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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I am definitely biased in favour of people with sexy tattoos. Take any guy who is funny or pretty or interesting enough to vaguely grab my attention, slap a tattoo on him, and watch as I turn from mildly intrigued to drooling at the mouth. (more…)

Sometimes I want to arouse you. Sometimes I want to rant at you. I always want to entertain you. But occasionally I want to disgust you.

Partly because I think it’s important to highlight the fucking weird things we all do sometimes, because it makes everyone else feel a bit less weird about themselves. Partly because we’re constantly – constantly – told that experimenting with our bodies or enjoying them is dirty and bad and wrong (especially if we’re women).

But mostly because so much of what we think about sex is based on knee-jerk reactions, and when our knee-jerk reaction is one of disgust it’s worth examining why we feel disgusted. Is there a rational reason for it? Or is it, like that dildo made from human ashes, just something we condemn because our gut tells us we should?

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