I read a book recently that made me so angry I nearly threw it into the sea.  It wasn’t designed to be controversial – it was a light, funny holiday read that I’d downloaded because it looked fun.

The book itself was good. I mean really good. It was laugh out loud funny, at points. It was interesting and had twists, turns, car chases and a fair bit of blowing shit up. Unlike my own book, it didn’t have much wanking, but you can’t possibly have everything. Unfortunately, despite being a bloody entertaining read, it made me angry – the author had gone to great pains to draw all of his male characters as interesting, in-depth individuals, but when it came to the women he’d obviously got bored. Each had just one characteristic, which was her primary motivating factor and drove everything she ever did: there was Bitchy woman, Supportive woman, Bossy woman, Hormonal woman – like a lazy misogynist retelling of the seven dwarves.

Our dashing, complex hero battled villains with backstory. Our bit-part dudes and walk-on cronies had needs and desires and flaws and foibles and all that good shit that humans have. Our women? Well. One of them had a sexy nun costume.

Women as filler

The book came in the middle of a period where I’ve watched lots of TV and films in which women have been there purely as fodder for the development of male characters. Whether it’s a wife getting killed in the first episode to give her husband dark reasons for revenge, as a tempting prize for our hero to win in the second act, or as a scheming harpy obstacle for our dashing gentleman to overcome, it pisses me off.

Yeah, some female characters are always going to be cardboard-cut-outs: I don’t expect you to tell me the tortured history of the lady whose only contribution to the plot is that she fixes our hero’s car at the beginning of act one. But what I do expect is that if women play a major part in the story, they should be more than just furniture or the faceless catalyst for a painfully bad sex scene.

What do two-dimensional women do?

It’s not just the poor characterisation and ‘but women are so complex I couldn’t possibly write one as if she were a human being’ – the women-as-insignificant message is woven into the story itself. Here is a list of some things that men in the book got to do:

• Drive tanks
• Have epic car chases
• Fire guns
• Be on TV panel shows
• Invent new scientific instruments

Here are some of the things the women got to do:

• Fuck the main character over for child support
• Have epic temper tantrums
• Give massages
• Dress in aforementioned ‘sexy nun’ costume

At one point a woman got to join in a fight, and she beat the guy by – can you guess? Go on, guess – kicking him in the nuts. Of course she did! Because men, while infinitely more powerful and violent than women, do at least have one weakness.

Women: know your limits

I’m not just angry because the women didn’t get to be president or whatever, though – in this book they didn’t even get to perform basic human functions. For example: our hero’s girlfriend had a job. We know this because he made repeated reference to ‘her job’, and talked about her ‘leaving for work’ and all that jazz. Yet at no point were we told much about what she actually did. Compare this to other minor characters, whose entire backstory was fleshed out in the space of a couple of paragraphs, and we were told not only what they did but how they felt about it, whether they liked their colleages, and if they’d ever had an amusing office incident involving a photocopier or a bottle of Tipp-ex.

Amazingly, one of the women didn’t even really get to speak. As the baddies and goodies were fighting at the climax of the novel, she – who had up until that point remained almost completely silent – was asked how she felt about something. She responded by letting out a ‘shriek of rage’. That’s it, just a shriek. At a certain point (the point at which bad women fight good women because that is how it’s supposed to be) I think she manages a word or two. But although we’d fleetingly been told she was a ‘bossy’ person, at no point did she utter a word when men were in the room. Unless – and I shit you not – it was for one of the scenes where she had to fawn and drool over a guy. Then, with ‘oh baby’s’ and ‘I love you’s and slobbery kisses, she piped up a fucking treat.

Full-blooded women

Sure, there are some awesome female characters woven into amazing literary masterpieces. This is just one book out of many many millions, and it wasn’t ever intended to be the defining literary masterpiece of a generation. But it’s not the only one, it’s just a neat example to use because it makes so many of these common mistakes in just one story. There are plenty more where it came from, though – TV dramas and films in which women are there purely so the male character can have an epiphany/get laid/perform a daring rescue.

Sometimes these things are wholly necessary, of course – we need the hero to go through scrapes in order to come out on top. And having one or two cardboard-cut-out characters is necessary for a story. But does it always have to be that way round? A tortured, complex guy leading plastic women to safety as they shriek in fear then fall at his feet? How about you give a girl a shotgun and let her storm the castle?

I know some male authors complain that female characters are hard to write. Or, in the case of video games manufacturers, that our soft bodies and gigantic battering eyelashes are so difficult to animate that to create playable women would cost more money than there is in the Universe. I originally wanted to refer to this as a problem of misogyny – these writers are unable to believe in their female characters or female audiences because they fundamentally don’t care about women. But that’s not the problem really, is it?

The problem isn’t a lack of empathy, money, or basic human decency: it’s a lack of imagination. Which, if you’re writing fiction, is a tricky hurdle indeed.

Yes, we live in a patriarchy. And in our patriarchy, men are generally at a bit of an advantage in terms of money, power, opportunity, and so on. But I’m not going to talk about that today – I want to talk about power and penetration. Specifically the idea that the power in any kind of sexual play is, by default, in the hands of the penetrator.

The other week I wrote something disgustingly filthy about pegging (aka strap on sex). In subsequent discussion, a few people talked about me ‘having the power’ and ‘being the dominant one’, which was interesting. Even when I’m fucking a guy with a big fake cock, I don’t tend to feel that dominant. I get waves of it occasionally, but it struck me that we do tend to assume that strap on sex gives the wearer an immediate power boost. That it’s the cock that’s synonymous with power. That no matter how doe-eyed and submissive I usually am, just by strapping it on I have performed a transformation into a powerful sexual superhero.

Are strap ons powerful?

Of course, there are a lot of expectations around being the penetrator. Watch most mainstream porn, or even most mainstream romance, and men tend to be seen as the ones in control – the ones doing. Men fuck, women get fucked. But of course, although this is the way the story tends to play out, there are a hundred different problems with it, as there are with most of our expectations around gender.

Naturally the obvious point is that not all men have dicks, or indeed want to be the penetrators. Likewise there are many women who can be powerfully sexual, who can penetrate and fuck, while their partners (male or female) prefer to be more passive, more laid-back. And – in the kind of situations I enjoy – there are many people who switch between the two.

I enjoy sex in which I am the fucker rather than the fuckee, and to be honest I don’t usually need a strap on in order to do that. In the right mood and with a fair wind behind me I can shag a guy using only my delicate, weak, unpowerful vagina and he’ll still feel as if he’s been used like a fucktoy.

Your dick as your weakness

Not only can you be powerful with no dick at all, but there are certain sexual situations in which a penis can be the very opposite of a powerful tool: it can be your weakness, your misery, and one of the ultimate symbols of submission.

Knowing you can penetrate me with your dick might give you power in the eyes of a society with a skewed view on genitals, but it’s not going to make you feel that powerful when you’re lying on my bed, constrained by an order not to come, twitching and moaning as I rub lube gently into the aching head of it. Nor when I squeeze it to just before the point of pain and you beg me to put it in my mouth. And certainly not when I lie on my back, with your bound wrists behind my neck, and tell you to fuck me without coming.

As you pull out, shaking with the need to come and pleading with your eyes, your penis doesn’t feel very powerful, does it?

A dirty story to illustrate the point

So are strap ons powerful in and of themselves? The fact that they don’t give direct pleasure to the wearer does give the wearer a certain element of control. Maybe I’m the ‘powerful’ one when I fuck a guy with a strap on purely in virtue of the fact that I feel nothing – that I’m wholly focused on what I can do rather than what I can feel.

Except even that doesn’t really work, because this lack of feeling can also be harnessed to make the wearer feel deeply cowed and submissive. Ask the guy who loved the trembling feeling of submission so much that I used to wrack my brains in bed at night trying to think of new and better ways to make him feel small – the guy who, eventually, I ordered to fuck me with a strap on.

He got hard and shook and begged me to let him fuck me – wrists bound behind my head, as above. I turned him down and dressed him in the strap on harness instead, letting him fuck me with cold, rubber strokes until I came – twitching and clenching around a cock that couldn’t feel it. A cock with no desire, no sensation, no power. Then I told him I was done, and he curled up hard and aching and unable to fall asleep.

What makes a powerful dominant?

Power isn’t contained within a penis – real or fake – and it doesn’t accrue to you just because you are the penetrator. This is one of the many myths we’ve been fed for a number of years, which we still tend to play up to in much of our fucking. I certainly do most of the time – as a straight female submissive, dominance and dick usually go hand-in-hand. I want to be on the bottom, I want to be penetrated: I need to get fucked.

But it’s nice to take a step outside this every once in a while – think about what it is, exactly, that makes someone powerful. It might be different for different people: what makes him powerful is his voice, and the way he has with commands and words. What makes her powerful is the way she can speak volumes just with her eyes or a turn of her head. What makes them powerful is their imagination – the fantastic new things they can order their sub to do, that brings both parties to the brink of shivering climax.

Power isn’t contained within a particular object, or act, or person: it’s a complex, intricate thing. And it’s good to remind myself of that every once in a while – not only does it give me a better perspective on what I truly love about dominance, it also gives me loads of new ideas.

Like a friendly wedding DJ, I’m always happy to take requests. The most recent one came from a gentleman who emailed me to ask about thongs. Specifically he asked if I could write about them in-depth, presumably so that he could read the entry with one hand down his own pants and an eager smile on his face.

Problem is, I’m personally not that bothered about thongs. I discovered them when I was younger and – initially – I was a huge fan. I had exactly the kind of arse that looks brilliant in them, and to be honest a decent thong frames someone’s bum in a beautiful minimalist way – slim fabric tracing the line of their crack and curving round the top of each buttock like a ribbon decorating a present. Lovely.

Thongs as sex wear

Unfortunately, my ‘oh God thongs are so hot’ phase clashed horribly with my ‘wearing corduroy trousers that were always a size too big for me’ phase. This led to some deeply hot moments – a mate picking me up, throwing me over his shoulder and carrying me across a bowling alley while the then Love Of My Life looked on and bit his lip with poorly-disguised lust.

When we got home the first thing he did was shove both hands down the back of my trousers and gulp “I’ve been wanting to do that ever since. I just want to fucking bite you.”

But these hot moments were greatly outnumbered by the not-so-hot ones. Catty whispers from people nearby when they noticed the slim fabric line peeking out of the top of my trousers. Guys who thought they were breaking new comedy ground by slipping their fingers beneath the fabric and twanging it like giggling schoolchildren.

The guy who emailed me to ask about thongs made very specific mention of the fact that he thinks they’re especially hot on ‘corporate’ girls. By which I can only imagine he means ‘women who work in offices and generally dress in suits.’ Apparently the tantalising glimpse of thong fabric is especially good when it appears above smart trousers, ideally in a meeting of some sort.

Sadly I can’t really see the appeal in this. I struggle in an office environment anyway – the clothes are uncomfortable, and always coupled with a dread that I’m not quite professional enough – not polished enough. The idea of colleagues also spotting the line of my knickers poking out the top of my smart skirt sends shivers down my spine. I’ll put this down to the aforementioned childish knicker-twangers: selfish twats who’ve ruined thongs for me forever. Not to mention that a bit of the credit should go to men who leer openly at women they work with, as if their boners are as normal an addition to an office environment as photocopy paper or unnecessary spreadsheets.

The sexiest knickers

Still, the absence of thongs does not mean that I never put on a new pair of knickers and say ‘oh God that’s great’. Although I don’t have quite all the gorgeous knickers I want – I’d love a pair of caged-back ribbon knickers, in case anyone’s planning Christmas gifts this early and wants a massive hint. But I have got a fair few pairs that make me feel awesome as soon as I pull them up to my waist. Here are my top three.

French lace knickers

These give excellent bum coverage, while still being shaped nicely enough that they make my arse look excellent. Bought from Primark for about a quid, they’ve been jizzed on, shoved into my mouth, pushed to the side for easy-access quick-entry hard sex, why – they even featured in one of these blogposts a couple of years ago – I’ve definitely had my money’s worth.

Boy shorts

I don’t understand why underwear must be so gendered – I love wearing boxers designed for guys just as much as many guys I know love the silky feel of a pair of well-made knickers. But still – ‘boy shorts’ that are designed for girls do give an excellent level of comfort, and they also cover just enough that I can wear them around the house with just a t-shirt – tantalising the boy with occasional glimpses of the bottom of my arse cheeks without terrifying the neighbours into buying new blinds.

Burlesque ruffle pants

These are pants designed to make your bum look bigger, and they are so stunning that I often put them on just when I want to have a wank – bent over in front of a mirror so I can imagine someone coming all over the back of them. I have occasionally been known to change into them before a guy comes round, so that when I let him in I can just lie on the bed and wait for his inevitable ‘mmmm…’

I love a good first time. Not just first time sex, but the first time I do anything that’s fun: driving on the motorway, eating halloumi and wondering where it’s been all my life, swimming topless in the sea, etc. There’s a lot to love about that initial kick of novelty.

This post isn’t about my own first times, though, it’s about those of other people. Because, although I have only ever had one guy’s virginity (which was very willingly given), when it comes to anal sex I’ve taken a few more.

Not naturally dominant, strapping on a dick and holding a guy’s legs up to his chest while I fuck him is something of a nervewracking experience. What if I’m not the kind of awe-inspiring dick-wielder I dream of being? What if he decides he doesn’t like it, and his memory of me is forever tainted by the disappointment when his prostate didn’t thrill with joy? Well, via the medium of Three Stories About First Time Pegging, let’s see, shall we?

The enthusiastic

This section is an extract from my book – if you’ve read it just skip to the next subhead. 

He lay on his back on the bed, naked from the waist down, and I could see how much he was looking forward to this. His cock stood straight up in the air, solid and thick and glistening at the tip. I pushed his knees up towards his shoulders, knelt on the bed between his splayed legs, then wet the tips of my fingers and traced them around and around the head of his cock.

‘Do you want me to fuck you?’

He nodded.

‘Tell me. Tell me you want me to fuck you.’

‘I want you to fuck me.’

‘Say please.’ I reached for the lube as he babbled, desperately.

‘Please fuck me. Oh please fuck me. I just want to feel you in me, I need to come.’

I had one hand on his dick while my other hand squeezed the best part of half a tube of lube onto my own.

Although it wasn’t something I’d fantasised about, something intangible about this situation made me tingle with arousal. There was no pain, no spanking. I wasn’t being submissive. I was just kneeling between the boy’s legs, pressing the tip of my fake dick right up against his ass, and yet something was giving me that lustful kick.

‘Touch your dick.’

He obeyed immediately. Quivering with lust and nervous about being fucked for the first time, he stroked himself slowly, not wanting to come before I’d had him. He was close enough to coming just from the anticipation of what we were doing, so when I slid first one then two fingers inside him he tensed up.

‘Ah, no, please.’

I stroked his prostate, very gently, and felt every muscle in his body tense as he tried not to come. I’d never been so powerful. ‘You’re going to come when I fuck you.’

‘Yeah.’ He nodded a few times, more a reflex twitch than a nod of agreement. He stared at me with wide eyes and bit his lip, as I used my lubed-up hand to guide my dick into him. He groaned.

‘Does it hurt?’

‘Yes. But it’s good.’

‘How good?’ I tentatively slid it back out, then in again, a bit further this time. Another groan. A twitch.

‘Good.’

And I knelt up, put a hand on each of his raised knees, and pushed them backwards, opening him up and pushing him back, as I slid in and out of him. His face was tight in an expression of both pain and ecstasy, knit with concentration in an effort not to come. But I wanted him to come. I knew that the build up and the nervousness and the panic and the joy of being fucked in a whole new way would lead to an orgasm that shot from deep inside him, spraying mouthfuls of spunk over and across his whole body.

I fucked him harder, and I grabbed his dick, and it happened exactly as I’d hoped: he shot ropes of spunk that hit not just his chest and face but the wall beyond his head. He moaned and cried out, his stomach tensing as he did and he raised himself up slightly towards me. I felt a slight movement on my dick as his ass tensed with the impact of the orgasm, and his own cock jerked violently in my hand.

The disappointed

“It’s… ow. Fuck.” He furrowed his brow. “It’s harder than I thought it would be.”

I knelt over him, red straps at my waist and frustratingly unfeeling cock about an inch deep inside him.

“Perhaps a different angle?” I suggested, shifting slightly. I don’t know why I cared so much but I really wanted him to like it. After helping the first guy reach the kind of orgasm he’d never had before, I wanted this next guy’s reaction to be the same. A wide-eyed ‘oh God it hurts but please don’t stop’ building to a shuddering, twitching, frowning climax and spunk plastered liberally over the head of the bed.

“I’m not sure.” He twisted again, trying to get it in further at a different angle. I pushed it in.

“No. Fuck. Argh.” I pulled out. He clamped his legs together reflexively. “I don’t think I like it.”

I held his dick, massaging lube from the base to the head. He moaned softly, and his frown faded.

“Maybe we should try again?” I shook my head. The fucking itself was pretty hot – feeling the power of being above him, on top of him, controlling his pleasure with every inch of my fake cock. But that feeling only worked if there really was pleasure. I wanted to fuck him into that kick of joyful novelty, to give him something new and filthy, not to tease and encourage him into it the way you would persuade a fussy eater into broccoli.

I didn’t want his face to tell me ‘ow. I hate it. It hurts’ – I wanted ‘that’s it. More. Please.’ So I grabbed his dick with my hands and made that face happen instead.

The best response to first time pegging

You know what the best one is, right? The best is a guy that takes that enthusiasm – that desperate horny lust – and begs for more of it until I can fuck him with power and force and the kind of all-out brace-yourself energy that he’ll aim for when he’s fucking me.

And that’s exactly what happened.

With the third guy, I knew he’d been wanting it for a while. Playful conversations about me fucking him had led not to giggles or ‘maybe’s but to a very open, certain ‘yes please.’ A bold declaration that he knew this would be good. And it was.

He was blindfolded, strapped by the wrists and ankles to the bed frame. I’d lubed up his cock, with the aim of testing some new wanking sheaths and seeing if I could do the kind of teasing denial-play that he’d spectacularly fail at if he weren’t restrained. Lacking imagination, and basing most of my proactive sexual moves on the things that appeal to me, I thought he might enjoy being bound and filled to stretching point with cock.

I put a plug in him and instructed him to push down onto it. He squirmed, bucking slightly, enjoying exactly that ‘filled’ sensation while I put on a harness and cock. I unstrapped his ankles from the bed, lifting his legs up and back. I pulled the plug out and he moaned.

“Are you getting ready to fuck me?” No fear, no apprehension, just raw excitement.

“Yes. Do you want me to?”

“God yes.”

I slipped into him slowly. My memories of the second guy had made me cautious, wanting to give him time to adjust and relax as I fucked him with very slow strokes. Instead of wincing, however, he urged me on – more, harder, deeper. He shifted position, pulling his knees closer to his chest so I could get my dick further into him.

“Do you like that?”

He answered with a nod and a guttural moan, then twisted around to part his legs further. Nothing tentative about it – he wanted something no one else ever had: a first time pegging that was full-throttle. Power and speed rather than a gentle introduction. My hands gripping his hips and him bucking and writhing onto me. The full length of my fake dick and my lubed-up hands on his. The ache and pain and lust as I slammed it with force deep inside him: a first time pegging that felt like a practised fuck.

Want to buy a strap on so you can do this too? If you buy sex toys through the affiliate links included in this post, I make a bit of ££ to support this blog. 

One of the most difficult fears to overcome is the fear of being weird. That’s partly why I write this stuff – I want people to read it and say “Oh, she does that as well. Perhaps I’m not abnormal after all.” But far greater than that is my need for people to tell me that it’s OK. That I’m not odd. That they do this sometimes too. And by ‘this’ I mean ‘wanking on the train.’

(more…)