Maybe why doesn't matter.

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Scene from Sixteen Years Old.

"Holy shit, someone put horse porn on the network!"
"That's horrible... open it up!"

It was a woman under a stallion, somewhat awkwardly guiding the tip of the horse's massive penis into her vagina. Was that illegal? I think it wasn't in Washington at the time--this was before Mr. Hands.

"God, that's horrible. Is that real? Is that going to hurt her?"
"Jesus, this is disgusting."
"I can't believe this exists."
"Ew ew ew."
"I think I need to have sex with you right now."

Thinkin' Bout Porn.

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Kicked out.

"You can sleep over if you're sleeping with me. You can't stay here to hide from your problems over there. Go home and sort your life out."

It's a pretty special man who can kick me out of his house and make me respect him more for it.

Sometimes I need friends to hug me and say it'll all be okay you poor dear, but sometimes I do need a small kick in the ass and I'm glad to have a boyfriend who knows when to do it. Maybe I'm only grateful because when I was a teenager I experienced the opposite.

When I was sixteen, I had a boyfriend who would gladly take me in whenever I had problems, tell me that absolutely nothing was my fault, and let me stay with him until the problems had gotten much worse from being ignored. (Fucking me all the while, natch, but I really don't think he was deliberately exploiting my angst; he just wasn't mature enough himself to know that what I asked for wasn't always best for me.) Eventually I stayed with him so long that a missing persons report was filed on me. The police took me home.

Of course it can be taken too far the other way (anything can be taken too far) and I certainly don't want someone who always knows what's best for me. But I think it's important and in a way more loving when you can avoid being an enabler and tell me to do not what I want, but what I need.



(To not be entirely cryptic about "problems," I'm flunking out. Although it certainly sucks, in a way I'm relieved, because I've already got a college degree and a living-wage job, being out of school earning my own keep will give me more independence than I've ever had, and once the "OMG DROPOUT" dust settles, I think it'll actually relieve a lot of family tension.)

The State of the Blog.

A logo! I hope it's not too eye-burning; as I use my newfound free time to give this blog an actual visual style it's probably going to change anyway. Pretty much the only thing I'm sure of is that I'll never put anything non-work-safe (well, other than "PERV" in jillion-point lettering) on the front page.

Mission reevaluation! This is my personal sex journal.
Personal: It's primarily about my experiences. Mostly because that's all I really know; when I try to generalize about others I always find I'm wrong, but when I share my own life I find out how much I have in common with people. And also because it's simply my personal outlet, a safe way to tell my secrets.

Sex: I only want to write about politics or Internet drama when they involve sexuality--not because sex is the most important thing in the world, but because it's the most important thing on this blog. This is a feminist's blog, but it is not a feminism blog. Nor is it exactly an erotic blog; although I'm quite happy to hear that my writing (or, rarely, photography) is sexy and you have my permission to enjoy it any way you like, I don't generally write with the intention of getting undies damp.

Journal: Technically, a blog is a collection of external links and commentary, whereas a journal is original writing. I'm definitely a journal and happy to be so. It's not solipsism, it's mission focus, dammit.

Comment policy! Unless they are extremely disruptive (i.e., posting personal information or flood-posting, not merely disagreeing), I will not delete comments. Comments only reflect upon their authors, so if someone wants to use my blog as a venue to tell the world that they're mean or stupid, they're welcome to. I try to reply to all comments.

Blogroll! Needs serious rewriting to include more of my friends and fewer big generic blogs. If have a suggestion (including yourself) please let me know, although no promises.

Everything we said the last time we had sex.

"Jeez, if you keep touching that you're going to get me all excited."
"Oh no, I wouldn't want that. I'll stop touching it... with my hands..."
"Ohhh."
"Jeez, I'm so selfish! I'm just sitting here with you sucking my dick!"
"Ain't selfish if I like it, baby."
"Ohhh."
"No, really, what do you want me to do for you?"
"I wanna get fucked."
"Oh you're so demanding."
"Scootch thataway a little."
"Aahh. Mmmm."
"I want you to slow down and get close to me and just grind it in."
"Ah ah ah I'm gonna come gonnacome ALAN AHHHH."
"Jeez, I could feel that."
"Mmmm... OW!"
"Sorry."
"No, don't stop."
"Ow fuck ow ahhh fuck fuck fuck fuck FUCK FUCK!!!"
"Wow, I think you're done now, do you wanna..."
"No. Don't stop."
"Yeah, pull my hair... you can do it harder than that."
"Oh god, you feel so fucking big inside me."
"OW, no really, ease up there, I'm like bleeding."
"OH GOD ALAN PLEASE HURT ME PLEASE HURT ME OH GOD OH FUCK ALAAAAAN."
"Dammit, Holly, I'm gonna come! Ergghh... OHHHHHH... ahhh."
"Phew."
"That was nice."

Road Rage.

"I masturbated in the car once. I was driving up [a 45 mph road] and I got really horny and I had a bottle in the car..."

i am really drunk posting this just so you know

(Links are NWS and show real [very minor, very consensual] sexually-inflicted injuries.)

Okay, fine. Jesus. I admit it. I'm a tool of the patriarchy. A helpless, stupid, deluded little tool! I don't do stuff like this because it makes me come so hard I scream, I do it because men want me to! Because they like hurting women, all of them! And I like pleasing men (that's terrible!), because I don't have the courage to fight the good fight I am such worthless patriarchshit!

And it didn't take months of discussion and building trust and frankly begging to get a man to do this, he coerced me into it! Women never have submissive or exhibitionist desires of their own, don't be ridiculous! I think I do, but that's just because I'm a victim and an appeaser! I'm at once a malevolent Uncle Tom and a volitionless pawn!

And the fact that a man enjoyed doing this means that I necessarily didn't, because sex is a transaction, not an activity between partners! It's a zero-sum game, baby, rape or be raped! Ain't no room for friendship or love while the patriarchy exists--when a man fucks you he's using you, and if you've known this man for months and think you really know and respect each other you're being fooled by the patriarchy because if he dares to fuck you that means you're trash to him!

BY POSTING THESE PICTURES I HAVE DAMAGED THE WOMEN'S MOVEMENT AND PROMOTED RAPE, WOMEN BEING SEXY IS DANGEROUS LIKE THAT

although really is it my fault because it's not like i WANTED to post them, the patriarchy made me, because it is so powerful it controls EVERYTHING including when you need to shit and whether it's gonna rain, and when i am alone with my boyfriend and say 'let's have sex' it is just the patriarchy talking through my poor helpless body while my mind screams 'noooo'

The world has two possible conditions, you know. Total ideal freedom in which we work for three hours a week and are all perfectly literally equal, and MISERY AND EXPLOITATION AND CRUELTY. If you are not exactly equal to all men at all times, you might as well be a starving beaten sex slave. The idea of "not a perfect world but I'm gonna do my best to enjoy and improve it" is a PATRIARCHY LIE.


STRAAAAWWWMANNNN everything you said that I cannot defend against is a STRAWWWWMANNN the only things we will admit to believing are that puppies are good and genocides are bad and if you try to argue against anything else you are just attacking a SSSSTTTTRRRRAAAWWWWMAAAANNN



i might delete this in the morning

Like sex? Dare to talk about it? UNCLE TOM!

Darnit, I'm not done being angry. Twisty's new post on sex-positive feminism is so goddamn narrow-minded. There's so much in it about wanting to restrict the actions of women for their own good, to keep them from playing into the Patriarchy. I'll try to quote rather than rephrase here, so as to avoid "strawman" accusations as much as possible.

...“sex positive” feminists focus on is the ability to accept themselves as sexual, which they only attain by presenting a version of themselves that others readily find acceptable and have since way before I was born. Would you feel so empowered by your sexuality if you didn’t have a receptive audience?
First of all, not everything in sex-positivism is readily acceptable to society. I'm pretty sure that my posts about getting cut up in bed or embracing the sexuality of fat people aren't winning me any mainstream-patriarchy popularity contests. And secondly, even when my views do fit with the mainstream, they're still my views. Tell me I'm wrong if you must, but don't tell me "you don't really think that."

I’m “sex positive,” (stupid term) by the way, and I think that this label is completely misused by practically everyone as a way of insinuating that those who disagree with their self-exploitation are somehow anti-sex.
Self-exploitation? I have to admit, I do a lot of that; I make me buy me stuff, I send me to work my shifts for me, and yes, I even make me have sex with my boyfriend. But here she seems to be using "self-exploitation" to mean exhibitionism. If a woman makes a free choice to show her stuff to the world, because she gets off on it or because she wants to be popular or get paid, that is her decision to make. And if you start telling her that she's not allowed to do that because it might make the patriarchy happy (as a side effect of her happiness), you're constraining women's freedom and you end up on the same side as the misogynist puritans.

It’s an expedient justification, a way to rebrand what everybody does when they’re in their twenties, which is to drink too much and screw a lot, as a cool 21st-century-activist political activity.
Don't know who brought drinking into it, but screwing is political, when I do it on my own terms and don't allow anybody to shame me for it. Sexuality is only one battleground of feminism, and it may be a fun one, but it's a battleground nonetheless.

What do I mean by “sexy feminism”? Suicide Girls. Bust magazine. BDSM. The “position” that women should be free to “choose” femininity if that’s what bangs their box. The idea that embracing sexploitation is “empowering.” The notion that women “can do what we want despite patriarchy.”
"Scare" "quotes" "sure" "are" "fun"! I don't know much about SG or Bust, but I sure as hell know BDSM and I didn't get into it because a man told me to, I got into it out of my own twisted desires. And telling me that oh, they must not really be my desires, no woman could actually be a pervert herself so they must be the product of some internalized misogyny, is hideously stupid and condescending. Denying female sexual desire is, once again, putting the radfems and the patriarchs in the very same boat.

And yeah, women can choose femininity, they can show off their sexuality, and they can do pretty much what they please. I'm not telling them they have to, if modesty's your thing then go hog wild, but it's not right to tell other women not to express themselves.

We’re living in a war zone and orgasms are a dime a dozen. The performance of pornulated, dude-appeasing sex moves just isn’t important enough to form the basis of an entire political ideology.
Oh, I'm not going to claim that I'm saving the world here, but that doesn't make it worthless. This attack on sex-positivism is like going to the dog food drive and yelling "don't you care about starving people?!?"--the fact that it's not the most important thing ever doesn't mean that sexuality is insignificant.

And if receiving sexual pleasure the way I want it is dude-appeasing, all I can say is that it's also so damn lady-appeasing that I think it's a fair deal.

I propose third, easy-breezy alternative to the suffocating conformity demanded by this tiresome positive vs. negative binary thought system: sex-neutralism. Get busy, don’t get busy, whatever!
That is, I believe, a very moderate-sounding way of telling women who like sex to shut up. "Oh okay, they can have their lifestyle, but gosh, they don't have to talk about it."

I like sex, I like equality, I think sexuality matters, and I'm not going to shut up.

Blood.

I honestly don't remember if it was his teeth or his nails (my memory-forming skills are disturbingly poor during good sex; there have been times when having multiple orgasms has caused me to basically black out a few minutes), but Alan made a two-inch cut on my left breast. He held my face and kissed me and with a little sigh laid his cheek against mine, and then while he was fucking me he made me bleed.

I feel so proud of the mark. I keep pulling my neckline down a little and looking at it and smiling.

I love it when sex comes with souvenirs.

Birds and Bees.

When I was four years old my mother got pregnant with my little sister. Naturally I asked how it'd happened, and she gave me an admirably matter-of-fact and unembarrassed description of the basics.

My first reaction was "Why didn't you let me watch?"

I was slightly hurt really; I felt that making my sister was an important family event, and as such, the whole family ought to have been included.

I love men!

I have to stop reading radical feminist writing. I consider myself a feminist, but with two caveats:

1) Some of my best friends are men. The vast majority of the men I see every day are kind, hard-working, intelligent people who respect women. In my world at least, hooting fratboys or growling wifebeaters or crazy fundies are outnumbered 10 to 1 by ordinary Joes doing the best they can to be decent people.

2) Call me a rich white het cis privilegebunny, but I don't feel very oppressed. Sometimes insulted, sometimes worried, sometimes concerned for the oppression of people in other places, but in my own life I just don't feel the boot on my neck. At work, at school, socially, nobody acts like I'm less than human or tries to enforce the Patriarchy on me directly. For me, in my daily life, I don't feel like being female is difficult or painful.

So... my reactions to a lot of radical feminism tend to fall into the following narrow-minded horrible categories:

"Men aren't like that!"
"But I like sex! For me. Not because I've been brainwashed to be a pleasurebot for men, because it feels good in my vagina where I have nerves. And, yes, also emotionally, and there's nothing wrong with that."
"Oh grow some skin. Yes, that was offensive, but it didn't instantly remove all your human rights. Get some freakin' perspective."

And I go nuts when I read stuff like this:
"In a patriarchy, the cornerstone of which is a paradigm of male dominance and female submission, women do not enjoy the same degree of personal sovereignty that men do. This oppressed condition obtains a priori to all other conditions, and nullifies any presumption of fully human status on the part of women. A woman, therefore, cannot freely “consent,” because her will is obviated by her status as a subhuman."

I don't know what kind of women-in-chains Gor crazyworld this author is coming from, but I'm pretty damn sure that no means no, yes means yes, and throwing up your hands and screaming "we're so oppressed we can't even make decisions!" is not actually advancing the cause of female strength and independence.

In fact, it's an example of something I've seen a few times in radfem thought--going so far that they actually come full circle. You see statements like "women aren't able to give consent" and "women just want love, but men exploit it for sex," and you might as well be on the Abstinence Warriors forum--it's the same stereotyping of both men and women and unreasonable fear of sex.

I'm a feminist. I really am, dammit. Our culture is permeated with weird ideas about femininity (and masculinity!) and it desperately does need to change. But if you don't take a realistic worldview and respect the people you're trying to change, you're not getting anywhere. And if you don't have sex until we reach perfect equality, well, buddy, you're never gonna get laid.



EDIT--REQUEST FOR OPPOSING COMMENTERS: Please don't say "Strawman!" or "Radfems don't believe that!" without giving a brief skim of what you do believe on the subject. And don't say "well, we respect women and think inequality is bad," because you get a whole lot more contentious than that when you're on your own turf, and it would behoove you to defend it rather than deny it.

Let's put the Perv back in Pervocracy!

I was nervous going to his house. I know him, I've seen him a hundred times--I was so on edge that my stomach hurt.

He met me at the door and we didn't say much of anything. In the living room he undressed me. There was a little window at the top of the room that had no blinds on it; it looked out on a street with a sidewalk. The angle was oblique, the window small, and the sidewalk empty, but the possibility was still there when I stood naked in that room.

He took my own rope out of my bag and looped it behind my neck, brought it down my body with the appropriate knots, and then threaded it between my legs and yanked up hard before bringing it back up my spine and tying my entire torso into a web of rope. He tied my hands to the web behind my back, as far up as they would bend so that I could feel the strain on my joints. He blindfolded and gagged me, and threw me forward over the arm of the couch.

The rope was the beginning of the pain; my wrists and elbows were pulled, and the rope running up my crotch and ass was rough and tight. The rope wasn't the end of it. He hit me with his hands first.

He pulled the rope aside from my ass for a moment, tightening it on the rest of my body, and slid a buttplug into my ass. The instant it was in he shoved his groin against me, rubbing his cock against the base of the plug, making it move deep inside me. I was making noises that weren't words and the whole time he was saying words I don't remember. I'm not good with words and sex. I just remember that it all hurt, more than I expected it to, more than it looks like in porn that makes this kind of stuff seem light, but I fucking loved it.

He started flogging me and I don't even know what was happening, I was in the dark with pain on my back and pleasure in my ass, his body hot on mine and broad red lines being slapped into my flesh. I'm sure I came, fuck, I don't know. I really don't remember clearly.

I just remember that at the end he stood me up, took the gag out, and I thought for a second that he was done and would untie me. He didn't. He sat down on the couch with legs spread and shoved me down between his legs. Without needing to be told I started sucking his cock. Blindfolded and with no hands it's not easy but that just means you have to try harder. In that moment, the cock is all you can know.

The eeriest part was that he made no sound. When I was sucking his cock, there were no moans, no grunts, no reactions at all. He's not a quiet man normally. I suppose that making a man call out is controlling him through his cock in a sense, and I had no chance for that. I had no control. He told me to go lower and lick his balls, and I did, for as long as he wanted until he brought me up to his cock again. The plug was still in my ass, held tightly in by the ropes, and painful.

He didn't come--I think he can't relax enough when he's topping. But eventually I was simply exhausted. When I got to the point where there were tears on my face, I'd gagged more than once, and I was resting my head on his thigh whimpering between strokes, he decided I was finished. I yelped when he untied me; it was painful just coming untangled, straightening my joints out again. And when I was free I collapsed.

All the sex advice I can give.

1. Communicate. Talk before sex, during sex, after sex. You can't read their mind and they can't read yours, so volunteer what you like and ask what they like. Not just the first time. Continuously.

(Obviously there's a lot of "idiot caveats" to this like "don't literally yak your way through sex" and "don't use 'communication' as an excuse to be bossy or whiny" and "don't blame your failings on your partner not giving an EXACT PLAY BY PLAY of what they wanted," but you get the gist of what I'm saying. Everything's got idiot caveats and I think it's pretty easy to figure out for yourself what they are.)

2. Remember individuality. You're not fucking a man or a woman, you're fucking Josh or Kyle or Nicole or Samantha. Don't assume you know "what guys like." It may not be all wrong and not every aspect of sexuality ("penis feels good") is a completely unique snowflake for everyone, but don't ever get the idea that you don't need to ask because you've learned how to do "a guy."

3. Be good. You're fucking someone because you like them, right? So assume good faith and act in good faith. Be nice, be generous, be forgiving. And if they don't respond in kind, be gone, because people aren't fixable. And all this absolutely applies to casual sex as well; just because you're not making any commitment doesn't mean you don't need to be nice to each other.

4. Unless it's a matter of anatomy or of explicitly communicated differences, follow the Golden Rule and fuck as you'd want to be fucked.

5. Don't be ashamed. They're fucking you because they like you, right? So show your whole body and everything you can do. You won't look dignified and you don't need to. A friend of mine once said of her boyfriend, "I'd touch any part of my body to any part of his body." That's a good attitude.

6. The erotic wedgie is not allowed.



I can't really think of anything else. I know this is a pretty dry and fluffy list, but anything I can think of that's explicit or specific violates Rule 2. The reason I'm not telling you how to please the G-spot isn't because I'm trying to be "serious" or anything, it's because I don't know how your girlfriend likes it. I could tell you how to do me, but I'm pretty sure that information would have limited application.

Hell, there's probably millions of women out there who think the erotic wedgie is hot.

EDIT: Jesus, I was being so fluffy that I forgot the most important rule, which is: don't give anybody any diseases and don't make a baby if you don't mean to. But that's an "idiot caveat," right? God, I hope it is.

Mars and Venus in the Bedroom.

Reading this book may be one of the most shamelessly unfair things I've ever done on this blog. I gave it no chance, admitted no redeeming virtues. But that's just because it doesn't have any. This is a book in which John Gray, the author of Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus (which I previously trashed) tells you how to fuck. By the way, he was a celibate monk for nine years. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but if you want to be an authority on gender relations, maybe it isn't the best life experience to bring to the table.

As before, his advice is all predicated upon the idea that men and women are entirely separate species and the only way for them to relate successfully is to learn each other's bizarre and unreasonable needs from his book, never discuss them openly, and treat each other like gender exemplars rather than people.

He does lots of little summary bold-text things in this book (I guess the "complete paragraph" format was kind of alienating his readers with its highfalutin ivory-tower intellectualism), so it's really easy to grab the main crazy ideas in a sentence and see how ridiculously anti-woman, anti-man, and anti-sex they are.

Below the cut, I do just that.

Edit: This website deconstructs John Gray much more rigorously than I do. And it's fun.


Sex allows a man to feel his needs for love, while receiving love helps a woman to feel her hunger for sex.
That's the central thesis of the book, right there. Men only want to get their dicks wet, women only want to be hugglebunnies. In which case I'd say they it sounds like they just shouldn't be dating and clearly God wants us to all be gay.

For a woman, arousal slowly builds long before it becomes a physical desire for sex... it could be days before she wants to have sex.
DAYS? Another main theme of this book is "man sex takes ten seconds, woman sex takes hours." But... days? How can you get aroused over the course of days? Don't you have to go to work?

Men need sex to feel. To go out into the wild or into battle, men needed to put their feelings aside. To provide for and protect their families, men were required to risk their lives while enduring the discomforts of scorching sun and freezing cold. Men gradually adapted to this requirement by becoming desensitized... Women's skin is ten times more sensitive than men's skin.
Um, I don't think hunter-gatherer women had the benefits of central heat and A/C. And women generally have a higher pain tolerance than men. Which doesn't translate into lowered sexual sensitivity anyway; neither sex is exactly leathery and I've seen men respond to some very light touches in the right context.

When Mom said that the way to a man's heart was through his stomach, she was about four inches too high.
Okay, now I'm... somewhere in the intestines.

How are men supposed to know what makes women happy when they are not women?
Gosh, what a quandary! If only women were capable of communicating somehow... maybe a crude tapping code or pointing to simple pictures!

She didn't go right to my erogenous zone. It was as though she was purposely striking out. She was moving her hands slowly up and down my body. Down my thighs and then back up to my chest. Up and down my arms and then up and down my chest and back. She was touching me everywhere I didn't want to be touched. Since we were planning to go all the way, I reached down to her hand and put it between my legs. I said, "There!"
Congratulations, John Gray, you're a dick.

When a man is kissing a woman, abruptly putting his tongue in her mouth can be too sudden. Instead, he should kiss her lightly several times, and then as she begins to open up, he can place his tongue in her mouth.
Whoa there cowboy, it's not my butthole, I'm actually pretty good at opening my mouth up with a minimum of mouthplay and artificial lubrication. (The whole section on "how to make love to a woman" is like this; some guys do need to slow down but he makes all women out to be absolute molasses in January.)

Instead of taking off her panties, he can reach around her buttocks and pull her panties into her crack to expose her bare bottom.
NO. DO NOT DO THIS. THE EROTIC WEDGIE IS NOT ALLOWED.

One very effective way a man can learn to give a woman a longer interlude in sex is to time it. It doesn't sound romantic, but it sure works. I recommend that the man discreetly put a clock by the bed. While he is touching her vulva and clitoris, he can occasionally glance over and time himself.
Um... you're right, that doesn't sound romantic. Like, at all. Also, does he make love exclusively to frozen pieces of brick? I think my lovers time themselves via the progression from "mmm" to "OH GOD," not the ticking away of the minutes.

Huh. I just finished a chapter on "how to please a woman," and I was expecting it to be followed by "how to please a man," but no. No such equivalent in the book. Apparently you please a man by owning female genitals and not screaming "don't touch me!"

For a woman to experience the big "O," a man needs to place the "O" after his two to three minutes, making it twenty to thirty minutes.
Now I know people are all different (John Gray doesn't), but I've never been with a guy who regularly finished in two to three minutes. It's happened a couple times, but as a general rule, every guy I've been with has needed a good fifteen minutes of stimulation to get to his happy place. And me? It depends a lot, but it's somewhere between thirty seconds and ten minutes. Usually well less than ten minutes. This is just me of course, because people are different.

What makes sex fulfilling and memorable for a man is a woman's fulfillment. What makes success fulfilling and memorable for a woman is the same, her fulfillment.
Why do you hate men, John Gray? Why is your whole book about men demonstrating skill and patience and women merely enjoying? Why are a man's enjoyment and a woman's skill (or rather lack of need for skill, because having a vagina is enough) taken for granted?

These are some common phrases for initiating sex and common answers a woman can give instead of just saying no.
A little context: his idea in this section is that when women don't want sex, rather than refusing it they should agree to just have a "quickie" to get him off. No pressure on her to undertake the long and agonizing process of reaching orgasm, he relieves his burning masculine need, and everyone goes home happy, except of course the woman who just got a totally pleasureless fuck when she didn't want to fuck at all.

He says, "I have some time. Would you like to have sex?" She says, "We could go for a quickie now and then maybe tomorrow we could schedule some more time to have sex."
She says, "You're a real fucking romantic, aren't you, John Gray?"

My favorite example of sexual signals came from a movie I watched about a Mongolian family. When the wife was in the mood for sex, she would put out a flag. When her husband came home, he would see the flag and know that she was in the mood. He would then race to get his flag and hoop while she got on her horse and rode away. He would then get on his horse and chase after her, lasso her with his hoop, and wrestle with her. Then they would have sex.
Ah, this explains why the women of Mongolia are known for their passion, sensuality, and severe spinal injuries.

A man should remember that it is not what he does but how long he takes to do it that ensures a woman's fulfillment.
Jesus Christ. You shoulda stayed a monk. Or, like, consulted with actual women when you wrote your book on how to please women.

Fish Loves Her Bicycle.

I think I do, in fact, need a man. Emotionally, sexually, socially--I'm really not as happy when there isn't a man in my life. It's not a lack of independence; it's heterosexuality.

If "I don't need no damn man" is a feminist statement, it's not one I can make. Sure I can have my own career, buy my own house, raise my own kid, use a vibrator, and all that's better than being stuck with a really bad man; but given any kind of chance I don't want independence to become loneliness.

Well. I suppose I only want a man, and I guess that's an important distinction. I can support myself and live a life manless, and that's a crucial human right.

But sometimes I'm sleeping over at Alan's, and it's about 3 in the morning, and I wake up just enough to see him deep asleep next to me, and there's a pale orange light from the street on his bare chest, and without even waking up he snuggles up to me a little. And I could survive without this.

But I don't want to.

Sometimes Stupid Statements Sound Sexy.

Alan flushes during sex.

"You're all red."
"I wonder why that is?"
"Cause you're getting fucked."
"Mmm yes I am."

Giving In.

I have trouble submitting. Not masochisting (or however you verb that); physically intense things are easy for me. But the same thick-skinned-ness that makes me able to take punishment keeps me from internalizing it, from going from "there's something hurting my skin" to "I am helpless." (The fact that I still have feminist and psychological reservations about whether internalizing that sort of thing is even a good idea only makes it harder.)

I backtalk a lot. It's some nervousness, some disliking Benny, but a lot of it comes from an inability to let go. To accept that for this fleeting instant my life isn't about me, isn't (directly) about what I want. To not just get on my knees and follow directions, but to actually give up control.

I want to. Maybe it's a stupid fantasy, maybe I wouldn't actually like it or it's not possible, but I really want Benny to somehow break through my ego and make me stop being me for a few minutes. I want to be made (very temporarily!) into this... animal... that isn't Holly, that doesn't have a big mess of thoughts and worries and desires and reservations, it just fucks and feels and is.

BDSM as meditation, maybe. I never did get the hang of real meditation. I kept thinking.

We could work out a scene for this, I think. With me blindfolded, immobilized, kept from speaking, and given pain beyond my limits, maybe I'd stop caring so damn much about myself. Or maybe even a scene where I'm free physically, but absolutely not allowed to express or act in service of my own desires. A habit I have worse than the backtalk is the small adjustment. "No, hit me a little lower." "Hangon, gotta cramp." "Loosen my knee, it's bent all funny." If I were kept in a scene where no such allowances were made, long enough and strictly enough, would I reach that state?

Being made selfless, thoughtless, not-me.... I don't want to live there, but someday I want to visit.

The Dance.

You start standing up. Fully clothed, facing him, and then into the traditional slow-dance pose: your arms up around his neck, his hands on your waist.

The first move is a kiss.

His hands run over your back first. Through your hair, taking up a fistful and pulling it for an instant before combing tenderly through and then moving down. His hands, then, under your shirt, running back up underneath, making broad flat strokes over your skin and your bra before moving back to unhook it. Your hands, this whole time, on his chest, feeling it firm under his t-shirt and the nipples hard.

In unison your shirts peel off, arms high over heads and held for a moment. Any hair that wasn't mussed before is now. And you can see so much of his skin and feel his scent, and you bury yourself in it as he buries himself in your breasts. His lips are soft, his teeth are rough, and for a moment all there is for you to do is hold his face and watch him close his eyes and immerse himself in the softness of your breast.

You lead on the next move. Down on one knee, hands forward to unbutton his pants, hands down to remove, hands down again for the underpants, hands forward to take the cock. Stroke. Observe. If it wasn't stiff the instant it came out, it hardens in your hands. He looks down and watches you and makes no move; you are free to set the pace. You take that cock into your mouth and then he has to react, making little noises or intakes of air, strictly in time with the rhythm. His hands come to the back of your head but apply no pressure.

If he let you it would finish here, but he doesn't; he drags you back up to his level again and kisses you deeply. Which is rather open-minded of him if you think about it. Then it's two steps to the bed and you fall back with his hands to guide you down. With a single swooping move, ideally, he removes your pants and underwear, and he sinks into you as his hand sinks down to your pussy. He strokes around the outside until you're wet and once there's wetness he strokes within until you relax open, and very often he keeps stroking after that just to make you writhe and moan and clutch at him. As he did before, it's your duty to stop him and pull him up to your level. You beg to be fucked. He obliges.

And that's the best thing in the world.

There's variations on the theme here, there's room for artistic interpretation. His mouth or hands may be on your breasts again, and your hands may be anywhere or everywhere on his body, from cupped on his face to stroking his balls. There are different positions--anything that allows him to keep thrusting deep inside you hard and fast is permissible--and you may move fluidly between them or stop for a moment and start again with redoubled strength.

You come. God, Jesus, fuck, shit, oh, yes, no, fuck, do you come.

It takes longer and it's less certain, but eventually there comes a point when his pace quickens and everything about him roughens. He thrusts harder and faster until suddenly every muscle in his body tenses and releases and coming he collapses on you. Under you. Wherever.

In the last move, you wrap your arms around one another and lie still.

"No."

Alan and I were having sex with me on top, and he reached his hand down to rub my clit.

I'm a mutant; I don't like clit stimulation. I'm okay with general crotch-area stimulation that rubs my clit indirectly, but a firm finger directly on the money button is just... too much. I think it's comparable to the way men feel about their cocks right after orgasm: it's intolerably hypersensitive.

So I said "stop that," and tried to push his hand away. He actually pushed against me kept it there, kept rubbing me in that horrible uncomfortable way even as I said again "no, stop, it's too much."

"It's not too much. You like it!"

"Please stop. I really don't like it." I physically yanked his hand out of my crotch and he finally gave up. We kept having sex, of course, and the rest of it was very nice, and I got off like five times and he didn't at all, so nyahhh.

Still I'm annoyed. It's roughly the millionth time a guy has told me "no, no, I swear you like this" when I said I didn't. The funny part is that it's almost always something ostensibly done for my pleasure--guys never want to force me to give blowjobs or anything, they want to force me into uncomfortable fingering and cunnilingus and vibrator play. If I could only get over my initial reluctance to receive pleasure, they think, they'd bring me such bliss.

I know I'm a little idiosyncratic in the way I work, and I don't blame Alan for touching me the wrong way, but I do blame him for not listening to "no."

Do other women say it insincerely? Is that my problem? Are there girls out there going "no, no, yes" or using "no" to mean "oh, that's just too naughty, tee hee"? Because if so, those girls suck and they're ruining men for those of us who know what we don't like and are just trying to communicate that.

Or if women don't do that, where do guys get this idea? Is it the media or something? There's usually some way to blame the media.

It's hardly a big deal, it was a tiny little finger move and a momentary misunderstanding. It just bothers me that a guy like Alan needs any convincing, under any circumstances, that "no" means "no."


(Benny, always happy to be on the worse side of any comparison, once actually fucked me against a "no," and not in scene or anything--we were just hanging out naked in bed and he got on me and I wasn't really ready and said so and he started anyway. Again, it was mere moments until things got sorted out, but... I could swear I was audible the first time, goddammit.)

Life in Heworld.

(I wrote a version of this post last year and it prompted Bruno to coin the word "Pervocracy." So there's great sentimental value.)

In my sexual utopia, everyone is a man. Everyone is called "he," every boy has two fathers, every board has a chairman and fires are fought by firemen. Pilots are all men, presidents are all men, and kindergarten teachers are all men.

Of course, biologically, there are male men and female men, but frequently it isn't obvious and unless you're a doctor or very intimate it's insanely rude to ask about or comment upon it. It's private parts, dammit, and whether someone has a vagina or a penis is as inappropriate for public discourse as speculating how much pubic hair they have. (Obviously body shape and whatnot do give you some clue, but it's still not polite to comment. And moreover, it's not interesting; sure you can guess that a five-foot man with large breasts and wide hips is female, but that doesn't tell you anything important. It's like knowing his blood type; who really cares?)

And there are men who like to wear makeup and long hair and skirts, and men who'd rather have a buzz cut and cargos (and some sexy bastards with a buzz cut and a skirt), but it doesn't correlate with maleness or femaleness, it's just a personal choice. As are personalities and family and community roles. And when two men have sex or marry--well, every relationship is between two men so there's no real difference, is there?

(It'd be interesting to let this experiment run for a couple hundred years and see if female men behaved any differently from male men. My guess is probably a little bit, but nowhere near as extremely or consistently as in our current society.)

I guess the concept of a genderless society is hardly a new one, and all I'm adding is the idea of making everyone male. That's partly because English is already structured around male-default, and it avoids awkwardly artificial constructions like "hir", and partly because I think it's funny.

This is what the world would be like if I were King.

Gauging Normalcy.

Assume there's a bell curve of sexual desire.

-3 is totally asexual, +3 is extremely hypersexual. The vast majority of the population is somewhere in between, in (not necessarily but let's assume, for giggles) a normal distribution with most people close to an average degree of horniness.

Where do you fall on that curve?

I've gotta be somewhere in the right half. And I'm not at the +3 far right, because I'm not very promiscuous and I only have sex maybe once or twice a week. (Not that sexual behavior necessarily indicates sexual desire, but I have a rough idea I'm not the horniest person in the world anyway.) But exactly where to place myself, I'm not sure.

Sometimes I get indications that I'm nearly normal, that I'm like +0.5 or something and my only real deviation is talking about it so damn much. I'll mention something to my friends that I thought was completely wild and pervy and find out that 75% of them have done it. Everybody and their mom has oral sex, anal sex, gets tied up, gets spanked, and I'm naïve for even calling it kinky.

And sometimes instead of talking to my friends I look at polls and statistics, and good Lord, I'm the horniest little slut on the planet. I saw a poll in Glamour (yeah, real scientific) that said "47% of men and 24% of women masturbate weekly." Weekly? What the heck do they do the other six nights?

Here (large PDF) are some results of a 2005 survey on global sexual habits that surprised me:
• The average American has 10.7 sexual partners in their life. I'm 22 and that's about my number right now. (The 0.7 dude was a little unpleasant.)
• 47% report anal sex. Seriously? That many? I'm very surprised.
• Only 10% of Americans report "sadomasochism." Although if they're like Alan, they may define that narrowly--36% report "bondage."
• 53% of Americans own pornography. That makes me realize what a bad sample my friends are, because I know 100% of them do. It also makes me wonder a bit what the lie factor in the survey was--it seems like "awesome cool" things like threesomes and buttsex have surprisingly high percentages, where as "lame loser" things like porn and frequent masturbation have surprisingly low ones.

In the end, I'm unable to reach a conclusion as to how pervy I am. Is my constant yearning for and enthusiasm in sex exceptional (or exceptional for a girl), or is it simply the human condition? Is this truly the Pervocracy, or is it after all only the SecretlyTotallyNormalOcracy?

Vanilla Boy.

Whenever I talk about BDSM, Alan squirms. (I don't ever talk about what I've done with Benny specifically, that would be sort of nose-rubbing.) His whole face scrunches up and he waves his hands at me in this frantic "no, NO" gesture. It's hilarious.

We were watching TV and the Travel Channel showed fire cupping being used in Chinese traditional medicine.
"I actually learned how to do this once," I said.
"Hmm, interesting."
"...At an SM class at the Wet Spot."
"AAAUUUGHHH!!!"

But even though he hates hearing about it, he doesn't mind me actually doing it. Which is horribly sweet.

And for all he pretends to be squeamish, he doesn't seem to have a problem with holding me down or biting me or pinching my nipples or spanking me. Apparently if there's props involved it's BDSM and thus ickypervy, but as long as you're only restraining and hurting a girl with your bare hands it's just good ol' rowdy fun.

There are bruises on my chest from my vanilla boy.

Just another lovely night.

Alan is amazing.

My nipples hurt so bad I can barely wear a t-shirt.

He offered to let me move in. Not a decision or anything, I'm not packing my bags, but a not-quite-offhand "Hey, if you're ever looking for a place to stay..." and even though it'll probably never happen it's kind of cool to think about.

Only funny observation: we are both extremely anti-PDA. At home we'll be completely draped over each other; when we go out we act like church kids on a chaperoned trip. We don't even hold hands. Usually we sit or walk about two feet apart. The idea of actually touching each other in public, even in the most innocuous of ways, is just unimaginable. If I so much as touch his knee in a restaurant I feel like I've just stripped and mounted him in front of everybody.

But in, um, a bad way.

Day and Night.

So today after work I talked to (or possibly moped on) Alan, and Jesus, I don't appreciate him enough.

Not that he's some kind of perfect Love God or anything; he's not a huge romantic himself and sometimes he ticks me off, but he basically treats me the way you'd expect a guy to treat his girlfriend. Maybe better. He's nice, and fuck, nice guys finish first and women do like nice guys. He wants to do things besides sex together, he wants to make me happy, he wants to be my friend and also a pretty good fuck.

And I can say "You know, I really like you," and rather than going OMG NO MY PRECIOUS BODILY FLUIDS he'll say back "Aw, I like you too."

And we'll kiss.

And then we made plans to go to this cool bar in north Seattle that has really rare imported boozes and after we can get late-night breakfast by Greenlake and then we'll go home and get in bed and there won't be any holding down or slapping or buttfucking. But we'll hold each other very close and trust and care for each other, and that feels almost as good as getting rammed up the ass.

Loveless.

Had an absolutely amazing scene with Benny--my entire body wrapped in rope, buttplug up my ass, him whipping me and forcing his cock down my throat.

But then. I stuck around, and we fucked and cuddled, and while we were cuddling Benny felt it necessary to tell me repeatedly and in many different ways that he didn't love me, we had no future together, I shouldn't get any idea that this means anything, and so on.

Well fuck, guess I'll have to go return that ring.

Look, I know we're just friends-with-hitty-benefits. I wouldn't even want to be more than that, not with Benny. But at the same time there's no goddamn reason to rub my nose in it. Especially not in a tone that suggests feeling affection for him would be some kind of horrible exploitative crime upon his person. I don't know if he's worrying that I'll stalk him or have a surprise baby or what. Or if he's just afraid that the good-for-sex-only slut might forget her place.

I'm not in love with Benny; I'm not insane. But it's a bit insulting to be naked in bed and have the naked man you just fucked hold you close and say "I don't want you getting any ideas."


For the first time I'm really not 100% sure I want to see Benny again. I love the sex. Everything he does in bed (or on floor, or in bathtub, or on kitchen counter, or over arm of sofa) is fucking fantastic, hot rough dominant sex like I've never had. I don't mind it being casual. But I can't take him being such a suspicious "you really want to trap me, right?" ass about it.

Prep work.

Shower. Shave all body hair as thoroughly as possible. Dry and straighten hair.

Clean toys. Coil rope. (Or do that cool chainy thing where it looks like a big messy knot but it all comes apart neatly with one pull--I don't know what to call it but I like to do it.) Pack toybag.

Select underwear: skeezy, matching, easy to remove, and preferably not ones that he's seen 50 times before.

Select outer clothing: feminine, only subtly skeezy, easy to remove.

Avoid eating for a few hours before.

Plan out at least the rudiments of a scene if he wants to bottom.

Makeup. Perfume.


I don't go through this for Alan. I try to be clean and all, but I pretty much show up as I am for him and any other "regular" guys. It's only when I have a date with Benny that I always do a full ritual preparation beforehand. I'm not even sure if he really appreciates it. I could sigh and go "Oh, the things I do for that man," but really... I don't think I'm doing them for him.

The Joy of Not Coming.

I like getting oral sex. I don't, unless the giver is very enthusiastic and determined, have orgasms from it. It's exciting and feels really good and makes me moan and squirm around and nothing else in the world is quite like it... but I don't come.

It can be hard sometimes to explain to my partners that I still like it. It doesn't get me off, it really doesn't even get me that much closer to getting off or to being ready for intercourse, it's just nice. For its own sake. It's the only sexual sensation that's truly soft, no bones or erections but just a warm wet and extremely pliable tongue. It's the only activity that is never even slightly painful. (I mean, not that finger or cock sex is painful, but there's always a couple missteps and eventually there's soreness. None of that happens with oral sex.)

But once guys learn that eating me out isn't an efficient way to make me come, they tend to stop doing it very often. I think they tend to think of orgasms as pleasure, and the rest of things as working up to an orgasm. (Is it like this for guys? Getting your cock played with isn't fun until you come? I seriously doubt it, but I guess I don't know for sure.) I don't really think it's based on their own experience, though, I think it's based on a general idea that any activity--even a purely recreational one--should have some sort of goal.

Focusing on orgasms is like keeping score in a pickup game: it gives you something to aim for and not a bad thing at that, but it can keep you from trying new things or just enjoying yourself. Benny's figured out how to make me come in literally less than a minute (oh God yes he has) and yet some weekends we end up spending six or seven hours in bed. Just feeling the "plateau", the pleasure that has no climax but just goes on and on in waves of pure goddamn joy, is... fucking great.

(I'm a total hypocrite here. I absolutely hate to stop sex before a guy's come. Or when he ends up jerking himself off to finish--kill me.)

Getting my pussy eaten is absolutely great and absolutely pointless. But hell, so is all of sex.

Win-Win Situation.

Sometimes Alan and I have arguments about who should have an orgasm.

"But I want to give you one, dammit!"

Loving my body.

I've posted my disembodied tits and cooter on this blog before, but this is a bit harder.

This (NWS) is my whole damn body. (I was born with a rare facial disorder known as mybossmightseethisosis.)

Welp. I'm fat. But is that all I am? Is my whole body, that I have to live in and work with and fuck with, described by one word? (And a fairly relative one at that; I'm nobody's skinny but I'm not exactly buying a second airplane seat.) Fuck no. Here are some others:

Strong. I lift human beings for a living. I don't have a lot of athletic ability but I can transfer 200-pound people who bear no weight fifty times a day, and I wouldn't knock that until you try it.

Resilient. That body's had bones broken, skin scraped off, a joint knocked clear out of the socket, and to look at it you wouldn't even know. It fixes itself. It's magic.

Sexual. For whatever reason I have an enormous sex drive and a big damn part of that is physical. My body loves to be touched, loves even more to touch, comes often and hard and doesn't want to stop until it hurts. If then. It can make pain into pleasure and service into joy. Not in some fuzzy psychological way. I mean that being slapped and pinched and forced down can actually, very literally, feel as good as being fucked. Maybe better.


I want to say more good things about my body but I'm not sure where the line falls between image-positivity and flat damn narcissism, and anyway the truth is that I'm not anything special to look at. Because my body wasn't built to be looked at; it was built to be lived in. It's responsive and determined and giving, and that's hard to get into JPG format but that's why I love my body. Not because of what it is but what it does. It works hard, it fucks hard, it makes me happy and keeps me alive, and I have to love it for that.

Plus it's got the cutest damn nipples.

Jerkin' Beatin' Whackin'.

It seems like there's no sexual activity that gets less respect in our culture than male masturbation. Partner sex is of course the Ultimate Goal Of Life, female masturbation is sexy or empowering, but a man wanking is funny, sad, or predatory. I dare you--seriously it would be cool if you could but I doubt it--to find a piece of mainstream American media where male masturbation is presented as sexy.

Or even just okay. A thing people do. Come home from work, fix some dinner, watch TV, brush teeth, jerk off, go to sleep. Good for the prostate, relaxes your muscles, helps you sleep. And--not to make it sound like a health exercise here--it's fucking sexy.

Every man I've slept with more than once has jerked off in front of me. I love to watch. I also love to help, but at least once I want to see how he does it himself. (Circumcised and uncircumcised guys have quite different techniques.) Just once I want to not even touch him and see the squeezed-shut eyes and the way he knows his own rhythm and watch him cover his own hand and belly with come.

(Or, once with Jon, his face. Boy's got some range.)

I suppose the supposed unsexiness of male masturbation is because cultural consumers are assumed to be either straight men or lustless women--the same reason there are fifty bikini-clad women for every attractive man on a newsstand display. When the male body isn't sexualized, a man being sexual by himself isn't sexy, he's just missing a woman.

Men are beautiful and hot when they jerk off, and I hate to see them shamed for it.

On my knees.

It's simply the most comfortable way to suck cock, isn't it? Kneeling before a standing man. Nothing to do with prayer, supplication, submission; it puts my mouth at cock height and his cock at mouth angle and that's all it means.

But the truth is sometimes it is about submission, about kneeling while he stands, about his hand on the back of my head and his hips thrusting forward faster and further than I would dare let him if I had control.

And sometimes it's not. Sometimes it's about seeing him go weak in the knees and nearly lose his balance and be forced to make me stop even though he doesn't want me to stop.

And sometimes it's just about not having to walk all the way to the bed or the sofa when he's just greeted me at the door and I want to do it now.

The one thing it's never about is him and not me. It may only be his genitals but it's both of our bodies. I'm acutely aware of his taste, his shape, every tiny reaction of his body, and I fucking love it.

A blowjob isn't a gift. It's sex.

Ways in which I am a bad feminist.

•I don't actually believe that women of all shapes, sizes, ages, disabilities, and fashion senses are beautiful. Lots are! And I try not to make a thing about it if someone isn't. But I can't sweepingly say that every body is beautiful without feeling like a hippy-dippy liar.

•I have, more than once, voted Republican. (Not for Bush.)

•I watch extremely unenlightened and misogynist mainstream porn. I don't like it and I criticize it, certainly, but... only after I'm done masturbating.

•I'm constantly on an insincere and unhealthy diet and it's not for my blood pressure.

•I was a mostly-fake bisexual and a completely fake lesbian for an embarrassingly large and recent portion of my youth, and I co-opted wayyyy too much specialness and supportive community and oppression before happily jumping on the next cock that was handy.

•I can't help disliking women who are hot in a certain conventional way (blonde, skinny, fakey breasts, heavy eye makeup) even when I know nothing about them as people.

•I can't inwardly accept every consenting-adults form of sexual expression. Certain fetishes and acts (furrydom, extreme D/s, ageplay, scat, purely fictional rape or pedophilia) make me go "ew," "ha ha," or even "that's wrong."

•I think The Vagina Monologues is terribly overrated, and promoting it by displaying vagina pictures in public or writing "VAGINA" in huge letters all over the campus is obnoxious.

•When I was much younger, I lied about being raped. It was only online and I didn't accuse a specific person or anything, but I soaked up undeserved sympathy.

•I have absolutely no use for anything Tantric or New Age or in any way "not religious, but spiritual."

•I've worked in extremely sexist and sexually charged workplaces and not only did I never say anything, I usually kind of enjoyed it.


...Did I just lose all my friends?

:(

Trainwrecks.

Man, online BDSM communities can make online fandom communities look polite, open-minded, and well-connected with reality. Quotes from a (community-only) post in the Livejournal Male_Dom group:

for me, there are two types of punishment. there is the fun type of punishment, which involves some type of pain. i am a masochist and a pain slut, so any punishment involving pain isn't really a serious deterrent.
...
i know this makes some people cringe, the idea that punishment and play can be similar, can have the lines blurred. i know there is the idea that if you "play" at punishment, then how can the sub know for sure where the lines are, the boundaries?
...
the form of punishment that is serious, the form of punishment that would have me on my knees sobbing and begging for my dom's forgiveness. for me, the worst thing he could do is simply ignore me. he knows this. and this punishment is reserved for only the worst infractions. there is only one thing right now that i could do that would cause this punishment. i am *very* clear on what it is and i will not cross that line.

I think you're a little backwards there, lady: what makes me cringe isn't punishment being too much fun, it's the idea that you'd do it if it wasn't fun.


Discussions like this make me think two things:

1) Whoa. What Jon and I do isn't BDSM at all. We just tie each other up and hit each other and stuff. Apparently this is just frivolous outer trappings, and Real BDSM looks less like kinky sex and more like incompetent dog training.

(Some of the people doing bad-dog-trainer D/s don't even have kinky sex. That's really depressing.)

2) Whoa. Maybe BDSM is insane and unhealthy after all.

Although we switch in play quite a lot, Jon's definitely the more dominant one in our relationship, but... if he ever started ignoring me because I broke some rule he made, I wouldn't be on my knees begging and I sure as hell wouldn't feel that the whole game was fulfilling my sexual kinks somehow. The conversation would start with "look, if you're angry just fucking talk to me about it, dickhead" and would end with "I'm going now."

I just don't fundamentally believe that he's really any better than me or that he really has the right to tell me what to do (other than "yeah, bitch, and the balls too"--and even that's only when I feel like it). I have kinks but deep down I basically think of myself as a capable adult.

I guess I'm not a True Submissive (whippings and tyings and "forced" sex acts aside). I think I'm glad I'm not. And I'm a little bit disturbed that anyone is.

He was a boy, she was a girl, could it be any less relevant?

One of the things I love about my relationship with Alan (and there are increasingly many, and most of them are disgustingly soppy things like "his cute widdle nose") is that he has never once tried to justify or explain anything--sex, cooking, personal habits, apartment cleanliness, sports watching, politics--based on gender. I don't think he's ever said "well, of course I'm messy, I'm a guy;" he admits that he's a messy slob, and... that's pretty cool.

Moreso when it comes to sex. I've had a lot of people tell me I'm horny for a girl; Alan only ever says I'm horny. I guess it's a small and maybe even accidental semantic thing but it matters to me. That instead of being a representative of the archetype "girl" which is clean and bored by football and likes cute things and a little reluctant about sex, I'm just Holly. There are no preformed expectations of what a Holly does, and when a Holly drinks strong unfruity things or fixes her own car or wrestles a boy into bed, it's not a deviation from a norm. I'm not a weird girl, I'm a perfectly normal Holly.

(Really, I'm not that unfeminine--I do like cute things and clean floors and I don't understand football--but that's beside the point; I don't want to be a man, I want to be whatever damn person I am and not be subject to arbitrary standards even when I fit them.)

I don't know if it's even intentional; he's never flat out said "I don't judge you as a girl" and I haven't really discussed it with him. He's just never, ever told me how I'm girly and ungirly (or how he's manly/unmanly), and he's the only guy I've been close to who hasn't.

Alan is cool.