t attracted to me but I will punish you all for it.”

Yes, it’s misogynist. But there’s a very particular type of misogyny that this represents, and I feel like it is becoming  more common. There’s an old-school prudish misogyny that is often the preserve of darkly religious types: a fear of women with their soft bodies and their Eve-like temptation, who will compel men to sin because we’re wicked and evil and beautiful and charming. There are a million and one reasons why that type of misogyny is terrifying and awful. I think this type of misogyny is different, though. No less terrifying, but different. And I want to explain why.

First category misogyny

What makes the shooter – and many other pick-up artists/men’s rights type people – stand out from the old-school, ‘fear of women’ misogynists, is the fact that he doesn’t hate women because they might tempt him into sex, he hates women because he thinks he deserves to have sex with them.

Many people have expressed a worry that he is looking on sex as something in category two – an absolute right. Equally you could read some of his chilling pronouncements on women and think he sees sex as a category one thing – something that, if he follows a certain set of rules, should be handed to him on a plate. Like an A grade. Like a decent meal. Like something he has earned.

The problem is, of course, that sex is not a right at all – earned or absolute. It isn’t like an A grade. No matter how hard you work, what rules you follow, or how desperately you want it, you are never entitled to sex.

The right to refuse

The obvious reason is clear: you never have a right  to sex (absolute or earned) because there’s a much more important human right that trumps it: the right to bodily autonomy. You would only be able to exercise any ‘right’ to sex if you removed someone else’s right to refuse it. That’s not going to happen, and naturally no decent person would ever want it to. Your rights can never come at the expense of someone else’s.

Hence why it’s obvious that sex never falls into category two – it’s not a human right.

Necessary versus sufficient

The slightly less obvious point, that seems to be made less frequently, is that sex cannot possibly fall into category one (earned rights), because there are no conditions you could ever fulfil that would be sufficient to ‘earn’ you some sex. We know that there are certain things that are necessary in order to have sex, but we often confuse the difference between ‘necessary’ and ‘sufficient’. Necessary conditions: things you absolutely have to do in order to put yourself in the running for something. Sufficient: something that – on its own – is enough to guarantee you that thing. The difference between ‘necessary’ and ‘sufficient’ conditions is vital, often confused, and frequently ignored.

Let’s go back to the A grade again. In order to get it you need to write all the correct answers. That’s a necessary condition. But it’s not sufficient – if you write down all of the correct answers but don’t hand your paper in on time, you no more deserve the A than you deserve to fly to the moon.

The problem with a lot of the discourse around sex is that many many people confuse necessary and sufficient conditions – they know that they should treat someone nicely if they want to have sex with them, then they make the erroneous leap of assuming that because they’ve been nice they have somehow earned the sex.

That’s the key difference between sex and an A grade: although there absolutely is a set of necessary conditions, you can fulfil every single one of them and it can still not be sufficient.

It’s not just the bad guys

The reason I’m writing this, rather than any other blog, today is because I wanted to pin down the problem beyond just my general rage and discomfort. I could talk about misogynist extremism, and how it’s wrong for men to think they are ‘entitled’ to sex. I could rage out about the prevalence of men who hate women and the easy excuses we try to give them when what they’re saying is awful and unforgivable. But the vast majority of men would respond with “so what? I don’t feel like I’m entitled to anything. I’m not like those other guys.”

And sure, most men aren’t going to shoot women because of an openly-held belief that they have a right to women’s bodies. But many people do make the mistake of assuming that – if you have fulfilled a certain set of necessary conditions, then that in itself is sufficient to have earned some sex. It’s incredibly apparent in so much of our discourse, and being able to formulate exactly why it’s wrong (beyond the statement ‘it’s hateful’) means we can apply it to broader scenarios, and explain to people exactly what it is about their attitude towards sex that needs to change. Most people don’t relate to the bad guys, but most people are influenced by these common mistaken beliefs.

Whether it’s problem pages that tell you how to ‘get’ your partner to fulfil your fantasies, pick-up artists (or agony aunts/uncles) that tell you a certain set of rules will guarantee you get laid, or telling someone that their partner is being unfair when they don’t do a particular thing: we talk like this a lot. And we need to stop.

If you think you have never been guilty of these assumptions, think again. While considering examples for this blog post, I came up with a fair few times when people I know and like have been guilty of this error one point or another. In fact, I am sure that I have – when sympathising with friends who have been recently rejected by someone they’ve tried really hard to impress, for instance. I’ve probably done it here occasionally too – while I will never tell you that you deserve sex from someone, I do sometimes offer advice on how to encourage someone to fulfil your fantasies without adding that extra caveat: ‘you can try this, but you might still fail, because no one is ever obliged to do what you want.’

So no, men aren’t all buying guns and getting ready to shoot women: but it’s not really helpful to state that as a response to this particular incident. A more complicated and urgent truth is that we often discuss sex as if it’s an earned right, that you achieve by fulfilling a set of conditions. And while you do need to fulfil certain conditions in order to have sex with someone, assuming these conditions are sufficient as well as necessary is incredibly dangerous.

We’re not all picking up guns, but many of us are discussing sex as if it’s a just reward for hard work. An earned right. An A grade.

Here are a few things my boy is a fan of:

• My hair being short
• My cunt being freshly shaved
• Me wearing a dress
• Me wearing his clothes

Can you guess which common theme ties these all together?

Novelty is sexy

No matter how much you love someone’s scruffy jeans and bog-standard t-shirt/hoodie combo (and I have to say I do: I really really do), there’s something deeply hot about novelty. The person you see day in, day out turning up looking as if they’ve been taken over by someone else.

That, I suspect, is why suits are so deeply arousing. I don’t go weak at the knees over the men who get on the tube day after day in a standard-issue blue suit with pastel-coloured shirt: they’re clearly the people for whom ironing shirts and selecting an appropriate tie is part of their daily routine. But my God, when a guy I’m dating gets scrubbed and pressed for a special occasion, both my heart and my knickers melt at the sight of it.

It’s not that you look much different in a suit: you still have the same face, same hair, same body. But all of those things are decorated in a new and beautiful way. Just as the high street looks more magical with Christmas lights, you look more magical in a suit.

My new sexy hair

So, novelty is sexy. But that doesn’t mean that I’m going to spend half my life trying new outfits and hairstyles and facial expressions just so I can inject pizzazz into any sexual encounter I have with someone I’ve known for a while. 

It’s not just for him that I get my hair cut – I find it pretty fucking sexy as well. Not out of an arrogant desire to show off, you understand: my hairdresser’s good but she’s not good enough that the new cut will hide the fact that I’ve put on a bit of weight and have bags under my eyes you could carry a weeks’ worth of shopping in. It’s not because my new hair makes me sexy, it’s because it makes me different.

Difference isn’t about becoming a different person: it’s about the ability to slightly tweak your feelings along with your appearance. If I’ve been feeling shite for the last few weeks, cutting off half my hair and seeing someone noticeably newer in the mirror gives me the chance to cut off some of the other stuff I’m feeling too. New-hair GOTN just isn’t the sort of miserable twat who’d sit around moaning about stuff: she looks like the sort of achieving go-getter who’d… I don’t know… stand up and moan about stuff.

This works not just for hair: new underwear, a ridiculous colour of nail varnish, a new piercing, half an hour spent bothering to put on make-up. And, incidentally, it means that not getting my hair cut, or shaving my cunt, or doing any of the things that magazines tell me I should do every single day, is utterly crucial to milking the sexual joy out of my changes in appearance. The sexiness of novelty relies on the everyday sexiness of the ordinary – they are two sides of exactly the same coin.

Fuck me like I’m someone else

I think part of the attraction of changing my appearance comes from a long-held desire to fuck strangers. I don’t fuck strangers these days, but I do flirt wildly with them. New men, with different bodies and clothes and mannerisms and accents… they’re special. If I’m meeting you for the first time, and you’re a guy, chances are I’ll spend the first hour or so of our conversation batting away mental images of what it’d be like if you bit my neck. Or slipped a hand up my skirt. Or ordered me to my knees and pushed your aching dick through my eager, open mouth: I can’t help it.

But changing my appearance gives me a tiny flash of that ‘fucking strangers’ hotness, no matter how well I know the guy I’m fucking. Because I’m new now. I’m different. I won’t necessarily drop to my knees the way you know I will – I might push you back on the bed and grind myself up against your straining cock. I might beg you to spit in my mouth, or find myself spitting in yours. I could do this any time, of course, but I don’t often realise I can until something changes about me, and it clicks into place that – hey! I don’t have to be the same person every day.

What I’m saying is that newness is filthy. I’m saying change is sexy. I’m saying bend me the fuck over, grab a handful of my freshly-cut hair, and screw me like we’ve never met.

I want a man to exhaust me.

I want a fuck that feels like a workout, that leaves me strained and gasping and covered in sweat. I want to shower away not just the scent of sex but the burn in my muscles.

I want to pant. I want to peel off my clothes and toss them aside and then lick the sweat off you. I want a physical, energetic, exhausting fuck.

Sexual energy

One of my exes used to take me running. Not how you’d ‘take’ someone to the theatre or for a treat, but the way you’d ‘take’ a child to the dentist: kicking, screaming, and sulky enough that you worry their angry stare might burn hate-holes in your soul.

He’d nudge me into putting my trainers on, donning baggy shorts and a faded t-shirt, and together we’d run. Sixty seconds in I’d be rasping and wheezing, by ninety seconds I’d want him to die. At two minutes, when we slowed to a walking pace, my heart hammered with wobbly, joyful pride. I was hot with arousal for this guy who was physically faster, stronger, and more determined than me.

By five minutes my heart went back to hammering murderous rage. By ten: love again.

Pant, wheeze, hammer, run. His feet pounded the ground in front of me as he streaked ahead – all muscles and sweaty hair and lean, sexy energy. I lurched after him, chest and feet aching and mind blurry with the speed at which I switched between love and hate. By the time we got home, hot and dripping and achy, I always settled for the latter: love, desire, arousal. I was tired, but I wanted him more than I’d have wanted him if we hadn’t run.

I hated the activity, but I loved that he exhausted me.

An energetic fuck

Lazy sex is fun. Lazy everything is fun. Sitting naked on the sofa chain-wanking all afternoon is fun. But as a person naturally inclined to laziness, I am constantly battling my indolent inner self. When I’m idle for ten minutes I worry it’ll last forever.

Relaxation is like superglue – a quick brush with it and I’ll be fine, but an extended session and I might find myself stuck there forever. I like spoon-fucking so much that I worry I’ll never get back on top. Never drop to my knees. Never bend over in the hallway and pull my knickers to the side so we can fuck in front of the mirror.

So I want to do things – energetic things. I want to run until I sweat and write until my brain hurts and fuck until I wear myself out.

Push me

I want a man to exhaust me. To come hiking then demand a blow job when we reach the top of the hill. To take me somewhere I’ve never been, then suggest we find our way home through alleys where we can furtively touch. To push his hand onto the small of my back and tell me I can arch it further. I can take it harder. I can hold it for longer.

Because I can. I know I can. And there’s a great value in someone who says “You can do better than this. You can run faster than this. You can be more amazing than this.” I want a man to make me pound the streets and pant and wheeze and wonder whether I could try even harder than I already do.

This isn’t about having a controlling partner who tells you what you need to be. This is about having someone who challenges you in ways you enjoy – who’ll teach you new skills or introduce you to new things or – in this specific case – physically push you to the point of tiredness so you can tumble into bed together aching and tingling with lust. This is a very specific, physical interpretation of ‘the thrill of the chase.’ Playing and sparring in a sporty flirtation that makes my knickers damp and my heart throb. Watching you run, or cycle, or dance, or do any of those things that I’d usually hide from, gives me something to try for. I’ll cycle faster because I want to impress you, dance so I can partner you, run because I desperately need to catch you.

I want a man to exhaust me. Because when all’s said and done, I can either sit and wait for you, or I can run after you. And right now the latter sounds much more fun.

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