“Argh you’ve ruined porn for me.”

This is often how conversations begin in my house. After talking to the boy about traditional pornographic tropes, and the way some pornographers are challenging them by making ‘female gaze’ porn, he says he cannot see a traditional extreme porn close-up shot without thinking “oh, that’s very male gaze.”

Hence, I have ruined porn.

Thing is, I find it hard not to notice this stuff too. Having learned a bit about female gaze porn (and as most of what I’m learning about porn I’m learning from Pandora Blake, it’d be remiss of me not to link you to her excellent discussion of female gaze in art and pornography), I’m trying to work out exactly what it is that I like about certain scenes and films that utterly turns me off about others. It’s hard to explain exactly what ‘female gaze’ is in just a few words – the idea is that much of our art and entertainment uses a ‘male gaze’ perspective – in which women not so much ‘portrayed’ as ‘ogled’. ‘Female gaze’ on the other hand, tends to take a different approach – trying to use images and story that would work to tell a story either from a female perspective or to a female audience. In ‘female gaze’ porn, it often translates into wider shots, more dialogue, more rounded characters or a greater focus on female pleasure.

What interests me, though, is that while video porn is something that – although traditionally assumed to be a male product – is now being targeted at both genders, when it comes to written erotica, the vast majority of it is marketed solely at women.

Which is ridiculous, when you think about it. Porn is a genre of entertainment like anything else – open to different interpretations and nuance and style, each of which will appeal differently to different people. Like the difference between a traditional retelling of Shakespeare and a Baz Luhrmann film with guns and stabbings and car chases, what makes porn sexy for one person but shit for another often just comes down to how you tell the story.

Here are two stories. Which do you prefer?

Version 1: A story about fucking

Girl meets boy. She’s wet. Soaking wet so you can see the slickness dripping from her open cunt. She’s smiling, enjoying it. Cupping her own tits in her hands as she lies back on the bed. Open. Waiting. Eager.

He’s hard – his broad hands stroke his fat cock as he stands over her – taking in every inch of her silky, taut, nakedness. Her nipples are hard, and he teases them with his prick. Rubbing the end over them as she moans faintly. The wetness from the tip of his cock leaves a trail on her chest, and she runs a finger over it then licks it off. She smiles.

He moves down her body, touching each bit of her – squeezing her tits, pushing the palm of his hand onto her stomach, running his fingers down through her wet slit. She moans. Kneeling between her legs, he spreads her thighs wide, holding the tip of himself against the entrance of the hole he’s about to fuck.

“Please fuck me.” No pause, straight in. The request made and granted almost simultaneously. He plunges himself into her and she squeals, reaching down to grip his arse with her hands. He fucks her – swift strokes that make her tits jiggle and her breath quick. She gasps, moans, and looks down to see his thick cock pushing into her.

In. Out. Again. More. Harder.

She flips over, presenting her arse for him to fill. As he slides his cock in his big hands grip her, slapping her and leaving red imprints. She moans again, arches her back, pushes herself onto him as he gets closer to coming.

In. Out. Again. More. Harder.

And it’s there – he pulls out, his dick twitching and glistening with the juices from her cunt. He grips the base and – with measured strokes – rubs out arcing ropes of spunk. They splash over her – drops and pools of come all over her arse. A river drips down the crack of her arse, mixing with the wetness in her cunt. His dick twitches a few more times: a few more drops.

And they’re done.

Version 2: A story about fucking

Girl meets boy. She’s halfway between nervous and excited: watching him undress has her nipples feeling tight and cold, and her cunt aching to be touched. She pulls off her knickers and lies on the bed, all the better to take in the view as he pulls off his clothes. His dick’s hard already – thick and pronounced through his tight black shorts. He hooks both thumbs under the waistband and pulls them down – grinning as he watches her eyes grow wide.

She’s touching herself – she can’t help it. The sordid hotel room and the look of this guy and the excitement of knowing she’s doing something new. She’s squeezing herself – teasing her own nipples as she hopes he will soon – hinting that she needs him near her.

She wins. With his dick in his hand he approaches her on the bed, not bothering to hide his enthusiasm – she likes that. He’s stroking himself and wants to touch her – as he rubs the tip of his cock on her nipples she can’t help but let out a moan. No words as such, but they both know this is a ‘yes please’ moan – an ‘oh God do more’ moan. So he does it again, and she moans again, using a finger to trace the wet trail he’s left on her nipple, and licking it off. Revelling in the fact that she’s done this to him.

He moves down her body, touching every inch of her – making the most of what they both know will only happen once. He cups her tits in his hands and squeezes, the firmness and her moaning making his cock twitch and his stomach kick with excitement. His palms flat on her belly, his fingers trailing down to her cunt – he doesn’t know which of them is more excited. Which more aroused. It probably doesn’t matter: all either of them wants is the culmination of this night: the tipsy flirting, the hands-under-skirts under the table, the whispered ‘fuck me upstairs’ that she gave him in the lift. The ache he’d been carrying, semi-hard, in his trousers from that moment.

He’s kneeling between her open legs, savouring the look of need in her face, the way she arches her back ever so slightly to make it easier for him to enter her.

“Please, fuck me.” She begs, half-smiling half-frowning as she thrusts herself towards his dick. He does – long, hard strokes, filling her up and making her cry out with satisfaction. She shudders with the delicious feeling of fulfillment, and glances down to watch as he works his cock in and out of her.

In. Out. Again. More. Harder.

He’s close, he can feel it – deep in the pit of his stomach he can feel climax rushing through him. He should pause, he knows, and wait until she’s had more pleasure from him. But the sight of her face twisted into lustful satisfaction, and the sight of her tits jiggling up and down with each stroke it’s… close. It’s tricky. He wants so much to come but he wants to watch her for a bit longer, hear her cries of joy a few more times. Know that he’s doing this: he’s making her cunt twitch and her eyes light up and her nipples tingling and hard.

She flips over, and he takes a second to calm himself. He squeezes the base of his cock. Blinks once, twice, breathes deeply. She’s doing the same – breathing deeply. Reveling in the power she has to take his orgasm from him. She arches her back, pushing her arse out towards the tip of his cock. Groaning loudly as he enters her.

In. Out. Again. More. Harder.

He bites his lip as he comes – a last-ditch attempt to hold himself back and give himself more time. She grips the pillow with her hands, squeezing it as she’s squeezing him, wanting to milk every drop of enjoyment from this evening. He pulls out, gasping as he reaches the peak of his climax, shooting ropes of spunk over her – twitching from his dick and signalling the end he didn’t want to reach just yet.

She feels the jets of spunk hitting her arse – forceful, strong, and copious – and she aches with delight. She locks the feeling away in her head, as she’s locked the sounds of his grunting gasps and the sensation of his cock tracing the outline of her nipples.

While he’s wishing he’d had more time, she’s pulling up her knickers and wishing herself home. So she can relive her triumph alone.

Guy’s pants can be stunningly beautiful – the perfect fabric will cling and cup your junk, clearly and delicately outlining every single curve of your cock. The perfect underwear will hold you in a snug embrace, lifting and pushing you forward, as if your genitals are being presented just ready for me to reach for. There’s a reason they call it a ‘package’.

My favourite pants are these ones – the ‘package’ style. Jersey-fabric shorts which display and present you in a way that makes me want to reach out and cup you too.

Loose cotton boxers and a guy I begged to touch

As a youngster, I’d see adverts for men in Calvin Kleins, and wish my partner at the time could afford CKs. So perfect were the images, and so beautiful the crotches of the men, that I mistakenly believed that this effect was only possible with tailored, designer pants. Ones that were made especially for each guy, and probably cost more than the rest of his wardrobe put together.

He was beautiful – my first boyfriend. And he wore what I thought were the best available pants at the time. Those loose cotton boxers that, back in the early noughties, came in three standard types: plain, striped or (if they’d been bought between October-December) covered in comedy pictures of reindeer.

They had their own particular beauty – loose-fitting and usually even looser after a few washes, they’d hang off his hips as if they’d fall down at any moment. As an added bonus, the fabric stretching from hip to stomach would highlight that beautiful dip in his skin just next to his hipbone. A dip perfect for running my fingers down. Perfect for sliding my hand inside when I went to remove his boxers, Perfect for him to tuck his aching erection behind in public, to avoid drawing attention to it.

If you’d asked me at the time what the sexiest underwear for men was, I’d have said loose cotton boxers. I’d have been wrong.

Tight jersey boxer shorts and unthinking hotness

When, later, I moved on to those amazing tight jersey pants (or, more accurately, I started dating a guy who wore them) it clicked that Calvins weren’t just for the super-rich, and in fact any man could own a pair. This revelation knocked me for six, as I spent at least a week struggling to chat to any guy without imagining him slowly dropping his trousers to reveal that perfectly presented pant-wrapped package.

Slowly, mind.

Unbuckling belts, pulling them inch by inch through belt loops, undoing one button at a time (button fly jeans are sexier than zips and I have no idea why that is the case) and then gradually opening the front to reveal the underwear that conceals hardly anything.

Sigh.

When I sat at my laptop today I aimed to write a post that mirrored that of a few weeks ago – on knickers, thongs, and the hottest underwear for me to wear. Sadly I can’t come up with a definitive list for the sexiest underwear for men: there is only really one kind, because I love it so hard I can barely pay attention to anything else. Tight jersey-style boxer shorts.

Feel free to disagree with me – I’m not the arbiter of sexiness. But let me just tell you this one thing before I go.

You have no idea what you do to me

I know a guy who wears these boxers. When he gets dressed in the morning they’re the first thing he puts on. Boxers first, t-shirt second, then the jeans. He pulls the jeans up his legs, sliding the waistband swiftly over his arse and to his hips. He’s almost dressed – almost. Before he buttons the fly of his jeans, there’s one more thing to do. That beautifully-presented package? His junk, bundled snugly in the cup of jersey fabric? It’s just sitting there – resting on the V of his open fly. Casually, swiftly, without breaking eye contact or stopping our conversation, he reaches down with one hand and pushes it inside his jeans.

He casually adjusts his genitals as if it’s no big deal. As if I’m not sitting there wishing I could take the whole lot, underwear included, into my eager, salivating mouth. As if he doesn’t know that the sight of him so casually rearranging what I so frequently dream about doesn’t make me want to rub every limb of my body against every inch and atom of his.

As if it’s nothing. As if he doesn’t know.

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…’