quizzical pussy

I have sex. I fuck. Because I find the term hilarious, I bone. I do all these, and additional things, passionately and sometimes with a deep, abiding love thrumming through every molecule of my body.

I’m not really a “make love” person.

Disliking the phrase “making love” is probably at least a little more hackneyed than the nomenclature itself. I don’t care. It rubs me the wrong way. It’s overly sentimental and treacly and euphemistic. Edwin Pomble never once– in years– said he wanted to “make love” to me… until after we broke up and he was was feeling particularly maudlin one day. I laughed at him. I’m a bitch.

If you need to make love, if just having sex isn’t going to work for you, I’ll gladly microwave a mess of peeps for you to stick your dick in, because I’m clearly not sugary enough. Then I’ll go fuck three of your best friends. Notice I will be doing the microwaving because I’m a romantic.

But I have absolutely no issue when the term pops up in old movies, when it means flirting/making a pass/wooing. That’s adorable, and it makes more sense. You’re literally forging a love bond out of a preliminary attraction. That’s making love; the other one is making babies .*

I’d say we should bring the old definition back, but at this point it’d just confuse everyone beyond redemption. Just think how many times a day you’d be obliged to launch into an explanation featuring Cary Grant.**

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*Or for some of us, avoiding same.

**Not that this would be a bad thing. Just time-consuming.

INT. LOCAL MEGAMART – EVENING

Magazine stands flank the checkout lines at the front of the store.

LARAMY and QP walk past on their way to find vitamins and feminine hygiene products. QP casually scans the magazine covers as they pass.

QP

What the fuck did Sandra Bullock do this year that makes her People’s Woman of the Year?

LARAMY

I’m sure I don’t know.

QP

Didn’t she get divorced or something? Is that what put her over the top? If that’s all it takes, hell, I can think of a couple other Women of the Year who are wondering where their awards are right now.

LARAMY

Yeah.

QP

In other news, Hermione really did get hot, however creepy that might make me sound.

LARAMY

Yeah, she really did. But then she cut her hair and kinda ruined it.

QP

(sputtering)

I was talking about when she cut her hair!

LARAMY

It’s too short.

QP

(remembering when she shaved her head)

…I don’t think I understand why you’re with me.

———

Now, personally, I think short hair on women is very, very sexy. But I can prove that her pixie cut was objectively a good idea. Emma Watson won an award for it last month. Best Hair of the Week on a website, baby! They don’t hand you one of those just because you got a divorce or something.

The very week my website features confessions from married people and Auntie Gibbon’s guest post about keeping sex alive within long-term relationships, the marriage issue explodes all over the internet and TV news programs like my pussy on a date with the njoy Pure Wand. You’re welcome, Zeitgeist. Always a pleasure doing business with you.

The newest news fad of the week is apparently proclaiming the Death of Marriage. I don’t think I’m exaggerating when I say that this is the most blatant admission of a slow news week since CNN did an exposé on the World’s Ugliest Dog Contest. Why the fuck should anyone care about a survey where 40% of people said they think marriage is obsolete? Why is this news when it feels so much like… not news.

Let’s be clear about something. It’s something you probably already know, but it needs to be stated: There is absolutely no purpose a married couple fulfills in society that an unmarried couple can’t. Close your eyes and imagine… wait. You’re probably reading this with your eyes. Don’t close your eyes, just imagine a world where marriage no longer exists: where pair bonds form, break, shift, and last, all without a legal document or religious ritual. Try to visualize that. Does it look very, very close to the world we live in today? It should, because relationships are going to function in more or less the exact same way. Some people will mate for life, others will have a string of committed relationships, and still others will play the field indefinitely. People will be monogamous and polyamorous. Couples will switch partners. People will love and fuck and fight and breed and raise their children. Taking rings and vows out of it won’t change that.

Does that mean I agree that marriage is obsolete? Not at all. I just think the question is uninteresting. It isn’t a breaking story that the concept of matrimony has drastically changed over time. Romance, partnership, and parity within marriage are comparatively new ideas in the Western world. The latest great evolution in marriage, I believe, is the removal of the stigma of divorce. Sure, divorce sucks and most people don’t like doing it, but instead of being anathema to polite society, it’s now more or less a break up smothered in legal hassles. A failed marriage is no longer the mark of Cain (in the mainstream and the vast majority of subcultures, at least). Since there’s less risk of becoming a shunned outcast when you get around to leaving a shitty situation, being married no longer forces a couple to stay together the way it used to. That and the increasing mainstream acceptance of premarital sex and the whole “living in sin” thing make marriage less and less necessary in the grand scheme of things. But they don’t sap its potential to be important to individuals, whether society needs it or not.

If it’s important to you in a religious or cultural way, or will ensure that your family or circle accepts your partnership, marriage is probably a good idea. If you find personal, romantic meaning in the institution, then have that wedding, you crazy kids! If you’ve chosen your life partner and being married makes sense for home ownership, insurance, legal, financial, or child-rearing purposes, much joy to you. If you want a free stand mixer, have at it. If it’s important to you to define your relationship that way for any other reason, I support your decision 100%. I don’t think your relationship is automatically more valid and special than everyone else’s just because you chose (and were able) to opt into matrimony, mind, but I also get that making that gesture of lifelong commitment is a big damn deal.

My point here is that if marriage is important to you, it obviously isn’t obsolete. No, society wouldn’t crumble without it, but it can indeed hold beauty, meaning, and practical advantages. If marriage were viewed in a more realistic, personalized way, maybe we wouldn’t have so many people deciding that others should be excluded from what should really boil down to a personal choice rather than a public virtue.

And yes, I absolutely did just write an entire blog post about how I don’t care about a news story. What of it?

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I want to talk to you for just a minute. This is serious time. I’m not even going to be dorky or silly on my blog today. At all. That’s because this shit is important. Are you ready? Are you sure? Show me your ready face. Good.

Stop hating your body.*

Today, now, right this second, and for realsies. Just stop hating it. Because most of the time your body is not the problem. The problem is you’re mental.

I’m running into way too many gorgeous people lately who seem to genuinely think they’re unattractive. To the point where it’s clear that their self-perception and actual looks aren’t on the most basic of speaking terms. If they, the resplendent, cannot muster up a modicum of customary smugness over how fucking pretty they are, how am I supposed to achieve basic self-acceptance? Please, you privileged, you ugly-impaired, you kings of New England, can you please stop making this about you and realize it’s about me?

I read an article several years back about some study that showed series of pictures to a bunch of men in Great Britain to determine the perfect B.M.I. for ultimate attractiveness in a woman. It’s 20.65.

Even today I still remember that number to the hundredth decimal place because upon reading it I immediately went to one of those online B.M.I. calculators, entered my height, and determined exactly what I should weigh to be scientifically hot.

And lo, I weighed more than that. And I was slightly more convinced than ever that I was irredeemably ugly. I definitely already felt that way before, but I was firmer than ever in my conviction.

But to be honest, if I were exactly– to the ounce– at that utterly arbitrary-but-for-a-random-internet-article goal, I’d probably have still hated my body. I would likely hate it now. I will probably always hate it to some extent. I also realize how completely fucked up that is. Which is why I’m telling you not to. I’m also telling me not to, incidentally.

Here’s the weird thing: the women (also the men) I’m attracted to have B.M.I.s all over the map. If I think you’re sexy as a person, then your curvy softness, or sculpted musculature, or sparse silhouette, or bountiful roundness, your whatever is an intrinsic part of that. The quirks, the realism, the tender truths make me weak with lust because they’re so damn pretty.

But me? I can’t possibly expect anyone to like me unless I’m flawless. It feels highly insulting to others, making them look at me while I’m so imperfect!

I’m realizing, however, that pretty much all of us (except PUAs, who seem to be more the exact opposite of this) have absurdly high standards for what we’re supposed to look like, and a healthy appreciation for diversity and natural beauty in others.

So what I guess I’m saying is, you’re probably a lot sexier than you think you are. And especially if your body is healthy**, and strong, and generally does what you ask it to, you should really start loving it. Hard. Because it’s amazing. And it’s probably also really, honestly beautiful.

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* Oh no, I do realize I’m not the boss of you. I really do. Please don’t be mad.
** I’m excruciatingly aware that there’s this whole other level of complexity when you’re not healthy and your body seems like a total dick sometimes. But still, your wracked-with-pain body is very likely more lovely than you’re giving it credit for.

(…with not-so-quick explainy stuff before and after)

Do you seem to get into a lot of arguments about rape, and you don’t really know why? Have you ever wondered why your statements about rape get negative reactions from feminists and victims/survivors? If you’d genuinely like to understand what’s going on, and maybe even reevaluate your stance on sexual assault, please read on…

It has occurred to me that many people may not understand what being a rape apologist means versus someone willing to be an ally to victims. Like it or not, in a discussion about rape, you will usually come off as one or the other. There is no side of any rational argument saying “Rape is great! There should be more rape!”, so often when people think they’re representing a middle ground they’re actually the extreme side, the apologist side, against the “Rapists are made of pure, unadulterated suck!” side. Just accept now that “Rape is never okay, but what did the victim think was going to happen when she went back to that dude’s apartment wearing that postage stamp of a skirt!?” isn’t the cool-headed voice of reason between two equally valid arguments.

We tend to not see self-described rapists entering public, philosophical debates about rape. So an apologist ends up as the rapist’s de facto voice (most often not intentionally), representing the rapist’s interests and trying to divvy out the blame more evenly. This is why people, especially rape victims or those who empathize with them, don’t tend to exclaim “Thank you for your brilliant and original perspective! Bless my buttons! I’ve simply never thought of it that way!” when confronted with an apologist’s comments.

Rape apologists aren’t rapists (see: rapists), nor are they consciously trying to defend rapists (see: trolls). Blaming the victim or insinuating that the victim has some responsibility for an attack (a maneuver coincidentally known as “blaming the victim”) are rituals woven into the fabric of society. It doesn’t make you an automatic monster, or even rare. But understand, please, that because of this your opinions are also far from revelatory, marginalized, and vital to the discussion.

This type of discourse about rape can be very hurtful, and I can’t for the life of me figure out how it’s helpful. You might not know if you’re coming off as speaking from a rape apologist platform. You probably don’t feel like you are. “Rape apologist” isn’t exactly a self-identification. But, you know, there’s an internet quiz for everything these days, and ZOMG here comes one now!

_____________________________

Quizzical Pussy’s Quick and Dirty Rape Apologist Quiz!

Read the following statements and try to react to them naturally:

1. Approximately 1 in 6 women is raped or otherwise sexually assaulted in her lifetime. Approximately 1 in 33 men is raped or otherwise sexually assaulted in his lifetime.*
2. Rape is underreported.
3. Nothing any rape victim does or leaves undone before, during, or after a rape can make the rape her or his fault or responsibility.
4. Rape can and does occur by means of physical force, coercion, and/or lack of the victim’s ability to consent.
5. Rapists are responsible for the rapes they commit, and they have the choice to not rape.

If you can fundamentally agree with these statements, not just here, but when you confront them on the internet or in real life, and (this is key) you don’t feel compelled to add a “but…” then we can probably have a productive conversation about rape. If you contest them or continually need to add a caveat, then the way you discuss rape might come off as more compassionate toward the perpetrators than the victims. In that case, you are being a rape apologist.

_____________________________

Be really honest with yourself here. If you fall into the latter group, it doesn’t mean you’re a horrible ogre and have no right to speak your mind, ever. It doesn’t mean you have to suddenly agree with everything I say, or even that this five-item list comprehends the entirety of points and truths related to rape. And yes, you have every right to voice your opinions. But you’re very likely not as useful to the dialogue as you believe you are.

I simply don’t understand what you think is going to happen if you just listen to the anti-rape, pro-victim point of view without getting defensive and argumentative. Do you feel like we anti-rape extremists are going to get too comfortable with having our views go unchallenged and start filing police reports indiscriminately? Do you think we’re going to collectively decide that every time we had consensual sex in the past, gee, now that we think about it, we were probably raped?

The whole “All intercourse is rape” thing is about as much a strawman as “Rape is great!” Sane people don’t feel that way. Believe sex bloggers don’t feel that way. What we (I’m going out on a limb and speaking for others here) really want is to not be raped. But at very, very least we want to be taken seriously if we are, and to be allowed to be compassionate to rape victims without getting blamed and lectured, or having our experiences trivialized.

* Please note that rape is also perpetrated upon those who don’t identify as fitting within the gender binary.

I was excited to be in the first real romantic relationship of my life. The guy I’d had a crush on for years wanted me, we were “in love” and having fun, and I was sharing orgasms with someone for the first time. If I’d known the telltale signs to watch for that belie the bliss and give an ugly whiff of future abusive behavior I’d have run away screaming, but at the time I thought that things were going pretty well.

Not so Reginald. To him it was a persistent and serious problem that I wasn’t Lily. Almost as unbearable was the fact that he wasn’t, and never would be, Jack.

To me, Legend was a mediocre ’80s fantasy movie that I’d never heard of until the cute Mormon boy I had tentatively, hugs-only dated a couple years earlier had eagerly showed it to me. It was less dazzling than Willow, less imaginative than The Labyrinth and less captivating than The Princess Bride, I thought. But it seemed to have some sort of power over these two guys. It was Reginald’s favorite movie.

The protagonists, Jack and Lily, despite being portrayed (in my opinion) with all the personality of a sprouted mung bean and a pile of toenail clippings respectively, are fabulously happy together and can party with unicorns because of their unsullied innocence. Then things go awry because Lily decides to ignore Jack’s warnings about touching the unicorns, and then Tim Curry is awesome for a while. Then stuff happens and the boring people win, as they very often do in stories of this type. And there’s something about True Love™ conquering all at the end, I think. To be honest, it’s been a while.

To be really honest, I would like the movie more if it hadn’t been such a source of drama. As it was, their love, informed in the movie rather than shown, was a cynosure to him. It must’ve hit him in the exact right way at exactly the right point in his psychosocial development, because everything was compared to Jack and Lily. When things were going well, they were never going well enough because there were no unicorns asking Reginald and me to hang out with them. When we were fighting or he was bored, Reginald would literally cry because we didn’t have anything like the True Love™ featured in that Ridley Scott movie. Whatever we were doing, if it wasn’t accompanied by an original score by Tangerine Dream, it would always fall short.

In an essay entitled “This is Emo”, Chuck Klosterman basically says that he once had this girlfriend, until John Cusack stole her. Not even John Cusack, but Lloyd Dobler, John Cusack’s character in Say Anything. It seemed at first that Chuck had the edge, being both real and present. This girl was very likely never going to meet John and was absolutely fucking not going to meet Lloyd Dobler. But the fact was that he was never going to measure up to a movie, and she was never going to forgive him for it.

Love exists. It’s a beautiful, transformative force. It can inspire words and deeds and works of art. It can drive you insane or make you feel finally still for once in your life. It’s powerful, but it’s never perfect. It doesn’t look like the manufactured, scripted love you see on screens and read about in fiction. Real love is never True Love™.

When you’re in True Love™, exciting shit is happening all around. conflicting forces are in play, destiny is invoked, and everyone involved is a very special snowflake– not just to each other, but probably on a much grander scale. In a True Love™ universe, everyone gets one [1] soulmate. Or if everyone doesn’t, at least you sure do, you special snowflake.

Because that’s how stories work. In a story, everything is significant. Even throwaway details are symbolic of something important. People aren’t shown showering, or driving to work, or doing anything at all unless it advances the plot. There’s no filler, no tedium, no silences that aren’t meaningful and no dialogue that hasn’t been reviewed and tweaked and edited. A story, like True Love™, is an escape from reality, not an example of what reality would be like if all the slags around us would just cooperate.

Real love isn’t always breathtaking and spine-quivering. It won’t be all heady declarations and grand gestures. True Love™ would get exhausting; real love is comfortable and secure. There’s time for lingering in bed and cuddling because the fate of your world isn’t threatened all the time. You’re allowed to have problems individually or as a couple without it meaning that the relationship has failed. It’s okay that real love is imperfect because it’s between people, not ideals.

Having some kind of fantasy of what love is supposed to look like is responsible for more than just hurting one’s own relationships. It’s also part of the impulse to “protect marriage” from frightening homosexuals. It leads us to obsess about people we barely know rather than pursuing healthy partnerships. It makes you less adventurous, less interesting, less loving. In short, it makes your story duller and it makes you less of a hero in it.

Let’s be frank for a moment: Boobs are awesome.

They’re a tactile dream: soft, round, delicious with a distracting embellishment at the tip. They are the anatomical equivalent of the peanut butter cyclops cookie. They’re also capable of providing complete sustenance for a growing human being (this part being less like cookies), which is quite a parlor trick.

One of the most intriguing things about boobs is the variety they come in. If tits had their own nation someone would eventually refer to it as a melting pot. You can see their outline, their size, maybe even catch a tantalizing glimpse of cleavage (and all those vary widely from person to person), but you have to do some real exploring to find out what the nipples are really like. They can be big, small, corks, nubs, dark, pale, perfectly delineated circles, gradients, smooth, bumpy, crinkly, and/or run through with metal, among many other possibilities. Sometimes it’s maddening trying to guess. Sometimes when you finally get to play with them you realized you had it entirely wrong, and that’s kind of amazing. I love being wrong. I love discovering.

Playboy has this Evolution of the Boob article on their website. It’s about what style of breasts were in vogue which decade (starting with the ’50s, when Playboy started). It’s possible that Playboy is really primarily talking about the preferences of its own editors over time, but to a point you can’t argue with the fact that tit fashions change. That being said, I’m not sure I’ve ever looked at a topless woman and thought, “those are so last season”.

Perhaps even more than decades, people have preferences. I like all the boobs, but there’s something about those ’60s torpedo boobs that I find very compelling.

But I don’t believe I’ve met many people who have admitted to preferring augmented breasts. I’m not sure if they’re actually unpopular or if that’s just the crowd I tend to run with (I mean, obviously they’re not presenting a huge handicap if women keep getting them). But somehow or other I’ve gotten this impression that a boob job would indeed limit my sexual options, or at least be a liability.

I don’t see a problem with fake tits; I’m fine with most body modification. And I don’t see why they would deter me from having sex with someone. But I can say this: bare augmented breasts often somehow look less naked than natural ones. It just feels like the woman still has something on, even when she’s totally stripped. Maybe that’s why the people who don’t like them really don’t like them. Implants do make for amazing cleavage, though.

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We all know that sex education in your standard, K-12 education tends to be varying degrees of abysmal. And many parents have a hard time having the “The Sex Talk” (singular), let alone talking to their children frankly and informatively about sex on a regular basis. Unless you know where to look for good advice and accurate knowledge, sex becomes a terrifyingly learn-as-you-go endeavor: one in which trial-and-error can really backfire. A lot.

My sexual understanding was so poor until my mid teens that I while I knew that a penis could go into a vagina, I couldn’t really fathom how because I’d only ever seen flaccid penises before and I didn’t realize that they got hard. Knowing I lacked this and other vital information, I always ended up wishing I had an older sister.

Now, strictly speaking, I do have an older sister. I actually have a couple, but when we were growing up they only stopped ignoring me when they wanted to pick on me (which is understandable, since younger sisters are all stinky, worm-faced  poopyheads). What I really wanted was a mentor who knew significantly more about sex than I did (unlike my friends) but with whom I could still spelunk through the hidden, dirty nether regions of my mind (unlike every responsible adult I knew). Even when I was 18, 19, hell, 23… this person would’ve been invaluable to me, and probably saved me a great deal of time and grief and embarrassment.

But I think that the next best thing to that would’ve been having this book.

Moregasm: Babeland’s Guide to Mind-Blowing Sex by Claire Cavanah and Rachel Venning is probably the coolest sex guide I’ve ever read. It’s even cooler than my sister who was a cheerleader. And it’s embossed. None of my sisters are embossed.

Moregasm is formatted more like a magazine than a textbook. It’s full of hot photos of sex toys and people getting it on, questions and answers, lists, and charts. The style and tone are light and conversational. It’s really what Cosmo wishes it could be, minus all the half-hearted fashion stuff that Vogue does better anyway.

This book is geared toward women, though I think nearly anyone would find it useful. It not only reads like a women’s magazine, but its first section is called “Lay of the Land: Your Body”, and deals with female anatomy with depth and understanding: from the ins and outs of orifices to body insecurities to using toys to masturbate. Later comes a “Him and His Body” section. Trans/genderqueer/intersex people are mentioned briefly (with an accompanying picture), on literally one page.

The sex advice is where Moregasm really shines. The sex tips are practical and straightforward, with an emphasis on communication. This book wastes no time or space justifying sexual pleasure nor making judgment calls on the “right” way to do things. It just works from the assumption that we’re all adults and want to get the most out of our sex lives. It discusses diseases, risks, and general safety, but never uses scare tactics. It doesn’t assume or ghettoize sexual orientation. There are separate sections for fellatio, cunnilingus, intercourse (including strap-on and anal subsections), etc. There aren’t “What Lesbians Do” and “Straight People Sex” chapters, just well-organized sexual knowledge.

Being a Babeland project, sex toy recommendations are liberally strewn throughout Moregasm. We are not talking generalized “dildos, plugs, and vibrators are things that exist”, but pictures and names of specific toys. For instance, the anal toy guide suggests the Flexi Felix as good starter anal beads, and the Pfun for prostate play. The big question here is how soon some of these toys will be outdated, and if future editions are planned as newer generations of toys come out.

Moregasm also has sections about virginity, libido, safer sex, sex when you’re older, and includes a Sex Bill of Rights (featuring rights like loving yourself, keeping lube handy, and asking for things you want). There are some damn sexy pics of people doing… you know… stuff, although more variety in race and body type would’ve made the whole thing even sexier.

Overall, this is the book I needed when I was first discovering my sexuality (even though it didn’t technically exist yet). However, as far as I am from having finished all that discovery, this book is pretty damn useful now. But without a doubt, if you know a fledgling sex fiend (even if it’s you), be a good older sister (even if you’re not female) and give the gift of Moregasm. Or, if that would be too creepy in the case in question, make carrot cupcakes instead. Because not everyone likes carrot cupcakes, but everyone should.

Thanks, Babeland!

I’d love to be confident enough and secure enough with myself to be naked in front of a camera, and not burst into tears, and not feel horrible about the resulting photos.

Body acceptance is hard for anyone, I think. We all have things that we hate about our bodies, things that we feel severely limit our worth as sexual objects and maybe even as people. If you don’t feel this way, maybe I’m just projecting my own self-loathing onto you and assuming I’m more normal than I really am. That’s entirely possible. But I hear the way people tend to talk about their bodies, sometimes with a nervous half-laugh, maintaining a facade of plausible deniability in case some one figures out that they occasionally, maybe often, all of them, feel like trolls. Because NO ONE MUST KNOW.

We’re told that confidence is sexy. And it’s true. Some of the most romantically and sexually successful people I’ve ever met didn’t necessarily look better than the people around them; they just believed they were hot stuff, and everyone sort of went along for the ride. Cleopatra would be the classic(al) example of this phenomenon: she wasn’t ugly, but she was never considered visually beautiful. Yet her voice was enchanting, she was past mistress in spectacle and fantasy, and she carried herself like, well, a queen. And today we’re all pretty sure she was exquisite (see: Sophia Loren, Vivien Leigh, Claudette Colbert, Elizabeth Taylor, possibly Angelina Jolie). That is confidence doing its job well.

But still, it’s hard to be confident just because confidence pays off. You can’t manufacture confidence out of whole cloth and wishful thinking. You have to nurture it over time until it gets to be a habit. And until then, what? I guess we fake it. I think that most of us fake it most of the time.

A while back, I was talking with some friends and this one guy came up. Everyone agreed that he was shady by virtue of consistently trying to weasel his way into the life of any insecure female he could find. I’d never really met the guy, but had seen him around at cons. I had to agree, though, that it was a creepy M.O. “Don’t worry, though,” my friend Penelope said. “You’re way too confident for him to bother with. He’d never even pay you any attention.”* Too confident! HA! The masquerade continues…

I didn’t contradict her because I want to be too confident to be the victim of some shady guy who preys on self-loathing and vulnerability. In my heart of hearts I believe that I’m not, but I try to maintain that image when I can.

But I dream of the day when I can feel pretty and strong and worthwhile and sexy. When I can look at myself in the mirror and think “Hey, not bad” without the reflexive response of “Actually…” I want to like myself naked. I want to like myself in general. And I’d like to one day, many years from now, look at some nude pics of myself from back now and think, “Man, I was hot.” Frivolous, yes, but fundamental.

(image source)

*Yes, it occurred to me she might have just told me that because I’m too ugly for him to bother with and she wanted to paint that in the best light possible, but I have rejected that possibility on the grounds that there are limits to how ugly I’m prepared to feel.

Five kids died last month because their peers thought it would be fun to bully and humiliate them simply because they were different. I’m disgusted and saddened beyond words. Go look here to read something useful about this fucking mess.