I’m inclined to give Edwin a pass for a few different reasons, but the largest is that he really is so self-centered and socially clueless that he almost certainly never meant any harm, even when his behavior left a great deal to be desired. While I don’t want to date or fuck or even be close friends with prohibitively self-centered and socially clueless people (socially clueless is sometimes endearing to a point, but there are limits), I don’t mind a casual friendship with one here and there.

It’s weird to talk to an ex after a long period of no contact. Sure, he’s called me a few times sporadically on some pretext or other, but we stopped talking regularly last Fall, and now we seem to be inching toward a casual friendship point again. I guess. There’s something awkward about not knowing what you’re supposed to talk about, what’s going to open up old wounds or just plain be too personal. I pay attention to these things; I’m not sure he does.

In just a few conversations he’s mentioned a lot of odd and personal things, including but not limited to the following:

• He can’t go to the club without being hit on by all the ladies. (He’s mentioned this one on at least three separate occasions.)
• He lasts longer in bed than he used to.
• He’s so damn good-looking.
• The shower in his new residence is perfect for fucking in.
• He wants to find a Halloween costume this year that will show off his damn good-looking body.

It’s not that I have an issue with intimate disclosures (duh), but it all seems a little over-the-top, considering. Maybe he still harbors some resentment about the break up and wants to “[tell] me what I’m missing”, or maybe he thinks these are the sorts of things I’d be interested in because we’ve always been pretty candid in the past. Whatever the reason, these tidbits read as slightly off coming from an ex. Or possibly anyone else: I don’t want to hear anyone go on and on about what it’s like to be insanely fetching. Who even says that? It all ties in perfectly with his ongoing self-centered, socially clueless shtick.

I’m not exactly worried that he’s trying to entice me back or anything. Well, maybe a tiny bit, but I’m not vain enough to assume it. For now I’m just going to call it curious, funny, and slightly off-putting.  Still well better than our relationship when we were dating, though!

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Modern demons have advanced a bit.

Words are like people. Complex. They each have a history, an evolution. And just like when you sleep with someone you’re also sleeping with everyone that person has ever slept with (hawt), when you say a word you summon up all these wonderful tendrils of ghostly meanings that you might not even realize.

And some of the tendrils just tickle me.

Chastity and celibacy are now used interchangeably to mean “miserable”…er, rather, to mean “the state of not fucking”. In days of yore, though, neither of them meant that. You could actually be either and also get laid. Chastity referred to having no illicit sexual liaisons, so no-frills sex inside marriage for purposes of procreation was perfectly chaste. Celibacy simply meant “the state of not marrying”. Celibate clergy would have loads of bastard babies back in yore.

The etymological roots of incubus and succubus come from the Latin for “to lie upon” and “to lie under”, respectively. This suggests that even demons observe the missionary position. How bland.

There’s no point to this other than the fact that I find it terribly interesting.

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I don’t know how parents determine their daughter’s clitoris is “too big”. I don’t even know what that means. I was under the impression that big clitorises were sexy anyway, but no one should be evaluating a child’s genitals in such a way unless they’re presenting an actual medical problem. “Being bigger than average” isn’t a medical problem. But somehow, a bunch of parents decided their daughters’ clitorises were too big, and turned to Dr. Dix P. Poppas for help (you probably think I made that name up, but I didn’t even!).

Dr. Dix P. Poppas is nothing if not helpful. According to this and this and this he’ll helpfully hack into your child’s healthy clitoris (as young as 4 months) and pare it down to some arbitrary acceptable size. Then he’ll stimulate her clitoris with a vibrating device and ask her how it feels… not just once, no! Every year. He’ll keep a chart. A chart of your daughter’s mutilated clitoris’s sexual response. Across years.

There’s no way to convey this in normal-sized font, so…

Creepy. Evil. Creepy.

Why this is guy allowed perform experimental surgery on children and then systematically molest them is anyone’s guess.

I posted about this on twitter the other night, and comparisons were naturally made to male circumcision, which I’m also entirely against (concerning male circ, Holly Pervocracy wrote about it recently, and made some excellent points, as she tends to do). I’m not sure if we’re talking equal atrocities considering the potentially-scarring, prolonged aftercare involved, but to me these seem like obvious civil rights issues. We’re talking about the physical integrity of a person. You don’t fuck with that, even if you’re that person’s legal guardian. What am I missing here?

Maybe it’s down to the fact that I don’t want kids and can’t realistically put myself in the position of a parent, so maybe there are complexities to this I can’t grasp, but when we’re talking circumcision I’m appalled when otherwise-intelligent people whose opinions I respect trot out tired, unsound reasons for cutting off pieces of their hypothetical babies’ genitals. I’m not going to fight all the stupid pro-circ. myths right now because Intact America does a thorough job here. But really, the bottom line is that I just feel that cutting a child’s genitals for arbitrary reasons is never justified. Trust me, when they’re adults they’ll have plenty of time to decide if they want to mutilate their own genitals.

Why would anyone force a child to submit to any surgery that’s medically unnecessary? Or does that just go back to the “Why is there evil in the world?” question.

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She's measuring.

My hair is currently– for the first time ever– short enough to easily determine which direction the whorl goes. It opens up a whole world of possibilities. Like, I can finally figure out whether I’m a gay man or not.

In the early to mid aughts we started hearing about research that suggested that more gay men had counterclockwise hair whorls (about 23%) than one finds in the general population (about 8%). This accompanied other modern-day phrenology like relative finger lengths, thumbprint ring density, left-handedness, that all seemed to correlate (according to some studies) in varying degrees with gayness.

But it seems like the finger length and whorl things are trotted out most often, probably because you can compare them more easily in a social setting, but they’re subtler than left-hand dominance. Can you imagine saying, “Oh, you’re left handed! Surely you’re gay!” It would be absurd! But I’ve heard people say that a counterclockwise whorl means someone’s gay, having a longer index than ring finger means that you like guys, or having a longer ring finger means you’re attracted to women.

I don’t know about you, but by varying the pitch of my fingers slightly I can make either one look longer, although I think my index finger is slightly longer, which means OH GOD I’M NOT REALLY A BISEXUAL! I also have a clockwise whorl and I’m right-handed. Oh, god. But actually, no one seems to study the physical differences in the bisexual population. I guess they’re just waiting for us to make up our minds.

I feel like things get dangerous when the public gets a hold of data from (more or less) scientific studies or surveys. Holly’s post on Monday points out a perfect example of this phenomenon, discussing some article that dimly justifies tired gender stereotypes with the decrees of some monolithic entity call science, which doesn’t appear to function quite like any actual scientific community I’ve ever heard of.

Take the whorl thing. The only study I’m aware of that examines the population of counterclockwise whorls on homosexual heads occurred at a Pride Festival in Southern California. Its sample size was about 50 men, which isn’t large enough to “prove” much of anything. We could say that the study suggests that gay men may be more apt to have counterclockwise whorls, but without actually knowing if there was adequate control we could also say that counterclockwise whorls could be disproportionately represented in Southern Californians, or in extroverts, who might be more liable to attend an outdoor festival, or maybe there are more counterclockwise whorls in men who are out, but closeted men have the standard 8% of whorls. We don’t know. We didn’t do the study, and unless we have access to all the information we might just be parroting piffle.

There are reasons it would be cool if we could prove that homosexuality was genetic. All that talk about “choice” might melt away, and maybe people would stop being jerks, right? Right? Maybe. But finding a “cause” for gayness is pretty damn close to protesting that it’s “not their fault”, isn’t it? And there’s no fault anywhere, so we definitely don’t have to go looking for whom to blame. At this time in history, isolating a “gay gene”, or the non-simplistic form of the same concept, would invariably spawn a movement to cure it. Same-sex attraction existing is awesome. It adds to the rich tapestry of human experience, and I personally don’t want to be cured of it because chicks are hot.

The thing is, it makes a good story to say that there are physical “symptoms” of gayness, but as far as I’m concerned the only reliable tell is the whole “sleeping with someone of the same gender” thing, and even that can sometimes steer you wrong.

I don’t get the whole baby thing. My reproductive drive, my biological clock, is completely absent. I’ve never wanted kids; I’ve never even thought “maybe someday…”. I didn’t like to play with dolls as a kid (My Little Ponies FTW), I wish I were sterile now, and nothing has ever shaken my utter disinterest in baby-having. Which is weird considering that my baby-making (read: fucking) drive is insatiable and biologically you’d think those two things might be linked. I guess I just prefer orgasms to changing diapers. Actually, when you put it that way it’s not even slightly weird.

I realize that everyone is different, and evolutionarily speaking, I’m the one who’s broken here. I’m an evolutionary dead-end and all these happy mommies-to-be are passing on their genes. Still, it boggles my mind that there are people so enthusiastic about living my worst nightmare. But however hard it may be, I try to be polite when people are getting excited about their waxing bellies and baby registries and so forth, and I make an effort to listen to their thoughts on impending parenting challenges.

One of my friends (due in August, I think) is a feminist and an engineer. She’s unsure of whether she’s carrying a boy or a girl, but either way she intends to practice gender neutral parenting as far as practicality allows. Gender neutral parenting, as I understand it, tries to insulate a child from expectations to conform to gender stereotypes (e.g. girls wear princess dresses and play with dolls, boys get all the cool toys), allowing children the freedom to make up their minds about interests and preferences. This parenting style sounds awesome… idealistic, difficult, and probably frustrating at times, but awesome.

My friend mentioned several things, including the fact that she’s becoming more and more sensitive to gendered sayings like “boys will be boys”, and that she doesn’t intend to dress her child in the traditional pink or blue to denote her/his sex.

I don’t dislike pink, but I really, really dislike the practice of slapping pink on something (e.g. a cell phone, skateboard, or gun) and expecting it to automatically appeal to women. I also dislike the fact that little boys– hell, even men– are discouraged from wearing and liking pink for no good reason. Far be it from me to say that you can’t dress your little girl in pink or your little boy in blue. I don’t care how you dress your child. But I’m not sure I buy the suggestion that these are innate color preferences dictated by gender.

One study performed a few years ago by Newcastle University researchers reported that female test subjects tended to like colors at the redder end of the spectrum compared to men. Apparently because they found that this pattern was true for a handful of subjects born and raised in China, so the researchers concluded that the preference is biological. According to one of the researchers: “Evolution may have driven females to prefer reddish colours – reddish fruits, healthy, reddish faces. Culture may exploit and compound this natural female preference.”

I don’t understand how you get to exclude social conditioning and cultural impact as factors just because 37 of your subjects come from a non-isolated foreign country. That seems wildly assumptive to me.

In Western society, pink=girl blue=boy is a very recent phenomenon, emerging in the last hundred years or so. More interesting still, many sources suggest that in the past these colors were reversed, and many magazines and books listed blue as the correct color for girls and pink for boys. Blue was seen as delicate, pretty, and feminine, while pink was seen as the diminutive of exuberant, manly red. The current color standard definitely doesn’t date back to the earliest flickers of civilization.

It doesn’t really matter if women generally prefer pink to blue. Maybe they’re just taught that pink is for girls, or maybe their primitive minds really are seeking out ripe berries. Maybe it’s a little of each, or maybe there’s something else altogether going on. It’s intellectually worthwhile, though, to challenge anything that reinforces cultural stereotypes by saying “we’re just wired that way”. Reducing our behaviors and thoughts to the remnants of a simpler time when all humankind was interested in was eating, fucking, and raising young is lazy. It lets us just ignore thousands of years of social pressure, and countless other variables. It’s too easy, and it’s too easily manipulated. You can end up with lots of hilarious assumptions, but often not much science.

I have precious little tolerance for the intolerant. When people get all judgmental and sexist, racist, heterosexist, cisgenderist, vanillaist, or any one of a number of other kinds of “ist”s I haven’t made up yet, my hackles tend to raise. But then I realize that, to a point, I’m talking about the man in the mirror. Because I’m not immune to being judgmental myself, and not just against the judgmental.

You see, I’m really kind of a dick about furries.

I’ve recently learned, through the mystery-annihilating magic of multiple social networking sites, that a few of my friends and acquaintances are attending a furry convention. I’ll say it again. They are going to a furry convention.

I don’t know why, but furries are that thing for me: the thing that strikes my “that just ain’t right” reflex in that oh-so-special way, to the point that if I learn that you like to dress up as an anthropomorphic animal to get your kicks, I’m going to start thinking less of you. It’s something I’m trying to grow past, but for now it’s the truth.

I understand that not all people within furry culture consider it a sex thing. I guess for some it might just be an extension of cosplay/dressing up/costuming. Or something. But it seems like many argue that it’s not just a sex thing. Which means, correct me if I’m wrong, that it partly is.

This prejudice against furries is not sex positive, open-minded, or even rational of me. In fact, the rational side of me is happy that they’re having their fun. But at the same time, another side of me is thinking “Ew. That’s…it’s…that just ain’t right.” I definitely don’t have a particular distaste for any other costuming hobbies. I also wouldn’t have this reaction to most sexual fetishes, even though I share–as far as I know– none of them. Do you like to pee on each other? Glad you’re enjoying yourselves. You want to coat yourself in liquid latex? Have at it. Beat each other with lit sparklers while climaxing? Can I watch? Oddly enough, I think pony play is kind of cute. Weirder still, if you’re a zoophile all I really care about is that you’re not abusing your animal sex partners, and that you honor consent inasmuch as you actually can. Hell, if I eat a hamburger and you let a bull fuck you, who’s doing more harm?

But furries? That’s, inexplicably, my line. In my book, it’s just slightly less appalling than scat. Why? I don’t know!

Well, I kind of know. For some reason, animals that are too anthropomorphic have always creeped me out. Beatrix Potter and Winnie the Pooh characters are fine, but anything approaching Hanna Barbera or team mascot level distortion unsettles the hell out of me, actually gives me goosebumps. I have no idea why that is, but it’s been true for as long as I can remember. So furries work that particular hypersensitive nerve for me, and sexualizing something that’s already creeptastic makes it even more troubling. This is why most of us don’t like to picture people we find repulsive having sex.

However, I suspect I’m also buying into the social stigma against furries, the “let’s all make fun of the plush-fuckers because it’s easy” crap that we all seem to get away with and don’t even bother to examine. And even now, my brain is serving up all these excuses, like “But it’s icky! And you know some of them are into some really weird shit.” (because of my terrible bias I have no idea how disturbing these links actually are, but I think very, so take care) But so what? That’s their fantasy world. I don’t want to be a part of it, but do I have to go out of my way to judge it?

Shame on me and my that-just-ain’t-right-ism.

…But still, ew.

The Candie’s Foundation, founded in 2001 by Candie’s, a shoe/apparel/fragrance brand, was started to “shape the way young people in America think about teen pregnancy and parenthood.” and “…educate America’s youth about the devastating consequences of teenage pregnancy.” My snarky side can’t help but wonder if this foundation carries an air of overcompensation about it, considering the fact that Candie’s has drawn heat over racy ad campaigns in the past, such as a print ad photograph of Jenny McCarthy sitting on a toilet, and this fragrance ad (see right) that had to be modified to a “tamer” version for certain publications by removing the condoms and butt crack (because, you know, depicting an unsafe sexual situation is much tamer), but remains hypersexual and (to some) disturbing in either iteration.

I don’t disagree with the Candie’s Foundation’s purpose. They state on their website that the “only 100% way to avoid pregnancy is to not have sex. If you do have sex, you need to use protection every time.” And guess what, urban legends about semen-laced bullets notwithstanding, they’re right! Their discourse is abstinence heavy, but stops short of advocating abstinence-only education. I have no problem with promoting abstinence to a point. After all, many teenagers aren’t ready for sex, and it’s perfectly okay to try to encourage them to wait until they are ready. Candie’s Foundation has used spokeshotties like Hayden Panettiere, Beyoncé, Usher, and Hillary Duff, people that their target audience might look up to, as well as famous cautionary tales like Jamie Lynn Spears and Bristol Palin, to drive this point home.

One aspect I dislike about the Candie’s Foundation’s methods is that they promote a “Don’t be a slut! Be a tease!“ message. This is not their only message, but it is very well-represented in their campaigns. They offer t-shirts and tank tops that have “I’m SEXY enough… to keep you waiting.” emblazoned on the front. I don’t think it’s wise, helpful, or empowering to pressure young women to try to be sexy (i.e. an object of someone else’s desire), while telling them that if they actually act on their own sexual desires they’ll be devalued.

The foundation’s new PSA features Bristol Palin, daughter of Sarah Palin and single teenage mother of some kid with a name that’s just about as weird as hers, saying “What if I didn’t come from a famous family? What if I didn’t have all their support? What if I didn’t have all these opportunities? Believe me, it wouldn’t be pretty. Pause before you play.”

I’m assuming that “pause” here means to either stop and obtain birth control or stop and think, inclusive. I don’t interpret it as a strict “no sex until marriage” message, but you can watch it below and come to your own conclusions.

I make enthusiastic use of both vulgar and euphemistic slang when it comes to my girl parts, for reasons manifold. First of all, there’s no good catch-all official term that includes all female genitalia. You know the whole “boys have a penis, girls have a vagina” thing? It’s tragically incomplete. Girls each have a vagina, yes, but that word only comprehends the internal canal, and that really doesn’t cut it when we’re talking about sex organs– even just the fun ones. The external genitalia is called a vulva. So when someone says “she has a cute vagina” that someone is probably either wielding an autopsy saw, or just plain confused.

You can argue that the term “penis” doesn’t describe a man’s complete genital package, considering that testicles are left out. However, vulvas and vaginas and penises are all usually considered central to sexual response and interaction. Balls are more a fun embellishment, like nipple stimulation or perineal play. (Anyway, stop trying to derail my pedantic flow with your pedantry.) The vulva/vagina combo is fundamental. The way I see it, it’s more like the head of the penis and the shaft than the penis and balls. It’s one well-oiled, multi-faceted, stupendous orgasm-making machine. But what do you call a vulva/vagina combo? I dunno. A pussy, right?

Or one of the countless other colloquial solutions. I mean, no one ever insists “No no no! My cunt doesn’t include my labia majora. Why on earth would you say that?” Slang is so deliciously vague. And we need that forgiving linguistic mist, or more people will walk around calling vulvas vaginas and I will just scream. I don’t want to live in that world.

There are other reasons for the slang, though. To some people, hearing “I want you touch my vulva like this…” doesn’t exactly provoke feverish lust. It’s too clinical. “Slap my little cunt harder” or similar might get a more enthusiastic response.

Also, some of these terms are terribly fun to say. We’ll come back to that.

When it comes to advertising, there’s a special problem, because apparently even when we’re talking about a body part in the most practical, least sexual sense, networks don’t want to hear the word, as Kotex recently discovered when they tried to air a pert little tampon commercial that mocks tampon advertising tropes and featured the word “vagina”, which is incidentally where you put tampons. The networks didn’t even want to hear a euphemism like “down there”, which Kotex used in their second cut after “vagina” was rejected. I’m supposing they sure as hell don’t want to hear “cunt”.

Which is one of the reasons I think Moon Cup’s new website loveyourvagina.com is clever. (For those of you who don’t know, a Moon Cup is a soft silicone cup that you put in your [actual] vagina to catch your menstrual discharge instead of using a tampon or pad. I suspect the motive for all this has to do with ecology, feminism, or possibly both. I’m half tempted to try a moon cup and revue it because I think it could potentially end up being my comic masterpiece. Please comment on this entry to let me know if this is a great idea or too horrifying.) I can’t say that their hours-of-fun list of publicly generated and ranked terms for female genitalia has anything to do with Kotex’s recent debacle, but it’s definitely an internet fuck-you to network sensibilities, which is what viral marketing is all about, I guess. And! “Cunt” is coming in third!

I refuse to comment on LYV’s use of the word “vagina” beyond saying that it’s clear that their product is meant for vaginae (the real plural form of vagina, I swear!) while it’s also clear that they’re asking for terms describing the vulva/vagina combo. Sometimes I feel like I need Jeff Goldblum to put drops of water on my hand and explain incomprehensible things to me.

So I decided to review a few of my favorites from my own daily vocabulary as well as some I pulled off loveyourvagina.com. I can guarantee that very few people will agree with me across the board here, so I’m not speaking for all women or all disabled bisexuals who like dinosaurs or all anythings.

1. Pussy! (#5 according to LYV) To me, pussy is the best all-purpose term. Clever you probably guessed this when you read my site’s name. I don’t feeling dumb saying this during sex or in casual conversation. It seems playful, fun, and a little dirty to me.
2. Cunt! (#3 on LYV) I once saw a documentary TV show where an old gray-haired lady joyfully explained that the Middle English terms “cock” and “cunt” went together, and her enthusiasm softened my feelings about the c-word considerably. By sound alone, cunt is an abrupt, rude word, which isn’t always a bad thing. It is kind of annoying when people use cunt as an insult* because it sounds so violent but it just means “vulva/vagina combo”. The playfulness seems to seep out of the whole enterprise and we’re just left with a slap of a word that seems to be directed toward female anatomy. But a little levity softens it enough to make it hilarious. To describe anatomy, cunt is sometimes very erotic but it’s funny conversationally. “My cunt is hungry for manflesh” is automatically funnier than it would be with almost any other word.
3. Twat! (no rank on LYV) Old sassy ladies can use this to describe their genitals. The rest of us need to use it primarily as an insult.* In that respect, it may be unmatched.
4. Cunny! (#530 on LYV) Cunny is supremely fun to say. Try it now. I’ll wait. I can’t see myself using it in an intimate context, but it is great for daywear. If you’ve watched the B.B.C./H.B.O. series Rome, you may suspect why I particularly love this term, and you’re right! I also frequently use the phrase “wet as October” to jokingly indicate arousal for the same reason. Plus, October is a wet month where I come from.
5. Lady Business! (#176 on LYV) This one makes me laugh every time I hear it. It’s so delicate that it goes back around into filthy. Or maybe just funny.
6. Pudendum! (#278 on LYV) Derived from Latin for “to be ashamed”, pudenda is not a sex-positive term. I cannot say it without a fake accent. Can you?
7. Vajajay! (#14 on LYV) I can’t stand this one, mostly because grown women tend to use this toddler-learning-to-talk term without a hint of irony. They are what’s wrong with society. I’m only half kidding here.
8. The Downtown Dining and Entertainment District! (#2 on LYV) Although this is another overly-euphemistic, “I don’t want to say a word that might make my mouth dirty” kind of term, it’s also too cute, so I don’t mind it. I would only use it if I were talking to someone I knew would be alarmed by a more aggressive term, but also wasn’t horrified by the inherent sexual implications therein. In my world, that leaves about two people.
9. Vagoo! (#59 on LYV) This is another one I can’t imagine saying while actually using the body parts in question: “Ooooh, pound my vagoo harder! Yes!” Um, no. I know several grown men who use this one, though, and it is a glorious thing to witness.
10. Moot? (#1 on LYV) So “moot” is winning as I write this. It’s the most popular term, and absolutely new to me. A very quick google hunt tells me that it probably originates in Australia, and is supposed to rhyme with “foot”. It’s awkward to say and not even accidentally sexy, but the people have spoken! Maybe it’s a cultural thing and I don’t just “get” it. I’ll try it in a sentence, maybe: “The Australian put the boomerang in her moot.” This just isn’t working for me. I tried!

Honorable mentions go to Panty Hamster (n/a), Snatch (#21), Coochie Snorcher (n/a), Axe Wound (n/a),  Pootie Tang (#343), Cowhead (n/a), Yoni (#42), The Fiefdom (#689), and the ever-enigmatic Giraffe’s Ear (#842). Couldn’t have done it without you guys.

*Using terms for female (or male) genitals as an insult is a whole other issue that I’ll probably want to delve into another time. Sometimes it bugs me, sometimes it doesn’t.

The official record on penis size is, understandably, a source of contention and much gnashing of teeth. The blue whale’s mighty member can measure up to 8 feet long, but that’s not very impressive in proportion to his massive body. It’d be like an average-sized man having a 10 cm penis– which happens, of course, but it’s not getting into any record books.

Barnacles have the biggest penes proportionally (about 40 times the length of their bodies or something insane like that), and since most species of barnacles are hermaphrodites, they mostly all get them. Of course, if each of us had been born with a forty-million-dollar trust fund, none of us would feel all that rich, now would we?

If you care only about vertebrates, look no further than the Argentine Blue-bill duck, who curls all 17 inches of his pendulous prick up inside his cloaca until it’s business time. And most birds don’t even have pricks, so in birdland, this one-eyed snake is king.

If you are so terribly anthropocentric that you care only about human vertebrates, then the largest verified penis measured in at 13.5 inches in length and 6.25 inches around (I’m assuming that’s erect), documented in the early 1900s. This guy matches that length, and is 9 inches flaccid.

This entire italic section is a huge digression, by the way.

Here’s the interesting thing about what women like when it comes to penis size, and what I’m about to share is absolutely true…

• Some women like a lot of length.
• Some women prefer more girth.
• Some women want exceptional length and girth.
• Some women prefer average or smaller measurements in length and/or girth.
• Some women don’t really care, they just like cock.
• Some women are revolted by cock and would like you to put yours away now.
• I’m going out on a limb to say that men fall into similar categories regarding penises that aren’t theirs.

Did I miss anything? My point, of course, is that I can’t say that penis size is or isn’t a big deal. It all depends on whom we’re asking. Some size queens are going to be disappointed with certain guys that are still statistically above average, and some women who aren’t into deep-dicking don’t understand what all the fuss is about.

Then, there are those guys who don’t seem to trust what their partners think and feel inadequate no matter what. Penile dysmorphic disorder must be a sober road to travel, and I can relate to it in a sense. Clearly there’s some societal pressure in play: guys feel like they need to measure up to be virile and alpha and all that, and it must be hard. Kind of like, say, having photoshopped fashion models with B.M.I.s of 16 shoved in your face all the time and being told they’re the non-negotiable physical ideal. Or something.

It becomes obvious why this penis extension sleeve and other such products start to seem like a logical option.

Personally, I’ve never had sex with a cock that felt “too small”, but maybe I’ve just been lucky. It’s hard to really compare them to the average cock (roughly 6 inches long, 4.75 inches in circumference erect, if you’re curious) without my trusty tape measure. And of course every guy I’ve been with claimed to be above average. I can say, however, that the first one I experienced was also the smallest, and going back to that size might be a trifle disappointing. Just being honest.

If a penis works and is attached to someone I’m partial to, size isn’t a primary consideration. And there’s such a thing as uncomfortably big for me, especially since I hate getting my cervix pummeled and I tend not to use lube for vaginal sex. But again, this is just me.

So far I’ve been reveling in the subjectivity of it all (which is what I often do, because I think pretty near everything is subjective, being the godless harlot that I am), but do you think human beings with our tinkering monkey minds have really been content to leave it at that? Of course you don’t. Deep down you knew that people like Ed were working hard on the problem.

Most guys have used rulers and tape measures and eased their cocks into empty toilet paper rolls to figure out length and circumference. They likely even compared numbers and roll snugness with their friends or strangers on the internet. But Ed has taken it to a whole different level. Ed wrote an ebook! And, of course, Ed made a graph.

Based on Ed’s extensive non-medical research, which I’m not sure but I think probably involves the super-empirical “asking women on the internet how they feel about their partners’ self-reported sizes” method, the perfect penis is… it kind of looks like anywhere between 7.125 and 8.375 long and between 6.125 and 6.375 inches in circumference. Anyway, the red blob. If your penis is longer, shorter, girthier, or skinnier than that, it’s relegated to “very satisfying but not ideal”, “satisfying”, or “enjoyable”. Or, heaven forbid, “not satisfying” and “freaky”.

Ed’s pretty fucking harsh. There. I said it. Also, am I the only one who thinks these circumference measurements are just a smidge unrealistic? My huge mitt is 8″ around at the widest point when in a silent duck posture, so you’d better believe that 7″ is firmly in fisting territory when we’re talking smallish female hands. For me, that amount of pain wouldn’t be very “satisfying”.

It’s too bad penises aren’t jointed or prehensile or something, because I’ve had all sorts of orgasms with just one finger in my pussy. Or with nothing at all in there, for that matter! Has anyone told Ed about my clitoris yet?

So of course all this left me wondering about my cock. A reported 7″ insertable and 5.5″ around (although my measurements place it at closer to 5″), my Feeldoe is solidly above average. It can fit partway into a toilet paper roll but then it gets stuck. Ed’s chart asserts that it would need another good inch of circumference to be “ideal”, and as it is it’s only “satisfying”.

I have fucked myself with that cock, and yes, it is satisfying. It’s “satisfying” like there’s “a bit of a problem between Shias and Sunnis”. Accurate, sure, but not exactly astute. Can you imagine coming up for air after fucking someone, searching her eyes dreamily, hoping she found it as glorious as you did, and then she remarks blandly, “Well, that was enjoyable.”

Bish please! Maybe you forgot that it vibrates.

Don't make this weird.

Happy International Women’s Day, everybody!

In honor of this highest and holiest of high holy days, I’m going to reveal something that may shock some people, and here it is: We’re really actually not living in a post-sexist age. Your mind’s blown, isn’t it?

I’m not here to tell you it necessarily sucks to be female, although concerning some parts of the world we can certainly make that argument. For me, though, in all my incredible comparative privilege, I more or less like being a chick and I’m not ready to turn in my pussy card just yet.

But even nestled in the bosom of Western culture we haven’t attained the basic equality that women set out to achieve generations ago. We’re closer, but we’re so not there. Equal pay for equal work is still a goal rather than a reality. Our culture produces children who believe that violence against women is easily justified. One in six women is sexually assaulted in her lifetime, and all too often it’s perfectly acceptable to blame her.

Women are still sexual objects, not just to some people, but to society as a whole. I know 20-year-old women who have anxiety over being “too old”. Too old to have a kick-ass career? Too old to make a difference politically or socially? Nope. Too old to be a doe-eyed ingenue; too old to be Miley Cyrus. Apparently legal is the new expired. And realizing that being pretty gets us more appreciation and success than any other positive trait, way too many of us have a near-religious conviction that we’re ugly: too fat, too tall, too short, too flat-chested, too pimpled, too muscular, too pale, too dark, too scrawny, too imperfect. We think that our toes are weird or that our stretch marks mean that no one will ever love us. And if no one is going to love us, we are somehow worthless.

If we mention that these things are unfair, we’ll often get called unbalanced, emotional, or irrational. There are still so many things to tackle, but as a small nerdy she-fish in an ocean of crap I wish women didn’t have to deal with, I’m starting tiny.

I’m starting with sexual harassment at the Sci Fi Conventions I go to.

Here’s an imagination exercise: Take a bunch of people who likely faced romantic rejection and isolation growing up, making sure that a healthy percentage of these are shitty at recognizing social cues. Add a common interest they may not get to talk to real people about all that often, and all the excitement and adjacent libido that would naturally result. Put some of these people in costumes designed to make the wearers look (with varying success) like cartoon and video game characters, and put others in corsets. There will also be people inexplicably wandering around wearing cat ears.

Hi there. It looks like you have a Fan Convention on your hands. You realize, of course, that with all those roiling factors in play, someone is going to try to fuck up this nerdy utopia by being super creepy, right? Some guy will inevitably think that the hot costumes exist only for his personal enjoyment and that any woman who likes the same TV shows he does must be praying nightly for someone just like him to appear and grope her tits.

Which is why I’ve taken on the daunting task of organizing an anti-harassment project at my local con. The convention has a sexual harassment policy in place already, but it hasn’t been implemented all that well, and some creeptastic geek-on-geek crimes have been perpetrated.

Creeps have been routinely grabbing or hugging people without permission or warning, commenting on their bodies uninvited, flirting aggressively… you know, the things that you might have heard about cons that make you reluctant to ever go to one, but that shouldn’t be tolerated. Worse, the injured parties have been afraid to report these incidents to con staff because they’re worried about seeming hypersensitive, or like trouble-makers.

But how fucked up does a culture (or subculture) have to be to alienate the victim and make the offender feel justified? Just because men tend to outnumber women at these things doesn’t mean they get to make it a boys’ club where the women attending are just so many sacrifices to the communal hard-on. And neither do women get to harass men, nor men men, nor women women. Let’s just be universally uncreepy.

Of course, nerds flirt at conventions. They get laid at conventions and have glorious, debaucherous times in an environment where free love and free energy drinks reign. I don’t want to put a damper on that, but seriously, the creepy people need to back the fuck off, practice common respect, and only put their hands where they’re expressly invited.

So I’m going to work to make sure the harassment policies are accessible to everyone, to educate the con staff and the con guests how to deal with creepy person encounters, witnessed or experienced, and to open a dialogue about this stuff. I’m going to try to make my little corner of fandom safer for catgirls and cosplayers.

In reality, though, there’s a good chance I’ll set a terrible example for everyone by shouting off-color jokes all over the place. But at least my horrible behavior will be a good talking point for whichever brave warrior takes over my post after I’m escorted off the premises.