Tag Archives: meta-blogging
Two things: Good sex writing and really bad lube
Welcome to what I hope will be a New Project for 2016: two things.
I am powered by a combination of inspiration and rage. Inspiration, where I try to be more like people who are better than me, and rage, where I get fired up about things and people and companies that are appallingly shit.
So… on Monday mornings I’m going to try and highlight one thing that’s awesome and one that’s awful, thus kickstarting the week with a combination of inspiration and rage.
Let’s start with the rage:
Most popular guest blogs of 2015
Naturally when I do ‘top X posts’ roundups, those that get to the top of the list in terms of visits will be the dirtier ones, because dirty stories usually get the most search traffic.
Any post I write which contains the phrase ‘butt plugs’, for instance, is going to do pretty well. So what I’ve done is a top 5 (below) of the most popular guest blogs in terms of visits, and a few extras picked by me purely because I love them. That’s not to say I don’t like the dirty ones, of course. It’s just that, as partners have told me before, life cannot all be about butt plugs. (more…)
Not perfect, but done
When I was young, I used to think about all the things I wanted to be when I grew up. Looking to the future, I’d see myself in lots of different roles. Lawyer (the first, and most intense of my Future Dreams), comedian (very brief desires, always stamped out by the fact that I’m not as funny as I think I am), and often writer (that one’s stuck).
It was – and still is – fun to imagine all the cool things I could do and be if I had the skill, and put in the effort.
But something’s changed since I was younger, and that’s that I think far less about what I could be, or what I want to do, and more on what I want to have done. Looking at writing, I am less likely to imagine myself beavering away at a desk with a typewriter (most dreams of writerhood involve those clackety old typewriters, despite the fact that they’re deeply impractical things), and more likely to imagine myself lying face down in a pile of scribbled-on manuscript, exhaling a sigh of relief and exhaustion.
Less likely to consider what I want to do in future, and more keen to think about what I want written on my gravestone.
“She tried her best” might be a good one. Or right now simply: “Knackered.”
Are you cut out to be a sex writer?
Are you interested in sex? Do you enjoy the fact that humans have sex in different ways, with a number of different people, in a variety of interesting positions? If someone tells you about a cool new sex game or a fetish that’s new to you, is your first reaction to go ‘ooh, wow! That sounds interesting please tell me more’?
You might want to be a sex writer.
If any of the above things have made you recoil slightly, a frown of disgust on your face, or made you feel like you should hammer out a comment about how some people are just ‘sick’, ‘creepy’ or ‘gross’? Then I cannot stress this enough, but please:
do not become a sex writer.
Biased, obviously, but I’m sad about the demise of FHM
I’m gutted that FHM is going to suspend publication. That might sound odd because I’m a feminist, and surely I should be ready to dance wholeheartedly on its grave, the way some people were accused of doing when Nuts magazine folded. It should also – to those who read FHM – sound perfectly natural for me to be sad, because for the last few months I’ve been a contributor.
I’m gutted on a simple level: I won’t be able to write things for them any more. But I’m also gutted for the other people who work there, many of whom were publishing some good stuff. Looking back on the FHM I first pored over in my teenage boyfriend’s bedroom and its more recent editions (October’s issue, for example, had an awesome feature on ‘rule breakers’ including interviews with a female CEO, a North Korean defector, and a 95 year-old sprinter), there’s a world of difference, although I appreciate that many of you might disagree.
I’ve been critical of some things FHM has done in the past (like their ‘sexiest women’ in 2012), but I’ve also been fairly open about the fact that I don’t think we should ban lads’ mags, or even imply that there’s no place for them in a society that has healthy views on sex. Sex is not the opposite of feminism, and being a feminist doesn’t mean ignoring or quashing straight male sexual pleasure. What it means, I think, is pushing for a broader representation of sexual pleasure – making it clear that the glossy magazine pictures are just one of a million things that might turn some people on.