Cosmocking Catchup: October-December '13!

How could I have let Cosmocking slide?  What has become of me?

Rather than stretch things out by doing the three (!) backlogged Cosmos I've got separately, I'm just going to make a mega-post with a little bit of the worst from October, November, and December.

Covers!  "The Scary Thing 90% of Men Fantasize About" is having sex with someone who isn't their partner! "Weird Things Guys Do When You're Not Around" basically comes down to sometimes they're naked!  I can understand the need to be shocking on the cover, but I can't forgive faking it, not in a world where "female kangaroos have three vaginas" is an actual fact!  And then there's Miley!  Wearing an otherwise see-through suit covered in rhinestones and encouraging us to "twerk your ass off"!  Yes, dear, you're very scandalous. Good for you. We're all very scandalized.

The kind of woman who's really rising in her career in her 20s tends to be high in testosterone [...] High-testosterone guys tend to be more aggressive, tough-minded, and competitive--and not as compassionate or emotionally expressive. High-estrogen guys, on the other hand, have no problem expressing their emotions and are trusting and empathetic but can be indecisive.

And guys who are high in black bile tend to be dry and cold and associated with the element of Earth.

This would almost be interesting if it was validated with blood tests and not the author going on to speculate that Barack Obama is probably high-estrogen because he called his wife "the boss."  As it is, it's just yet another weird attempt to go "oh no, I would never hold sexist and transphobic opinions, but you can't argue with science!"

Well, guess what?  I just put on glasses and a white lab coat.  Now I get to decide what objective truth is!  And, using some very long and newly-discovered words, I can tell you that according to SMIM1 Vel antigen levels and dynamic computed tomography, you are a poophead.

Slick his fingers with shower gel, and have him reach around and give you some digital pleasure.

Ow. No. Ow.  You know that feeling when you get soap in your eye?  Transpose that south a little and let me know if it sounds sexy.

You wake up with 2.5 minutes to spare before your alarm rings.  Rip off the cami you slept in, and tie it over his eyes. Now you can spin a fantasy using nothing but your words.  Here, we'll get you started: "All the neighbors are crowded around the windows right now, watching us..."

Since "try springing BDSM on him when he's least expecting it" was a couple issues ago, Cosmo has now upped the stakes to "try springing BDSM on him when he's goddamn asleep."

I do want to use this fantasy, though, because I live on the second floor.  "All the neighbors are crowded around the windows right now. They're hovering.  Sickly green flames flicker in the places where their eyes used to be."

Q: My boyfriend is a unicorn. He's not into porn or strip clubs. But I am. I'd love to watch porn while we're having sex or have a wild night at a strip club together. Are we incompatible? 

A: Guys who say they're not into porn are either lying or repressed... and lying.  [...] suggest a girl-on-girl scene to eliminate the possibility of him being intimidated by porn penises.  If he says no, you need to decide if you're okay being with a guy who's so closed off and unwilling to explore with you.

I'm not even explaining why this is wrong.  I can't.  It's like being asked "why wouldn't tinfoil make a good tampon?"  There's so many different layers of wrong that I'm just going to trip over myself trying to pick which one to talk about first.

I've never come even remotely close to playing make-believe in the bedroom. The truth is, I've been too scared! It's challenging enough to feel comfortable being yourself during sex, let along someone else.  Plus, what if my partner found my fantasy freaky? What if I bungled the dialogue?  What if I started giggling... or worse, what if he started laughing at me?

Then you'd be just like people who do this all the time, because we fuck up all the time.  What keeps the play hot is that we get good at rolling with it.  We get the giggles, but we can laugh together or shut it down with an evil "what are you laughing at?"  Our dialogue isn't perfect, but what we do is too intense to worry about critiquing the dialogue.  The standard we aim for isn't "seamless" but just "fun."

(Credit where credit's due, by the way; this article actually did a decent job explaining negotiation and safewords.)

Q: During my internship in college, my boss and I flirted a lot but never got physical. I used him as a reference to land my current job, and now that we don't work together, he's been asking me out. [...] 

A: [...] If you keep saying no, he could very well be so hurt or confused that he won't be able to serve as a reference for you (at least, not the kind of enthusiastic, professional reference you want).  So if you really do like him and he likes you, then say yes.

The new, feminist Cosmo, you guys!  Now with extra feminism!  And the occasional barely-veiled threat to sabotage your career if you say no to a date!

The weird thing is that the letter writer doesn't imply anything about her ex-boss withholding references or blackmailing her.  She just says he's asking her out and she's not sure if that's appropriate. The advice columnist (Ky Henderson) is the one who decided this needed a little extra spice in the form of explicit sexual harassment.

Lure his tongue into your mouth, and when he pulls it back, wrap your lips around the tip, sucking like you would during oral. It's an R-rated preview that will have him aching for the feature presentation.

Gluaghchkauh.  (That's not my reaction. That's the noise he would make.)

Set up a movie night on the couch, and tell him he's only getting to first base.  It's an innocent come-on that will make you both want more.  Letting him try to "convince" you to go further is half the fun.

I'm going to let Louis CK take this one:
(NSFW and talks about rape)

Geese mate for life. Riff on this concept of eternal intertwinement and wrap your leg over his back, which gives him access to your clitoris.

...Dammit.  I just can't stay mad at you, Cosmo.

Let's Read Fifty Shades of Grey! Chapter 11!

It's a double post day!  Because I decided to, that's why!  And because nothing happens in either chapter, so really it's like getting zero chapters for the price of two!

(And because I really want to do more original writing, and I'm hoping getting more FSoG out of the way will motivate me to do that.)

I hope you like fakey, blatantly illegal legal documents, because most of this chapter is one of them!  In its entirety!  Right down to the signature page and appendices!  Because EROTICA!

Content warnings for this chapter: A legal document that somehow still manages to incorporate emotional and physical abuse and total disregard for consent.  Also forced exercise.

Let's Read Fifty Shades of Grey! Chapter 10!

Nothing interesting happens in this chapter, but I made a really good joke in Chapter 11, and we won't get to that if I don't post this.

Content warnings for this chapter: Emotional abuse (which is almost continuous in this chapter), child/adolescent sexual abuse.  You know, light fluffy romance stuff.

Let's Read Fifty Shades of Grey: Chapter 9

Last time on Fifty Shades of Grey, our heroes were having blandly mechanical sex while Buff RockGroin continued to pout and fume any time he didn't get his way about everything, and Ana continued to act like "I don't mind, it's sexy when he doesn't consider my needs" isn't something a lot of people convince themselves at some point in a really bad relationship.

Content warnings for this chapter: Emotional abuse, sexual coercion. As per usual.

Let's Read Fifty Shades of Grey! Chapter 8!

When we left off, Dirk HardPec was raging out at Ana because she admitted to him that she was a virgin. I remind you that this is our romantic hero who is supposed to be the epitome of the sexually appealing man.

Content warnings for this chapter: graphic sex, general abusive dickheaddery. I tell some icky personal stories, one of which involves coerced ickiness and both of which involve blood.

Let's Read Fifty Shades of Grey: Chapter 7!

When we last saw our intrepid heroes, they were entering Hack BlowFist's playroom, and she was playing "I'm too innocent to know anything about sex ever" while he was playing "I'm too domly to make any accommodations for that."

Content warnings for this chapter: disordered eating, plus coercion and emotional abuse all the hell over the place.  (And detailed BDSM talk, but I feel weird "warning" for that, lumping one of the happiest parts of my life in with all those terrible things.  Also, you're on a blog called "The Pervocracy" that has "BDSM" at the top of every page.  ...Anyway, there's detailed BDSM talk in here.)

Let's Read Fifty Shades of Grey: Chapter 6!

When we last left our intrepid heroes, he was committing sexual assault in an elevator, and her inner goddess was doing a samba about it.

Content warnings for this chapter: Stalking and emotional abuse, mostly.  The rape themes are still hanging around, too.

Let's Read Fifty Shades of Grey: Chapter 5!

When we last left Fifty Shades of Grey, a man had found a woman by tracing her cellphone and now was taking her unconscious body up to his hotel room.  Which would be fine, if this were a spy thriller.  Unfortunately, it's a BDSM romance.

Content warnings for this chapter: sexual assault, a LOT.  Plus stalking and general "you might not want to read this while eating" grossness.

The Sexcalator.

By the time I was out of my early twenties, I'd done some fairly hardcore BDSM.  I'd been beaten, whipped, cut, bound, shocked, peed on, done most of the above naked in front of strangers, and frequently during sex.  Which raises the question--where do you go from there?  When you're so young, and you've already had such intense experiences, what's left?

Cuddling on the couch, for one.  Or having slow sleepy sex at the end of the day.  Or--not to make this sound like "but then I discovered that sweet gentle love was the most daring of all!"--getting beaten some more, not necessarily in a harder or more shocking way than before.



One of the many, many unspoken assumptions out there about sex is that it's an escalating process.  Think about how kids talk about it when they're starting to experiment--how far did you go?  Did you get to second base?  Third?  Did you go all the way?  It implies a system where oral sex is more sex than a handjob, and should be an experience you have later.

(This ended up being rather hurtful for me when I gave a guy a handjob before ever having a real kiss, and went through quite a bit of "does that mean I'm too dirty and corrupt for anyone to kiss now?" internal strife before discovering that kissing was still available to me and quite nice.)

The assumption doesn't really go away when you grow up.  It just adds on the idea that you have to stop at an appropriate point on the escalator, or you'll end up on a slippery slope.  ...Which sounds like an awesome waterslide to me.  But the point is supposed to be that if you go "past" penis-in-vagina intercourse by too much, you'll have gone "too far" and you might never return.

Then the inclined planes metaphor turns into a drug metaphor, and you get the idea that "overdosing" on sexuality will make you build up a tolerance, and then "normal" sex won't get you high any more.  You'll have to start fucking donkeys or something just to feel anything.  (I think this has some kind of folkloric connection to the frat-boy myth that vaginas are single-use and will always be the size of the largest object that ever penetrated them.) If your sex tolerance gets too high, you'll keep doing more and more depraved things, until kinky has given way to outright evil, your life falls apart completely, and you become a sex addict and maybe a sexual predator.



There's all kinds of micro-fuckups built into this macro-fuckup paradigm.  Like how sex with people of the same gender, people of a different race, trans people, or people with certain disabilities gets moved to the "more depraved" side of the escalator.  Or how activities people didn't consent to are counted as moving them up the escalator; or someone's position on the escalator is used as an excuse to ignore their consent.  Or, of course, how all this is much more intensely and dangerously enforced against women than men.

Or how something's position on the escalator, rather than its potential to harm, is used as a benchmark of "obscenity."  Or how relationships are expected to escalate, and failure to gradually ramp up the escalator to a certain point ("spicy," which is just a couple steps above center) is taken as failure of the relationship.  Or how even individual sex acts are supposed to have their own escalation, and after you've started groping you're not ever supposed to go back to just kissing.

Or how child molestation and rape are sometimes described as the end of the escalator, like they're what happens when kinkiness goes "too far." and oh my god fuck everything about that.  Or how PIV intercourse is positioned at the exact center, the gold standard which no man should fall short of and no woman should exceed.

Or how lost you can get saying "we shouldn't consider X dirtier than Y," when you ought to be setting the entire idea of sex-as-escalation on fire.


(So it's a baseball game, an escalator, a waterslide, a drug, gold, and it's on fire.  Work with me here.  Take some Claritin if you can't handle analogy.)


In the end, sex is like... it's not really like anything.  Freed from analogies and paradigms and fixed linear progression, sex can get amorphous.  There's no order to do things in, no right or wrong (consensual) things to do, no guarantee of how it will or won't change you, no idea how it does or doesn't correlate with romantic attachment, no guide to what will come next.  It's not even entirely clear what sex is.  Sex could be freakin' anything if the people doing it want it to be.

Good.

Let's Read Fifty Shades of Grey: Chapter 4!

I have to head down to New Jersey for another round of family drama, so you get a new chapter of FSoG!

When we last saw our intrepid heroes, Ana was falling down because clumsiness is the Designated Harmless Romantic Heroine Flaw, and Buff HardBack was using catching her as an excuse to paw and stare at her because he is gross.

Also, this is the beginning of the part of the book where we're going to want warnings going in, because hoo boy.  CONTENT WARNINGS FOR THIS CHAPTER: Stalking, rape threats, sexual assault, abuse of drunk people.

Let's Read Fifty Shades of Grey: Chapter 3!

First, a (somewhat last-minute) ANNOUNCEMENT:

I will be speaking on "How To Have Sex On Purpose" at the University of Pittsburgh Rainbow Alliance this Thursday (Sept. 26)!  Members of the public are welcome; the event will be at 8:45 PM in the Kurtzman room on the main floor of the William Pitt union, on the corner of Fifth Ave and Bigelow Blvd (4200 Fifth Ave).  If I have any Pittsburgh readers... come say hi!



We continue with FSoG where we left off--with Splint ChestHair acting like an insufferably self-satisfied stalker, and Ana acting like she needs Giles to run in and yell "she's under some sort of thought control spell!"

This is probably the last chapter of the book that does not require a major trigger warning.  (It does feature stalking and general creepiness, but nowhere near as bad as it's about to get.)

Cosmocking: September '13!

Pink cover!  Nina Dobrev!  Which is odd because the main interview/profile (which is almost always the person on the cover) is with Rebel Wilson!  I guess they didn't think Rebel Wilson was cover material because she's clearly too fat to be glamorous!  "Mind Blowing Sex Moves You've Never Tried Before!" God, I hope they really are, because that means they'll be hilarious! I can't work with Cosmo when they just do shit like "amazing newly-discovered sex secret: touch his penis!"

During sex, she asked me if I would say "Parsons," which is where she went to college.  I thought it was weird, but because I was drunk, I went with it. Then she asked me to say "Park the car in the Harvard Yard"--she said my Boston accent turned her on!  So I continued to say random sentences for her.

The sex must've been pretty damn good, because most Bostonians will flip you off if you start "PAAHHHK THE CAHHHH"ing at them.

(Then again, I'm a hypocrite, because I still think it's funny to make Rowdy say "roof" and "bag." Not in bed though.  Although I did once sleep with a different guy from the Upper Midwest and he said "ooh jeez, ooh jeez, OOOH JEEZ" the whole time.  This has nothing to do with Cosmo. I just really wanted to tell that story.)

Take some sexy fabric with you when you two travel together, and use it to make a normal hotel look like a love motel.

Sexy... fabric?  If this were about sexy sheets, I'd sort of get that. But it's not sheets.  You just bring some, like, red satin with you and tack it up to the headboard. Okay.

Man, and some people think condoms interrupt the spontaneity of sex.  I hope they end up with partners who want to stop to reupholster the room first.

Fifty Shades of Grey has made its mark abroad: Light BDSM is the most popular sex trend in the world right now.

I'm writing in extreme detail what I think of Fifty Shades of Grey, so I won't get into that here.  But god, I hate that phrase "light BDSM."  Or "light bondage."  Places like Cosmo always use it to mean "acceptable BDSM that is for normal people and not weird degenerate freaks."  I'm not sure what makes it that way.

Mostly it seems to involve keeping yourself pure by staying ignorant of good technique or safety measures.  Negotiating and then tying someone up with hemp rope and two-column ties and safety shears is heavy freaky BDSM; surprising your partner by tying them up with a slipknot in a silk scarf is--by Cosmo standards--light BDSM.

Q: Sex with my boyfriend has become meh. How can I talk to him about improving it 

A: Having a serious conversation can be overkill. Take action instead.

Yeah, because if you talked about this, it would be a challenge you had to work on together!  But this way, it's something he can be oblivious to while you bust your ass trying to "spice things up"!  Of course, there is the slight drawback that if there's an actual reason your sex life has changed, you're never going to know it; you'll just grow gradually more resentful that he isn't responding to your efforts.  But that's a small price to pay for not having to take the massive, drastic step of communicating with your partner.

Q: I was having sex with a guy I've been hooking up with, and he said to me, "I don't want you doing this with anyone else."  Is he asking me to be exclusive?

Yes. Yes, that is what those words mean.

Although he's not offering to be exclusive himself, so unless you have a well-negotiated intentionally asymmetrical relationship, and I can absolutely guarantee you do not, he's being kind of a double-standardy asshole.

Q: My fiancé is sensitive to my needs and always makes sure I have an orgasm. But sometimes, I wish he would just push me down and have his way with me. He was like this once, after we went out and had a few drinks, and it was amazing. How do I get him to do that again 

A: Uh, was that the only time the two of your ever got drunk together?  Because it sounds like getting drunk together worked pretty well. Whether you're drinking or not, I'd recommend going out wearing a hot dress or skirt and whispering to him at some point that you're not wearing any underwear. It'll build up his anticipation until it explodes back home.  You can also, you know, tell him what you want.

So, basically you should try and entice him to attack you, as men are compelled to do to women in sexy clothing who are drunk.  Gahhh.

I do like that Cosmo finally raises the possibility of communicating, though. Maybe they should have put that before the "drive his animal side so wild that he'll want to hurt you and have no idea you're actually enjoying it!"

the Footsie Roll: Place the condom securely on the tip with your hands, then lean back and balance on your forearms. Place your feet on either side of his penis, and gently roll the condom down with your big toes.

This is going to go down really, really differently depending on how he feels about feet. You might want to check on that first.

 [on women's dating profile pictures] The World Traveler: On a camel, on the top of a mountain, on a beach, on a boat... I admire the adventurous spirit, but will I ever be able to keep up with her?  Is she ever at home?  What's she running away from--him?

Women who take vacations: clearly fleeing a dark past.  You heard it here first, folks.

 [a Zales jewelry ad] All of the carats. None of the calories.

Diamonds: a low calorie food! Winner of this year's Technical Truth in Advertising award.

Let's Read Fifty Shades of Grey: Chapter 2!

[Apparently this is how I procrastinate Cosmocking now. Darnit. It is coming, I swear.]

We continue where we left off: with a heroine defined by awkward babbling and a hero defined by being Dracula.

Let's Read Fifty Shades of Grey: Chapter 1!

Alright, I should have done this years ago, but since the meme is still not dead, I think it's not too late.

I'm reading Fifty Shades of Grey.  I'm going to write this as I read it, rather than finishing and going to the end, so you're getting my first reaction here.  I'm also going to put this all behind pagebreaks, so I can go on as long as I like and not shit up my main blog with glorified Twilight fanwank.

Let's begin. God have mercy on our souls.

Not So Different.

The first time I touched a penis, I was amazed: it's just skin!  It didn't feel all that different from the skin anywhere else on his body.  I'd been expecting... I don't know what I was expecting. Something exotic, something totally new and different and dirty and scary and strange.  Like maybe it would feel like a squid, or be electrified, or cause the world to tastefully fade to a view of fluttering curtains.

Because it was a sex thing, and everything I had learned in life up to that point had primed me with the idea that sex things are nothing like ordinary thing things.  Sex ed was always set apart from ordinary life skills teaching.  Sex movies were special secret movies I wasn't supposed to see.  Sex wasn't just a taboo; it was a mystery, an esoteric alternate dimension where people became their animalistic sex-selves.

But there I was, touching a penis, and it turned out to be completely continuous with the rest of his body.  It was just a part of him.  And the sex we had was just a part of life.  A fun part, sure--sometimes a magnificently, transcendently pleasurable part--but it did not take place in a different universe nor did it make us into different people.  The me who fucked until I was sweat-slick and screaming was the very same me who got up the next day and made my bed and went to class.  The line between "sex" and "life" had been a lie.



Sometimes people say "sex is a part of life" to mean "sex isn't a big deal."  I don't agree with that.  I think sex is a big deal--but only a big deal.  Not a magical mystical none-of-the-normal-rules-apply deal.

Which is to say: the normal rules do apply.  Everything you learned from Mister Rogers about how you treat other people--that's how you treat other people when you're fucking them, too.  It's simple stuff, mostly, and you don't need some Sex Expert to dispense Sex Wisdom to know it: Be honest. Ask permission before touching things that aren't yours. Be safe.  Don't bully or make fun of people.  Don't  throw tantrums when you don't get everything you want.  Keep your promises.  Use your words.  Brush your teeth.

Really, this is the whole foundation of my sexual ethics.  It's not Betty Dodson and it's not Susie Bright.  It's Fred McFeely Rogers.

"Is it okay to cheat on my partner if they won't have sex with me?"  Keep your promises.
"Are people who've had too much sex icky bad people?"  Don't bully or make fun of people.
"Is it okay to have sex with someone who's asleep, if they've had sex with me before?" Ask permission before touching things that aren't yours.
"What should I do if I want an open relationship?" Use your words.

I don't want to make this sound oversimplified--there are lots of questions where it's not immediately clear which option is "being honest" versus "throwing a tantrum", or what exactly constitutes a "promise"--but it's simple at the core of it.  Everything you know about how to be a decent person still applies when sex is involved.  You don't need to figure out (or more often, not figure out, but excuse your behavior by claiming they exist) special different Sex Rules for everything.  Sex isn't a special case in ethics. It's just a case.



The other night, a friend and I kidnapped a man. We blindfolded him and threw him in the back of a car and drove in circles to disorient him (or possibly because I forgot that you can't turn left at the end of White Street), marched him around in public and treated him as our captive, tackled him when he tried to escape, then took him home and interrogated him.  (Then we fed him cake.)

This wasn't okay because the guy was kinky, or because we were.  It wasn't okay because we didn't really hurt him.  It wasn't okay because it was fun and sexy and you can let your morals slip a little for funsexiness.  It wasn't okay because we followed some obscure set of specifically kinky rules for how to do this in a correct kinky way.  It was okay because we used our words, got permission, and kept our promises.

Cosmocking: August '13!

I know I start too many posts with excuses, so I'll just say: major family crisis which is still ongoing and will probably end badly.  (Oh god, I hate speaking in vague-ese.  Basically what I mean is my grandmother had a heart attack and is having major health and psychological crises on a daily basis, which I'm being repeatedly sucked into.)  Also I have various mental hangups about posting on this blog which are matched only by my mental hangups about not posting on it.  I'm working on those.

Anyway. Cosmocking is very overdue, so, without further ado...

Blue cover!  They didn't tag this "the HOT issue," because Cosmo is getting all serious these days, but they haven't totally lost touch with their roots because they still snuck in a "SUPERHOT!" on the cover.  Demi Lovato!  I feel so old when I have no idea who the cover people are!  "Best. Sex. Ever. 42 New Tips!" The tips turn out to be things like talking dirty and using a blindfold and there's nothing wrong with that but wow that is some chutzpah calling them new! "The Real Reason He Never Texted!"  Generally I assume it's because he missed the message or procrastinated answering it and if I remind him he'll get in touch!  Because if it's anything else then I'd say I dodged a bullet!

FAIL: A U.N. report suggest we eat more bugs in order to fight world hunger. Blech.

Because I am a pedant (and I've eaten a few bugs in my day), I found the report they're talking about. It goes into depth about all the different ways people eat insects right now: caterpillars are popular in central Africa, crickets and beetles are snacks in Thailand, witchetty grub is a traditional food in Australia, ant larvae are a delicacy in Mexico... the question the UN is posing isn't "what if people ate insects?" but "why doesn't everyone eat insects?"

The answer, is, in part: because Westerners think it's icky and suppress insect-based culinary traditions, even when doing so leads to widespread malnutrition (PDF link).  Turns out that going "ewww FAIL" at important protein sources is not, in fact, sound global food policy.

Sexy vs. Skanky

For all that Cosmo is supposed to be totally feminist now, you guys, they still have this section, and they still use it to say "women wearing revealing clothing - sexy; women wearing incrementally more revealing clothing - skanky."

See, if guys see part of your breasts, they'll want to have sex with you, and that's great; but if guys see a slightly larger part of your breasts, they'll think you want to have sex with them, and that's terrible.

So You Want To Be A Princess: Grown, professional women are sporting glass slippers, spending thousands on a Cinderella wedding, and holding out for Prince Charming. What the frock is going on?

This is a really weird trend piece.  It's almost up to New York Times levels of "taking a trend that basically no one is involved in, acting like it's sweeping the country, than judging all the people who are supposedly involved."  I'm just going to give you some amazing quotes from this piece and let them stand on their own merits here.

The professional princess doesn't claw her way up the ladder. She ascends through the ranks by employing kindness, courtesy, and charm, leaving everyone with whom she has worked sinking her praises. 

Driving around in her pink car, texting on her pink iPhone, and still planning her Little Mermaid wedding, she waits for the man who will open doors for her, buy her flowers every day, and know her favorite song--"not because he has to but because he wants to." 

"It's a form of insanity," Orenstein says. "Why can't they emulate queens?" 

Not having to be in charge is the point of princess culture, adds Rebecca Hains, Ph.D, author of Confronting Cinderella. "These women are saying they want it all but in a way that doesn't involve the work and does involve the sparkle and glamour. [...] Women are being joyously duped."

Their definitions of what a princess is have become intensely personal. 

For her at least, being a princess is not about being self-absorbed, materialistic, or rescued by a man. "I know it's silly," she says. "But there was such female bonding and empowerment out there. The women weren't like, 'Hey, move, you're in my way.' They were like 'Hey, I like your tutu."

At least it's not "hookup culture."

...Okay, five bucks to anyone who finds me a trend piece on "princess hookup culture."

"Our life feels like it's turned into one errand after another, so we've started assigning sex acts to errands. His going down on me equals grocery store, so now I love our trips to Whole Foods."

"Hey, honey, want to [eyebrow waggle] take the paint cans to the hazardous waste center?"

Q: Sometimes my boyfriend takes too long to finish, and I'm lying there, uncomfortable, wondering, "How much longer?" Is there anything I can do to help him get there faster?

A: Yes! But let's start with the basics: A survey of sex therapists in The Journal of Sex Medicine found that intercourse lasting from 7 to 13 minutes is the most desirable.

Well, that's great to know, but a survey of me in the journal of my vagina came up with different results, so maybe having sex for the objectively correct amount of time shouldn't be the goal here?

[How to talk to your boyfriend when he's unemployed]: It's best to put the emphasis on you. Say, "I just don't get why you're not trying harder to get a job--you're so talented! What's going on?" Complimenting him instead of insulting him will help him open up. See what we did there?

...You told him that he's deciding to be unemployed and demanded an explanation for why he made that decision?  Yeah, I see what you did there.

Q: A guy asked me out to see a movie. He picked me up, so I offered to pay for the movie tickets, saying it was like reimbursing him for gas money. I didn't think he would let me, but he did. Shouldn't he have tried to pay?A: He shouldn't have tried to pay for the tickets--he should have insisted on paying for them.

Okay, seriously?  I am so fucking sick of people who think "they should have known I meant the exact opposite of what I said" is acceptable adult communication.  If you say you're going to pay for the tickets, and you are after all a grown woman with money of her own, then the reasonable assumption a person would make is that you're going to pay for the tickets.

In LARPing (shit... this post is revealing I've both eaten bugs and LARPed, god I'm a sexy beast), when someone holds their hand up with their fingers crossed, it means they're speaking out of character.  It's a safety hatch for unambiguously saying "no, I literally mean this," so that if you say "hold up, I twisted my ankle," it's clear that you the player are hurt, not merely playing a character who's hurt.

Cosmo relationships need an "out of character" gesture, is what I'm saying.

Cosmocking: July '13!

Pinkish cover!  Kelly Osbourne!  Apparently Cosmo feels that tracheas and neck muscles are really unbecoming, this is the zillionth cover in a row where they've Photoshopped all the features off someone's neck!  (Look at the pendant. It's in the center of her chest. Now try to find the center of her throat.)  "Are you too self-obsessed"?  Take a quiz where you answer questions about yourself to find this out about yourself!

Because I have to report a lot of quotes from guys for our stories, one of the first things I did on the job [as a Cosmo writer] was put together a huge e-mail list of every guy I've ever known.  Then I started bombarding their in-boxes with totally TMI questions. ("Happy Monday! What's your favorite sex position?")

Every guy she's ever known?  Gah!  I'm guessing "how important are personal boundaries to you?" wasn't one of the questions.

Also, I just went through my address list for all the men, and a distressing number of them were either relatives or people I have a purely professional relationship with.  If I tried mass e-mailing all the male names, I'd probably end up sending "When do you think is 'too soon' for anal sex?" to my dentist.

"I love bringing guys to my summerhouse to have sex on the lake in this small kayak. The smooth rock of the boat adds unexpected movement, so every feeling is like a shock of pleasure."

I don't think Cosmo knows what a kayak is.

This is a kayak.  Now, granted, I'm sure the ideal Cosmo woman is far smaller and more flexible than I am, but still, I don't see any way that's going to work.

Anyway, I know kayak sex can't be done, because I looked for pictures of it, and I couldn't find any.   If there isn't a picture of a sex act on the Internet, it is physically impossible.

Recently, I jokingly asked my boyfriend which of my friends he'd want to hook up with if he and I weren't together. It took some convincing for him to answer, but he eventually said my best friend. I know I pushed him to answer, but now I'm worried he actually wants to hook up with her, and I'm a little resentful of my friend. Am I being a little too paranoid?

Oh for God's sake.

The troubling thing here is that Cosmo fakes all their "reader-submitted" content, so someone sat down and wrote this, and what they chose to write is the most groaningly misogynistic "women are clingy and fickle and everything they say is secretly a trap" stereotype imaginable.  Yeah, you can argue it's just this one character, nobody said all women are like that, but... this is one step away from "Dear Cosmo, I become unreasonable when I'm on my period and sometimes I deny guys sex just to amuse myself. Also I cry when I break a nail. Please advise."

[When you're traveling alone] Before you even up your hotel-room door, glance over your shoulder to make sure no one sees you enter alone--you want as few people as possible knowing you're there by yourself. If there's someone in the hallway, keep walking and loop back in a few.

And if the other person's room is at the end of the hallway you walk down, that's going to get really awkward.  Maybe she could just walk in and yell "HI HONEY I'M BACK, HOW WAS YOUR KRAV MAGA AND WEIGHTLIFTING AND TARGET SHOOTING CLASS?"  That seems like a much more convenient way to keep up the charade that women shouldn't be out of the house any time they aren't under the protection of a big strong man.

[On a travel first aid kit, because remember, the outside world is scaaaary]: Nine lifesavers. Zero chance of you in a foreign pharmacy, trying to pronounce "diarrhea" in Spanish.

"Diarrhea" in Spanish is "diarrea."


Words that this issue of Cosmo uses:
-Guyeters (guy dieters)
-Friendvy (friend envy)
-Mombomb (being compared to a man's mom)
-Sexercise (*sigh*)
-Breakup-fast (breaking up with someone via carefully arranged breakfast cereal letters)

The meanings of BDSM.

One of the tough parts about discussing BDSM in a feminist context is that everyone seems to have a different idea of what BDSM means.  (The literal answer, of course, is Bondage, Disciplominance, Sadimission, and Masochism.)  What does it mean, what dynamic is really playing out, when you do BDSM?

Does topping a person mean that you're pleasuring them, or testing their limits?  Does choosing to bottom mean that you're choosing to endure harm, or that you're merely asking someone to do things you enjoy?  Does dominating someone mean that you're using them, or that you're taking care of them?  Does submitting mean that you're naturally fit to follow rather than lead, or that you have either potential but choose to follow?

The answer to all those questions is "yes."

A lot of debates about BDSM get stuck because people assume they know the meaning of a physical action.  The simplest, and most frustrating, problem is when someone interprets "hitting" to always mean "attacking with anger and intent to harm," therefore BDSM is about anger and is harmful, QED.  But there are subtler assumptions that crop up in better-informed discussions, sometimes even inside the community.  If you're talking about forced feminization, and one person thinks that means "making someone feminine to make them lesser," and the other thinks it means "helping someone explore femininity in a kinky way," they can talk right past each other for hours.

When I say people have different ideas about what BDSM means, this isn't just about intention or emotion or philosophy.  Sometimes it's quite visible when you watch BDSM actually happen. The same activities, that we describe with the same words, can be done in very different ways that completely change the meanings.

Take rope bondage.  People can use bondage to restrain someone while they do other play, or simply tie them up and let them experience it for a while and then untie them.  It can be drippingly sexual and involve fucking in bondage, or it can be done fully clothed and nonsexually.  (Not that "naked" and "sexual" necessarily go together.  Sometimes nudity in bondage is about freedom of motion, or keeping clothing from tangling up with the rope, or feeling the rope on your skin.  Or just having an excuse to be naked.)  It can be so painful it's a form of sadism, or so comforting the bottom nearly falls asleep.  It can keep a person from moving at all, or be purely decorative ropework that they can walk around in.  It can be rough, brutal, and hastily improvised, or it can be a painstakingly crafted art form.

So when we talk about bondage, we're not talking about a unified mood, intention, or effect. We're talking about an umbrella with a gigantic amount of human variation underneath it.  And we need to acknowledge that.  I'm not saying you can't generalize anything about BDSM, but... it's a lot less than you think.  So when people ask questions like "is BDSM oppressive?", the answer isn't "no" and it isn't "yes."  The answer is "it shouldn't be and it doesn't have to be."



This has a fun side.  It's not all about sexism and abuse.  It's also a tremendously powerful tool to use in play.  Understanding how to control the mood and meaning of a scene opens up a world of glorious possibilities. You can bring your negotiation from "I want to tie you up" to "I want to tie you up sexy" or "I want to tie you up mean" or "I want to tie you up artsy." (actual phrasing not recommended)  You can agree to tie someone up sexy and tease and them with not-quite-sexual bondage before turning it sexy.  You can develop the meaning of a scene in sync with your partner, something you experience together, and the cool part is, you get to decide what that meaning is.

Cosmocking: June '13!

I don't know how long I can keep doing this.  I thought Cosmo would be Cosmo forever, but now I'm afraid/hopeful it might not be.  They have a new editor-in-chief, Joanna Coles, who is slowly and subtly steering Cosmo towards growing the fuck up.

It's not drastic--which I actually approve of; if it turned into Ms. Magazine overnight they'd just lose their audience--but changes are happening.  Each issue has just a little more political and feminist content and just a little less "30 Reasons Your Vagina Is Doing Everything Wrong."  This month's issue has profiles of a woman teaching teenage girls to program, a woman campaigning for better equal-pay laws and enforcement, a female soldier who was wounded in Afghanistan and talks about why she still believes women should be on the front lines... this is not the Cosmo I know.

The magazine is still mostly fluff, and the misogyny and general weirdness are far from gone.  So I've got enough to write about this month.  But if this keeps up, I don't know.  I might have to switch to Maxim or something.  Which might not be all bad; I've mined the well of Cosmo pretty deep at this point, and could use some freshness.  Besides, making fun of Cosmo always has a little tinge of "dammit feminine women, stop oppressing yourselves!" to it; Maximocking (preliminary working title) would be addressing the intersection of masculinity and misogyny.

But for now... Cosmocking's not dead yet!

Purple color!  Sofia Vergara!  I don't know who she is, but to be fair, the only TV shows I watch are Mythbusters and Doctor Who, so I am not a very good arbiter of pop culture notability!  Um... None of these headlines are entertainingly ridiculous!  You see why I'm having problems here! 

Ah, there's the Cosmo I know and... know.  The left-hand image is "sexy," and the right-hand is of course "skanky."  And it's a stunning contrast until you apply the slightest common sense: do you think Heidi Montag suntans in that position?  She just hangs out that way all day?  Or was she shifting position or getting up and the photographer took a picture at the exact moment that looks like she's doing a porn pose?  If anyone's skanky here, it's that photographer.

Have Drunk Sex Sober!

Beats the reverse, I guess.  The idea here is that you can have all the fun of drinking, but without the actual alcohol, by just acting uninhibited and a little bit confused.  Oh, and you should have a red lightbulb.  Red light is a lot like being drunk.

Fall into that bleary-eyed, no-words-needed kind of hookup that's the touchstone of drunk sex. Because you'll be in a slightly dreamy state, the next morning will feel almost the same: Did that really happen... or did I imagine it?

Kudos to Cosmo for not encouraging people to do this via actual alcohol, but I've never said to myself "that was pretty good sex, but dammit, I just remember it too well."

Recently, an anonymous NYC guy put up 600 fliers with the hashtag #ThisIsHowYouWinHerBack all over the city to try to get his ex back.  His efforts, alas, didn't work, but he's just the latest in a slew of men who are trying to dispel their growing rep as wimpy beta boys by posting love declarations online. "We're seeing some young men use big, look-at-me-antics to publicly take back their status as dominators."

Oh my God that guy's poor ex.  I mean, a couple points to the guy for not putting her name or picture out there, but all points immediately subtracted forever because being surrounded by hundreds of public "I won't let you go" messages from your ex is still horrifying no matter how memey-clever they are.

They're right, though, this is a very dominating gesture.  And that's not a good thing.  That's not "taking back" some God-given right he has as a man.  It's putting someone in a submissive position who most likely did not want to and definitely did not agree to be in that position.

[When there's lube on your hands after sex,] use the excess lube to grease each other up. Rub it on his chest and your breasts, since those areas are less likely to come into contact with the fancy linens you scored for 50 percent off at OneKingsLane.com.

1. Ew.  I mean, nothing against people who like it messy, but if you're just trying to be neat and tidy, this is... not neat and tidy.

2. Oh man, I want to see someone try this with silicone lube.

3. Really depends on position what parts of you touch the sheets.

4. Smooth product placement there, champ.  Barely noticed it.

[How to tell if a male friend wants to date you:] Tell him all about other guys you're dating, and see how he reacts.  Or ask about one of his good friends as though you're interested.  If he gets annoyed or defensive, there's a chance he may have feelings for you.

Cosmo doesn't describe how you transition the conversation from "I'm dating a ton of dudes these days... by the way, is Steve single?" to "oh, never mind, I was just making things up to upset you, want to go out?"  That seems like the difficult part.

Could You Fall for a Guy Wearing Clogs?

See? The new, more political Cosmo is all about tackling the tough issues.

[ETA: The video linked in comments on this post, and the ensuing discussion, deal with sexual harassment and assault.]

What I Mean When I Say I'm Sex-Positive.

Pride Pterodactyl, by Rowdy's roomie

I'm sex-positive!

And I'm realizing that's a painfully ambiguous term.  I've seen people use it to mean everything from "not viewing sex as inherently evil" to "insisting that everyone should have tons of orgasms and it'll solve all their problems."  You can see how people using the first definition could have some seriously unproductive arguments with people thinking they're using the second. 

About the "orgasms for everyone!" thing.  It's not entirely a strawman.  I once saw a presentation by Annie Sprinkle (who clearly wrote her own Wikipedia page) where she basically argued that we would have world peace and feminist utopia if everyone in all the armies just fucked and had orgasms instead.   It's superficially sweet-sounding--yay, pleasure!--but there's some really obvious problems.  Not everyone can have orgasms, not everyone wants orgasms, and there are lots of people who have fabulous orgasms but they're still assholes.

Sex-positivity has had problems with misconstruing personal choice as sexual repression and sexual exploitation as personal choice, and I don't want to deny that.  ("Sex work is always great because sex is super fun happy time" is every bit as vacuous as "sex work is always terrible because no one could ever possibly choose that.")  I also don't want to deny that I've done it myself at times.  But I do want to move away from it.

So here's my definition/manifesto.  Defifesto.  (I wrote a much shorter version on Tumblr, and I thought it was worth expanding upon.)  When I say that I'm sex-positive, this is what I mean:

•I think freedom of sexuality is something that we all need and very few of us have.

•I think sexual pleasure is a legitimate thing to want and ethically pursue.

My sex-positivity does not exist in opposition to non-sex-positive feminism.  It exists in opposition to fucked-up social sexual norms.  It exists in opposition to the people who attack any sexuality outside strict norms, the people who demand women and girls be sexy but humiliate them for being sexual, the people who treat discussions of sexual safety and consent like obscenity, the society that constructs sexual desire as something dark and dirty and secret and awful.  That is sex-negativity.  That is the real reason sex-positivity matters.

•I reject preconceptions of what kind of sexuality a person "should" have, whether these preconceptions are based on gender, age, race, culture, disability, trans status, survivor status, or basically anything else.

•I do not judge people for the ethical sex that they have or want.
"Ethical" means "not harming others." Ethics doesn't have a damn thing to say about whether your sex should be kinky, heterosexual, fully clothed, anal, unmarried, boring, gay, still going at age 80, in a kiddy pool full of Karo syrup, twice a year, with twelve people, or not exist at all--and therefore, neither do I.

•I will not tolerate hatred of sex workers.

This means from all sides: employers and customers as well as moralists and police.  Sex workers are people; sex work is work.  There's often a shit-ton of misogyny and exploitation in the sex industry, but the "misogyny" and "exploitation" parts are the problem and what we should be working to fight.  Not the "sex" part.

•I believe comprehensive, honest, non-judgmental sex education is necessary for public health and happiness.
•I think understanding of sexual consent—what it is, why it matters—is sorely lacking in society and crucially important.

These two really, really need to go together.  If abstinence-only sex ed is like driver's ed without talking about cars, then sex ed without talking about consent is like driver's ed where they show you the gas and the brake, but assume you'll pick up all the "how to follow traffic laws so you don't kill people" bits on your own.

•I think the diversity and power of human sexuality is goddamn awe-inspiring.

Sex has the potential to bring great joy or great suffering.  Sex-positivity, to me, means celebrating and cultivating the joy.  Not imposing it upon people, not ignoring the suffering.  But believing that sex brings enough good things to enough people's lives that it is worth talking about, worth working on.

On the other hand, when I say I'm sex-positive, here are a few things that I absolutely do not mean:

•Everyone should have sex.
•Everyone should have kinky, non-monogamous, exhibitionistic, orgasmic, pansexual sex.

Some people are asexual. Some people are sexual but not all that into it.  Some people are monogamous, heterosexual, and not into kink.  Some people have physical or psychological issues that interfere with them having sex.  Trying to "free" any of these people from their "repression" is ignorant, presumptuous, and the very opposite of promoting sexual freedom.

•Accepting someone’s way of having sex means you have to participate in it, watch them engage in it, or hear about it in detail.

Yeah.  Ew.  I hate that I even have to say this.  But it comes up.  And ew.

(Caveat: "you don't have to watch it or hear about it" does assume some initiative on your part to avoid things you don't want to see.  If you say "don't tell me about your sex life," when I'm talking to you, I will respect that; if you say "don't tell me about your sex life" in response to writing not directed at you and clearly labeled as sex writing, I will tear my hair out.)

•Nothing related to sex is ever hurtful for anyone.

•Nothing related to sex should be criticized.

"If it's consensual and ethical, it's all okay" is worlds away from "if it's related to sex, it's all okay."  Worlds.

And I do believe things can be unethical even if all the sex involved is consensual.  Cheating is unethical.  Fetishizing people based on racial stereotypes is unethical.  Treating people as sex objects is unethical.  Imposing strict norms of gender expression and sexual behavior on others is unethical even if you come up with some convoluted argument for why it's your sexuality.

Responsible sex-positivity requires a thorough examination of sexual ethics.  It's just that whether something seems "freaky" or hedonistic or something you wouldn't enjoy yourself should play no part in those ethics.

•Feminism should be all about sex.
•Sex fixes everything.

I'm wary of anything that smacks of "making feminism sexy."  Sex-positivity should be a part of feminism because sexuality is important--not because feminism needs spicing up.  I really don't want to imply any "be a feminist ally and you'll get lots of kinky sex" deals here, or any "don't worry, we're not man-haters, we're into stripteases and blowjobs!" cajoling.  The challenge of integrating sex-positivity into feminism is communicating "women's sexual desire matters" without giving any ammunition to "women are for sex."

Plus, there's a lot of worthy feminist goals that just can't be shoehorned into being about sex.  I think promoting women's sexual autonomy and respecting the diversity of female sexuality should be a part of feminism, but I'm under no illusions that this is going to fix hiring discrimination or domestic violence.  There's a lot of unsexy work to be done in feminism, and sex-positivity shouldn't eclipse that.

No, we won't get feminist utopia through sexual freedom, but that's okay, because sexual freedom is an end in itself.  And that's what I mean when I call myself sex-positive.