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.

Why do women cheat? Well, that’s a bit like asking why they learn to drive – there are lots of different reasons for doing it, and some women prefer not to do it at all.

However, in a valiant step towards reducing all female sexual desire to some bizarre medical condition, a dude called Robert Weiss (who incidentally works at a place that aims to treat people who have a sex addiction – we’ll come onto this later), wrote an article entitled ‘5 reasons for female infidelity.’

That sounds fairly innocuous – I mean, if we’re just talking about 5 general reasons for female infidelity, then we could essentially list any reason whatsoever and as long as one woman is willing to cite that as the primary cause for cheating, it could make our list. But no. As he explains later in the article, these are the ‘most common’ reasons women cheat.

Why I cheated

I’ve cheated on boys before – I’ll leave the sordid details for something a bit more in-depth, where I’ll have a chance to make pathetic and inadequate excuses for all those hearts that I’ve broken. But right at the top of my ‘why I cheated’ list was this:

I was horny.

In the interests of full disclosure, there was another reason pretty high up on that list:

I was drunk.

There were other factors at work as well, depending on the particular cheating episode (and there have been more than a few, because of my aforementioned bastardry) – sometimes I wanted the challenge of sleeping with someone I never thought I’d get. Sometimes I was simply curious about how a particular guy would be. Other times I was planning on ditching my boyfriend but wanted to make sure I’d secured a nice back-up relationship to spring into afterwards. But ultimately my primary motivating factor was physical rather than emotional: lust.

Laying aside for a minute the fact that I am an amoral shit, there was a hell of a lot more sexual motivation going on here than in the list constructed by Weiss, who instead highlights reasons such as ‘women have intimacy disorders’ or ‘feel neglected’. Well, shit a brick. It turns out that rather than just being a horny slag with the willpower of a smack addict at a poppy farm, I am instead a damaged, blameless individual who requires either treatment or a cuddle.

Male vs female infidelity

Look, I’m not saying that women never cheat because they feel insecure – I am 100% sure that they do. I’m not saying that some people don’t have genuine troubles that mean they could do with the help of a relationship counsellor or sex therapist. As mentioned above, there are myriad reasons why women might stray from a relationship, and I expect Robert Weiss has correctly pinpointed some of them. But are these really the most common? Is it really more likely that you have an intimacy disorder than that you like having sex?

And more importantly, where is the research that actually backs up these ‘5 reasons for female infidelity’? Because as far as I can see, none of the links in the article go anywhere more substantial than a blog that’s over a year old which includes a slightly longer but no less speculative list, and a journalistic puff piece advertising a website for married people to have affairs. I cannot stress enough how much I want you to click those links: please do – see just how tenuous the cited ‘evidence’ is.

Is there a similar article in which Weiss dissects the 5 reasons for male infidelity? If it’s based on the same level of research, and skewed just as heavily to reflect society’s bias about gender and sexual drive, I suspect men would be asked to choose between statements such as  ‘my wife didn’t suck me off enough’, ‘I was horny’ and ‘she had really lovely tits. Wahey.’

What’s my motivation?

We all have different needs and desires, and consequently we all do different things for different reasons.

I, for instance, am writing this article because I am a sex blogger, opinionated arsehole, and all-round horny wench. I like having sex and I feel the need to challenge lazy, tired assumptions that women don’t enjoy sex for sex’s sake. Robert Weiss might have his own reasons for writing the original article, like perhaps the fact that he runs a sex addiction clinic. The women he has encountered (who have come to him for what they hope will be a cure) will probably be more likely to put a medical slant on their reasons for cheating. Or, and do stop me if this sounds a bit far-fetched, perhaps it’s because Mr Weiss has a vested interest in encouraging people to medicalise any instance of sexual activity that could be considered ‘excess’, so that they end up visiting his clinic.

You know, I’m just speculating.

But here’s the problem – if the ‘research’ in the article is anything to go by, the author is just speculating too. Weiss’s speculation, which presents women as feeble creatures incapable of having sexual desires that aren’t motivated by a deeper emotional need, is being presented as ‘fact’, when he’s presented no evidence to back that up.

This is exactly the sort of thing we have editors for: to identify facts, and sort them from self-interested waffle. Self-interested waffle: I’ve cheated on partners before but I don’t want you to think I’m an awful person. Facts: women get horny, grass is green, and the Huffington Post can utterly fuck off.

It is categorically none of my business what you stick in your cunt. As long as it is a) not going to cause you (or anyone else) damage and b) not something which you have stolen from my house, then I wish you the best of luck and happy wanking.

However, I have a minor personal gripe with the sex toy industry, and it goes a little something like this:

WHY IS SO MUCH OF YOUR STUFF SO FUCKING CUTE?

Sorry, correction: why is so much of your girl stuff so fucking cute?

I’m not saying no one likes it, or that it should be banned – I’m sure there are plenty of women who are happy to stuff bright pink menageries up their vaginas. And to be honest, I’ll do the same if there’s nothing else to hand and I fancy an executive wank.

But I resent it, deep down. Because my usual method of shopping online, no matter what I’m buying, is to sort it into colours and then pick the least sparkly. I’m with Henry Ford: it should come in any colour, so long as it’s black. And at least 7 inches. And powerful enough to bruise my cervix.

I’m pretty sure that’s a direct quote.

No, I do not want a face on it

Pink things aside (because I know I am in a minority in my general hatred of colour) could we at least stop pretending that in order to get a woman to insert something into herself, it needs to have some sort of animal on?

It’s as if, when Ann Summers invented the never-bettered Rampant Rabbit, the head of their marketing team (let’s call him Dave) said “hey, it looks like women like rabbits. And cute things. Let’s give them more animals to fuck!” and everyone shifted awkwardly in their seats and didn’t say anything because Dave was the boss and they didn’t want to embarrass him. Well they should have embarrassed him. Someone should have stood up and said:

“Look, Dave, I don’t want to make things awkward for you, but women don’t like fucking rabbits, OK? I mean, maybe one or two women like fucking rabbits, but the majority of women don’t like fucking rabbits.”

“So,” Dave retorts, with a smug ‘you’re almost fired’ smirk on his face “if they don’t like fucking rabbits why are they buying the Rampant Rabbit, Trevor?”

At which point Trevor leaps to his feet and shouts “BECAUSE IT DOES GOOD THINGS TO THEIR CLIT, DAVE. WOMEN LIKE IT WHEN WE DO GOOD THINGS TO THEIR CLITS.”

And there you have it. The Rampant Rabbit is awesome because it has a bit that goes inside and is all swirly, and makes your cunt feel good, and a simultaneous bit that goes on the outside and buzzes against your throbbing clit. The fact that the outsidey bit looks like rabbit ears is no more relevant to your orgasm than whether the box it came in is made from recycled cardboard.

Does cute do it for you?

There’s a movement recently towards more abstract sex toys: shapely things that could just as easily be an ornament as a fucktoy – I wholeheartedly approve of these. I also approve strongly of the ones that look like plain, old-fashioned cock. These are excellent.

But I don’t understand why there are still so many that have been Disneyfied. Whether it’s making them vaguely dolphin-shaped, branding them with Hello Kitty, or giving them the face of a creepy mutant smurf.

As with everything I write this comes with a gigantic flashing neon caveat that says ‘some people will disagree with me.’ Because there is no single sexy thing on which all humans can agree, there may well be people who are more aroused by a sex toy if it comes with a grinning face.

But these people – and I don’t think I am going out on a particularly shaky limb here – are almost definitely in the minority. How often have you heard someone say ‘that’s hot, but it’d be totally hotter if it had a tail like a chinchilla’? It’s just not that common. What’s more, if these products really are catering to a significant group that gets aroused by cute things, surely we’d see a slight overspill into the male section of the market. And yet, as far as I know, no sex toy manufacturer has captalised on this particular opportunity by sticking googly eyes on a Fleshlight.

It’s marketing, yeah?

No one at Lovehoney has yet offered me a lucrative blogging contract, so I do not have access to amazing data on what people do and don’t want in terms of sex toys. It is possible that the reason they are making these products is because there is huge demand for them. When they send people out to accost women on the street and ask them what they would like to stick in their vaginas, many of those women might say:

“I don’t mind, as long as it looks like a furry rodent.”

And their market research people rush back to the office to get Dave all excited about the Clit Squirrel.

So, it’s possible. But again, if cute fucks are so popular, why is this phenomenon mostly limited to female-solo toys? After all, we don’t paint smiley faces on strapon belts, or market sex swings as ‘cuddle harnesses’.

If women are genuinely more likely to buy things because they’re cute, that suggests toys need to be made unsexy before girls will feel confident about clicking the ‘buy’ button. Is this because women are naturally more squeamish about sex? Or is it because women are constantly told that we should be more squeamish about sex? That we should be virtuous and innocent, and the only possible reason why we might buy something that is sex-related is not because it makes our cunt throb with a need to be fucked, but our ovaries squeal in appreciation of how adorable this particular sea horse is.

I’m not going to say I know either way, because I’m just speculating. But I’m speculating pretty fucking hard that it’s the latter.

How do we solve a problem like a sparkly dolphin dildo?

As ever, I’m not calling for a ban, because the inside of your vagina is no business of mine. However, I am going to publicly and loudly state that the only things I care about with sex toys are:

• safety
• price
• whether it does good things to my sticky bits

I not only don’t care if it’s cute, I’ll be actively turned off if it is. I don’t want people to stop making them, or those that genuinely like them to stop buying them. I just want Dave in marketing to have a think, when deciding whether to shape a new vibrator like a creepy smurf thing, why exactly he feels he needs to.

As for the women who prefer our sex toys without My Little Pony-style packaging, who get annoyed when something that provides a genuinely nice wanking experience (i.e. the Rabbit) has to look like a Happy Meal toy – I’d like us to be louder and more honest in our feedback. We need to send a message to manufacturers that, for many of us, this cuteness is not only unnecessary but – if their goal is to make us come like a freight train – actively unhelpful.

I don’t want to rub my clit with a gerbil, I just want to rub my clit.

Some of the links in this post are affiliate links, so if you buy toys from the companies I get a small cut of the money which helps me keep this site running.