Tag Archives: meta-blogging
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.
Yes, you can run an anonymous blog and still be accountable
When I introduce myself to people, I use a different name. I have quite a few – I like them. One of them I wear so often it feels more comfortable than my ‘real’ name – I wrap it round me like a blanket, and it makes me feel safe.
Unfortunately, one of the questions I’m asked most frequently is: “is that your real name, though?” Like somewhere deep in my heart there’s a secret and special name, and the people I’m speaking to will be elevated above the status of mere acquaintance and into, I don’t know, God, if they can determine what the deep and immutable truth is. Problem is, knowing my real name doesn’t give anyone special powers, it just gives them a fact. And hand-in-hand with that fact comes a fairly big problem for both of us.
When I first started blogging I decided that anonymity was the best way to go – for a whole host of reasons, but primarily employment. We still live in a world where talking about buttsex on the internet and holding down a job at a company that gives a shit about your social media life is, if not impossible, at least tricky. As time wore on, there were more reasons, and then more. Recently, Kilted Wookie wrote a post about anonymity on his sex blog and it got me thinking about a lot of stuff. The primary thing was that there are far more reasons to be anonymous than I’d considered when I first began.
“I Call Bullshit” Man: the Superhero none of us deserve
Billy was an ordinary boy. He lived in an ordinary house, in an ordinary street, and every day he’d go out and play with his ordinary friends. Billy had a happy life.
But one day, as Billy’s friends took it in turns to swap brags about how cool their houses were and which level they’d reached on the latest Xbox game, Billy was struck by a bolt of lightning. Turning him from an ordinary, everyday boy into…
I-Call-Bullshit Man!
Now, in his superhero guise, Billy wanders the twisting corridors of the internet, shedding what he thinks is light into anything he perceives to be darkness. In comments and on Twitter he pops up, shouting that oft-heard phrase:
“I call bullshit!”