Category Archives: Ranty ones

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Porn censorship, and the worst kind of ally

The other day I watched a TV show that contained irritating gender stereotypes. I tutted, turned to the friend I was watching it with and said:

“Bloody hell, mate, this is some godawful sexist shite.”

He replied:

“Oh my CHRIST GOTN, why are you trying to CENSOR ALL OF TELLY?!”

This didn’t happen, of course, that would be ridiculous. But this happened instead:

Porn and censorship

I started following PornPanic on Twitter because they were having interesting discussions around the censorship of adult material, and campaigning against the UK’s utterly ridiculous attempts to take a red pen to half of the internet. I am pro-porn: I do some freelance work for a spanking porn site, I write a hell of a lot of dirty stuff and I have a vested interest in the UK government not implementing sweeping porn filters. I’m sure some of you disagree with me on this stuff – it wouldn’t be a decent world if we all agreed on everything – I just say this so you know that I am very much in the general Down With Porn Censorship camp. Which is why I was a teeny bit surprised to see an organisation that I thought was an ally in the fight against porn censorship saying something that seemed so wholly against their interests. The other day, PornPanic tweeted this:

A bit of discussion opened the can of worms, and we established that this was a reference to feminist critiques of gaming. The account owner is offering a ‘thin end of the wedge’ type argument, and claims that calling out sexism and misogyny is a fine way to sneak in censorship by the back door.

What’s more, @PornPanic seems to believe that – as a direct result of feminism – anti-porn arguments have increased since 1980.

*cracks knuckles* *gets stuck in*

Critical analysis is not censorship

This is a really obvious point, isn’t it? Saying ‘this is misogynist’ is not a euphemism for ‘this should be banned.’ I call shit misogynist all the time, and yet I very rarely support banning anything. As a general rule, where something is a massive and ingrained cultural problem, I think the best solution involves massive and long-term cultural change, which is best achieved by discussion, critique, and generally Making Things Better. I know, right? Pour me a cup of organic tea and knit me a lentil jumper, but that’s just what I believe.

Because of that, it’s screamingly obvious to me that critical analysis is not censorship, or a ‘thin end of the wedge’ towards censorship. As I can turn to my friend and tell him that the programme we’re watching is a load of old shite without demanding that we rip it from the schedule, I can point out that there are massive and systemic issues withing the gaming community, or the porn industry, without at the same time demanding that everyone in it is locked in a soundproofed room forever.

Sure, my ultimate goal is that there will be no more misogyny (hooray!) but that’s literally never going to happen in my lifetime, and it’s certainly not going to be achieved by censoring everything, and giving angry misogynists something genuinely unjust to weep publicly about. By criticising a thing I’m not saying ‘get rid of it’ I’m saying ‘hey, you could do this better. Please can you make more of this, but better?’

It’s not only a cry for improvement, it’s actually a compliment to the form itself…

Critical analysis legitimises certain media

If Banksy had just been a guy with a paintbrush, and no one ever went ‘hey that’s some pretty political artwork I reckon it’s making a comment on the nature of our surveillance culture’ then the dude wouldn’t have had even half the publicity he’s received, and his work would currently languish beneath six layers of other people’s graffiti tags.

Criticism is not only important – it’s vital in order for an art form to survive. I’d argue that video games are (or can be) art in the same way that films and books can. If no one ever discusses the themes and the flaws, video games will only ever be seen as an idle way to pass time until you die, instead of the rich and varied mix of the groundbreaking and the godawful that they actually are.

Humans live off discourse, and word spreads about a particular video, game or blog post because people discuss it. It’s one of the reasons I write a bunch of stuff here – not just erotica. People will share and discuss this far more than a post about a spreader bar, and although this will probably see fewer actual visits (a lot of my traffic comes from searches for dirty stuff), the people who do see it will remember it – whether they agree or not. What’s more, I wouldn’t be human if I didn’t occasionally get riled by stuff.

Porn deserves criticism

So there we go. Porn deserves criticism just as any other media does. But my curiosity piqued and my hackles raised by the ‘misogynist’ comments, I took a punt through the rest of PornPanic’s twitter feed to see whether they were engaging in the kind of interesting critiques and thoughtful analysis that will help porn thrive. The answer is: not really. They’ll retweet anything that’s pro-porn, and very little that involves a deeper and more interesting discussion of the porn industry.

It would be remiss of me to write such a long diatribe about porn and not add some criticisms of my own, because I genuinely care about the people who make excellent porn, and those who are challenging the industry and coming up with some excellent stuff. So here are a few issues:

  • Performer conditions. When people say ‘the porn industry’ they are often referring to what I’d call the ‘mainstream porn industry’, and I have a lot of problems with that industry. Exploitation of workers, lack of respect for performers, poor pay and conditions – the list goes on. Pandora Blake has written some great stuff on this, so do check out her posts on fairtrade porn.
  • Lack of diversity. Just as I get hacked off with erotica covers that only ever use gym-toned muscle men, so I get annoyed with mainstream porn that depicts a world populated by slim, white, cis, beautiful people. Where anyone who differs from this norm is specifically fetishized for their body type, and often demeaned by it as if they’re no longer a person, they’re a ‘BBW’ or similar.
  • Horrible language. I’m a words person: as a general rule I get more turned on by reading than watching (or sometimes ‘listening to sexy guys read stories about fucking – there needs to be more audio porn, imho). Porn talk is often deeply unsexy, and I hate the way that a lot of porn marketing a) is aimed only guys and b) assumes that guys are slobbering twats. I know straight guys who love creampie videos, and will happily watch something that’s labelled ‘cumsluts’, but would never actually use either of those words: it’s porn shorthand and it can kill arousal, as well as prevent us from using words in beautiful ways. When I write for Dreams of Spanking I sometimes agonise over the perfect word to use for something. Is this a smack, a slap, a whack or a stroke? Words are important. That’s just my personal bugbear, though.

Raising these issues doesn’t make me anti-porn, though, any more than saying ‘I can’t stand Clara’s boyfriend’ makes me anti-Doctor Who. None of this means we should ban porn: it means we can and should make it better. Fight for better pay and conditions for performers. Boycott studios that don’t treat performers fairly. Avoid pirating material that people have put their heart, soul, and sex juices into. Make porn more diverse – more interesting. At the end of this blog post there are some links to performers who I think are doing just that.

The point I’m making is – if what you want is to avoid porn censorship, it’s much more damaging in the long run not to acknowledge problems with the industry, or ways in which great producers are improving performer pay and conditions, diversity and other things. The only industries that will collapse because they get called out on misogyny are industries which are inherently misogynist. By knee-jerking to defend porn against all these criticisms, you weaken your arguments by implying that it cannot possibly stand up to this scrutiny.

Are anti-porn arguments on the rise?

So, what of the claim that anti-porn arguments are on the rise? That since the 1980s there’s been a growing wave of angry feminists being outraged about porn and calling for a ban? Are feminists getting more sneaky, or is there something else going on here? If you thought the answer was a), you’re going to kick yourself. Take a look at this strange device.

Video Cassette Recorder - also known as a Vporn Cdelivery Rdevice

That’s right – it’s a VCR. For those unfamiliar with them, they’re basically a primitive version of Netflix, only they had porn on. Lots and lots of porn. In fact, VCRs were the driver for a massive and significant spike in the porn industry. Before VCRs people either had to go to a porn theatre (and risk getting seen by their mum/coworkers/friends), buy magazines with naked photos in them (they’re a bit like gifs, only they don’t move and the pages get sticky). Desperate times.

So when VCRs came in, and people could rent, buy and swap hardcore movies, suddenly porn was easily accessible and far more common. Of course we saw more anti-porn arguments: we were watching fuckloads more porn! Technology brought material into people’s homes that was previously hard to get hold of without an ID card and a huge dollop of courage. Saying that anti-porn arguments have increased since the 1980s is as meaningless as pointing out that no one called for video-game bans before the NES: there were barely any sodding video games to ban.

So yeah, anti-porn arguments will increase when porn becomes more easily available. We saw a spike in the porn debate when the internet became available in people’s homes, again when torrenting became common, and we’re in the middle of one now because new forms of porn distribution (Tube sites, etc that crucially require no credit card verification) are bringing more porn to the masses. Some of these arguments are based on criticisms of misogyny in the porn industry and material which exploits women. Others (and I’d argue a much more significant proportion) focus on the fact that, with better tech and easier accessibility, children are more likely to find content which is inappropriate.

If you want to say anti-porn arguments are on the increase, that’s fine. But if you want to use that as a means to claim that nasty feminists are getting more insidious in their attempts to ban porn, then you’re on your own, sunshine.

“Shutting down debate”

The final point I’ll make before I fuck utterly off is this: there are a number of different ways to shut down a debate. Censorship is one of them: I can stop you every time you try to make a point. If I’m a government I can put you in a prison. If I’m a politician I can potentially make a law to ban you from spreading whatever your message is.

But if I tell you that I disagree, or that I don’t like your art, or that the way you make videos goes against certain other of my principles, am I really shutting you down? Are your principles so pathetically weak that they’ll crumble if I examine them? Or am I, in fact, giving you the respect that you deserve by treating your work as if it’s worth critiquing?

If you want porn to be accepted and acknowledged as an entertainment or art form, you have to accept that it’ll get critique. The only reason we’d stop talking about porn is if there were no more porn. And you wouldn’t want that now, would you?

As promised, here are some independent porn producers/performers who are doing some interesting and excellent things. This is very far from an exhaustive list: Courtney Trouble, Pandora Blake, Kitty Stryker, James Darling, (Kitty and James are currently promoting Fisting Day as a protest against obscenity laws), Cindy Gallop, Ms Naughty, Jiz Lee, Nimue Allen (Nimue’s just relaunched her website, Nimue’s World, which is well hot). There are many more, and this isn’t a long enough list. It’d be great if @PornPanic could contribute similar recommendations, because just saying ‘all porn is great and if you disagree it’s censorship’ doesn’t quite cut it. 

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Chore wars: the washing up is a feminist issue

Are you the sort of person who emails me every now and then saying ‘stick to filth, stop with the feminist rants’? Look away now.

Are you a guy who claims he is a feminist but makes self-deprecatory jokes about how if he did the washing up he’d only do it badly so there’s really no point? Are you the kind of person who says ‘ah, men are just useless at housework though, aren’t they?’ This one’s for you.

Chore wars: housework and feminism

First thing’s first: men are not shit at housework. When my partner forgets to do the washing up, or the washing, or the tidying or the bathroom or any one of the million things that humans need to do in order to keep a household in working order, I do not roll my eyes. I do not tut and say ‘oh, baby, you’re such a man.’ That would be sexist.

When I complain to a friend that I’m sick and fucking tired of picking socks off the floor and changing bedsheets and the fact that I am always – always – the one who spots that the fridge needs cleaning before it grows a new species, I do not expect my friend to roll her eyes either: sexist.

Housework is a feminist issue. As I feel compelled to point out, it’s not the most important one. But it matters. It matters, precisely because it doesn’t always feel like it matters.

‘Oh, it’s only the washing up.’

‘It’s just a bit of vacuuming.’

‘It takes two seconds, so why make such a fuss?’

Thing is, as many people have pointed out: it’s unpaid work, so it’s not ‘just’ anything. Sure, it only takes a few minutes to run round the house picking up clothes and chucking them in the washing machine. Half a minute to put the powder in, choose the right setting, and set it off. Only ten minutes at the end to take the washing out, hang it up, and fold away the stuff I’ve negligently left drying there since halfway through last week. But it’s ten minutes of my time, and my time is precious.

When all the household chores are added together, I spend roughly ten hours a week cooking, cleaning, tidying, sorting, and screaming silent screams into my pillow because holy Christ this is not what I want to do with my life. Then, when I have finished with the screaming and I get onto a bit of a moan, people (mostly men, but often women too) tell me that it isn’t important. That, in the grand scheme of things, it really doesn’t matter that I’ve had to clean the hob again because ha ha jokes when it comes to housework men are just not programmed to notice what needs doing.

A rock, a dishcloth and a hard place

This rant’s been sitting in my drafts for a while, as I pluck up the courage to spew it onto the internet and have people go ‘oh GOTN you’re so clichéd with your old-fashioned caring about domestic labour’, but this week BBC Woman’s Hour launched the ‘chore wars’ calculator, so I thought it was a good opportunity to let rip. Chore Wars is a bit of a cutesy, not massively accurate way to calculate who does the most chores in the household, and whether the split is fair.

This is not a feminist issue just because traditionally housework was seen as a ‘woman’s domain’ – it’s an issue because polling shows that much of the unpaid household work still falls to women, even in households where the amount of paid work is relatively even. It’s also a big issue because of how we still talk, think and write about it. When it comes to household chores, my male partner has two options:

  • help out, and receive praise for being an amazing human
  • not help out, and get some mild tuts and eye-rolls and a pat on his simple, masculine head

Ah, shit – in these options I have automatically used the phrase ‘help out’, as if he is stepping down from on high to swoop in and help this damsel in marigolds rather than performing a task that, ethically, is his to own. God, I hate me. And I also hate the fact that even on International Women’s Day this year, in relation to a press release about the uneven split of unpaid domestic work, Reuters’ headline smugly pronounced that Norwegian men are ‘most helpful’ with housework. Helpful. Not ‘contributing a fairer share’, but ‘helpful’. Thanks.

Talking of thanks, where’s my fucking pat on the head? Whenever my partner manages to do one load of washing or tidy the lounge, I have been conditioned to actually tell him ‘thank you’, like he is a particularly well-trained puppy doing clever tricks for biscuits. I myself am perpetuating the myth that household tasks are mine to own and his to deign to help with, by rewarding him just for getting off his arse. He hasn’t been conditioned to praise me for scrubbing a frying pan because I’m a woman, so apparently it’s just my goddamn job.

When it comes to the housework I have two options as well, but mine aren’t quite as tempting: I get to choose between being a servant or a nag.

Housework and sex

This is a sex blog primarily, and that’s because the vast majority of things in my life are actually linked to sex in some way. I am a horny, angry, feisty slag, and even something as simple as housework is linked to sex in my mind. I don’t find it enjoyably filthy to sashay around the house, naked but for a small cotton apron, and bend over to scrub the floors while boys wank in a corner (although that might be hot in the right context), but I do draw a strong mental link between sex and housework.

Housework is not sexy. Standing up to my elbows in a sinkful of grease is not sexy. Selecting the right washing cycle to remove jizz from the bedsheets is not sexy. It’s not even sexy when I strip to my knickers and scrub round the edge of the bath.

And so, when I do all the housework, I have less sex. I’m not on ‘sex strike’ until a guy swoops in to do it – why would I deliberately forego something I love just because I’m angry? It’s not a conscious and deliberate choice, it’s a byproduct of emotional and physical exhaustion.

If I’ve spent all day doing housework I’ve had no time to think about what I might like to do to him. No time to walk, or cycle, or do sit ups, or any of the things I do that make me feel sexy in a sweaty/musky/messy way. No time to remember the filthy fuck we had last week that I haven’t got round to blogging yet. The mental narrative running through my head on a good day involves any number of ‘mmm’s, ‘unnngh’s and ‘oh God I want him to bend me over the coffee table’s. Post-housework, my brain says ‘fuck this shit forever’ and hides in a hermit cave of boiling, passive-aggressive rage.

Bottom line: if I’ve spent ages hoovering the living room, I’m unlikely to want to fuck on the carpet.

Is this blog post sexist?

This isn’t a blog post in which I berate the male half of the species for not picking up a fucking duster. There are millions of men who are not only capable of doing this stuff, but who just get the hell on with it each and every day. Men who – day in, day out – consider the housework to be part and parcel of their role as a significant half of an equal partnership. Or – if they are poly or living in a flatshare – a significant contributing member of a group. Or even just on their own.

These are the men who don’t refer to spending time with their children as ‘babysitting’, or who declare with puffed-up pride that they’re ‘treating’ their girlfriend by cooking dinner, thus taking away perhaps 10% of the unpaid work that she does without thanks every day.

On the other side, there are women who do nothing around the house and drive their partners up the wall. These people are – unless there are genuinely good reasons such as issues with illness or a drastically different split in out-of-home paid work – equally selfish of course. But when their partners complain they’re unlikely to be met by well-meaning friends who roll their eyes and tut ‘women, eh? What can you do?’

Feminist men do the cooking

I’m not writing this just because I hate housework – most of us hate housework: it’s a thankless, miserable task. This isn’t about individual items to tick off a household ‘to do’ list: it’s about hypocrisy.

Because I’ve met men who go on marches and pickets. Who sign petitions and have angry rants and show solidarity to women on all manner of feminist issues, then go home and expect to be worshipped as a God because they spent two hours cooking dinner on Sunday.

If this isn’t you: well done. If this is you, have a little think about why you’re willing to write off unpaid labour as ‘not really my problem/not my area of expertise/something that magically happens when I’m not looking.’

Then put down your ‘awesome feminist’ badge, and pick up a fucking dishcloth.

Questions and comments

I love a good ruck as much as the next opinionated blogger. But here are some questions/comments that I anticipate I might receive as a result of this post, and what my response will be if you give them to me.

I’m a man, and I do exactly half of the housework. I am OUTRAGED by your rant. 

Well done. If you do exactly half of the housework and you never moan about it or expect unnecessary thanks, then you are good. But not ‘good’ in the sense that ‘you get to sit on a moral high horse and shout at women who are frustrated by the traditionally unequal split of household chores’, just ‘good’ in the sense that ‘you meet the minimum standards of human decency.’

I am a man, and I do more housework than my female partner. I am OUTRAGED by your rant. 

When you complain about her general slovenliness, are you greeted by people saying ‘well, you have to expect it really – women are so shit at this’? I suspect not. But well done for doing loads of housework, and if you’re frustrated I suggest you send your partner a link to this blog.

In my relationship, we have come to the arrangement that one of us earns the money and the other keeps house. 

Congratulations. If you have both agreed to this and find it fair, then good luck to you both.

There are certain household tasks that I cannot do because I have a medical condition/have to work much longer hours than my partner. 

There are many reasons why household tasks might not be evenly split. That’s obviously not what I’m talking about here though.

Have you tried training/teaching your partner to do better?

He is not a fucking dog. He is an adult who knows how to do this shit. Besides, this rant does not just come because he – a flawed individual like the rest of us – pisses me off sometimes by failing to do his fair share. This rant has come because he is not the only one by a long shot, and because I hate other people’s ‘men are useless’ excuses for this crap even more than I hate scrubbing pans and folding laundry. For the record, though, my partner is much better than many other dudes I’ve known, and he does what decent humans do, which is recognise where he falls down and try to get better at doing stuff. Sadly he doesn’t have a blog in which he can rant about my failings, so you’ll just have to take my word for it that I fail too, in equally important ways.

Isn’t it just that women have higher standards than men and men are more happy to live in filth?

This question is a BONUS one added after a Twitter comment. This one’s thrown at me a lot, so worth tackling. Different individuals have different tolerances for mess: this is normal because we are human. But, unless you are asserting that ‘men’ as a homogenous mass, are all happy to eat off food-soiled plates, wear clothes that have never been washed, allow their bathrooms to smell of piss and mould, and never eat food that has had more than a five-minute blast in the microwave, then this is a massive red herring. As a lazy, slobby, twat who is generally happy to have dirty clothes carpeting my bedroom, I can assure you it’s not about differing standards: it’s about the time spent on work, and who holds responsibility.

This isn’t like you, GOTN, to rant about what ‘all men’ are like.

I’m not. Not ‘all men’ are like this. There are men who do their fair share, who thank their partners for doing theirs, and who never refer to caring for their children as ‘babysitting’. I’m not saying ‘all men are shit at housework’, I am saying that if you are a man and you are shit at housework then that’s a fucking problem. Moreover if you let a female partner do most of the household chores, you sure as shit don’t get to call yourself a feminist.

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Why the ‘Good2Go’ consent app is shit

Sometimes when I am having an argument with a complete twat about consent, they argue that consent is difficult and the fluid nature of it means that life is so hard for people that they might as well just NOT HAVE SEX AT ALL because they’ll never be sure if their partner likes it. At this point I smash my face repeatedly into whatever firm objects there are to hand, and explain to them that before throwing all their toys out of the pram they might like to instead try communicating with their partner, and watching/listening for those sexy clues (verbal, non-verbal, a combination of the two) that someone gives you when they’re keen.

At some point in the conversation, aforementioned twat might say this:

“Oh, I suppose you want me to get them to SIGN A CONTRACT or something saying ‘I declare that I consent to this sex’ before I even lean in to KISS THEM?!”

And it is at this point that my head explodes, spraying passers-by with the messy detritus of the by-product of their twattery. Because there’s a mistake here. A massive and fundamental one.

Good2Go app and consent

This week yet another shiny new sex app was launched. The aim of it was to get people thinking about consent, and the app itself does… well… some things that sort of miss the point. There’s a Slate article here that explains what the app does, but in essence the idea is that you and your partner both use the app to record the fact that you are ‘Good2Go’ (i.e. have sex, although there’s little detail about specifics) and then you have sex. And then… what? Magically everything you do is consensual and nothing can ever go wrong?

The app does flag that consent can be withdrawn at any time, which is useful, but not massively so, because fundamentally the app is based on exactly the same misconception as the idea of a consent ‘contract’: that consent is a tickbox. Once ticked it can be unticked, but it’s a firm and decisive ‘OK.’

How I like to get sexual consent

Perhaps the reason the contract idea sounds so tempting to twats is that it sounds a bit legal – a bit ‘official’. Of course the sex you’re having is official and totally A-OK: someone has consented to it. They have rubber-stamped your sex plans, signed their name on a dotted line at the end of a piece of paper, ticked a box, pressed a button on an app. You’re ‘good to go.’

Unfortunately, this is not the kind of consent I want when I’m fucking: it’s the kind of consent I want when I’m selling someone insurance.

“Do you understand the risks, sir? Have you read the small print?”

“Why yes I do, and I have.”

“OK, please sign the dotted line then prepare for the sexing to begin.”

It is the least sexy thing in the entire fucking world, and sexual relationships just don’t fucking happen like that. If they do, you are either a fetishist with a really niche role-play fantasy, or you’re doing sex wrong. If I want to fuck, here’s the kind of consent I’m after:

“Touch me. There. Oh fuck, yeah that’s it. Bit higher. Mmm. Bite my nipples. That’s good. Oh please put my cock in your mouth. Like that. Bit more gently. Aaah, perfect. Fuck. Fuck that’s good.”

Or, if you’re less chatty during sex itself, here’s the kind of consent I’m after:

“I’ve always wondered what it’d be like to get shagged with a strapon.”

“Sweet. Want me to show you?”

“Umm… would it hurt?”

“Maybe. Tell you what – I’ll use tonnes of lube, and we’ll start slowly and take it from there, what do you reckon?”

Note that he hasn’t explicitly offered a safeword or asked me if I’ll stop if he tells me to because for me that goes without saying. If it doesn’t go without saying for you, then say it. Anyone who thinks you’re a dick for saying it is not worth fucking.

Other forms of consent include guys begging me to fuck them, guys staring at me with sexy, sexy eyes, then raising eyebrows as if to say ‘do you want this?’ as they reach round to touch my arse. They include me telling a guy a story about a particular fantasy in which I struggle a bit against him while he fucks me, and that guy fucking me in that way, but stopping if I say ‘ooh, fuck, ouch, your elbow’s on my hair’ or ‘OK that was hot but can we switch round now?’ They include all of these things and more.

Crucially, consent in all of these situations is individual to me, and to the person I’m with: it’s personal. If any single one of you points at this blog post and uses it as an excuse to raise your eyebrow and grab the arse of a person you fancy, then scream at them “BUT GOTN SAID THAT WAS CONSENT!” you have utterly and completely missed the point.

But what is consent, exactly?

Consent may be hard to explain, because it’s individual, but that doesn’t mean it is hard to do. You communicate with your partners about what they want, what they need and what they are absolutely dripping hot for, and you keep listening. As you kiss them, touch them, fuck them, and cuddle afterwards. And yes, I am fully aware that this blog post is in no way helpful to someone who is stuck in the ‘contract’ mindset: someone who wants a blogger to give them a list of words and body language signals and phrases that they can tick off and feel comfortable that they definitely did all the right things and established consent.

But that’s deliberate. I haven’t done it for the same reason I haven’t told you how to have the perfect conversation or work out whether this person you’ve approached in a bar definitely fancies you: sometimes things just don’t work like that. I need to stress wholeheartedly that I am not an expert in this. I am an expert when it comes to negotiating the kind of sex I want from my own partners, but I am not an expert in what you should do with yours. If you want some more considered, expert advice on this, do what I do and learn from Bish.

What I do feel qualified to tell you, though, is what consent is not: it is not a simple rubber-stamp ‘OK.’ Saying ‘should I have a contract?’ or ‘should I have an app?’ is based on the fundamental misunderstanding that because we have a legal definition of ‘consent’, that gaining it should be done in the same way as you’d go about gaining planning permission, or something equally tedious.

Do not ask your partner whether they’re ‘Good2Go’, like you’re a dodgy car salesperson trying to get them to sign off on a ropey deal. You’re not looking to get them to agree to something, you’re looking to find out if this is something they actually want. Ask them: is this fun? Do you want this? What’s great and what’s not working? Ask with your eyes, your hands, your mouth, and every tool you have to communicate. And keep asking.

That’s not just how you get consent, it’s how you get good sex.

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There’s something wrong with sex and morality

I can’t quite put my finger on what it is, but we have a big problem with sex and morality. If something is sexual, we seem to want to attribute a moral action to it even when one is not necessary.

There are some acts which, by whatever standards of morality you hold, most of us can accept are inherently ‘good’ – helping people who are vulnerable or suffering, for instance, or sharing resources when you’ve got more than you need. There are some we can label ‘bad’ fairly easily: hurting a person deliberately and without any reason, etc etc.

However, with sex we seem to want to label things ‘good’ or ‘bad’ when – at best – they’re morally neutral. Masturbation, for example. It can be good for your health (mental and physical) but is it morally good per se? Not really: it’s just a wank. Some sex acts are morally bad, but they’re morally bad because they have other characteristics which are ‘bad’ – they exploit or hurt people.

All this is to say that I don’t think ‘sex’ is inherently good or bad. Like eating, sex is just something we do. It can be good (a delicious doughnut to sate you after a hard day’s shagging) or bad (eating the flesh of an animal you’ve just tortured for fun). But food is a good example, because we frequently apply moral actions to eating, as we do to sex. You’ll have a ‘naughty’ slice of cake. Or ‘be bad’ and eat a second biscuit. Realistically, there’s no moral quality to these acts, as there’s little moral quality to the inherent act of sex: it’s just a fuck. The context is what gives it moral weight.

On that general foundation rests my default position whenever ‘sex things’ come up in the news. I’d always rather be extra careful when making moral judgments about sexual things, because of this tendency we have to leap towards ‘that sounds icky to me therefore it must be immoral.’

Brooks Newmark and the nude pictures

And so, the story that prompted this blog: Tory MP Brooks Newmark has resigned because he sent some nude pictures to someone who was not his wife. The pics went to an anonymous reporter who had explicitly requested the pictures, so there isn’t an issue of consent there. He did a sexual thing that someone had asked him to do.

I do not think that was morally wrong.

However, what was morally wrong is that he (from the sounds of it) did something that was not acceptable within his relationship. He and his wife did not have an agreement that naked sexting was OK. So that’s pretty crappy.

But I don’t think he should have resigned. I don’t think he should have been fired. And I certainly don’t think that his inability to resist the urge to send naked pictures of himself to someone who asked for them means he is incapable of being a politician. If we held politicians to high standards of morality in their private as well as their public life, based on the decisions of an angry mob/press, then the number of us who’d be qualified to be politicians would be vanishingly small. But it’s not just practical reasons that make me a bit uncomfortable with the torches and pitchforks that come out whenever there’s some sort of sex scandal.

It’s the fact that this argument is so often thrown out:

It’s about integrity!

Well, sure. We want politicians (and other people who work in roles that affect us) to have integrity. My doctor, for instance, should have great integrity. I expect her to be honest with me, to choose the right treatments, and not to sell out to Big Pharma for a fiver if she knows the better remedy is cheaper. Integrity is vital. But there’s a massive and overwhelming difference between saying to someone: “You are in an important job, and we need to trust you to perform your role with integrity” and saying “by the way this includes everything you do from now on even when you’re not on the clock.”

I’m sorry, but bollocks to that.

Allow me to clarify for those of you who’ll think I’m excusing any kind of immorality outside the workplace: I’m not. I’ll happily join in a bit of chit-chat calling someone a bastard if they cheat on their partner (and I’ll put my hand up and call myself a bastard too, for I have made myriad mistakes and cock-ups in my life) but there’s a big difference between saying ‘I don’t like that’ and extending it as far as ‘you’re fired.’

Here’s the thing: it’s the easy answer. I get that it’s far simpler and more satisfying to say ‘this guy sounds like scum, so he doesn’t deserve a job.’ But I’m suspicious of easy answers, particularly around sex, because I think with anything sexual we’re so desperate to assign morality to every single act that we forget what I said above: sex isn’t inherently ‘good’ or ‘bad’ – it’s something for which the moral consequences must be weighed up depending on the context.

Simple answers sound awesome, which is why they are often the best way to deprive people of freedoms. Saying ‘if you’ve nothing to hide you’ve nothing to fear’ is a nice, simple, memorable way to get people to agree to quite drastic infringement of their liberties. Likewise saying ‘well, if you’re in a position of trust you need to be held to higher ethical standards’ may well be a great way to curb politicians who do things we find icky.

But ‘a position of trust’ is easily interpreted to include headteachers, teachers, bankers, doctors, lawyers, journalists, carers, anyone who leads a team of more than two people…. etc etc ad infinitum. We all have responsibilities, and we all need to have integrity in order to perform particular tasks in life. The issue I have is with treating people as if they cannot possibly distinguish between different areas. That if they’re dishonest in one area – that has nothing to do with their job – they will naturally be dishonest elsewhere. That if they spank people in their spare time they’ll be a sex pest in the office. People aren’t that misguided, and even if they were I can think of far better institutions to police it than their employers.

In conclusion, then: I don’t think we should sack people for doing sexual things outside of work. There are plenty of immoral acts for which I’d want a politician to be fired. Sexual harassment, for instance, is not only immoral but has genuine and serious ramifications for how that person performs their job (it implies a deep lack of respect, and often actual harassment, of people they are working with) – it’s also illegal. But unless a politician is going to make a cast-iron pact with their colleagues or the electorate to never send nude pictures of themself to another consenting adult, then holding them to account for a private promise they’ve made to their loved one makes no more sense than firing them for getting divorced.

I appreciate some of you might disagree vehemently with me on this, and please do feel free to: I’m particularly interested to explore the grey areas of this to see if my gut instincts hold up to scrutiny. So disagree, tell me I’m wrong, and get all angry in the comments if you like: just please don’t have me fired.

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Shock news: male sex toys are popular, and men read erotica too

Wankers unite! There is a revolution upon us and it’s important that you’re part of it. Wipe up the jizz, pull up your trousers, and join your brethren in the march for acceptance.

A while ago I wrote about male sex toys, and a desperately judgmental article at Jezebel that described the guys who used them as ‘lonely fucks.’ But it’s not just Jezebel – I’m frequently coming across examples of the double-standards we have around what men and women do to get off. The overall narrative goes a little something like this:

Men masturbate loads as a matter of necessity, and hence their wanking is something filthy and sordid that should be done behind closed doors, like defecation or voting UKIP. Women don’t really need to wank, because they don’t need sex, so female masturbation is empowering, yet also gentle and feminine and pink. 

From this narrative, a lot of bullshit flows, of which the following is just a tiny snippet:

  • Female sex toys must be pink and sparkly and ‘unintimidating’ and should mainly be used to ‘enhance’ a woman’s sex life with a partner.
  • Male sex toys are a bit shameful and dirty, and must be hidden in a drawer so no one ever finds out.
  • Porn for women is basically a romance novel with a bit of shagging in it. Which men will never read.

All these things are bullshit, but it can be hard to discern that they’re bullshit because so much of our culture plays along to this tune. But even the most basic of research (and I cannot stress enough just how basic my ‘research’ is) shows that sexuality – male, female, or not-easily-forced-into-a-gender-binary – is clearly far more interesting than that.

Male and female sex toys

How many times have you read a mainstream sex advice article that recommends straight guys include vibrators during sex to please their partner? Loads, right? And now count up the number of sex advice articles that recommend women use a masturbator when they give hand jobs because holy Jesus they’re amazing and they make it way more fun? I bet you could count those articles on one hand, and at least two were written by me.

Similarly, guys using toys during solo masturbation is only just beginning to get talked about – traditionally our culture told the dude buying sex dolls and wanking sheaths that he was a lonely, desperate perv. So what’s the deal – are male sex toys only bought by lonely dudes? Or are they, in fact, bought by a significant number of people?

It’s the latter.

Thanks to sextoys.co.uk for giving me some info – here are the most viewed toys on their site.

To be fair, they have recently been doing some research and surveys into sex doll use, so it’s possible that’s what’s bumped ‘Brad’ and the ‘sisters’ up the list, but of the three remaining one could be used by anyone, and two are specifically designed to be used on a penis. Taking a peek at the top five search terms…

See? The search terms are delightfully universal – some of these toys can be used no matter what configuration of genitals you have. And as for the top toys, most are aimed at people with dicks. I appreciate this doesn’t prove that every guy has a Fleshlight in the cupboard, but I think it shows that male sex toys are not – as the general narrative has us believe – things bought by the few to sate loneliness or desperation. Male sex toys are, in fact, exactly the same as female sex toys: fun, optional additions to your sex life, whether you’re with a partner or on your own.

Men reading erotica

If you’ve been reading my blog for more than a post or two then you have read erotica. I don’t call it erotica, though, I call it filth. And there’s a bloody good reason for that: as soon as you call writing ‘erotic’ people file it away in the ‘just for women’ bank. As if men can’t cope with porn that’s told via this mysterious medium of ‘words on a page.’

I’ve lost count of the number of times someone publishing-related (not my publisher though, natch) has told me ‘oh but men don’t buy books, and they definitely don’t buy erotica, so we make the covers to appeal to women.’ Can you see the flaw in this? Course you can – covers designed to appeal to women may well put men off, because men are human and therefore influenced by their peers: they’re less likely to buy a book with a cover they interpret as ‘female-friendly’ because someone has effectively painted a barrier around it saying ‘this isn’t for you. If you buy it you’ll be the odd one out.’

I’ve used Google stats for the following, and it’s worth noting that Google’s demographic info can never be 100% accurate (and it also forces people into a gender binary, which naturally is a flaw in and of itself). But anyway. Here are my gender demographics – blue is male, green is female:

Girlonthenet blog demographics

Sexuality isn’t simple

The info above doesn’t conclusively prove anything, so don’t go showing it to a proper journalist or anything. But what it does show, I think, is that sexuality is far more complicated than we’re tricked into believing.

I frequently talk about how women like sex too, and that it isn’t just a currency with which we barter for money or love, despite the constant stream of depressing sex advice that seems to assume it is. I think that male sexuality falls victim to the same assumptions. This idea that men are sex-obsessed, and only after one thing, is one of the foundations on which the original bullshit story is built. If sex is such a grotesque necessity for men then everything they do with it must be disgusting: the porn they watch, the toys they use, the dirty things they get up to alone behind closed doors, etc.

But actually that’s just as crap as the claim that women lie back and think of England. Not only does it paint every single man into the same sexual corner, but it spectacularly fails to understand the vast differences between individual sexuality (not to mention those who don’t identify with one side or other of the gender binary). It also fucks with morality, assigning moral actions to things which are at best amoral (such as wanking) and painting men as creatures incapable of making moral choices when their sexual desires are involved.

This started as a light-hearted blog, aimed at showing men that they’re being short-changed by society’s views on how they should and shouldn’t wank. It’s turned into something much more depressing. But it doesn’t always have to be this way. As women have gradually changed society’s views on female sexuality (Women can wank too! And watch porn! And be the architects of our own sexual fulfilment!) I think we can change what people think about men as well.

We can start by not giggling when guys buy sex toys, or read erotic stories. When we’ve mastered that, perhaps we can move on to the idea that men – like women – are unique individuals, whose sexuality can’t be easily generalised about or packaged. Then comes the wankers’ revolution. If you don’t want to join in then please step aside: it might get a little bit sticky.