Today’s guest blog (which includes discussion of rape and sexual assault), was written after something very odd happened. It happened just before Christmas, and thanks to a combination of anxiety and Christmas stress I wasn’t keen to delve too deeply into it at the time. But New Year is a time for Getting On With Stuff, and what better things to be Getting On With than calling out shitty companies who behave badly?

A company called Quite Delightful (who tweet under @QuiteBriefly on Twitter), got into something of a heated debate in December about James Deen. In case you’re not aware, many women have accused Deen of rape or sexual assault, and Deen has denied the allegations. The statements that Quite Delightful made showed what I think is a pretty callous attitude towards people who have been raped or sexually assaulted.

On a personal level, I obviously disagree with QD. On a boring professional level, I’m pretty surprised that this company was happy to alienate a whole bunch of sex writers, customers, and potential customers – not just dismissing them but tweeting in a way that all their followers could see, thus inviting others to come and tell us just how wrong we were. It bothers me because I have seen the company (which publishes an ‘erotic magazine by and for women’) recommended by a number of people I respect in the sex industry, and I figure there are probably quite a few of them who are unaware of the comments @QuiteBriefly made, because they have since deleted their tweets.

So many thanks to @sophable – a customer of theirs, who has kindly offered to explain why this left a very bad impression.

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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:

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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…)

I think I’m meant to do a yearly wrap-up post. Unfortunately right now I’m a bit grumpy and can’t remember much, so this is constructed purely from me going through my Twitter archive and picking some things that stood out. They’re not the ‘best’ things of 2015, just some things I noticed, tweeted about, and which subsequently showed up on my ‘top tweets’ list.

Some are sexy, some are newsy, and some are downright bizarre.

Happy end-of-2015.

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