Tag Archives: feminism
Do women like porn?
Imagine a club in which all the doors are five foot six. You’re six foot tall, so you have to duck to enter. On your way to the club, you had to get out at the train station and hop onto a crowded shuttle bus. There was a person standing with a sign directing you to it:
“Shuttle bus for people below five foot six this way!”
When you walked past them to step onto the bus, they didn’t exactly tell you to leave, but a fair few people gave you weird looks.
Here’s why ‘klittra’ isn’t a great word for female masturbation
What’s your commute to work like? Is it one of those normal ones where you get on a bus or train or into a fancy-pants car? Or is it a female commute? Do you eat breakfast, or female breakfast? When you take a piss, is it just, like, a regular piss or do you partake in female urination?
Today someone tweeted me a link to an article ‘what do you call female masturbation?‘ As you might be able to tell I have some Thoughts On This Topic.
In answer to the question: wanking. I call it wanking. Sometimes I will try to mix it up by talking about a hand-shandy or rubbing one out. If I’m feeling particularly coy, then I may refer to it as ‘alone time’ or taking a ‘freelancer’s nap.’ But in general, I rarely refer to what I do on my own with a sleazy fantasy and a fistful of glass dildo as ‘female masturbation.’
The article was about the new word ‘klittra’ – an invented word, being promoted by the Swedish Association for Sexual Education, because “If we don’t have a word in the language, how can we even talk about it?”
Hmm…
Let’s stop pretending these are female turn ons
A long time ago someone published a book called ‘Porn for Women.’ Don’t get too excited, it isn’t actually porn. It was simply a collection of different images of guys doing the hoovering, washing, and other household tasks. In this ‘porn for women LOL’ hilarious trope, guys are occasionally tantalisingly half-dressed but never doing the kind of thing I’d consider genuinely horny: masturbating on the sofa, or poised halfway to sitting down on a butt plug – that kind of thing. I would be surprised if – barring a few people with very niche fetishes – anyone’s actually ever wanked to it.
I was reminded of it recently when someone (I don’t remember who and I don’t want to drop them in it even if I could) tweeted a list of ‘top female turn-ons’ which looked suspiciously like this book. The list included such gems as ‘listen attentively when she tells you about her day’ and ‘take the garbage out.’ I don’t know about you, but I’m more likely to have actual, satisfying sex with my own vacuum cleaner than to orgasm while thinking about a guy begrudgingly hauling bin bags to the front garden.
I do not sit at home frigging myself trembly over the idea of my partner picking up a hoover. I do not get wet just because someone is listening attentively while I speak, unless perhaps that person is Tyrion Lannister and what we’re discussing is just how hard he’d fuck me.
Guest blog: what do men think about patriarchy?
Meet Dave Pickering. If you don’t already follow him on Twitter (and you should – he’s @goosefat101), you may not have heard of the #ManSurvey yet. A while ago he posted a few tweets with a link to a list of questions on surveymonkey designed to find out what men think about patriarchy. Questions like ‘does patriarchy exist?’ ‘does misandry exist?’ and ‘how has patriarchy hurt you?’ yielded a whole range of answers: some sarcastic, some touching, some sad, some insightful.
In total, over 1000 people filled out the survey, and I invited Dave to write a guest blog to give you an overview of the results. So, ever wondered what men think about patriarchy? Let’s have a look…
Not all men (a radio drama in three parts)
I’m 100% sure I’ll get shit for this, but I’ve had this sitting in my drafts for ages, and now feels like as good a time as any to crack it out.
I’ve been asked a few times why ‘not all men’ annoys me, and I’ve struggled to explain just why the response seems so illogical. So I wrote a long-winded analogy, in the form of a radio drama. And given that #BlameOneNotAll – a hashtag which aims to shed light on the not-in-any-way-surprising truth that not all men are rapists, I thought now’s as good a time as any.