Cocks are beautiful. There – I said it. I think they’re not only hot in the traditional sense – i.e. in their potential to be used for doing sexy, sweaty, hot things – but in a more aesthetic way too.

I like the smoothness of the skin, the unique shape, length and girth of each one, and I think that the contrast in colour to the rest of a guy’s body highlights perfectly something that is worthy of individual attention.

The ‘last turkey in the shop’

The idea that the cock is a beautiful thing seems to be a relatively controversial one. On the one hand, there are people who are so enamoured of cocks that they’re willing to collect, curate and rate images of them. On the other hand, there are those who – when presented with these images – say that there’s something inherently hilarious about dick, or that it’s a shame the male sexual organs are either laughable or ugly.

Naturally, what someone finds beautiful is an incredibly personal thing. I, personally, don’t think that cunts are particularly pretty, but I accept that countless thousands do. One person’s work of art is another’s pile of rubbish. If you don’t want to sit down with me and scroll through hundreds of images of erect dicks, admiringly complimenting the features of each one, then I don’t think you’re a bad person.

But I do find it uncomfortable when people say ‘God, aren’t penises hilarious!’ and I look like a humourless arsehole for saying ‘no.’

Penis appreciation

There are a million different pressures put on women – be thin but not too thin, be sexy yet modest, remove some types of hair but not others. Similar pressures are creeping up on men as well – as is evidenced by the large number of guys on the lovely site of cocks who have completely shaved their testicles.

But I can’t think of any part of the female anatomy that is subject to the same treatment as the penis. Women are judged, certainly. But is there anything about us that is assumed to be universally funny? When we get out of the shower are our partners thinking ‘god, it’s hilarious how her tits, when not pictured in a sexual context, are comically ridiculous’? Are there people across the world flicking through Playboy going ‘I know it’s supposed to be sexy, but I just can’t look at a female arse without giggling’?

There’s no conclusion to this blog post, really, other than to say that I think cocks are beautiful. Whether they’re soft, and waiting for a gentle cupping hand to start massaging them to rigidity. When they’re being gripped firmly during a particularly powerful and sexy piss. Or whether they’re rock-solid and glistening slightly with pre-come, red and tight and thick and twitching…

OK, especially that last one. Seeing a glistening, naked cock makes me want to do many things:  laughing isn’t one of them.

Let us discuss the word ‘ladylike.’ This word conjures the idea of demure high-society women nibbling on tiny sandwiches before patting daintily at their unsullied lips with napkins. Sorry, serviettes. Or whatever one calls them in order to avoid a terrible faux-pas.

The word ‘ladylike’ can, in my opinion, be applied to anyone – female or not. The key is ‘is your behaviour a type which the Victorians deemed acceptable for high-society ladies?’ These days we don’t expect anyone (male or female) to behave in the ways the Victorians deemed suitable for high-society ladies – we’d all be fainting and gagging for a pasty before you could say ‘I take my tea with lemon, Jeeves’. Hence why the word is useful, because it can be funny when applied to people who are being disgusting. Downed ten pints then puked in a gutter? Not very ladylike. Eaten an entire packet of Cadbury’s Twirl Bites then burped loud enough to disturb the neighbours? Unladylike. Shat your trousers on a rollercoaster? Likewise.

I don’t personally think the word ‘ladylike’ itself is necessarily misogynist – it’s just an outdated label that can be applied in various ways. So, as with all words – slippery little bastards at the best of times – I think a lot depends on context and intent.

Bodily functions

Unfortunately for the word ‘ladylike’, it is most frequently used in contexts which make me want to hurl large blunt objects at delightfully shattery china. It is often used for comedy, but more often used as a reminder to women that they shouldn’t admit to having any bodily functions at all.

There are two reasons I’m writing this blog. Firstly, because I overheard a conversation in a restaurant recently that went something like this:

Small girlchild: burp
Second small girlchild: giggle
Mother of aforementioned small children: Don’t do that, it’s disgusting.
Small child 1: Why?
Mother: We’re at the dinner table. Besides, it’s not very ladylike.

When I was a little girl I loved many things that I considered ‘ladylike’ – tiny china teasets, huge frilly dresses that I could spill Ribena down at parties, and (please stop laughing at the back) ballet pumps. But if someone had told me then that in order to maintain a veneer of ladylike charm I’d have to not just acquire these frilly things but also refrain from doing other things I liked – making mud pies, burping, running along the landing naked after a bath with a towel streaming behind me while I shouted “Der ner ner ner ner ner ner ner BATMAN” – I’d have hurled my cup of Ribena into their stupid narrow-minded face.

The second reason I felt compelled to mash wildly on my keyboard in barely-disguised and possibly excessive rage is that I read this interview. Take your time, have a read, and come back when you’ve reached the point that you think my head exploded.

Anyone who guessed ‘some time during the first question’ is correct. The woman being interviewed is a science writer. I’m not familiar with her work but it sounds brilliant, not least because she’s written a book about sexual arousal called ‘Bonk.’ However, rather than ask her something about all the fascinating things that she’s studied, or what drew her to the subject matter, the interviewer instead jokes that it’s not ‘ladylike’ for her to wonder what happens to the anus when it has a cellphone inside it.

I’m not saying the interviewer is an evil person and needs to be crushed, but were I to meet them in person I’d certainly be tempted to ask the startlingly obvious question: “would that have been your first question to a man?” Would the first thing they probed be whether the subject matter was a bit inappropriate or un-dainty? I doubt it.

It’s my body and I’ll piss out of it if I want to

I’ve frequently heard grown adults talking about women’s bodily functions in ways which imply that we, as women, have some sort of superhuman level of self-control which means we are never scruffy, pissed, obnoxious or irritably-bowelled. I’ve met girls who’d be horrified if they accidentally farted in front of a boyfriend, or boyfriends who would be disgusted to walk into the toilet post-shit and smell something other than roses.

Sure, burping might not be polite. Farting, swearing, talking loudly about getting fisted or accidentally pissing your knickers on the night bus: all of these things can certainly be considered rude, or gross, or inappropriate. But the idea that they’re more gross and inappropriate just because a woman is doing them is ridiculous.

Women are brilliant, I’ll grant you. But we’re no more skilled than men when it comes to being able to control our bodily functions. We’re disgusting and messy and we smell. We leak strange juices, burp when we’re windy, get rolls of fat when we sit down wearing tight jeans. We’re curious about what people put up their arses. We sweat and we swear and we get drunk and fall over. Occasionally we even shit in the woods.

So I think what I’m trying to say is that there are certain rules of politeness that I’m happy to adhere to: I won’t burp at the dinner table or do the Batman-towel thing in polite company. But I’ll only follow these rules if they apply to everyone. I’m not going to sit demurely in a corner stifling my farts if you’re allowed to trump with gay abandon in the seat next to me.

I am woman, hear me burp.

I am becoming a little bit uncomfortable with my apparent lack of sexual accessories.

There are some things you can’t really do without the equipment: pegging is tricky without the strap-on, you’d either end up humping lacklustrely at a rather bored gentleman or doing him an injury with something homemade and as unsexy as it is unsafe. But the vast majority of filth can be improvised – why spend £100 on a hand-cut leather tawse when you could just beat your loved-one with a flip-flop? You can buy them from the pound shop, and the sound is eminently more satisfying.

What’s more (and I feel I might have to hand in my sex blogger membership card at this point) the toys I do have spend far more time at the back of a cupboard than up against my cervix.

Reviewing sex toys

I’ve held off on doing it for this long, and every time a company approaches me asking me to review something or put an affiliate link on my site I’ve said no. Not because I’m a snob (if you can make money by slapping ads on your blog then you have my blessing and a fair bit of my envy as well) but because I can’t work out how to do it in a way that would be even vaguely entertaining for either my readers or, quite frankly, myself.

First someone has to send me a sex toy (which requires me to either give them my address or have a designated friend who is willing to accept daily dildos through the post), then I have to put it in my cunt, then I have to write approximately 600 words about it. No matter how skilled I am, I’m not sure I could muster 600 words about what is essentially just a wank. Most of my sex toy reviews would end up something along these lines:

“I put it in my cunt for a bit and it made me come. Would have been better if it wasn’t pink. 6/10”

Alternatively, I have to persuade a boy that rather than pull my knickers down and fuck me up against the mirror in the hallway, he instead has to ravish me with something provided by a friendly PR company, and dissect the whole experience ten minutes later. There might be giggly fun involved if it’s a particularly crap review, but I think the very act of reviewing something would give it a disadvantage: just as jokes stop being funny when they’re explained, being fucked with a ten-inch dildo would be far less sexy if you have to take mental notes.

What’s in your sex toy cupboard?

But when people ask me what my favourite sex toy is, or the sort of sex toys I’m drawn to, I have to admit to feeling a bit ashamed. A bit inadequate. Like I’m not a proper pervert because I don’t have drawers full of the things just waiting to be jizzed on at a moment’s notice.

I have a fairly decent box of tricks: buttplugs, sheaths, a couple of vibrators, a few hitting things, a strap-on, an amazing pair of nipple clamps with a heavy chain running between the two, an assortment of tools such as pliers that I leave in my toy drawer purely to scare the shit out of people. But the fact that I own these things proves nothing other than that at some point I bought them. I’m far less likely to use even my favourite toys than I am to just sit on a guy’s dick.

And yet people ask – how many do you have? Or ‘what do you have?’ Or ‘why don’t you do reviews?’ and I feel embarrassed. Like I’m not a real pervert unless my letterbox is clogged with suspiciously-shaped parcels. Some perverts like the parcels. Some people are more excited by a shag when they can use their kit and experiment with new ways to beat, whip, shock or fuck someone. And that is both admirable and hot. It’s just not me.

A tiny cynical part of my brain wonders if one of the driving forces behind the fact that we’re becoming more open about sex (which I think we are, hooray!) is that there are now far more ways to make money out of it. From making and selling sex toys to writing a dirty book or throwing wild parties which, for the bargain price of fifty quid, you can attend dressed only in your pants.

There’s nothing wrong with this, of course. Making money is good, sex is good, giving people a way to make money by providing things people can insert into themselves is good. But it, like everything else sexual, isn’t universal. For every toy-hungry pervert with a drawer full of wonders there’s someone like me looking blankly at my pitiful collection of underused dildos and wondering just what, exactly, I’m doing wrong.

So for those of you who are like me, who haven’t got a great collection and don’t crave the latest things, here’s the answer: you’re doing nothing wrong. You’re just doing something differently.

It’s all very well for internet arseholes like me to tell you to be confident, own the world, and generally stamp around with a level of self-assurance that most people would struggle with on a good day. I know that, despite my hippy-esque assurances that you should love yourself no matter what, genuinely being happy with yourself is one of the hardest things to be.

Your rational mind can look in the mirror and go “well, I’m sort of average shape, quite tall, and reasonably tidy-looking” while your emotional mind, ignoring evidence to the contrary, goes “I’m so fucking UGLY.” Even the most confident, beautiful, almost-perfect people get these flashes. But some get it harder than others, and some have to fight it every single day.

It’s all very well assuring people that ‘you’re totally fine. You’re beautiful. Don’t be ridiculous’ when they let their insecurity out, but often the problem is so much deeper than just a simple desire for reassurance. Knowing that helps us understand people a bit better, and dodge the flippancy that I’m certainly guilty of a lot of the time.

The following guest blog is by Madison, who is a very new blogger writing excellent things over at Madisonwritessht. She got in touch to ask if she could write a guest blog on recovering from an eating disorder. And fuck me, can she write.

Madison writes:

I can’t tell if I’m getting fatter or if my mind is getting sicker.

I have never had a positive body image. I remember panicking when we had to go swimming in primary school, and being jealous of my younger sister for having a smaller body than me. I was six, and I was sick. I thought that the only way anyone would love me would be if my bones were visible and I was blemish free. Unfortunately, I still do.

It’s difficult to explain how you feel about your body with a mouthful of pizza and friends saying they want to look like you. It’s not that I ever thought I was obese, or even fat. ‘Fat’ doesn’t have the same meaning to someone suffering from an eating disorder as it does to others. Fat means disgusting, it means failure. It means you can’t get anything right, and as long as the numbers on the scale are creeping higher, you’ll never be a success.

Personally, food is a comfort. I don’t remember the last time I was actually hungry, I eat when I’m sad, bored or lonely. Food is so tightly connected with emotions that every moment of my time is spent counting calories, or searching for happiness in a bar of chocolate like a Wonka ticket. So, as a pre-teen, I did what I thought would make me look ‘normal’. I drank a litre of salted water and stuck a toothbrush down my throat. I didn’t care what anyone thought, as long as there were other people out there skinnier than me, I was fat. I’d cry myself to sleep and, for a long time, I wished I wouldn’t wake up in the morning, so I didn’t have to deal with myself. There was nothing I could do to stop puberty or my developing body, but the success in stopping my periods spurred me on. But I never lost much weight and the constant act of bingeing and purging simply left my weight fluctuating and my body wrecked. It wasn’t until I was sent to therapy as a teenager for other issues that I was able to stop the voices for a while, and put them to one side.

After accidentally losing a lot of weight during summer a year or so ago, starting at university was torture. The drinking and fast food, coupled with a new unrestricted environment caused my recovery to go downhill. I bulk bought laxatives, taking 30 pills in one go, went days without eating and exercised like a fanatic in my bedroom. I knew I was being irrational, but an eating disorder is an addiction, and I didn’t see a way out. I just wanted to be confident, and to like something about myself. For a short while I had a boyfriend, and after he broke up with me for stupidly arbitrary reasons I didn’t sleep for two days, bingeing, convinced that he would have stayed with me if I’d been thinner.

These days, I’m in recovery. Or at least I’m trying. I’m trying so hard to regulate my eating pattern and think about myself positively. I’m scared about disappointing people if I let myself fall again, but even making myself a bowl of pasta is terrifying. The worst part is, I’m almost 20 and I feel like I’m broken. I’m just looking forward to the day when someone will tell me ‘you’re beautiful’ and the voice inside me won’t erase their words.

This week was Eating Disorders Awareness week, arranged by the charity beat. They offer help and support if you’re affected, or know someone who is.

We’re all squeamish about certain things – some people hate the sight of blood, others can’t cope with injections, or the possibility of disease, or unclean kitchen worktops. There’s nothing wrong with a certain amount of squeamishness, but I’m surprised at the number of people I’ve met who are – to one degree or another – squeamish about sex.

Sex, by its nature, is quite messy. Even at the most basic level (quick missionary hump for the purposes of procreation) both of you have to emit certain juices and fluids: sweat, jizz, quim – even saliva, if you’re feeling particularly romantic.

And so, unless you have a lot of equipment and a shedload of wet wipes to hand, when you fuck you’ll get dirty.

Ultra-clean sex and a tip for Dommes

If you want to avoid all possible sexual juices, the only way I can think of is to cover your partner head-to toe in a plastic sheet (ensuring that he has a suitable mouth to breathe through but, crucially, maintains a safe distance so that you can’t kiss each other) then stick his cock through a carefully-cut hole in the middle (protip: cut hole before cock is anywhere nearby), slip a condom on him, and hump away. Not particularly sexy, but it essentially eliminates almost all skin-to-skin contact. Were I a dominant lady I would certainly consider using this during sub play – you can have this idea for free.

However, although it’s excellent for people who have a fetish for sterile sex, it’s not great for those of us who revel in the smells and juices and general slipperiness of the whole scenario. To be honest, it’s not great for any of us if we don’t happen to have plastic sheeting in our sex toy drawer.

The point I’m trying to make is that we have to go to extremes to make sex un-messy, so any squeamishness we have about the exchange of particular fluids necessarily needs to be laid to one side if we want to really get on and enjoy things.

Let’s talk about menstruation

Number one (that number, for new readers, denotes the first guy I slept with) did not like shagging while I was ‘on.’ A couple of tentative attempts while I was bleeding lightly went OK, but an energetic, doggy-style hump during my heavier days proved disastrous.

Once he’d come, he pulled his dick out and made a slightly high-pitched squealing noise.

“What’s wrong with you? Are you OK? Oh Jesus, are you having a miscarriage?”
“I’m fine – what’s up?”
“You’re bleeding!”
“Of course I’m bleeding, I’m on my period.”
“But this is worse than that.”
“No it’s not.”
“It’s… it’s… it’s got chunks in.”

I calmed him down with tea, a cuddle, and a long explanation of the fact that yes, sometimes it has chunks in. We never did it again, and I spent a good few years avoiding sex during my period, worrying that the guys I shagged would react with similar horror upon discovery that menstruation isn’t just the occasional leaking of a thimbleful of blue water, but often a gushing onslaught of not just blood but genuine, honest-to-goodness gore.

It’s totally fine to be utterly disgusting

So what changed my mind? Because, of course, my mind has been changed: I’d no more refuse sex during my period these days than I’d give up wanking for lent. Period horny is the horniest type of horny. About halfway through my red week I’m jiggling my knee and rubbing my thighs together and picking the bumpiest seat on the bus. What changed my mind about relieving this urge the old-fashioned cock-based way (as opposed to the ‘frantic clit-rubbing under a duvet’ way) was a couple of other guys I met.

Poor number one was quite naïve about periods, and a few other things for that matter – he didn’t like the idea of kissing me after a blow job (unless I’d brushed my teeth) or even giving me head.  But his horror at the more slippery aspects of sex was by no means a benchmark for how every guy would feel. Although I have met guys since who aren’t keen on period sex, or oral, or indeed anything that might require a deep clean afterwards, I’ve met far more who could give less than an iota of a fuck.

In fact, for adult men, ‘on’ fucking has proved to be much the same as ‘off’ fucking, only with a towel put down to catch the drippiest bits. One guy went so far as to remove my tampon with his teeth during a particularly feisty session. I appreciate this. I don’t have a particular fetish for sex that’s blood-drenched – apart from anything else I simply don’t have the time or inclination to soak that many bedsheets. But I love the ‘I don’t give a fuck about your menstruation’ attitude that means I can stop panicking that the guy will get his dick covered and run out of the room squealing ‘why can’t you just be clean and sweet-smelling like the girls on telly?’

So if you’re squeamish, especially if you’re a teenage boy with limited knowledge of the mysterious workings of the female uterus – I understand. But I’d love it if you could lay a bit of your squeamishness to one side when you’re stripping down and getting naked with someone. What prompted me to write about this was a bit of browsing on ’embarrassing bodies’ forums, and other related sites. There are a hell of a lot of young girls and boys howling desperately into the online wilderness: ‘am I weird?’ ‘am I wrong?’ ‘am I grotesque and disgusting?’

The answer is almost certainly no, but it can be bloody hard to hear that answer sometimes. The sixteen year old version of me would have given anything to experience the genuine liberation that comes from realising that these juices I leaked and these noises I made and these weird spots that insisted on growing in seemingly random places on my body and subsequently leaking juices of their own: these things were pretty normal. Let’s embrace the leaking, juicy, weird bits of ourselves, love the leaking, juicy bits about other people, and commit to having some thoroughly messy sex.

Addendum, because I know I’ll get emails: if your period is especially painful, or you’re experiencing a significant change in blood loss and/or consistency, speak to a doctor.