A quick question: just how hard can tweets such as the following fuck off out of my Twitter timeline for good?

“There are far scarier things on the loose in Essex than the escaped lion. We ran in terror from these beasts last night http://t.co/A86Tz3Hw“

The answer, I hope, is ‘very fucking hard indeed.’

There is (or, more realistically, there probably isn’t) a lion on the loose in Essex right now. The police are on the hunt and Twitter’s crawling with jokes about lions. I can cope with wardrobes and circuses and puns about ‘lion around’, but what I’m not particularly pleased with are the numerous jokes about how all Essex women are fake, ugly, desperate slags.

Haterz gotta hate

I know there are some shockingly awful people on the internet – one of the fantastic things about certain parts of it (Twitter for instance) is that you can pick and choose whether to follow them. I choose not to – I try and select people who are liberal, interesting and funny. In short: I follow people who aren’t cunts.

But unfortunately these people who aren’t cunts have massively let me down. In the last 24 hours or so I’ve seen numerous retweets of jokes like the one above. Hilarious descriptions of ‘beasts’ wandering nightclubs sprayed orange or side-splitting gags telling the police not to ‘vajazzle the pussy.’

These have been tweeted and retweeted by people I like. People who think they’re liberal. People who think they’re unjudgmental. People who sip lattes and worry about human rights and wonder what kind of political activism will have the biggest impact. Most pertinently, they’ve been retweeted by the sort of people who respect a woman’s right to bodily autonomy – to wear dungarees and a cardigan covered in soup stains if she feels like it, her right to not shave her armpits or have plastic surgery.

My problem is not with the jokes themselves – they’re annoying and cunty, sure. I’m the sort of girl who’ll twitch if people in pubs make reference to ‘2am slags’ or ‘the hot girl’s fat mate’, but I realise there’s not much point in tackling the arseholes who believe they’re mining a rich seam of comedy gold. My worry is that these jokes aren’t being made by arseholes I’m overhearing in a Wetherspoons, they’re being made by people I admire. People I usually think are funny. People who would previously have retweeted blogs I’ve written about self-confidence and body image.

Seriously, liberal people – feminists FFS – how fucking dare you do this now?

Vajazzle the fuck out of your cunt

I don’t want a vajazzle. I don’t want a spray tan. I don’t want extensions. I expect – because I am not a fucking idiot – that not all the women in Essex want these things either. But some of them do. And you don’t have to be from Essex either – quite a few women want to strut the streets wearing skimpy clothes and fake tan and padded bras and false eyelashes and a fuck of a lot of other stuff that liberal hipsters like me wouldn’t be seen dead in. And good on them.

If you want to agree with me that a woman has every right to not shave her fucking armpits, then you need to be consistent. You can’t support a woman’s right to physical autonomy if you subsequently mock and spit upon those who pick a look that you find unarousing or gross.

I recently had a conversation with a friend about ‘Snog, Marry, Avoid’, and why it was such a hateful programme. She pointed out that although they occasionally let goths and punk girls off the hook (because, apparently, they have a ‘unique style’) fortunately they do sort out the women who ‘just look like an awful mess.’ Because black lipstick and ripped fishnets is a ‘style’ but fake tan and hair extensions is ‘a mess.’

Sorry, but you don’t get to do that. You just don’t. If you’re going to champion women’s right to pick a ‘style’ and select clothes that they feel comfortable in – clothes that make them feel good and that they enjoy wearing – you can’t subsequently declare certain styles to be out of bounds.

Pick your sides, people. 

I’m standing here in my scruffy jeans, with legs I haven’t shaved for a week and piercings you wouldn’t wear to a job interview, next to hot muscular girls in dungarees and boxer shorts, and all the other types of women there are. Some are wearing floral summer dresses and subtle, how-does-she-achieve-that-look makeup. There are punks and goths and hipsters and – yes – there are scantily-clad bleach-blonde women dolled up to go to a nightclub. I don’t care who you fancy, or who you identify with, because it’s not about that. It’s about having respect for people’s choices, even when those choices don’t fit your personal worldview.

You’re either with us or against us, but you can’t just be with some of us.

Update: The police have now called off the search for the lion. World reacts with a total lack of surprise.

I’m not sure I could drink a whole pint of it, but I do like spunk. It’s hot and salty and indicative of sexual satisfaction in a way that orange juice just isn’t. But that’s not to say it’s compulsory to swallow it – it’s not even one of your five a day.

A story’s been whizzing round the press in the last week that spunk ‘can cure morning sickness’, and I’m a bit frustrated at the way people are talking about it. The narrative goes like this:

A scientist (ooh, authoritative person) has discovered that spunk (tee hee) could help to cure morning sickness. The scientist (male – wonder why he’s recommending this, eh?) said that ingesting it could help relieve women (ooh, they’ll be pissed off about this, they bloody hate jizz, right?) from the symptoms of sickness during pregnancy.

Did you get that? Spunk for women is like medicine which, although disgusting, they have to swallow every now and again. Men across the world will rejoice at finally having an excuse to make their girlfriends ingest their lukewarm ejaculate.

With ‘eugghs’ and ‘blerghs’, women are being told that perhaps they’ll have to just – quite literally – suck it up, despite the fact that women bloody hate jizz, and will do anything in their power to avoid it. The naughty girls.

Read all about it

Metro reported it as the “‘cure’ that might be hard to swallow”

The Daily Mail, (I don’t want to link to it, because it’s a pathetic crusty bedsock of a rag, but I’m sure you can find it if you care hard enough) noted in their traditional nudge-nudge wink-wink manner, that ‘It is unknown whether or not Dr Gallup is caring for a pregnant wife himself.’ The implication being that he might have made it up, because his wife will naturally be repulsed by spunk and he is therefore so driven by a desire to splurt it down her aesophagus that he’d dedicate years of his life coming up with a plausible excuse to do so.

It’s not just the papers – people have been tweeting about this story with comments like ‘eugh, as if morning sickness wasn’t bad enough’ and ‘don’t let your man read it LOL’.

The truth about spunk

Are these articles true? Yes, Dr Gallup has made these claims. Are the claims in the research true? I don’t know. I haven’t been able to find detail that would suggest he isn’t presenting his results in good faith, although I’m now so used to a bombardment of media stories about science that turn out to be woefully poorly reported that I don’t want to endorse it. Ultimately, whether it’s true or not can be left to the science bloggers.

But I take exception not to the research itself, but to the attitudes which accompany the reporting of it. Namely that:

a) women don’t like eating jizz

b) although women don’t like eating jizz, they have to every now and again to keep their man happy

Both of these things are fictional and damaging.

I like jizz – I know other women who like jizz. It’s not for everyone, and in fact I’d compare it to Marmite – some people don’t want it anywhere near their mouths, but others think that a small amount spread thinly on toast is the best way to start the day. You’re not abnormal if you like it, and nor are you abnormal if you don’t. To pretend that all women think alike is to believe that we are a species of indistinguishable automatons.

Moreover, if you don’t like eating jizz, then the idea that you should fucking have to just to keep your partner happy is insane and ridiculous and should fuck off back to the 1950s.

No sex act is ever obligatory

Blow jobs are (in my opinion) a bloody lovely way to spend an idle moment, and a fucking awesome way to end a fuck. The taste of jizz gets me off, and the feeling of it hitting the back of my throat makes me want to cry a little bit at the sheer joy that can be had from sex. But for others, spunk is about as arousing – not to mention as appetising – as a bowl of tinned spam and custard.

Sometimes we do things because our partners want us to – because we know they’d be aroused or pleased. And some people might be able to swallow their mild distaste so that they can subsequently swallow a teaspoon of cockdroplets.

But if some people are as thoroughly repulsed by spunk as these cheeky ‘sexy science’ articles make out, then we’re fucking arseholes for smirking at the idea that they’d feel obliged to eat it.

Those who despise the taste of prickliquid should not be compelled to eat it, and no one should make them feel like they are. Not their partners, not the journalists, and certainly not some semi-literate arsehole on Twitter urging women to take one for the team.

It’s not medicine you have to swallow or a chore you have to perform to keep your man happy. It’s either a mutually enjoyable part of your sex life or it isn’t a part of your sex life at all.

There are few things that make me want to rub one out more than a seriously lovely pair of tits. Firm, perky tits trapped in something really tight – a corset, a low-cut t-shirt, or occasionally just squished together with a belt or a length of rope.

I was casually perusing the internet recently when I came across a fantastic example of this – a woman with beautiful, hard tits wearing a top stretched tightly over them, with a hand-sized peephole in the middle displaying cleavage, and a rise in the top beneath so you could see the curve of the underside of them. Stunning.

Naturally, I immediately pulled down my jeans and rubbed quick one out – imagining a guy pushing the end of his dick against her chest and wanking until he spurted thick spunk through the hole in her top.

Hypocrisy and self-disgust

Immediately afterwards I felt pathetic and amoral. Not for wanking – if I felt bad for wanking I’d have lost the will to live before I hit my fourteenth birthday. No, I felt pathetic because the picture was:

a) not of a real woman, but of a video game character
b) being used to illustrate an article about the objectification of women in video games.

Not only did I crack one off to an article that explicitly frowned upon crack-offable video game characters, but I subsequently read the article and agreed with it.

Some video game design is shockingly objectifying, and borderline offensive. The women are usually inhumanly pert-breasted, unnaturally slim waisted and wearing clothes that are deeply impractical for fighting. Even the moves seem designed to draw attention to whichever feminine features are expected to most excite teenaged boys. Those who learn the right Dead or Alive moves will be rewarded with a flash of Kasumi’s panties, or a hypersexual throw in which she leaps, cunt-first, at her opponent’s face, squeezing her muscular thighs around their cheeks before hurling them to the ground.

On an intellectual level it disgusts me. But on the very basic, primal level at which I operate when I’m at home in my knickers, it makes me wet. Playing video games against women with massive, hard, well-framed tits leaves me panting and desperate to be touched. I see Ayane’s tits jiggling and I want boys to touch mine. I see her being hurled to the ground and I want to be hurled to the ground. I imagine that after a fight her opponent takes her into the woods, and she stares in awe at him with her impossibly-wide manga eyes as he triumphantly seals his victory by fucking her in the mouth.

Just show me your tits

It works no matter which role I’m in. Whether I’m playing as a male character or a female one. Playing Xbox with a boy today, in between bouts of screaming “die, DIE, eat my fucking AXE, you cuntbag” I was imagining my male character pinning his girl to the floor, and taking her with quick, rough, angry thrusts. Ripping her clinging top from her jiggling tits and spraying jizz all over them.

But although I’ll revel in it at the time – trash talk my opponent and encourage him to join me in my questionable perving (“Look, kiddo – I can see your fucking panties. When I’ve beaten you we’ll watch the replay together so you can imagine me tearing your top open“) – I know it’s wrong. It’s not bad to look at tits, but it is bad to appreciate these particular tits, which have been put there by designers with teenaged boys and quick sales in mind. The game’s been drawn so that – in between beating monsters and stabbing slick-haired sword-wielding princes – players will be imagining the characters fucking.

I don’t know what my conclusion is here – I want there to be something that will square the circle, and explain away my vague sense of self-disgust. I want an excuse for wanking to material that morally I should condemn.

But I’ve got nothing. So I suppose this is a bit of a plea – tell me what the answer is. I figured if anyone would know about masturbating to pixellated images of tits it’d be the friendly hordes of the internet.

So, people – is this OK, or is it reprehensible for a feminist? Should I carry on, safe in the knowledge that no kittens will die in the making of my tragic wanks? Or should I pull up my knickers and grow the fuck up? If you can think of a way I can fight to end female objectification while simultaneously pressing buttons to make tits jiggle, I’d be ever so grateful. I don’t have a penny for your thoughts, but I can start by offering you this picture.