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

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

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

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

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

Read all about it

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

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

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

The truth about spunk

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

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

a) women don’t like eating jizz

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

Both of these things are fictional and damaging.

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

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

No sex act is ever obligatory

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

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

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

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

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

I tend to avoid athletic boys. With their muscles and their energy and their ability to go for hours I fear that they’ll put me to shame. The sex they have is impressive – powerful, beautiful and hard. The sex I have is desperate – moaning, panting, begging. It’s not about athleticism, it’s about lust.

But number 24 was athletic.

I met him at a posh event where he was surrounded by friends and I was surrounded by strangers. I was awkward in high-heels and a dress, and he was funny, fit, bald, with nerdy glasses and a quick mouth. I wasn’t completely smitten but I was getting there, and just drunk enough to approach someone who would otherwise fill me with terror. Someone who was far cooler than me, more attractive than me, more athletic than me. Number 24 was a lad – the sort of boy who won at sports day while girls like me were hiding behind the bleachers smoking fags and comparing fake injuries. He was holding the room with effortless confidence – drunk and getting drunker, leering and joking and scanning the party not for girls who looked pretty but girls who looked willing.

So I did what any slightly curious, drunk girl would do: I took him round the back of the building for a blow job.

The briefest of kisses ended with me on my knees in the mud, feet and knees wet through as I tore at his flies. He whispered in the dark – angry and lustful encouragement just loud enough for me to hear but not loud enough to give us away. When I put his dick in my mouth he already tasted salty with precome – rock solid. He held the back of my head and pushed me down until my lips touched the base of his dick and I choked.

“That’s it.” And he shoved it in harder. He wanted the control – he wanted me reeling, unbalanced in the mud, with nothing to grab onto but him. He wanted my hands cupping him and stroking as he thrust his dick harder into my mouth. I ran my hands over his unfamiliar body – solid thighs, a tight arse – a genuine honest-to-god six pack. Athletic though I wasn’t, he liked seeing my lustful take on blow jobs – he liked my pervy enthusiasm, and he liked it when I looked up into his face with eyes watering.

“I’m going to come.” I moaned as he said it – a choking, wet moan as I opened the mouth he was fucking to suck in the air that would take me through to the end. Excited by the thought of his hot spunk hitting the back of my throat. I sucked harder, pulling as much of his dick into my mouth as I could.

But he didn’t come in my mouth.

He pulled his cock out, and with one hand rubbed at it frantically. Pulling on my hair, he tipped my head back and looked into my eyes. He saw my face wet with spit and precome, and – with grunts and twitches – he came. Thick spurts of his spunk covered my cheeks, dripping into my open mouth, plastering loose strands of my hair. He didn’t just want to come – he wanted to come so that his friends would see, when we walked back inside, that he’d had me. He’d fucked me. And he’d left me covered in him.

Up to that point I was, despite the humiliation of having to avoid kissing people goodbye, still in my comfort zone. I’d showed the cool kids how the dirty goth girls can fuck. He’d humiliated me, but I’d had him – I’d owned him. I’d had his twitching prick in my mouth.

But later that night he followed me back to my hotel room and fucked me like an athlete. Flipping me over, picking me up, bending me over the desk and forcing his spit-lubed dick into my ass. Quick, curt thrusts punctuated by sharp exhales of breath. Porn fucking, with a porn audio track.

“You. Like. That” as he slapped me. “Fucking take it” as his cock slammed deeper into me, with him holding one of my legs at an angle so acute he could reach every inch of the inside of my cunt.

Muscular arms bending me into different shapes, holding me wide open so he could get at me. He couldn’t sit still when I sat on his dick. Instead he grabbed my arse and fucked the rhythm out of me, until it was all I could do to hold still, squeeze my cunt around his dick, and enjoy the rapid forceful pounding of his powerful hips.

It felt like a fight, like he wanted to show me what he could do. He was performing, like a gymnast performs a routine, like a runner sprints in front of a cheering crowd. He was faster, harder, stronger than me, and he wanted me to know it.

It wasn’t just a fuck – it was a competition. And although he was the most athletic, I think, on reflection, I won.

I’m a freakish weirdo when it comes to foreplay, I think. I’ve spoken before about how I don’t really like getting head. A good fingering is nice every now and again, but I’m a bit impatient. Just as I’m the first in the pub at 5 pm on Friday, itching to start the weekend, when the chance for a shag comes around I’m the one speeding things up in anticipation of what I see as the ‘main’ event, pulling down my knickers and mumbling “just put it in me – now – please.”

But recently I spoke to the rather lovely @EasilyTempted on Twitter, who talked so lovingly about foreplay (or rather – those myriad aspects of sex that don’t involve putting a dick into a vagina) that it might have tempted me to spend a bit more time doing it.

Here’s what she said:

EasilyTempted – on foreplay

This week my husband and I had a beautiful and lengthy 69. I came on his face, more than once, and he came in my mouth. And then I fucked about on Twitter, while he cooked me scrambled eggs. Possibly a perfect evening.

But.

‘Officially’ we didn’t have even have sex. It got me thinking about the word ‘foreplay’ and how misleading and flawed it is as a concept. Foreplay traditionally describes something which is the precursor to sex. But what is sex?

Personally I think of sex in terms of sexual satisfaction with a partner (or partners ~ I’ve read this blog). In this model I would see it as something that involves an orgasm. But what if you can be sexually satisfied without an orgasm? (I have heard such people exist). And do both people have to have an orgasm or just one?

I have no answers.

Given access to each other, my husband and I probably have sex around five times a week and we have been fucking for 12 years. This adds up to a fair amount of sex. But actual penetration – classic penis in vagina stuff – plenty of what we do involves or concludes that way and a great deal doesn’t.

I don’t orgasm from penetration alone, so perhaps that is why fucking is an element of my sex life but not the focus. My husband is also not interested in isolated penetration – if we have limited time he will almost certainly choose abstinence over a simple fuck. So in that sense foreplay is everything to us, which is why I don’t like the implications that it is ‘just’ the starter.

We are both oral-centric. Kissing, licking, sucking – we live in a grown up sexy lollipop shop.

If he kisses and bites me all over for so long that when he puts his fingers on my clitoris I come immediately, is that foreplay?

If I fuck him with my strap-on, is that foreplay?

If he straps me down, spanks me, and fucks my arse with a dildo, is that foreplay?

These are all things we have done this week, and yet we only had penetrative sex once. Include the 69 and that is only one in four.

Blowjobs seem to be in the middle of the Venn Sex Diagram for a lot of people. You have penetration on one side and foreplay on the other but for a lot of people a blowjob means both – this is all down to Bill Clinton, everyone had that discussion.

But somehow, the feminist in me rails against the idea that if just the man has an orgasm it’s sex but if just the woman has an orgasm it is foreplay. Because this would mean the male orgasm trumps the female.

What I don’t like about the expression is that it gives virgins, new lovers, or even bad lovers the idea that anything before the penetration is merely a waiting room for the main event.

There is a lot more to sex than in and out.

If you don’t already follow @EasilyTempted, you definitely should. She also has an incredibly sexy Tumblr where she collects pictures of people doing the good stuff.

I neither know nor give a shit if it tastes different when you’ve eaten pineapple.

Spunk is good because it’s spunk. It’s raw and hot and yours. It’s something that you squirt from the end of your dick when you’re so fucking satisfied with me, with what I’ve done, with what I look like when you have me bent over and tied to a chair, that you can no longer keep it inside you. Spunk is, more than anything else, the measure of whether I’ve made you happy.

It’s not good because of the taste, it’s good because you cover me with it. It’s good because you pump it deep and hot inside me. It’s good because you make me eat it.

Can you improve the taste of your jizz?

A brief and depressing google around this area tells me that almost anything natural and fruity could change the taste of your spunk (WARNING: research based on Google does not constitute actual science) so if you’re happy to chow down on a pound of melon or a shitload of grapes each day, alongside the almost inevitable diarrhoea you suffer, you’ll probably also be able to provide a liquid that your ladyfriend would be happy to dribble on her ice cream.

But why? What’s the point? I’m a grown-up earning a wage – I can buy sugary syrups and whipped cream and fruity treats to my heart’s delight – the only way I’ll get a taste of your spunk is to suck on your cock nice and hard, in exactly the way that you like it.

Tasting nice is not what your jism is for. Your spunk doesn’t need to taste like strawberries, or pineapple, or sugar, spice and puppy dog tails – your spunk needs to taste like what comes out of the end of your dick when you come.

Spunk makes sex better

Sex is fun whether you come or not – the feeling of you nice and full and tight and hard inside me will give me the shivers and make me wet and give me something to clamp down on – to tense my cunt around and twitch over and feel happy about. But sex in and of itself isn’t half as good as sex that ends with spunk.

Dribbles of it, spurts of it, nice thick white ropes of it covering my tits or filling my cunt or (my personal favourite) spurting hot and hard into the crack of my arse.

Don’t worry about how you taste – everyone tastes different – pineapple or not – all guys tast different. Some are bitter, some are salty, some shoot sourness down to the back of my throat that makes me gag and worry I might puke. You all taste different – it’s part of your charm.

Have a little taste now – go on. If you’ve never tried it before you’re probably quite an incurious person, but indulge me. Have a taste. You might not like it – many people don’t – but at the very least you now know. You see yourself in the mirror every day, you’re your own constant companion – the person who knows you best. You know what you look like, sound like and smell like, so why not also see what you taste like?

Go on, try it. Salty, sweet, bitter, whatever. That’s the taste of you. And that’s what makes it so special.

Whether the rumours are true or not, I don’t want your spunk to taste like pineapple. If I wanted a pineapple I’d eat one, but I don’t, so if your spunk tastes like pineapple I’ll feel disappointed. Cheated. Because I wanted that special flavour of you – of your approval, your happiness, your sexual gratification. I wanted hot, grunting, squirting thrusts of proper, salty spunk. And you’ve given me a fucking sorbet.