This past weekend I was at a geeky convention¹. I could tell you stories about what happened there: about flirtations both new and continuing, about glances both electric and slimy, about my butt cheeks both covered and substantially less covered.

But instead I’m going to tell you about what I will charitably call an idea for an art project, and why it made me need to leave the room.

On Friday evening there was a chance to present ideas for projects and activities to improve the con, and get funding for them. I was watching the proceedings and trying to figure out how to convince the board that it wanted to buy me a life-size, working replica of the 1989 Batman film’s Batmobile. Another con attendee– middle aged, bearded, paunchy, and probably wearing a kilt² or something– was pitching his plan. He wanted to make a human-shaped PC kiosk, essentially. Quoth he: “The monitor would be the head, and we could make the body male or female, depending on how kinky we wanted to get…”

You know, because a male body’s normal and a female body is kinky. Yeah.

I think I may have been the only person in the room who flinched, or even minded, but Sigyn’s bowl, did that irritate me. I wasn’t even sure why, but I had to leave immediately to go run my hands up and down my intrisically-kinky-because-female body. Wait, no, I left to wander around the convention.

It took me a little while to suss out exactly why I was so bothered that a random nerdy stranger was othering and eroticizing female bodies, especially considering the fact that I live on Earth and we get this all the time. But I finally figured it out the main reason I wanted to Feminist Hulksmash things: in short, I was irritated because he was right. His casual, unaware sexism not only reflected how things worked, it was so self-evident to everyone present that things work that way that no one else even seemed to notice.

The female body is kinky. It is inherently sexual in our culture. Not only that, but even just the words “the female body” are usually code for a young, attractive, very likely white, able, cisgendered, female body. An older female body, a larger female body, etc. may still be seen as kinky, but now it’s a fetish. If you’re a woman and it’s difficult for whatever reason to sexualize your body, your womanhood is questioned, and you become invisible.

Now, these are realities that seem completely obvious to some of us, but there remain people who have never had any compelling reason to think about them. And I guess it bothered me to hear– not these facts, but their fruit, so casually uttered and so casually accepted.

My body is kinky. My body’s worth is measured in erections. Today I may live up to some basic, generic standards of attractiveness (and I’m not even going to pretend that within the current system that can’t be used to one’s advantage like possibly even more than the Batmobile), but tomorrow I may not, and on that tomorrow I’ll be a cipher or an ever more deviant kink. However I feel about myself or my body personally, these things aren’t really my choice. If I am very lucky, then for a relatively short time I can be lust-shaped; person-shaped is a rather lot to ask.

Some people wonder why feminists are still talking about privilege, about the male gaze, why we’re not shutting up now that we can vote and stuff. To these people I answer: It recently occurred to me that a kiosk may have more of a chance of just being person-shaped than I do, as long as you build it male.

(image source)

1. Which, as you read this, I may or may not still be in bed recovering from.
2. I don’t remember what he was wearing, but trust me, if there’s anything my years of con-going experience have taught me, it’s that there’s a 43% chance it involved a kilt.

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Lesbians are sexually attracted to females. This does not include trans women with penises.

Hold the fuck up there.

First off, hasn’t feminism– especially queer feminism– been dealing for over a century with how fucked up it is that other people try to define “correct” womanhood for us? Distinguishing between “female” and “woman” here may seem deceptively okay because “female” refers to sex and “woman” refers to gender. But sex is so much more than genitals, and I cannot imagine feeling comfortable telling anyone else what their sex or gender is. If you feel comfortable doing that, please spend the next month speaking as little as possible and concentrating hard on listening to the people around you. You are not the boss of the planet: you can certainly say that women with penises aren’t female, but your simplistic view of bodies and selfhood and reality is not fooling the rest of us.

Second of all, and I can’t believe there’s even a remote possibility that this is going to blow anyone’s mind: Some lesbians want to have sex with women who have penises. Yes, really. Accept it now. I’m a queer woman. I love women. I am absolutely open to dating and fucking trans* people, including trans women. You don’t get to dictate to me whom I am attracted to. You don’t get to tell me what girl love means. I realize that my bisexuality might cloud this issue, but let me assure you that there exist full-blooded lesbians who feel the same way. Let’s put it this way: I can also have completely male-free lady sex involving a penis at any time with a cis woman. It’s called a strap-on. A penis doesn’t make someone male; I speak from a place of experience here.

I don’t think the trans activist or anyone else was saying that all lesbians are transphobic meanies unless they go out immediately and find trans women to have sex with. Obviously, each of us has the inalienable right to be attracted to the people we end up being attracted to. At the same time, there’s a big difference between saying “You’re not the type of woman I’m into” and saying “I’m into women and you don’t count.” I suspect that the plea here is to fully acknowledge trans women in the queer community as women, as lesbians (if applicable), to acknowledge their partners as female-loving people, and to open up to the idea that female-on-female sexuality is more diverse than all vaginas all the time.

In short, stop trying to make goddamn rules about other people’s sex lives. Maybe even consider reevaluating some of the assumptions that led you to create rules for your own.

Feminism doesn’t get to be an exclusive club. Feminism is the anti-exclusive club. We will joyfully include everyone in our goal of equality– including men with penises, women with penises, marginalized groups of all kinds, and even people we don’t particularly agree with, or we’ve already failed. We’re either dismantling hierarchy or we’re just rearranging it.

(image source)

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Sometimes it wasn’t immediately apparent, especially if I knew and disliked someone. But if I looked long enough I’d find it. Sometimes it was shallow and obvious, and sometimes I had to work a little: a nose no one else would be born with for another 500 years, eyes hugged pleasantly by smile lines, a perfect cupid’s bow. I just had to find it beautiful, and as long as I found something in everyone I won the game.

I guess one could argue that the nature of this game was offensive and presumptuous on any number of levels, but what did I know? I was a kid and it never occurred to me that I was being rude by staring or shallow by focusing too much on people’s looks.

The interesting thing? I literally never lost. How could I? When you look for something like that it’s always there.

No one is born ugly. When you’re born you just look like whatever you look like; you aren’t yet equipped with all the tools required to make judgments about your face, your body type, your body fat percentage, whatever “flaws” you’re going to discover later.

And while there may be as many ways to be ugly as there are ways to be beautiful, everyone arrives at physical ugliness in the exact same way. You learn that there are good and bad ways of looking, you realize that you don’t necessarily look the way people want you to look; that they might think your appearance qualifies as bad. And then, the final and necessary step: You agree with them.

Because you’re not ugly if you don’t believe you are. There’s this amazing protective magic that happens when you don’t believe it, and that makes it impossible. If you feel like you look the way you’re supposed to look, every dirty look and snide comment dissolves in the power of you not giving a shit.

But if you buy into ugly, the naysayers you’re agreeing with don’t even have to be real. They can be completely imaginary, and all the real people in the world can think you’re exquisite, and that’s going to make not one lick of difference. You’re ugly, and no one is telling you any different.

The magic trick of not giving a shit is admittedly harder for some of us to master than others. Sometimes because the looks police bastards are very real, and intent to grind some of us down particularly. Sometimes because many of us refuse to realize the truth: we are never, not even ever, objectively ugly. Because there is no such thing.

When I think about how terribly hard I’ve worked to become ugly, it angers me. It could be so easy to find beauty in ourselves instead. Fuck, a six year old can do it.

(image source)

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These ConTuesday confessions are pretty much all less frivolous than that.

9 months after the break up of our short romance, I still sometimes have dreams that he takes me back and everything is right with the world again.

But then you wake up and realize your life is awesome and you’re awesome and anyone willing to let you go is someone you’re better without? I’m hoping.

I think there is something seriously wrong with me!!!! I have only orgasimed with a man once. I can masterbate and hit it on the spot just like that, but you let a man come into the picture and it ain’t happening. Oh sure the sex is great but no orgasim. I have changed positions, added toys, and even told the guys how to do it. I don’t know what else to do, so I enjoy the sex, I come home, masturbate, and have the most intense orgasims. What is wrong with me???

Nothing is wrong with you. This is a very common situation, as I understand it. Maybe it’s the mental distraction of having someone else there. Perhaps the pressure of feeling like you need to have an orgasm to satisfy your partner’s expectations is bogging you down. Perchance it’s the fact that even if you tell someone just what to do with a toy, their technique won’t be exactly the same as yours. Have you tried just masturbating in front of a partner? If you haven’t, that might be a good start. If you’ve tried that and it hasn’t worked out the way you want, maychance try masturbating while having phone sex with your partner as an introduction to sharing your orgasms with him.

Keep in mind that you’re capable of giving yourself orgasms, so that’s great in and of itself, seeing as you’re a person interested in having them.

I want a hysterectomy more than anything. There is no medical reason to get one. I hate my uterus though – it is an organ with entirely oppositional goals to mine, and I do not identify as female and having it makes me feel alienated from my body. But I am terrified of losing my uterine orgasms – this must the joke of the cruelest gods, to make one organ both responsible for my greatest joy and greatest fear.

You didn’t ask for advice, and I am in no way qualified to give you any, but I want to say I cannot imagine how difficult this dilemma must be, and I’m sorry you’re facing it.

I want my lover to be poly-compatible more than I want just about anything else. I love her deeply and she’s practically perfect, but so matter how happy we are together, no, she’s NOT enough. It isn’t that anything is wrong with her, it’s the fact that she’s just one person. I can never make her understand that if she can’t understand open relationships. It’s hopeless. I can either lose the love of my life or stay with her unfulfilled. How does one choose?

Monogamy vs. polyamory is a relationship/sexual orientation (and yes, there are people who swing both ways as well). More and more I’m convinced that it has more to do with how one is wired than what one is able to understand, or how evolved one is, or how badly one wants to be the other orientation. If your orientation is definitely poly and hers is definitely mono (and demanding of monogamy, because some people stay monogamous and very happily let their partners practice polyamory, and that’s one solution), it seems to me that neither of you has a great deal of choice in the matter.

That being said, maybe buying her a book wouldn’t hurt. No pressure, mind, just a free book and the polite request that she do you a favor by reading it and discussing it with you.

Good luck!

Want to confess something? Preferably something related to sex, relationships, or how you have a giant crush on me? Please go here and spill it!

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My darkest fantasy: My girlfriend dumps me for another guy, or I walk in on her having sex with another guy (or really any other variant on that theme)

Then through some twist of circumstances, I am at her mercy, and she forces me to give him oral sex or clean up after he finishes on her after making me watch (or really any other variant on that theme)

I have never really felt betrayed, and I wonder whether I fantasize that way because it’s such a reversal of the way my life actually goes, or whether I’ve never felt betrayed in my life because it couldn’t possibly live up to my wildest expectations of betrayal.

This kind of cuckold fantasy is pretty common. I tend to think the human mind and human sexuality are too complex to necessarily be able to explain the things that turn us on, but when has that ever stopped anyone? And seriously, why should it?

I just engaged in a solo session out of literally nowhere in which I suddenly discovered that vaginal walls are really sensitive if you press them from the outside kinda through the outer labia, damn near fisted myself somehow, and finished by jacking off with a Nexus and imagining it was my own dick.It was so awesome I have to tell someone. I am bursting with weird excitement, here. But my girlfriend’s at work and nobody else I know wants to hear about that. So I’m just telling EVERYONE indiscriminately through the power of ConTuesday.(I kinda needed it too…as-yet undiagnosed chronic pain conditions and holidays and periods and back spasms really don’t mix. But damn, if I don’t feel fucking amazing for just right now.)

Indiscriminate relation of mindblowing fapping sessions: one of the many purposes gladly, giddily served by ConTuesday.

I hope your health issues are better now, or at least diagnosed and getting treatment.

Also, I’m trying that pressure-through-the-labia thing, so help me.

When I masturbate I pretty much always swallow my own semen. Sometimes the whole lot, sometimes just a little. I equate it with biting my nails…

This totally reminds me of something that should probably be a confession itself because it’s sort of weird and I don’t want everyone to judge me. But whatever.

I once (years ago) formulated a plan to induce lactation on myself and see how long I could just live off my own breastmilk. I probably would’ve tried to go through with it, too, if it weren’t for the fact that I’d have had to wake myself up in the middle of the night to pump in order to get the milk flowing, if it even worked at all. I must’ve been so super bored back then.

This has next to nothing to do with the semen eating thing, which strikes me as a much nicer habit than nail-biting, really.

There’s a woman I really like. She has an amazing heart. And she’s the best kisser I’ve ever kissed. But she also has saggy folds of flesh that I’ve never encountered in a date before. Not fatter than I’ve seen, but droopier. And it bothers me. I can sort of see past it, but looking at her doesn’t have the effect on me that either of us would prefer.

There’s another woman I’m dating. She has a great body. In my heart it seems like she’s much too pretty to be interested in me. Objectively, I can tell that’s not true, I’m a handsome man and she’s not the prettiest woman to have hit on me by a long way. But I’m so insecure that deep down I can’t accept her interest at face value, and I have trouble getting close to her.

BTW, both girlfriends know that there are other women but not anything about them

I guarantee you that there are people out there who will be attracted to Woman #1′s body just as it is, as well as her heart, all while appreciating her amazing kissing prowess. Offhand I’d say she probably deserves exactly that. I think everyone deserves someone who’s genuinely attracted to them rather than someone who’s just overlooking their appearance. Maybe that’s naive. I also don’t care.

The thing that strikes me most about this confession, however, is that I have no idea if Woman #2 has a damn thing to offer besides a hot body. I think everyone deserves someone who’s genuinely attracted to them rather than someone who’s just interested in their conventionally hot appearance.

Hopefully you’re one of the good someones for one (or both, if you’re poly) of them. If not, don’t beat yourself up. You don’t owe anyone your attraction. In that case, I hope you move on and find the right person/s for you.

Have a sexy confession? Submit to me!

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And I’ll wonder to myself, Is this it? Is today the day I’m finally going to wear fake boobies in my bra? So far, it never is.

Sometimes I would like to have bigger tits. If the reason were any simpler I’d have to grunt it. Women with big boobs get a lot of sexual attention when they show them off, leading me to imagine it’s pretty easy for them to get sex any time they like. This is a lifestyle that appeals to me.

To be fair, at other times I wish I had smaller boobs and 12% body fat. Basically I want to be Princess Mombi, but with modular bodies in addition to all the heads. I don’t think that’s asking too much.

Anyway I was blessed with boobs I’d call just about average-sized. (Though, in a Serling-esque twist, I think my tits have grown a little since I went off birth control pills, despite my actual weight staying stable. If anyone can figure that one out, let me know. ***Spoiler: Also no, I’m not knocked up***) They’re not tiny, but they’re not formidable either. So at one point I bought those weird silicone inserts in a fit of “why the fuck not?”.

But I haven’t ever worn them, and the reason is not an ethical issue with deception, nor the fear that someone will get a disappointing handful of plastic if a spontaneous hookup should happen. And sadly, perhaps, it’s not because I looked inside myself and found that I like me just the way I am. The major reason is that I don’t really understand how to use them.

They didn’t come with instructions. Do they go at the bottom of the bra, to boost the flesh boobs up higher? Do they go on the sides to push the cleavage together? Somewhere else altogether? I don’t know. Wherever I put them they look weird. It always just looks like I stuck a big brick of plastic down my shirt. Which I guess I sort of did.

Really, it’s just too damn much trouble to play titty tetris every time I want to look hot.

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Tonight is the finale of RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 3. Who cares, you ask? I do. My latest brush with acute illness has left me with a lot of time on my hands. Did you know you can watch every single scintillating episode of RuPaul’s Drag Race ever produced right on logo’s website, tiny and pixelated beyond your wildest dreams? Well, you can.

To say that I lay in bed watching every episode would be a gross understatement. I also watched the extra catty web exclusives where you get to see the drag queen contestants bitch about each other backstage.

All in all, I’m excited to see who wins. I actually, really, almost and maybe even truly unashamedly am.

Part of this, of course, is research. Or maybe reverse research, because I’m actually a drag king. That’s right: I have exactly one performance to my masculine alter ego’s name (which I can’t share because I just know he’s destined to become a famous playboy and I still have a secret identity to play fast and loose with here). And I’m just a handful of days from another, if I can decide what song we’re lip-synching to.

It was once explained to me that to do your makeup as a king, you just reverse everything that queens are supposed to do. So while a man will put a white stripe down the center of his nose to make it appear narrower and create the illusion of feminine features, a woman has to draw a dark stripe instead to make the nose appear wider. I have no idea whatsoever if this is valid or not. I know exactly enough about makeup to have never bothered to learn anything and I own a book by Kevyn Aucoin that I don’t entirely understand. That’s pretty much all I can say for myself when it comes to makeup.

Really, the assumption in drag is that the genders are opposites, and have minimal overlap. If I walk like a woman I obviously can’t be walking like a man. In a recent episode of Drag Race, a queen advised a straight jock on his first flight dressed as a woman that “girls don’t point”. Like, at things, with our fingers. Which, I have to admit as a girl, I do. But what we’re dealing with in drag isn’t gender; it’s fantasy gender.

Which is why it’s so powerful and challenging and fun, really.

But this is also why there probably won’t be a reality show all about drag kings. It’s the same reason handsomeness pageants aren’t neck-and-neck with beauty pageants for popularity and scholarship opportunities. Same reason both men’s and women’s magazines have hot chicks on their covers. This is gender 101 shit. We more or less all fetishize the image and the fantasy of femininity, regardless of which gender/s we’re actually attracted to. In performing the opposite gender, women lose that double-sided edge we come to expect. We’re no longer universal visual shorthand for “sex object”.

It took drag to make me stop and wonder if guys don’t sometimes feel bad that they’re largely excluded from pretty.

Of course, I kind of also love this about being a drag king. Performing maleness I don’t feel any pressure to look sexy in the ways I’m used to failing at (big boobs, long hair, perfect figure et al.), and I think that’s why I suddenly almost feel sexy. Or something.

Or maybe I’m drunk with power because I have a big fucking packing penis.

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But then I look around me and see all these amazing people I have in my life. I have friends who are more interesting, brilliant, accepting, and tolerant of my flakiness than I ever dreamed possible. Some of these friends, shockingly, even find me attractive and want to play together: an outcome far beyond my loftiest fantasies. And my boyfriend? He challenges everything I used to believe about relationships, after years of making stupid, harmful-to-everyone-involved decisions in my love life, just by being himself. I didn’t know what it felt like to be loved and respected by a partner until Laramy showed me. Did I mention he’s awesome? And he picks me.

Even on the most superficial level possible: I, Quizzical Pussy, mere mortal, have gotten to have sex with some of the most exquisite, intriguing, and frankly hottest people I’ve ever had the privilege to meet. Not bad for a cripple who sucks at flirting and can’t tell whether people are into her or not.

So with all this evidence in front of me I have good reason to wonder if maybe I’m just a little awesome after all. Otherwise wouldn’t these seriously cool people shun me? I mean, even allowing for the fact that they’re also kind, wouldn’t they at least try to keep some distance?

Of course it doesn’t do to base my entire self-worth on the fact that people of excellence want to know and possibly even fuck me. But it’s good to remember that maybe I have some good points I’m not seeing, that they might. And I love these people; I trust them. Maybe they have a point.

And even if I’m seriously Not Awesome in any way, shape, or form, which I accept as a distinct possibility, life is making up for that by being boundlessly awesome in some of the ways that matter most.

(image source)

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The Sovereign Nations of the World by Penis Size

(click to engorge)

How patriotic do you feel looking at this map? Of course, part of me is wondering if the data is all self-reported. If so, we may simply be looking at a map charting the size of insecurities, sorted by country.

Either way, where’s the girth map? Do cartographers know nothing about the mechanics of sexual intercourse?

(Via geekologie, through a confidential source.)

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There are so many variables to them: What do the labia look like? How do they fold together? How big is the clit? Its hood? Where is everything positioned relative to its neighbors? And damned if nearly every variation I’ve seen isn’t mesmerizing.

I’ve never paid all that much attention to the actual vaginal opening before, though. Obviously I’ve paid attention to the way mine feels when something enters me, or how another woman’s feels when I slip my finger inside, but I’ve never spread the labia wide and studied the way a vaginal opening looks before. Turns out it’s absolutely fascinating.

In the past I’ve noticed by feel that there’s this little dangly bit at the bottom of my vulva. It flirts just behind the base of my labia minora, not quite peeking out. It’s almost like another little clit that mirrors the real one at the top. Feels almost like one when I play with it, too.

I finally got around to looking at it last night. I suppose I just assumed that it was a sort of diacritic to my inner labia. Not so. Not so at all.

I never noticed before how, well, ruffly my vaginal opening is. Its architecture is positively Boroque. It has its own folds and pearls; it has its own whorls and fingers. And I see exactly, precisely what it’s doing, the brilliant little cunt: It’s embellishing itself in every possible way to maximize surface area.

A simple ring of flesh would suffice, of course, but my pussy is having none of that. When a penis, a toy, a finger enters me, every knob and ruffle of my entryway strokes it, and all those extra nerves hungrily drink in the sensation.

No wonder that moment of penetration steals my breath and stops time.

Of course, this is another place where there’s tons of variety depending on whose anatomy we’re talking about. Some openings are neater than mine, and others even more embellished, no doubt. I’m not saying mine is anything special.

Except wait: it is special. That’s my whole point. My vulva is amazing. And so is yours, if you happen to have one. They all are, and every time I notice something new in one, that moment unfolds a universe. It’s almost, almost enough to make me believe that there’s a creator, and that s/he considers physical pleasure a profound virtue.

(image source)

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