My long distance girlfriend came to visit last week. A good time was had by all, including some fun with chocolate sauce and a basting brush. By the end of the week she was around, she was referring to me as “The Energizer Bunny” and “A God in Bed”. Even managed to make her legs give out at one point. I just had to brag a bit.

(Re: June 29th confessions) Being bi is totally awesome for avoiding jealousy. My partner and I check out women or men together and we share porn all the time. (Gloat brag gloat)

I got the hood of my clit pierced a few years ago because guys had too hard of a time finding it – my clit’s too small. That’s not a problem anymore!

Last week I bound my breasts for the first time. I love being female and I love my boobs, but I wanted to know what it would feel like to have a flat(ter) chest. And it was awesome! I was bound all afternoon at work, put my (Share XL) cock on before I went to see my partner, and greeted him with a big, packaged hug.

Sometimes I get the feeling I’m easy to fall in love with. This isn’t the type of thing you can just tell people.

Got something to brag about? Or bitch about? Or just confess anonymously? Bring it all here.

But to me, having something plunge inside an orifice that’s all-too-happy to accommodate it doesn’t feel all that passive. Nor does gripping that something in the crush of my mighty orgasm. Of course I’ve felt myself in the submissive position in sex before– in ways both lovely and horrible, but being penetrated wasn’t the factor that made it so.

One of the most alarming and saddening articles I’ve ever read on the subject of sex was Virginia Vitzthum’s 1999 Strap-on Epiphany. In it, Virginia recounts her experience of pegging (before it was called that) her boyfriend, Adam.

The article starts innocently enough. Sure, it flirts with the idea that a woman allowing someone to enter her body is empowering in its vulnerability or something, but it really doesn’t disturb me until she actually starts fucking Adam. Once she penetrates him, shit gets weird. (I refuse to resist pointing out that the link to the second page of this article says “Defiling Adam”. This is indicative of exactly the attitude you’re about to see.) Observe:

As “my” huge appendage disappeared inside him, his eyes showed shame, trust, fear and a sort of helpless adoration. In a way I’d never understood those words before, he was mine. The knowledge I could really hurt this person by being less than careful made me feel responsible, protective. The vulnerability appalled me at the same time; it was vaguely disgusting that he would let someone do this to him. Mixed in with the disgust was possessiveness. The thought of anyone else penetrating him seemed revolting. These observations clicked into place in quick succession; I felt like a projector being loaded with slides of maleness, of male seeing.

…I was conquering, silent, responsible, the taker. With his legs spread, Adam was agreeable, inviting, ashamed, taken.

When I first read this I was shaken. I’d never used a strap-on, and I wasn’t a man, so I felt completely unequipped to answer the question of IS THIS TRUE? Does penetrating someone really give you contempt for them? Is the act of being penetrated disgusting and weak somehow? This Virginia bitch had really upset me by suggesting that the sexual interactions I was having may be entirely different (in troubling, corrupt ways) to the people I was sharing them with.

I asked a few male friends, my boyfriend at the time. Some said, “Yeah, that sounds about right,” and some said “She’s overthinking it.”

In truth, I think that some people might equate penetrating with power, but it’s not an inevitable conclusion. Virginia’s views here weren’t objective, and they tell us more about her than they necessarily do about “men”. They tell us nothing about the native symbolism of a sex act.

Are you submissive to the food you eat? Is a canteen at the mercy of the water inside it? Eclipsing, holding, consuming, overlapping, absorbing aren’t words of weakness to me. We choose to think of the partner who welcomes the other into his/her body in such passive terms, but that’s choice, that’s perspective. It’s not innate to the nature of sex; it’s a commentary on our social paradigm.

I’ve had moments when I had a cock inside me and I was conquering, silent, responsible, the taker. Well, not silent, but close enough. And I refuse to be surrendering, tractable, helpless, and (wtf?) ashamed just because it feels good to fill my holes anymore than I would presume to project those words onto a guy I was pegging. It’s fucking piffle, is what it is.

…So 1999, anything else you want to tell me about sex? I’m all ears.

(image source)

The term “cock worship” grates on me. I don’t love the term “pussy worship” either, but it doesn’t gnaw on my raw patriarchy nerve, and so doesn’t bother me nearly as much.

But I don’t like calling that cock worship. I guess I don’t want to feel less important than a body part, even if it’s a really fun body part. If that implication is built into your power dynamic, cool, but it’s something I’ve never signed up for, so it doesn’t apply to me. If I’m just sucking your cock don’t try to transform it into a religious experience I’m meant to be having without consulting me about it first, buddy.

The following is an actual email. It is also an actual work of art. You may possess such a gem yourself, but you’ve likely cast it into a “spam folder” using your fascist art filters. Don’t worry, though! I’m willing to share…

***

Subject: Your sausage will become hunger than ever before.

________

Making love is always pleasant especially when the girl you love screams from a great satisfaction that she achieves while your tool gets inside the deepest parts of her flower!

According to the statistics some close relations bring people together better than any soul relations and inner world.

That’s why it comes obvious that if you want to conquer the girl’s heart you ought to be a monster in her bed. Every girl love large tools, so that’s time for you to look at your device and decide whether you are able to satisfy your girlfriend or not.

Obviously your tool is not that big to provide the wonderful pleasure and you are risking for your girl to break up with you. So, hurry up to change your lifestyle and inner look. Our enlargement pills are definitely what you need to take in, in order to keep stable relations or make them tighter.

All the information about our enlargement pills and the effect they may give you is available at our site.

***

There it is, people. This is the absolute best thing I’ve ever read. John Steinbeck, Virginia Woolf, James Joyce: sucks to be you. You’ve been bested in a fair fight by the little Penis Enlargement Pill Email that could.

However, I want to see these statistics about “some close relations” vis-a-vis “any soul relations”. If you’re reading this, company whose website I will never go to without extensive antivirus prophylactics and some holy water because it would probably be the internet equivalent of licking the toilet stall floor at a highway rest stop, please send me your data.

Speaking of devices, my Mr. Limpy came today. Mr. Limpy is a packing penis, not really a useful for sex play so much as gender play. I’ll be packing him for my drag act in an upcoming show. Sure, I could use a rolled up pair of socks or a condom filled with shaving gel, but I wanted a real packer. Of course, I’ll review it after I’ve had a chance to put it through its paces, but there’s one thing that stands out: this is meant to represent a flaccid penis, I ordered the size small, and it’s about 6 inches long.

The folks at Fleshlight might not have an incredibly realistic concept of what a small flaccid penis actually looks like. Not that I’m complaining. If I were a real guy, a 6-inches-at-rest penis would pretty much guarantee that my tool could get inside of the deepest parts of her flower, if you know what I mean. Still, that’s size small? And in case you’re wondering, the large is about 8.5 inches.

Leo Tolstoy wrote that “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” That’s not actually true of families or of sucking cock. But there are many ways to give a bad blowjob, and each bad blowjob is probably uniquely bad in its own special way. However, if you follow the bulleted rules below, you will most likely succeed in giving one miserable excuse for a blowjob. And, because I’m a philanthropist, I’ll also have a short italic section in which I talk about ways to avoid or address each rule because I honestly don’t wish bad oral sex on anyone. I wish zero oral sex on some really nasty people, but never bad oral sex!

I don’t know how realistic this is, but when someone is giving me oral sex I don’t want it to feel like a favor. I certainly don’t expect servicing me to be the sexual highlight of anyone’s year, but an “Aren’t I incredible? I’m suffering through this for you!” attitude gets an automatic “You shouldn’t have. No, really, you shouldn’t have.” response from me. I can have fun without oral sex, but a martyr in my bed really spoils the mood for me.

But I’ve been fortunate enough to have some really amazing tongues give me mad orgasms with enthusiasm and what passed for joy. And generally these people don’t even have to ask me if they’re incredible because I make that damn clear. So goes the blowjob. While just showing up and putting a dick in your mouth is cool, I guess, it doesn’t necessarily cut it.

Thus, the first and most important rule of a bad blowjob is…

• Be lukewarm and begrudging about it. He’s lucky you’re exposing yourself to this indignity in the first place; make sure he remembers that every fucking nanosecond of this ordeal.

If you find that you aren’t enjoying giving blowjobs, or that your partner isn’t enjoying giving them to you, you might have to get really unorthodox and actually have a frank conversation about sex. Maybe the giver has had a bad experience in the past, maybe there are some hygiene problems, maybe something the receiver is doing or saying is turning the giver off (I have no idea why, but if you call a blowjob a “beej” it automatically halves my motivation to give you one, which is admittedly rather finicky of me, but also fact). Maybe you need to employ the old 69 trick of training each other to associate giving oral sex with getting orgasms. There are many ways to address this problem.

I’ve heard it suggested that the absence of deepthroating ability and refusal to swallow are features of blowjob malfunction. I actually think that these “faults” are greatly exaggerated. Most guys like the idea of bottoming out on a willing throat, but very few will actually complain if you can’t do it. It actually seems like deepthroating is considered more of an advanced oral technique rather than a basic requirement.

I’m going on record right now saying that I don’t understand spitting in the “spit or swallow” dichotomy. If your goal is to not taste semen, spitting actually maximizes its contact with your tongue as opposed to having it spill down your throat. Is there another reason someone might want to spit? Vegetarianism? But why should spitting make a blowjob bad? It’s technically over by then anyway. Also, some guys actually prefer to come on your face,  tits, or various other body parts. Last time I checked that’s not swallowing.

Contrary to these old tropes, the two complaints I’ve come across most often as to technique are more about the fundamentals than the frills, and inspired rules two and three of giving a bad blowjob:

• Avoid falling into any discernible rhythm.

• Make sure to stick with the exact same technique, style, and tempo for the duration of your cock-sucking adventure.

It may seem like these two are at odds with each other, but they’re really not. It’s important to establish a rhythm and not flop about aimlessly, but it’s vital to not get so focused on keeping a rhythm that it gets boring. Do different things: tongue the head, suck the shaft, vary your pressure and depth. Have you ever been fucked by someone who was inept and dull in bed? Chances are he or she was following one or more of these two rules, because they don’t just apply to blowjobs.

I’ve heard conflicting things about what specific techniques guys like and dislike (e.g. suction, head vs. shaft focus, interaction with balls, use of hand/s) and guess why? Because these things are personal preferences, and there’s no magic formula for the perfect blowjob. That brings us to our fourth and final rule.

• You’re an infallible sex deity. You know what men like. Pick a generic blowjob to give to every guy and stick to your guns. If he hints, suggests, or flat-out tells you that he likes a certain kind of stimulus, ignore him. You’ve got this.

Sometimes when people get overconfident in their status as superlovahs they forget that there’s no such thing as “what men like” or “what women like”. There may be some statistical trends, sure, but assuming that your partner complies with what you consider the norm marks the death of sexual discovery. No, this rule won’t always guarantee that you’ll fail at sucking every cock, but it will ensure that if you continue sucking different cocks, eventually you will fail a lot. That penis is attached to a person. Pay attention to the feedback that person gives you, ask questions. If you’re honestly not interested in personalizing this experience for your partner, then congratulations! You’ve actually just managed to make someone else’s blowjob all about you!

In closing, now I want a blowjob. A good one.

But the drag kings got even more attention than the larger-than-life drag queens, somehow. As they swaggered onto the floor necks swiveled. Modelesque femmes in delicate heels and frothy skirts threw their pipe cleaner arms around the kings’ popped and tie-ringed collars, or followed them around like puppies.

On my first trip to the local lesbian club, the weekly drag show pulled me away from the dance floor for as long as it lasted. As I sat through the vivid parade of gender pageantry I was transfixed by the kings. The drag queens were gorgeous and fun: tinsel and butterfly wings. But the kings were hauntingly magnetic. They tugged some blushing, stammering, boy-band loving, adolescent fangirl you didn’t even know you had in you straight out of your spleen. They made her bounce up and down, squealing, on your diaphragm until you hyperventilated a little and toddled up to the stage to give them a tribute in dollar bills. You were powerless against this. I was powerless against this.

I’ve always been fascinated by butches in a “want to be one” way as well as a “want to fuck one” way. Drag kings were butches in overdrive. And I wasn’t the only one who thought so.

Post-drag show, mid-dancing, there was a line like whoa for the unisex bathroom. As I stood there waiting a pretty young thing with a short skirt and teased hair sat on a nearby bench, weaving her impossibly long legs around each other–thighs and ankles both crossed, waiting to pounce on one of the drag kings as soon as she exited the restroom. The poofy-haired she-predator stalks its prey…

As the king emerged her confidence was almost a visible force surrounding her. Her hair was short, she wore a polo shirt and baggy pants over hundred dollar sneakers, the hip hop-loving frat boy look. She was unremarkable in terms of conventional beauty standards. She looked rather like Lance Bass, actually. As a femme she might not have gotten a lot of attention; probably not as much as that pretty young thing on the bench. But drag king Lance Bass wasn’t a femme. She was a king.

Prompted by PYT’s fluttering eyes and hair twirling, she struck up a conversation, and the pretty young thing hung on every word. PYT mentioned something about university classes, and Lance asked her major, like it somehow wasn’t the most mundane question ever conceived of. PYT’s eyes lit up to be asked anything about herself, and admitted she was undecided but leaning toward business. Lance instructed her that business was an excellent major and she should stick with it, then leaned down to PYT’s pretty young ear and whispered something that those of us in the loo line weren’t privy to, but made PYT’s eyes glow even brighter. In that moment I believed that PYT would earn a fucking M.B.A. just to impress this drag king she’d just met. After a few more minutes, Lance sauntered away with PYT’s number.

Later that night I passed PYT as she was talking to a flock of friends. “She’s probably such a player. She won’t even remember me tomorrow.” She was hoping she was wrong, but so obviously worried that she was right. I couldn’t help but think that in a typical, heteronormative high school setting (which would’ve been the reality, what, three years ago tops for these chicks?) PYT would’ve probably been too pretty and popular to say three words to Lance, who would’ve likely been in marching band. With me. Since I was the type of nerd who always nursed crushes on cheerleaders and chicks on the homecoming court, ace bandages were starting to look pretty good.

I resolved to try to harness the ineffable power of the drag king for myself. I knew it wouldn’t be easy. I had, and still have, several things working against my goal. For instance:

1. My face is decidedly feminine. I have big Disney eyes and girl features. I don’t know how to avoid making highly exaggerated facial expressions. I’m hoping that makeup tricks can correct these handicaps, but the most I can realistically hope for is to look like a very effeminate man.
2. I have proportionately large ass and hips. This is not a typical male shape.
3. When I walk, I naturally sway my hips. If I consciously try not to do this I somehow end up also not bending my knees at all so I’m basically waddling like a duck. Not even necessarily a male duck.
4. Often I actually have considerable trouble walking at all because of my disability so it’s extra hard to try to learn to walk like a man when some days I barely know how to walk anyway.
5. Drag kings are at their best when they can dance a little. The only type of dance I’ve actually studied is belly dance. So not masculine.

Despite all this, I’m planning to do my first performance sometime in the next month. But I do have factors in my favor too. My boobs are small enough that they should be pretty easy to strap down. I have short hair (that’s going to get dramatically shorn for Spring all too soon) so I won’t have to hide my tresses under do-rags or hats. I’m nearly immune to stage fright. I’m used to people thinking I’m an incomprehensible idiot so “wtf?” stares don’t get me down. I have lots of swagger even if it is accompanied by a hip waggle at the moment. I think with a little practice and the right guidance I could possibly not suck at drag. I’m sure even Lance Bass had to start somewhere.

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.

And this is why I bought my Feeldoe. I wanted a cock of my own. Specifically, I wanted to jack off. It did occur to me– casually– that I might want to fuck another person at some point. Also, that it would be hot to slide my pretty purple cock between a set of lips, provided I could find someone to agree to give me a blowjob. But I wasn’t holding my breath or my order for any such opportunities to emerge: they were like the wacky roadtrips you might envision when you get a new car, but you’re really getting it for your day-to-day driving. Basically, I got it for day-to-day wanking.

A few of my male friends have remarked that buying the ingenious strapless strap-on to jack off with is perhaps the purest and most excellent reason to get one. It’s always nice to get unique compliments. I’m pretty sure my reason is simply the most penis-envious. Of course, if I were male I’d likely consider penis envy pretty pure and excellent myself.

I adore my pussy. I love my small-but-mighty clitoris. I write poems about my G-spot. But a cock is a beautiful thing to have, as an accessory, and I picked an especially good one.

About a year ago I was looking at strap-ons online and thinking how none of them really seemed all that tempting. I could see how the act of penetrating someone could be kinky and erotic and all, but I couldn’t imagine any harness/dildo combo feeling all that good from the fucker’s end. There’d be some clit stimulation against the harness, but it probably wouldn’t be all that different from dry humping, would it? But then. Oh, then! Then I saw the Feeldoe.

Naive as I was, to me a double dildo was a long, straight, two-headed phallus used only in porn and Darren Aronofsky movies. But this was different. This was brilliant. “Surely,” I declared to myself, “a woman designed this marvel.” Turns out, yup. It has a bulb that the top puts inside her pussy so she can feel every thrust she makes with the external dildo, and ridges that press enticingly against her clit. I could imagine the Feeldoe propelling me toward real, joyous fucking, compelling me to push faster and faster into my fuckee like a man in the grip of his impending orgasm. I also immediately realized that if I had this wondrous device I could jack myself off, and that possibility made me dizzy with longing.

I tried to reason with myself: there was no point in spending all that money on a two-person toy if I was only ever going to use it by myself. I might not even enjoy wanking like a guy, maybe I just liked the idea. But the image of stroking my own cock kept creeping into my brain, eventually camping out as a persistent fantasy. I couldn’t explain it: I wanted a cock. It didn’t matter if I never penetrated a single orifice with it, I wanted it and I would make my own fun.

So I decided to stop being a jerk and to let me have my penis. And when it came, all my wildest dreams came true. Not about fucking with it, or even getting a blowjob, because none of that has happened yet. But jacking off with my Feeldoe is fabulous. The ridges that work my clit (which I consider the major tell that a woman designed it, by the way) feel amazing when I pull on the shaft, both ends of it feel great inside me, and the little bullet vibe is a mind-blowing enhancement when I want a little something extra.

The only problem is that when I come especially hard my pelvic muscles tend to contract and push out whatever’s inside me, be it warm, pulsating flesh or slick violet silicone. So I have to concentrate on keeping it in if I want it to stay put. But the beauty of a detachable penis is that you can take it out and put it back in with ease. I do so love having it all.

I say I specifically want a Fleshlight because I’m a little wary of some of the other toys out there. Like with any partner, I have some standards for my sex toys. I’m not saying that my masturbation aids have to be charming, witty, and have pretty eyes. I’m saying that they need to not creep me right the fuck out.

Fleshlights are cute, with a range of neat little orifices and inner textures (lotus, twista, ultra tight, vortex…), many of which seem appealing. The coin-slot “stealth” orifice is the closest these things come to being creepy (I can’t help but think it’d be like fucking a Barbie piggy bank, if there were such a thing), unless you find the hilarious “Succu Dry” vampire-toothed mouth off-putting.

Another  masturbator that seems pretty cool is the Tenga Flip, which looks like a hyperbaric chamber for your cock, or possibly something out of 2001: A Space Odyssey. It might seem a little sexless and sterile for some people, but since I have a well-known robot fetish I’d have no trouble putting my equipment in this docking station. Hopefully the tech wouldn’t revolt and the ending wouldn’t be totally inscrutable.

There are other sleeves and masturbators that seem pretty great. But there are many, many toys for guys out there that seem like catastrophically bad ideas. They’re designed oddly, marketed awkwardly, rendered patently unattractive, or just seem weird somehow. I realize that a vulva or a mouth is more aesthetically complex than, say, a penis, and that might account for some of the problems I’ve seen. But let’s face it, it doesn’t explain away all of them. Let’s examine some of these issues a little more closely:

Terrible Marketing Copy

The Super Head Honcho Masturbator has the following quote in its description: “It’s as good as a blow-job. Women will be dancing in the streets.” You know what guys like to think about while they’re masturbating? How much chicks hate giving them blowjobs! If my boyfriend had one of these and we were about to have sex, I’d definitely just hand him his Super Head Honcho Masturbator and a bottle of lube and tell him, “Enjoy your foreplay! Let me know when you want to fuck. I’ll be on the couch playing Pokemon.”

…Except how I like putting cocks in my mouth and the Head Honcho doesn’t have anything to do with that. That quote is just reinforcing the “Hey, consumer, you can’t get a woman to blow you, so you’d better buy this!” stereotype that I already mentioned I hate. This also seems like a rather dim marketing strategy.

Hilarious Details

Some guys are turned on by a full bush. I’ve had zero real guys complain that I shave mine, but I had a phone sex client who would always treat me to a diatribe about how I was hurting my “poor little peach” and crippling my sexiness whenever I forgot his preference and told him my character was smooth. So there’s a market for pubic hair.

The Full Bush Vibrating Cyberskin Pussy isn’t just a clever name: it was clearly meant to cater to the bush-loving demographic. But I can’t help but think that something went wrong in the execution. Something about it seems a little… off. I don’t think that pubic hair grows the way they think it grows. I vote we rename this “The Swedish Cleft”.

…which brings us to…

Dealbreakingly Embarrassing Name

The design could be absolute genius, the orgasmic promise superb. Still, I just don’t see myself buying a Flip A Sister Over or an ATM (not referring to banking) masturbator. Where I come from we try to keep our masturbation devices classy, thank you very much.

Resembles Something Deeply Troubling

I may never learn why anyone would choose to give the Kinky Virgin Masturbator a scalloped detail around its gaping suggestion of a vulva, but I hope they realize that it gives the toy an eerie vagina dentata/hookworm flavor to it.

However, I don’t have time to worry about The Kinky Virgin. I’m too busy praying to Paul Verhoeven Almighty that the My Cocoa Stroker isn’t hiding under my bed. I can confidently state that this is NOT what pussies are supposed to look like. Why why why would anyone put a body part inside something that looks like the brain bug from Starship Troopers? I loathe the people who brought this abomination into the world and I hate everything they stand for.

WHAT?

The reviews for the UR3 Pocket Ass are really good, and maybe I’m missing something, but does the disembodied finger tugging open its “life-sized” anus add something positive to this toy, or is it just really, really funny?

Real Dolls are arguably kind of creepy, but their anime-inspired Boy Toy line is far creepier. “Hey, Dawg. I heard you like the uncanny valley, so I put your sex doll in the uncanny valley so you can be unsettled while you fuck fake women.”

And don’t even get me started on ROXXXY. Robots are keen, but I’m with Holly on this particular one. I wouldn’t touch this “companion” with a ten-foot arc welder.

In closing, dear god what IS this thing?

I’m no one’s sterotypist laureate or anything, but it seems to me conventional wisdom holds that men and women fap very differently. Some sources actually contend that women can’t fap at all, and that they only “schlick”, but that’s misogyny for you. Schlick isn’t even a word, and it sounds off-putting.

So let’s just all agree that girls can fap. And do. Some more frequently and enthusiastically than others. And perhaps it really is true that men and women tend to gratify themselves differently. Maybe men and women are from different planets, and those planets have very different masturbation rituals. Like…

“How men masturbate”

Let’s look at a fap in the life of your average bloke. He’s going to want a healthy clutch of porn, his hand, and ideally a bottle of lotion. A quick click animates the pretty naked things on the screen and his dick snaps to attention. He’ll graze on different porn scenes, flitting over whatever catches his eye and discarding it when it loses his interest, moving on to the next stimulus, and then the next. Alternately, if he’s in the shower or another place where porn isn’t readily available, he’ll use his imagination and fantasize about fucking his friends’ girlfriends or his wife’s sister or his squash partner. He focuses on the most sensitive spots on his cock with a fast and heavy, practiced touch. His orgasm is quick and workmanlike. He’s done this thousands of times and faps with efficiency, for results.

“How women masturbate”

Women don’t masturbate so much as make love to themselves. Women don’t like regular porn. They like “erotica”. There are special porn companies that make smut with story lines and character development and poignant portrayals of intimacy, but everyone knows that most women prefer their erotica in text, be it slash featuring anime characters or bodice-ripping plucked from the grocery store.

When a woman decides to masturbate, it is an event. She pours herself a glass of wine, lights some scented candles, and luxuriates in a bubble bath or lays back in bed with a favorite toy. And there she escapes into an erotic fantasy, becomes other people, slips into breathless moments and exotic roles. Her hands wander all over her body, teasing her neck, thigh, nipple– like a lover might, tracing circles that spiral ever closer to her sacred center. Finally, when she’s ready and she’s at an especially hot paragraph, she stimulates her clitoris or impales herself tenderly with a dildo. It’s spiritual, vital, powerful. It’s part of the process of falling desperately in love with herself. Hell, she might even have an orgasm!

…Yep. That’s definitely how men and women masturbate, respectively. But I’m such a special snowflake that none of it applies to me.

How I masturbate:

I’m actually much closer to the male stereotype when it comes to fapping, but I suspect that many women are. I can’t relate to its female analog. It seems too damn elaborate, like a lie that tries to cripple your skepticism with irrelevant details. I may need to put in a lot of work to seduce someone else, but myself? If I can’t be my own sure thing, we have a problem.

I think lots of women actually do like porn, and not just “girl porn”. Plenty of us like the really hot, exploitative kind. When I’m in the mood for video, I’ll watch mainstream, gay, or lesbian porn: hot people fuckin’, preferably saying derogatory things here and there.

But usually, I don’t just masturbate like a guy; I masturbate like a fourteen-year-old boy. I browse through pictures of hot naked chicks, my vibrator poised on my clit (or I’m actually jacking off, but we’ll cover that another time), eager eyes darting to the next picture, and the next, and the next. I’m not thinking about aught but the scandalous things I want to do to these women: there’s no grand backstory, no character development, just me-on-them action. In my mind’s eye.

Sometimes I do this for literally hours. Because although I normally pride myself on my will of adamantium, once I start getting off it is really, really tough for me to make myself get back on.

It’s a relief to be able to admit this aberrant behavior now. I spent a long time lying to boyfriends and telling them I thought of nothing, absolutely nothing, or just them when I fapped. We’re all mature enough here to realize that our partners are lying through their teeth if they tell us that, right?

Of course, sometimes I will think about fucking guys, usually things I did with partners in the past, things I wish I’d done with them, or things I intend to do with them.

…Or I fantasize about fucking my friends’ girlfriends. Just kidding. Kinda.

One thing that may be more stereotypically feminine about my system is that I actually do prefer “tasteful(ish) nudes” when it comes to pics. I don’t really need the spread-eagle pussy shot; in fact, occasionally it just looks tacky to me and I move on to something with a little more mystery: a wall to scale, a thicket to penetrate.

Sure, I’ll fap to hot text sometimes: a well-crafted erotic story or a field report from a fellow blogger. Not often, but it certainly happens. I’ll also masturbate casually while watching TV or reading a completely neutral book: it’s like fidgeting, but much better. I honestly do masturbate too much, the more I think about it. But really, every single other guy from my planet seems to have the exact same problem, right?