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.

A quick question: just how hard can tweets such as the following fuck off out of my Twitter timeline for good?

“There are far scarier things on the loose in Essex than the escaped lion. We ran in terror from these beasts last night http://t.co/A86Tz3Hw“

The answer, I hope, is ‘very fucking hard indeed.’

There is (or, more realistically, there probably isn’t) a lion on the loose in Essex right now. The police are on the hunt and Twitter’s crawling with jokes about lions. I can cope with wardrobes and circuses and puns about ‘lion around’, but what I’m not particularly pleased with are the numerous jokes about how all Essex women are fake, ugly, desperate slags.

Haterz gotta hate

I know there are some shockingly awful people on the internet – one of the fantastic things about certain parts of it (Twitter for instance) is that you can pick and choose whether to follow them. I choose not to – I try and select people who are liberal, interesting and funny. In short: I follow people who aren’t cunts.

But unfortunately these people who aren’t cunts have massively let me down. In the last 24 hours or so I’ve seen numerous retweets of jokes like the one above. Hilarious descriptions of ‘beasts’ wandering nightclubs sprayed orange or side-splitting gags telling the police not to ‘vajazzle the pussy.’

These have been tweeted and retweeted by people I like. People who think they’re liberal. People who think they’re unjudgmental. People who sip lattes and worry about human rights and wonder what kind of political activism will have the biggest impact. Most pertinently, they’ve been retweeted by the sort of people who respect a woman’s right to bodily autonomy – to wear dungarees and a cardigan covered in soup stains if she feels like it, her right to not shave her armpits or have plastic surgery.

My problem is not with the jokes themselves – they’re annoying and cunty, sure. I’m the sort of girl who’ll twitch if people in pubs make reference to ‘2am slags’ or ‘the hot girl’s fat mate’, but I realise there’s not much point in tackling the arseholes who believe they’re mining a rich seam of comedy gold. My worry is that these jokes aren’t being made by arseholes I’m overhearing in a Wetherspoons, they’re being made by people I admire. People I usually think are funny. People who would previously have retweeted blogs I’ve written about self-confidence and body image.

Seriously, liberal people – feminists FFS – how fucking dare you do this now?

Vajazzle the fuck out of your cunt

I don’t want a vajazzle. I don’t want a spray tan. I don’t want extensions. I expect – because I am not a fucking idiot – that not all the women in Essex want these things either. But some of them do. And you don’t have to be from Essex either – quite a few women want to strut the streets wearing skimpy clothes and fake tan and padded bras and false eyelashes and a fuck of a lot of other stuff that liberal hipsters like me wouldn’t be seen dead in. And good on them.

If you want to agree with me that a woman has every right to not shave her fucking armpits, then you need to be consistent. You can’t support a woman’s right to physical autonomy if you subsequently mock and spit upon those who pick a look that you find unarousing or gross.

I recently had a conversation with a friend about ‘Snog, Marry, Avoid’, and why it was such a hateful programme. She pointed out that although they occasionally let goths and punk girls off the hook (because, apparently, they have a ‘unique style’) fortunately they do sort out the women who ‘just look like an awful mess.’ Because black lipstick and ripped fishnets is a ‘style’ but fake tan and hair extensions is ‘a mess.’

Sorry, but you don’t get to do that. You just don’t. If you’re going to champion women’s right to pick a ‘style’ and select clothes that they feel comfortable in – clothes that make them feel good and that they enjoy wearing – you can’t subsequently declare certain styles to be out of bounds.

Pick your sides, people. 

I’m standing here in my scruffy jeans, with legs I haven’t shaved for a week and piercings you wouldn’t wear to a job interview, next to hot muscular girls in dungarees and boxer shorts, and all the other types of women there are. Some are wearing floral summer dresses and subtle, how-does-she-achieve-that-look makeup. There are punks and goths and hipsters and – yes – there are scantily-clad bleach-blonde women dolled up to go to a nightclub. I don’t care who you fancy, or who you identify with, because it’s not about that. It’s about having respect for people’s choices, even when those choices don’t fit your personal worldview.

You’re either with us or against us, but you can’t just be with some of us.

Update: The police have now called off the search for the lion. World reacts with a total lack of surprise.

It’s easy to get caught up in the good qualities – when arbitrarily judging a hot boy, I’d always prefer to focus on the things that make me want to tear his pants off than tear his face off. But someone asked me to write about the negative things and so – slavishly devoted to the whims of people off of Twitter – I thought I’d have a crack. Here are my top 5 turn-offs.

1. Preening

This manifests in a number of different physical forms. As a general rule I don’t like people who are too muscular, clean-cut or well-dressed. It’s not that a solid six-pack isn’t a lovely thing to behold, or that guys in suits aren’t jaw-droppingly sexy – they are – but if you look too preened it demonstrates a commitment to That Sort Of Thing that I just can’t hope to match.

Your muscles don’t make me think ‘oooh, he works out’, but ‘shit, he’ll expect me to work out.’

2. Narrow-mindedness

This includes the obvious (racists, homophobes) as well as the not-quite-so-obvious – people who’d laugh at a friend who confessed to a foot fetish, or make their partner feel guilty about a particularly spicy sexual past. Understandably I never end up fancying these people. If your instant reaction to something different or new is to either ban it, mock it, or kill it with sticks, then we’re probably not going to get on.

3. Excessive confidence

I don’t mean someone who is just confident in their actions and their looks – these people are super-hot. I mean someone so confident they aren’t interested in other people at all.

People who act like what comes out of your mouth is just a tedious compulsory interlude between the end of their last sentence and the beginning of their next. People who say “That’s nice, now about me…” People who actively yawn if you tell an anecdote that doesn’t involve them. Don’t get me wrong – I’ve fucked my fair share of them – but I’ve now resolved not to shag anyone who’s more likely to get hard looking into a mirror than at me.

4. Excessive shyness

Socially awkward nerds, unite – shyness is not necessarily a barrier to getting laid. There’s something deeply sexy about taking a guy who is nervous and awkward and coaxing him out of his shell until he’s tying my ankles to a bedpost and calling me ‘bitch’ when he fucks me. Shyness itself is not a turn-off.

However, if you are too shy it becomes a barrier beyond which it is impossible to see. It’s not that I don’t fancy guys who are excessively shy, it’s that I am unable to tell whether I fancy them or not. If you won’t speak to me, tell me about yourself, make a stupid joke or confess to an embarrassing story, I will never know whether you’re the sort of guy I want to ride off into the sunset.

5. Nagging/neediness

“But I really want to see you tonight.”

“I notice you haven’t replied to my last email.”

“Can’t you just stay with me this weekend?”

Cards on the table, here – I’m a cold-hearted cunt. If you act casual and treat me like an overly-sexual best friend, chances are we can stay together for as long as you decide it’s fun. But if you act as if I’m the solution to all your emotional needs I’ll grow bemused and then very quickly irritated.

I love it when you want me, but I cannot bear you to need me. The bottom line is that the puppy-dog keenness that might go down well with an actual girlfriend just fills me with guilt and – occasionally, though I shudder to admit it – disgust. By nagging me to see you, email you, love you, you fool me into thinking that these are things I didn’t want to do in the first place. You stop being a person that I want to spend time with and become a task to cross off my to-do list.

In conclusion

You might have noticed that (barring elements of the first item) this isn’t just an exhaustive list of physical characteristics, like a judgmental dating site profile. The reason is probably obvious to those of you who are regular readers. Although I have a definite physical ‘type’ when it comes to men (would that dangerously hot guy from My Chemical Romance please stand up) looks aren’t that high on my ‘do I want to fuck this dude?’ checklist. It’s nice if you’re pretty, fit might be a bonus, melty dark eyes are a tasty cherry on top, but ultimately the most important things about you are the things that I can’t see.

I don’t want a pretty fuck, I want a pretty good fuck, and you don’t get to be one of those just by going to the gym and waxing your chest hair.

Background: A politician has been having a love affair with a young Russian girl, who was accused of shagging him purely so she could find out state secrets. Well, this week the courts ruled that there was no evidence that she was a spy – she just loved him.

Liberal Democrat MP Mike Hancock is a sexy man. Perhaps not to you, but he certainly is to Katia Zatuliveter.

For some reason we are aghast. We are shocked. We, as a nation, have risen as one and cried “WTF” at the sheer implausibility of someone who is young and (let me just get out my arbitrary ‘hotness’ measuring device) sexy falling for a guy who is – shudder – old.
We are so gobsmacked, in fact, that we believed her to be a spy.

She was a young, blonde Russian, for a start, so of course she was a spy. But more than that, she just had to be a spy, because the very idea that she would have been fucking an older man for anything other than money is just utterly grotesque. Awful. Unthinkable.

In his judgement (in which he allowed that Mike’s ladyfriend was, on balance, not a spy) Mr Justice Mitting concluded that “however odd it might seem, she fell for him.”

Odd indeed. Why oh why would a young (bring out the arbitrary measuring stick again!), sexy blonde fall for a beardy old Lib Dem? While you try to hold down the rising feeling of nausea at the idea of intergenerational relationships, I’ll throw out a few ideas:

Older guys are wiser

More years = more time to ingest facts and stories. Listen to an older guy talk and you’ll hear interesting tales and scintillating nuggets that, in turn, will help you to appear wise when you’re older. Just look at the weight of sexy knowledge contained within the brains of old dudes such as Ian Hislop, David Attenborough and Jeremy Clarkson.

Older men have more sexual experience

While they may still only do it in the same range of sexual positions as you’re used to, older guys have more experience and patience in bed. They are definitely more likely to make you come because they’ve had more practise at doing it.

Older guys have the aura of authority figures

Hi, teacher/driving instructor/angry army sergeant at a training camp for filthy female recruits. Older guys are hot because they can tell you off and have you really believing it. They’re a bit like dads, and therefore more likely not only to spank you like you’ve been very naughty, but also buy you ice-cream and help with your homework.

Absolutely none of the above

You know what I love in a guy? An awesome sense of humour, a filthy mind, a liberal outlook, a willingness to tolerate my excessive swearing. I am not generally bothered by his weight, his height, his body hair, or the year that happens to be printed on his driving license.

Maybe Mike Hancock is a great cook. Maybe he’s a brilliant listener. Maybe he’s sensitive, charming, funny and absolutely stunning in bed. Perhaps he makes her gasp for air as he rails her like a man possessed.

Just because we pick out one particular feature of someone (in this case his age) and dwell on it obsessively, that doesn’t necessarily mean that it is the only thing that potential partners will focus on. And just because there is a huge difference in age that doesn’t necessarily mean that this girl has an age fetish.

Forget his age and appearance for just a fraction of a second, and consider that maybe, just maybe, she loves him because he’s great.

I’m a massive, massive girl. I stand at five foot 11 in bare feet, which means that in the pretty boots I rock a good six feet three inches. Massive.

Wikipedia informs me that the average height for guys in England is five foot 9 or 10 inches (depending on age). If I only fucked guys who were taller than me I’d have spent most of my life alone.

Practicalities aside, there is genuinely nothing wrong with a male/female coupling in which the guy is shorter. The only reason we think it’s weird is because cretins point out that society has certain expectations about height. It’s a way to make people feel self-conscious about things they have no control over – playground bullying that grown ups should have grown out of.

My first ever boy was pretty small – he came just a bit higher than my shoulder. But you know what? I got used to it after about a week, and from then on the only time I noticed it was when shallow, judgemental arseholes would make comments about it.

“Don’t you get a sore neck when you’re kissing him? HAHAHA.”

No more than guys get when they’re with shorter girls, you gold-plated prick.

People pretend to be interested in the mechanics of a small guy fucking a woman who’s taller:

“Doesn’t it make it harder when you’re fucking standing up?”

No. Doesn’t your miserable attitude make it difficult for you to fuck at all?

They’re not really interested – they just want to discuss it and point out how ridiculous it is that we don’t conform to the exact physical expectations that they’d have regarding gender and height. Ha fucking ha.

Dear short men

You’re hot. But you’re not hot because you’re short – as with the vast majority of the population your height has little bearing on your fuckability. A tight, firm ass, a deliciously-placed tattoo, a penchant for dropping filthy comments into pub conversation – these are the most important things.

So no matter how many inches you have, work them with confidence. If you’re low on self-esteem there are some things you can change – you can be fatter or thinner or nicer or more likely to put out, but you cannot change your height – rock whatever you have with confidence and charm, and the people who matter will fuck you no matter what.

Some guys try and disguise their height with, for instance, big shoes or by *cough* Sarkozy *cough* standing on a box. But not only is it unnecessary, I’d argue that it’s actually going to make you look worse.

I’d never turn down a fuck with someone just because they were short. But I might turn one down if he was massively paranoid about the difference between him and me. If he was uncomfortable about standing next to me, or hated it when I wore boots, or made me feel like I should slouch when I was around him – those are crappy things to do. Being short? That’s just who you are.

So dress yourself up, go out, talk to ladies, shatter people’s expectations, be great at your job, stand up like you mean it – love things, fuck things, do good in the world. And if anyone mocks your height or laughs at you when you’re with a taller woman, give them the biggest ‘fuck off’ you can muster. You’re always going to be short, but you should never ever feel small.

Dear tall women

Once I was in bed with a guy who whispered to me:

“You know, the great thing about small women is you can put them up against a wall and fuck them.”

I’m 5′ 11″ – a giantess of a woman – he wasn’t talking about me. Since then I’ve had occasional issues with my height – I used to find out how tall guys were before I went on dates with them so I’d know whether I was OK to wear heels. I’d slouch and I’d lean and I’d try to do most things sitting down. I’d refrain from dancing, I’d wear flats, I’d voluntarily make my life less fun just in case people judged me for being tall.

But since then, other guys have said other things:

“Fuck, you’re so tall. I fucking love tall girls.”

“Wear the massive pretty boots. Please?”

And I learned something utterly crucial: the best guys couldn’t give a flying fuck. Whether you’re five foot five or six foot six, a decent guy will fuck you anyway. Men don’t usually shag you because of your specific physical features – they shag you because you rock them with confidence.

So the next time someone says “wow, you’re tall for a lady” I want you to grab the nearest thing off a high shelf and fling it at their stupid sexist head. Find your biggest, stampiest pair of boots and crush them beneath the heel. Stand up straight, pull your shoulders back, and use your long, gorgeous legs to swing a kick in their general direction.

Because you’re massive, and brilliant, and you can take on the world if you want to. Don’t let that world make you feel small.