Silicone Valley

The Great Wall Of Vagina – it’s in London, it’s amazing and y’all might enjoy checking it out

Three years ago, I had my cunt cast. It was only last week that I really understood why.

The Great Wall Of Vagina is an art project, showing the cast cunts of four hundred women and a few trans men, and it has come to London for a month as part of an exhibition, “Skin Deep”, at the Hay Hill Gallery. It’s free, and I’d very much recommend a visit.

The idea behind the Great Wall is to show natural variation - it’s another part of the battle against a homogenised, Photoshopped view of cunts. There are cunts from cis women, from trans women, from trans men, from old people, younger people, at least one virgin, there are cunts full of piercings, ones without, and the variety in shape, in texture, in size, is absolutely staggering.

I knew intellectually that cunts varied enormously, that variation was normal, but there’s absolutely nothing like standing in front of a panel, resting eyes on one cunt after another after another. The photographs do not do the sculpture justice. In person, you can see just how far some of those labia extend, how puffy or long or pendulous they might be. I had thought it would be difficult to locate my own cunt in a group of 400 - it was a piece of cake.

I understood why this was so important. I’ve seen a few cunts in my time, and I’ve managed to dodge having many body issues of my own, but even so I had no idea how wide the bell curve went, and I left with even more appreciation for the ability of cunts to be enormous, flappy and magnificent just as much as they might be small and neat. I loved seeing the bigger, messier cunts with huge labia, and understanding them to be beautiful.

(icky stuff ahead - ) Look, did you know that in Australia they’re getting the makers of soft porn to Photoshop out visible labia minora? That these Photoshopped cunts are all that thousands of people ever see of what others’ cunts look like? That hundreds of women, there and in the UK and all over the place, are asking surgeons to *literally cut off their labia with knives*, for no medical reason than that their society has instilled this false idea of what’s beautiful in their minds? Can you imagine how pissed off that makes me?

I’m not going to do a huge amount of consciousness-raising on this, ‘cause that’s not much fun to read - just, here’s a video if you’d like to know more about this godawful stuff, and look, folks, negative body image is a big deal, yeah? So, I’m really glad to see stuff like the Great Wall in the world.

There is also a book about the project! And I’m in it, writing about myself and body image from two years ago! I hope that it’s been edited beyond all belief, and I wasn’t actually that bad a writer back then.. I’ll post some of what I wrote later this week, so you don’t need to squint.) And this book - it’s just full of other people writing about their cunts, their body image and the experience of being cast. It’s brilliant. As the Monologues have said, ‘once they got going, you couldn’t stop them. Women love to talk about their vaginas, they do.’

Showing more of what un-Photoshopped cunts actually look like feels like a really important endeavour. I’m proud to be part of this project - it’s been really fun to see it get bigger and bigger (I’ve had email updates for the last three years), and to see friends talking about it online (to which I bounce and say ‘I’m in that!’) I really, really recommend seeing the exhibition - it’ll run in London til June 2nd, at the Hay Hill Gallery near to Oxford Circus.

As for more pictures of non-Photoshopped cunts - here are some galleries, here is a tumblr, and of course here are lots of photos of the Wall. You can also chat about cunts and much more with the enormous and wonderfully queer- and trans-friendly Vagina Pagina community on LJ - enjoy!

Meta: moving to Wordpress, staying on tumblr

I’ve made myself a swanky website all professional like, with links to other stuff I’ve written and events I run and notable posts and the like. Yay!

I’ll be blogging there from now on, partly due to formatting being easier, but tumblr, having given me gems such as meangirlsofpanem, is close to my heart. I’ll carry on blogging here too.

Thank you for your continued awesomeness, tumblr.

~ Ludi xx

Is non-monogamy feminist?

Thus asked Love Is Infinite today, and I just thought I’d paste my comment here, with some exposition. In general, I’m so pleased to see various different alternative sexuality groups talking more recently about our communities not always being up to scratch, institutional problems, and the benefits of creating things like sex-negative spaces.

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I think that mono-normativity is misogynistic, and I think that non-monogamy has huge potential to be feminist, especially as many people come to poly, and actively choose it (few monogamous people choose monogamy, as it’s a default) because they’re frustrated with the oppressive nature of mono-normativity. (I wrote about my experiences of that here.)

However, the more time I spend in poly spaces, the more I’m questioning the inherently feminist nature of poly. I think the ways in which many people practice things could be more feminist, given how much many people talk about how great poly is and how awful monogamy is. I’m a beautiful twentysomething woman, and when I’m in poly space, I feel like I’m fair game for any man to come on to, strongly, and a lot. Most poly space is sex-positive space, and what that means in practice is that it’s space in which I’m seen as being constantly sexually available - especially to the many, many forty-something men that hang out in these spaces, some of whom I’ve found to be actively predatory. Especially for young women new to poly, these people (generally experienced, seen as experts and held in high regard) are really quite dangerous.

In the Climate Camp community, poly became quite widespread a few years ago, and the way in which loads of their women were suddenly seen as sexually available was really rubbish for the community: they wrote a zine about it, the pdf to it is at the bottom of this post.

And much of poly literature seems to be written by middle-aged men, many poly events and websites are run by men… at the moment, my being a twentysomething women writing a whole lot of stuff on poly and running poly events feels like a really good balancing factor against that. But I know that, at some point, this whole thing of… collaborating in making loads of young women sexually available to loads of older men, and this often not really being the greatest thing ever, is going to mean I stop doing poly activism. I absolutely love running poly events, but at some point that’ll get too much.

I think the problems here are really similar to those in kink communities: kink has so much potential to solve lots of the problems that mainstream narratives of sexuality bring up. The ways in which kinky folks talk about safety and consent are absolutely brilliant. But, that potential isn’t realised, because there’s so much focus on maintaining that image as feminist and fully consensual that people who mention problems are squashed - and in addition, some genuinely predatory people gravitate to the community because they know it’s a place where they can get away with abusive behaviour and not be challenged on it. So in many ways it ends up being worse than in mainstream communities. Same with poly.

Sadly, I don’t really know what to do about it. I’d like to make things more institutionally feminist, and carrying on doing my noisy thing as a writer and organiser is part of that. But, I don’t know what else could help. And right now, I don’t really feel like I can go to mainstream communities - say, to educate professionals - and be a voice for the poly (and kinky) communities, and say ‘look, this is a thing people do and it’s great and totally feminist’ or ‘this is a thing people do and it’s absolutely fine and not abusive at all ever’ because I don’t believe it.

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And then! Mere minutes later, I read this post on abuse in the BDSM community: “I’m angry because I’ve been abused under the aegis of BDSM; I’m angry because so damn many of my friends have been abused in the scene; and I’m angry because if I used the guy’s name in that story above, I’d be kicked out of the scene.” There’s even a list of practical things we can do to start challenging this norm and making our communities better. This is brilliant.

OpenCon has a policy of ‘this is a place to meet new friends, not to pull’ - the discouragement of pulling coupled with the fact that most accommodation is in shared dorms means that it’s quite a sex-negative space, and there’s been some really enthusiastic feedback on that. So, maybe things will get better such that I don’t end up stopping poly activism because it no longer feels like I’m doing net good. Right now, I’m sad, and dubious, and I don’t feel like I can be an ambassador for poly to mainstream folks. But maybe things will change. Let’s keep talking about it.

It’s time to move on the conversations about kink and feminism.

I feel like there are only a couple of relatively basic conversations that are going on about the intersections of kink and feminism, and that old stereotypes and these old patterns are silencing deeper, more informed and important conversations that need to be had.

I want to talk about gendered violence. I want to talk about the times when kink *is* abusive, when abusers use kink as a cover or when people aren’t feminist enough, and aren’t good enough at consent, to play safely.

Again and again, I see conversations that go like this, and no further:

Question: “I’m a female submissive and a feminist. OMG all those other mean horrible feminists are going to say that I’m not really a feminist! They’re so sex-hating and kink-hating and hairy-legged and they don’t want anyone to do anything but eat granola and talk about their own oppression all day. But anyway, what I want to know is - can I be submissive and still a feminist?”

Answer: “Yes. Feminism is about having the freedom to express and own your desires, and if you desire being sexually submissive and you express that and go out and get it, that’s awesome! It’s really empowering to have sex in the way you want! Anyway, there are loads of really sex-positive male doms around who totally get that feminism’s all about letting women escape slut-shaming and have loads of casual sex with them and submit to them a whole lot, so you’re totally safe in the kink community because it’s so feminist. And any feminists who do say kink might be problematic sometimes just don’t understand kink and they hate sex.”

Every time I see a conversation starting about feminism and kink, I feel like it’s quickly shut down by this spectre of mean, fun-hating feminists who don’t understand kink and think it’s actually abuse. Now, excuse me, but exactly which year are we living in here?! I have NEVER, EVER, met a feminist woman who thought this. Or anyone, actually. I have had a lot of conversations about feminism and about kink. I am in my mid-twenties, and have never experienced this, ever: as far as my own (yes, privileged) experience goes, the sex wars ended decades ago. What I experience instead is this constant silencing of any feminist conversation based on this stereotype: it’s just like the stereotypes that keep many women from feminism by telling them is all about hating men, becoming hairy lesbians and never being allowed to bake or knit again. I mean, really.

Every time I see a conversation starting about being a female submissive and feminist, the party line just seems to be ‘you have choice, you’re empowered because you can choose freely to submit to men.’ *This is a great starting point - it’s a fabulous bottom line.* But I want to have more complex conversations.

Look. I’d like free choice. I am feminist, and experienced with kink. I get it, right? I know kink isn’t abuse, I know it’s okay to submit to men, I know that all the control is really with the bottom. I also know that no choice under patriarchy is really free. I know that all het sex is to some extent coerced by a million social and interpersonal pressures, however careful and knowledgeable the participants may be. How is it that we can acknowledge social pressures and privilege gradients in the workplace, in the home, in the pubs, on the streets, yet as soon as things hit the bedroom or the dungeon we think that those all evaporate and that things simply become a matter of ‘free choice’?! We live in a rape culture. There is no free choice.

I want to talk about that coercion, from a position of being experienced and knowledgeable and looking for pragmatic solutions. I want to create a world in which saying ‘no’ gets as much social reward as saying ‘yes’, where Prude Walk receives as much celebration as Slut Walk, where there is more to being a male feminist than campaigning for the right of anonymous women to suck your cock. Then, I will know that the choice to be submissive, to be dominant, to have missionary sex twice a month or to eat granola is truly free.

I want to talk about the abuse in our communities, from a position of knowing that kink isn’t just abuse and that the kinky party line is one of careful negotiation, informed consent and full aftercare. Yes, kinky folks are often better at doing consent than mainstream folks. That doesn’t mean our communities and bedrooms and dungeons aren’t still full of coercion and abusive behaviour - we still live under patriarchy. We still live in a rape culture. There is still coercion, because it’s not something we can ever escape. In addition, many abusers come to the kink community and abuse because they know that they can get away with it in an environment that is very invested in maintaining that kink is never, ever, ever abusive.

This is gendered. In the vast majority of individual cases, this is about male violence against women. Male-on-female abuse is also the only kind with widespread social sanctioning - that context is why I want to talk about it the most. This is a feminist issue. I am also tired of seeing this conversation shut down - every time male violence against women is mentioned, the woman who talks about it (because of course it’s never one of these very-helpful male feminist allies) is drowned in a cacophony of people telling her off for not including male victims, queer situations, everyone else. Why aren’t those people talking about queer and male victims?

Please, please, can we move on this conversation? Can we acknowledge that we don’t like slut shaming and we do like nice sex, and then talk about not necessarily wanting sex? Can we acknowledge that kink is consensual and good consent is feminist, and then talk about the times when kink’s guidelines fail? Can we know that choosing to submit is both free and coerced, that this coercion isn’t necessarily anyone’s individual fault but that we still need to work, hard and constantly, against it? Can we talk about the actual abuse that is going on unchallenged, right now, in our oh-so-safe-and-consensual communities?

Further reading:

Rape culture 101

The Ethical Prude: Imagining An Authentic Sex-Negative Feminism

Consent Culture

Sex-Negative Actions In Sex-Positive Communities - the list of links at the top of this post are also essential reading, especially:

I Never Called It Rape

When Safewords Are Ignored

Under Duress: Agency, Power and Consent, Part One, “No”, and Part Two, “Yes”

Recommendations: some small, discreet vibrators

Quite a few people have asked me for vibrator recommendations over the last few days, often with several extremely specific criteria. I’m utterly delighted by this, and welcome more questions, and I’ve also noticed that I’ve actually got a relatively small pool of really good, well-priced toys in my head that I’d recommend. So I’m now thinking about making a giant flowchart at some point. In the meantime, here’s the list I wrote when asked about small, discreet clit vibrators. Good for hospital visits, retirement homes, visiting (or living with) family, and anywhere else where people might be poking around in your stuff.

This little bullet vibrator is absolutely brilliant in every way. It’s small, cheap (£10), pretty much silent and very powerful. It has one, excellent, speed, and takes sensible batteries: it takes one LR1 battery (a small camera battery, costs about £2 and the vibrator comes with one), whereas many bullet vibrators take tiny, expensive, fiddly watch batteries such as LR44s or (worse) LR41s. Ann Summers do them next to their tills. This is what I buy for people who haven’t tried a vibrator before, and the one I carry around in my pencil case. It’s an ideal first vibrator, and it’s also really discreet.

If you’re a person who wears make-up, or who people think might wear make-up, there are vibrators that come disguised as lipsticks: Lovehoney have three kinds. The cheapest (£10) one is soft rubber and takes tiny, silly watch batteries. The £15 one is hard plastic and takes one AAA. The £25 one (not to mention the £45 one, jeez) is far too expensive for what it is and it’s also made of shite. Were I to choose one, I’d take the £15 one. Pop it in a make-up bag or a pencil case and you’re sorted. They also tend to be quite good accessibility-wise (along some axes): rather than having tiny annoying buttons, they usually turn on by twisting up the lipstick part, which is less fiddly.

If you can afford to have something that’s a *little* bit noisier than silent, and that isn’t disguised as something else, I’ve got one of these and like it a lot: it’s silicone-tipped, powerful, has three speeds and takes an LR1 camera battery (looks like they’re also called ‘N’ batteries.)

Lastly, if you have £65 to spend and would like something super shiny, I was really impressed with this one (disclosure: I got one for free, loved it, lost it and plan to buy another one, I was that impressed) - it’s rechargeable, submersible, super powerful, has ten speeds and I found the sensations from the tip, edge and flat to be very different: it’s more versatile than it looks. (Or you could get five little vibrators and batteries for them all. It’s still very expensive for what it is.)

Subtlety tips:

- if you’re shopping online, Lovehoney send stuff in plain packaging and they appear on your bill as ‘LH Trading’. Most online sex toy shops will have a note (usually in their ‘shipping’ section) about what they appear as on the bill, and the vast majority (if not all) send stuff in plain packaging. I mention Lovehoney as they’ve a huge selection of cheap stuff. Read the reviews, check the toy materials, and make sure you’ve heard of the battery type.

- if you’re shopping in Ann Summers… well, they also sell underwear, and you might be buying gifts for friends.

- Boots, the chemists, now sell vibrators! They’re made by Durex, and vary in quality, but they’re there! Next to the condoms! I’m extremely pleased about this.

Until the flowchart appears, those are some of my basics!

G-spot toys: the bad, the good, the amazing

Bad:

Good:

AMAZEBALLS:

I’ve talked before about marketing around the G-spot. In many ways, it’s fascinatingly dodgy: the branding of the G-spot as a magical button that can create astonishing, magical orgasms and can coincidentally be stimulated by intercourse needs, well, looking at with suspicion. The eagerness of the mainstream discourse to sideline clitoral pleasure, yet again, in favour of what is essentially a new kind of vaginal, penis-focused, hands-free orgasm, needs to be noted. And we know already that capitalism is very fond of creating new, niched target markets to which to sell an array of ever-specialised pieces of rubbish.

 The G-spot hasn’t been recognised as a sexual staple for very long, and G-spot orgasms and (in particular) ejaculation seem to have become another sexual goal to accomplish. The G-spot is difficult to find, apparently, and it requires special tools and knowledge to stimulate. Thus, any sex toy, regardless of size, shape or texture, can now have a small curve put into the end and is suddenly called a G-spot toy.

The market is full of silly little pointy toys that look more painful and damaging than stimulating. Check out this one - about 2cm in diameter, a tiny tip less than half a centimetre across. Or this one: half the length, similar tip, shiny coating that’ll slowly rub off.

These are hard, smooth, pokey plastic, and utterly useless as G-spot toys: they seem to be being sold as something to very, very precisely stimulate a tiny little area. Bollocks. The G spot is larger than this, and it generally likes firm, diffuse, wide-ranging stimulation (though of course anatomy varies: experiment! ask!). And who is going to buy these toys? People who are experimenting, and searching (and good for them, yay!) and so, when these tiny toys do nothing, is it any wonder there’s confusion and doubt over the G-spot’s very existence?

Don’t get me wrong - G spot orgasms are awesome (well, all orgasms are awesome), playing with the G-spot is great, it’s just the ways in which the market has piled in to brand it, sell it and flog rubbish toys for it that makes me suspicious. Let me recommend some better forms of stimulation to you.

So, the G spot is made of the same sort of stuff as the prostate (and it produces the same sort of stuff, too: ejaculatory fluid from each organ is very similar.) They’re analogous organs, like the penis and clitoris (and I note there’s no debate over the existence of the prostate.) So, if you’re already familiar with prostate stimulation, hurray! Very similar.

Here it is! Two fingers, in about halfway (though explore, play with it a bit), pushing upwards towards the bladder: gentle, flattened. Asking a lover for help reduces wrist cramps (likewise using toys helps and is fun: more on that in a second!). If intercourse and/or strap-on sex is your thing, doggy-style (on all fours) can work wonders as well!

Solo, wrist cramps are a problem, and with lovers, variety is brilliant: and so, we have g-spot toys. Try wide-nosed, soft, silicone toys at first, then larger, firm, glass or steel toys if stronger stimulation is wanted. Here are some good ones: I’ve seen all these in person and I’ve used (and loved) some of them.

Silicone, in order of softness:

- the squishiest one on this list is this: a Fun Factory classic that’s sold well for years, it’s small, squishy, cheap, submersible (!!!) and has a friendly face on.  I’m a big fan of FF’s toys and style: they’re really well-made, high quality and reasonably priced.
- next, look at this thing side on. Make a note of the shape of the tip: that kind of wide, flattened shape is absolutely ideal.  That’s a vibrator, and pretty expensive for what it is, but there’s also a dildo version here:  - Lelo are pricey for what they are, and I’m simultaneously unimpressed and fascinated with their ‘luxury toys’ schtick, but the dildos and vibrators are high-quality, have absolutely gorgeously textured silicone surfaces (go to a sex toy shop, right now, and rub one on your face. I’m serious), and the vibrators are all covered with a ten-year guarantee. So, they’re pretty good.
- those toys are both slightly better shaped to be held by a lover - for those of us with shorter arms, they can be awkward. The G-Ki (I have one) is the one toy I’ve found that’s really easy to use on one’s own, for self-powered g-spot orgasms: it’s curved right round, adjustable and can be bumped against the G-spot just by rocking it back and forth. It’s pricey for what it is, so worth getting if you know lots of g-spot stimulation is what you like, rather than for experimenting.

Firmer toys:

- the Pure Wand. This thing is amazing. (I have one.) Either end works, the larger end is… really, really large, it’s beautiful and shiny and steel, it’s steel, it’s heavy, it’s the hardest thing ever and you can heat it up and it’s so slippery and - yes. I like this one. A lot. (It’s actually given me a steel toys fetish. Can you tell?) If you like firm g-spot stimulation, and you’re turned on by the idea of something shiny and pretty and slippery that can be heated up or cooled down, you definitely want one of these. It’s just brilliant.
- this glass dildo is medium-sized and has a good curve and a wider tip: it’s really well-sized, and looks lovely. (It’s not actually black, either, unless they’ve changed it: it’s clear with a rainbow swirl on the surface.) Like steel, glass can be heated up, cooled down, sterilised easily (this is Pyrex, it’ll happily boil in a pan), and it’s smooth and slippery and takes lube like a dream. 

If you’re looking for g-spot stimulation for the first time, use your or another’s fingers, and a small squishy toy if you’d like to play with vibration. If you’re more experienced, all the above are lovely toys to play with - generally, bear in mind using a large surface area, with firm, diffuse stimulation. Stay away from the silly pointy things, or toys that are too squishy and yielding. Happy hunting!

Repackaging kink in a pastel-pink shade

Come here. I want to show you something really excellent. Let’s talk about marketing.
 
I’m going to use ‘marketing’ here to kinda mean like the packaging of a product - the way in which it is sold, the associations that are set up around it to make it appeal to certain target groups of consumers (ie. people). One fascinating trend in the world of marketing has been the shift in several industries (especially of consumer goods, such as the stuff ordinary people buy to use everyday) from advertising a certain product, to advertising an entire lifestyle, with the product as one part of that: viewers are intended to identify with the characters, to desire their lifestyle and to identify the product being sold as the difference between their lifestyle and that desired. (The lifestyle aspect is fascinating, and I’ll talk more about that later: this post will mostly be more basic, just about the packaging and associations.)

I recently interviewed for Lush, who describe themselves as ‘selling an experience, not a product’ - they encourage their staff to lay out and describe in detail the wonderful things their prospective customers will do with their products once they are home, to stroke their arms, manifest images of candlelit baths, fluffy towels, soft sheets. (A bit like neuro-linguistic programming, essentially.) I’m really interested in the ways in which the sex toy world changes the images of certain sex toys and sexual acts by changing the marketing, packaging and advertising of products, and the sorts of sexual adventures manufacturers call upon when marketing goods. We can consider these by looking at advertising and thinking about the sorts of words and images they’re using, be they ‘luxury massagers for exquisite sensations’ or ‘banging hardcore stretching xtreme xxx’.

Let’s look at some examples.

Here is a description of a butt plug from a luxury online sex toy shop. (A butt plug is a small anal dildo with a narrow neck that’s designed to be worn, rather than moved, sometimes for long periods of time.)

“an elegant and luxurious gentleman’s pleasure object, elegantly sculpted to provide exquisite tension and profound pleasure, crafted in stainless steel or 24K gold plate … As a gentleman’s plug for deep internal stimulation, including male G-spot massage, he helps the user sustain sensation and reach a new intensity of release. Hygienic, stylish and ready for play, he is smooth and designed with a ring for full control of the sensual experience .. Comes presented in an elegant wooden gift box…”

A Quick Guide To Wearable Double-Ended Strapless Strap-On Dildos

You know, things like this. They really need a snappier name.

EDIT: a friend, Charna, suggests ‘strap-in’. I think we should now use this term everywhere! I think it’s perfect : )

You may have heard toys like this referred to as ‘Feeldoes’ before - the style was pioneered as the original Feeldoe, made by Tantus (a sex toy manufacturer popular in the States) several years ago, but now they’re being made by different people all over the place. The Feeldoe range is now huge, Fun Factory make several styles, and so do Sh!, in London. “Feeldoe” is to “wearable double-ended strapless strap-on dildo” as “Hoover” is to “vacuum cleaner” - I’d love to see a more generalised, unbranded name for this style. (tweet me suggestions!)
 

They’re really fun to use for strap-on style sex - the idea being that they provide internal stimulation to the giver as they’re thrusting (mutual, synchronised internal stimulation - hell yes.) They’re marketed as something to be held inside by the giver just using their cunt muscles, but I couldn’t use these without support, myself: they’re are big, heavy toys, and it’s fun to move around lots during sex without worrying about toys shifting and falling out. I generally just tie a scarf harness around the base of the shaft, and romp around contentedly!
 
So, here’s a quick guide to the good stuff that’s available. Loads more brands than those I’ve mentioned have made similar toys, but the following are the best-known, they’re easy to find in sex toy shops, and they’re all silicone. We like that.

 
- Tantus Feeldoe: (warning: porn women in link, sort it out, Tantus) this was the original, and now comes in several sizes, which is cool. I’ve used one of these (the blue one) - the silicone surface is really glassy and smooth, and it’s quite firm. The bulb (for the giver) is quite small, so it’s relatively easy to pop in without much warm-up. It’s kinda penile, in that there’s a stylised head, which can feel quite fun on the way in. I’ve only seen the blue and red versions in person, so that’s all I have to say: they’re straightforward, and work fine, and have been really popular. Silicone is a great conductor of vibration, and these can all take bullet vibrators. EDIT: friends have made me aware that lots of people are boycotting Tantus for some really shitty transphobia, and I’ll be joining that myself.
  
- Fun Factory Share: (disclosure - I own one, I love it, I love FF in general, I think it’s totally the best one. So, biased.) This one’s on the slightly larger side, it’s heavier, it widens *lots* at the base (which is awesome for keeping condoms on), it has a stylised, wider head. It’s not smooth - if you’ve felt any of FF’s other toys (they’re similar to toys made by Rocks Off, too), they’re a tiny bit more rough and textured, like really fine, gentle sandpaper - almost a bit more like skin. You can stroke these, and they feel nicer (I reckon) than complete smoothness, kinda similar to the difference between smooth and frosted glass. None of the FF styles have a hole for a bullet vibrator, but vibrating cock rings can be used instead!

- Fun Factory also do an extra-small size: the thrusting end is around finger-sized and expands gently, the holding-bulb end really quite larger - it’s intended for anal beginners, especially for women to fuck their male lovers (yay!), though it could also be brilliant for people who’d like to use smaller vaginal dildos.

- and there’s an extra-large version of the Share, too: this thing’s huge, and ribbed, and scares me a little: great if you like *loads* of sensation, or after lots of warmup.

- Sh! have also made a version: the dildos Sh! make are also really smooth on the surface, and they’re quite wobbly and squishy. I’ve also found they collect dust like no other dildo: it’s a different kind of smoothness again to that used by Tantus. The dildo-part is similar in style to their bestselling shape, the Cupid 3 (as shown in the previous post) - so it’s graded from a gentle tip to a slightly wider base, and the bulb part is around the same size as that on the Feeldoe. These have a flat base, on which they won’t stand when out of the packaging, and this makes edges, and kinda makes them look… a bit messier, more hinged, than the others. That said, this floppy hinge should help with position flexibility, and this is also the only style in this guide that I can imagine being used for double penetration on one person. That bulb end? Ideally formed as a butt plug. The flat base also looks ideally shaped to be, um, held in easily over long periods of time, with, say, underwear or a harness, if that’s your thing. These also have holes for bullet vibrators. They’re are quite expensive for what they are - they’re around 70 pounds, while the Share (for example) can be found for about 40. But, lobster claw play. Just saying.

- lastly, working out angles with inflexible toys can be tricky - so an adjustable version exists! This one has a sort of silicone card that you can take out and put back in to change the angle between the bulb and the shaft, which is brilliant - the surface is similar to that used by Fun Factory (grainy, not smooth) and there’s space for a vibrator too. It… looks a bit cheaper, and less sexy: if look is important, go for one of the others. The dildo part is fairly slim and doesn’t change in width a whole lot, either.

I’ve covered the best-known forms, but a bit of research and looking around will bring up lots of other styles of the same toy, both in silicone, and in scarier, jelly forms. As ever, stay away from jelly: silicone is better in every way. If possible, go to a sex toy shop and see the toys in person, and if cost is an issue, Google Product Search is your friend. Have fun!

How to *really* strap a dildo to a chair. And anything else.

Lovehoney have just published a guide on strapping a dildo to a chair, and, call me cynical, but the entire post just kinda reads to me like an advertisement for the ready-made chair strap-on they sell: it is £32, contains phthalates, looks a bit rubbish and only goes around one axis of a chair. And it’s eight inches long! Eight! Who wants that, with their whole weight on it?!

In the guide, they recommend drilling four holes in a flat-based dildo and passing string through each one to attach it - an idea that filled me with abject horror. Drilling holes in silicone is a really, really bad idea! Silicone has irregular shear planes, and will cleave all over the place if you try to drill it. DON’T DO IT. (Other toy materials will likely behave in a similar way, but really - why aren’t your strap-ons silicone anyway?)

Their guide is overly complicated and will probably kill your toy. I wasn’t especially impressed, so decided to experiment myself.

Remember the scarf harness? Consider traditional harness design, too. The general idea is to have a ring around the base of the dildo, and to pull tension in many different directions from that. On a standard harness, that’ll be three directions. On a thigh harness, it’s two. Using that principle, it’s probably possible to attach a flat-based dildo to just about anything.

I’ve used the same scarf-tying method as for a standard harness: grab two long, thin scarves, cross them over, tie one around the base of the dildo such that it grabs the other one halfway. That gives you four arms to wind around anything you like, then tighten. The key is making the scarves taut, so they’re holding the dildo tight in several different directions.

So. Meet Julia. She’s a Cupid 3 shape, in marbled purple, made and sold by Sh! in London. She’s their best-selling style, and is about £40. I love Julia a whole lot. I’m less happy about my phone camera quality - sorry about that.

Here she is on a chair: each arm goes to a side, and they tie underneath.

Here’s some detail of the tying: the green scarf is knotted, and it’s holding on to the purple scarf.

Chairs aren’t that comfortable. Here she is on a cushion. (You could also put a towel under it.)

Vertically? Here she is on a headboard.

Thigh harness - just tie the scarves round.

Seriously. We don’t need this customised rubbish. Using our own ingenuity, we can tie sex toys to just about anything. We can tie any size of dildo onto any piece of furniture, and we can seperate the harness from the toy and clean both easily. Brilliant.

(massive thanks to C for the tech! Attempting to put photos in terrifies me.)

Bad Dragon: a sex toy geek’s slippery, pulsing, wet dream

Bad Dragon are amazing. I love that they exist.

They make supernaturally-themed dildos and sleeves. Their toys have absolutely gorgeous, really imaginative designs: they have werewolves, aliens, sea monsters and, yes, several different species of dragon.

Many of the toys look nothing like any anatomy I’ve ever seen in life - they’re utterly original, and each style comes with a richly-described story and hot, silly art. They don’t take their designs too seriously, yet at the same time, the toys themselves are of absolutely beautiful quality.

See, these aren’t just a fantasy geek’s dream - they’re also a sex toy geek’s dream. The toys are all 100% silicone, and - best of all - they’re utterly customisable.

Every design comes in three or four sizes, three degrees of firmness, about thirty possible colour combinations, and optional extras include ejaculation tubes (with refills) and suction bases. Get this: they can even put together multiple degrees of silicone firmness in a toy, so that you can have toys with squishy shafts but firmer bases. One of them can even have a squishy outer layer outside a firmer core! Check out the list of possible features here - and look, they even do a silicone sample set! It makes me so happy!

Every toy is custom-made to your exact specifications, and, for all that (and the sheer mass of silicone in some of these, too), they’re extremely reasonably priced. There’s also an ‘adoption’ section of pre-made, slightly defective (but never unuseable) discounted toys.

I’m fortunate enough to have experienced the Tentacle (largest size, hell yes) for myself. Close up, the detailing is spot-on: the surface is lightly bumpy, the colours merge beautifully into each other and the two rows of suckers look great. Mine is the softest available, and it feels gentle, squishy and even ever so slightly slimy.

The flared tip (with a little orifice, too) looks sexy as hell, and feels amazing. It’s big: the tentacle’s long, and widens a whole lot at the base, but it’s soft enough to make taking it… easy, but still, um, significant. It’s heavy (nom), stands upright alone (and looks gorgeous on a shelf) and makes the most satisfying ‘thunk’ sound when it’s put down.

The base is flat and flared, so it could probably be strapped on using scarves or rope - costume! Standard condoms would have a tricky time staying on the wider, flaring base, but it’s silicone and so can be boiled to sterilise it, or you could use ‘female’ (receptive) condoms as a barrier. If you don’t have a gigantic saucepan, I’d just do what I do with any excessively large dildo (or anytime I don’t have a hob), and hold it upside-down inside an open, boiling kettle. (You can hold down the lever to keep it on a rolling boil. That method’s good for wearable double-dildos too.)

Yay for sex toy geeks making sex toys!

How on earth do women date each other?

A newly-out female bi friend asked:

Dating women is really difficult - there’s a whole level of female/female sexual interaction that I just don’t understand because it’s so new. Is it just me? Should I stfu and fuck men? Or am I missing something?

(my answer has a focus on non-monogamous young people who live in cities. I’m writing what I know. I’ll have a look around for resources for older people and do a linkpost at some point too.)

Many women who have been dating women for *years* still have no idea how the hell they’re meant to flirt with each other, or work out whether or not they’re on a date. Female/female sexual interaction is a mystery to *loads* of people. It’s not just because you’re new to dating women, and it’s not because you’re bi either. I don’t have a definite answer, and nor does anyone else, but damn, I can empathise.

Having had a think, I reckon that a few things that can help with meeting and dating women include: getting more informed about (young) lesbian culture, generally hanging out more with queer women, dating online, and learning to be more assertive. So!

Use our media. There aren’t many queer women out there: we’re not in the mainstream media, we don’t have dozens of magazines talking about sex and dating. Even if your social circle has loads of queer women in it, it’s well worth reading more and just building up a background of magazine-type queer fluff in your life. You’ll feel more like you’re in the ‘club’, more informed, and, well, you’ll see pictures of queers more. Which is nice.
- Read Effing Dykes. It is amazing. It’s a blog mostly about gaydar, with silly, funny posts about all sorts of aspects of lesbian culture, all interspersed with dozens and dozens of photos of actual, gorgeous, queer women. It’s really fun to read with friends or lovers (do the quizzes together! swoon over the pictures!) and hundreds of commenters make each post into a huge conversation.
- Autostraddle is a really big, US-based online queer womens’ magazine on current affairs, and the sex articles in particular (or maybe I’m just most familiar with those…) are stuffed with links to more reading.
- In the UK, Lesbilicious is an online magazine covering queer-relevant current affairs, with articles on politics and healthcare as well as reviews of books, magazines and music, and also a sex and relationships section (yay!)
- The Most Cake is a London-focused multi-writer blog, mostly covering younger people and the ‘scene’. Well worth a peruse.
- subscribe to Diva. Read BoLT, an Irish zine for bi, trans and lesbian women (it’s amazing and can be read online.)
- if you like television, watch the L Word - arrange evenings with friends, cook food together, watch hot queer women together. Win.

Hang out with queer women. Go to bi spaces, and go to lesbian spaces, too: if they’re biphobic, move on and find another one. There are loads, especially in universities, that are really diverse and accepting. Find a casual queer womens’ coffee meet or something, and go to it. Just, in general, hang out more with queer women. And ask the table how the hell women flirt with each other. It’ll probably lead to a really long, noisy and fun conversation.

Hang out socially in womens’ and feminist spaces as well. They’ll have more queer women than average, and you’ll probably meet many who don’t frequent explicitly queer spaces. Check out the London Poly Womens’ Group, or your local group of (non-transphobic) feminist activists.

This is all fairly easy if you’re a student, and much more difficult if not. A friend also suggests, ‘live a more obviously lesbian life - hang out in hipster cafes with a copy of Diva, wear a tiny rainbow badge somewhere, and project gaydar-stuff if you can: for example, maintain eye contact for a tiny bit longer than you would usually.’

Get online. OKCupid is a free dating website beloved of geeks and non-monogamous people for its inclusiveness, and it actually also has a massive contingent of bi, poly, anarcha-feminist, vegan, activist women. And they’re all young, really hot, seem totally awesome, and are on OKC *a lot*. (No, I have no idea why this is either.) Try searching for ‘poly’, ‘polyamorous’, ‘feminist’ and so on, and filtering it to just show bi women. Check out the OKChoices add-on to expand the range of self-definition options, too!


Lastly, get assertive. Be the change. Most queer women have absolutely no idea how flirting with queer women works either, and they’re probably just as terrified of the idea as you. Take the initiative and have a go at being upfront: being friendly and direct is totally hot. If you can combine that with not pressing them for an answer immediately, even better.
 
Tell them they’re awesome and that you’re interested, and then - give them space. If they’re interested, they’ll come to you. (If they’re interested but just want to stand around and be chased, well, I wouldn’t be interested in them anymore.) Oh, and if they’re het, or otherwise not interested? Worst-case scenario, they’ll be confused and/or flattered and turn you down. No big deal.

- So, email awesome women offering your time as a date or a friend, so they can choose: ‘heya - you’re awesome, and I wondered if you felt like joining me for a date/shag/cup of tea/conversation at some point?’
- In person, pass on your contact details, and as you write them down, say ‘just so it’s clear, I’m queer and available, and I’m hitting on you.’ Then hand over your details with a smile and walk away.
- At a party, one of my favourite ways to come on to someone is to say (at the end of a chat or exchange with them), something like ‘oh, and I think you’re really cool, and if you’d like to cuddle or something like that later on, come find me? I’m going to go over there and dance for a bit.’

Queer women are brilliant. We should totally do stuff with each other more.

Gloves are great. Here’s where to get some.

I think that latex (or otherwise) gloves are an absolutely essential part of sex, and I’ve also found them really difficult to source. In this post I’m going to elaborate on their usefulness and list some places in which they can be found.

Gloves are brilliant. They’re a vital part of making both anal and vaginal sex safer: blood-borne infections can be transmitted between fingers and orifices, and fingers often have tiny, invisible cuts on (for example, from trimming nails.) Latex takes lube like an absolute dream: it turns hands slippery, soft and really slidey, and lube tends to last on latex far longer than on skin. They’re gentler, and make it easier to be, well, rougher. They’re considered absolutely essential for fisting, and I like them even when just using one or two fingers. And they make clean-up really, really easy. Gloves are amazing. I love them.

Oh, and they look really hot too. Especially black ones. You know how condoms can be really sexy, how the sound of the packet, slowly rolling them on, means sex is about to happen? Putting on gloves (or watching them be put on) is totally like that.

In the past, I’ve found gloves really quite difficult to source. A while ago, I spent quite some time scouring several big pharmacies, and finding very little except make-up, hair accessories and soap. The closest I found on the shelf was at a small Co-op pharmacy, where they had an expensive little plastic packet of ten standard latex gloves, and carried just one size. Not helpful. I asked, and they said they could be ordered in: a box of gloves took several weeks to arrive, and was the wrong kind when it did. (Initially they gave me powdered ones, and then the wrong size. I eventually just took a box a size smaller than I needed. Not helpful at all.)

I feel frustrated that this staple of safer sex was so difficult to source - condoms are available everywhere! You can hardly move near a students’ union or an STI clinic without having them thrown at you! Dental dams, on the other hand, are virtually impossible to find, and most pharmacists don’t seem to know what the hell they are. It seemed as though gloves were in a similar category.

It’s not even as though dams and gloves are something that only queer people need, either: surely het people also engage in cunnilingus, rimming and fingering? Or perhaps fisting is seen as more of a queer act, and gloves as a piece of specialist equipment for that? Is it that it’s only barriers for the most normative kinds of sex that are available widely? That condoms are intended for anal and vaginal intercourse (with a cock), and so only the highest-risk activities are covered? Is this massive hetero-centrism rearing its head again? I don’t even know.

Well, the most useful thing I can do for now is to share some sourcing info. So:

On order, a box of 100 standard yellow latex gloves cost me around £12 from a pharmacy. Nowadays, I buy boxes of 100 black latex gloves from Expectations in London, where they stock small, medium and large sizes, and boxes are £18. (Packs of 20 are £4, and they’re also happy for you to try on samples for size.) Expectations are an absolutely amazing sex toy shop aimed at gay and bi men. The layout is not subtle or gentle at all: they have absolutely enormous dildos, terrifying medical equipment and enough leatherwear to equip a large clubful of men. The staff are welcoming and friendly (I usually go there alone), they play hardcore porn and (to my delight) sell lube in bottles of up to a litre. I absolutely love visiting Expectations.

Some people may not love being surrounded by giant dildos as much as I do, and they also don’t stock gloves larger than size L. (I was surprised at that - if anywhere is going to stock XL and XXL gloves, it’d be a male-focused shop, right? They don’t do extra-long ones, either.) So I decided to ask Twitter where others bought their gloves.

- Turns out that Boots do sell them in boxes: you just have to ask at the counter. (I can’t find boxes online, so looks like it’ll need to be in person.)
- Amazon do them for cheap! Latex and vinyl are £6 for boxes of 100.
- Some sex toy shops sell small packets, but they tend to be in limited sizes and a bit pricey. Sh! do packs of small and medium ones in latex and nitrile.
- Occasionally STI clinics will do them. Worth an ask.

- Williams Medical Supplies do boxes for cheap (~£6) in sizes from XS to XL (yay!) as well as surgeons’ gloves in more specific (and often larger) sizes (they’re *really* expensive!) I haven’t ordered from there before, and you might need to make an account to do so.

- Long gloves (fun! look exciting! deep anal fisting, if that’s where you’re at!) can probably be found via veterinary suppliers. If anyone finds some good ones, let me know?

- Lastly, an engineer linked me to Farnell’s - they all seem to be industrial gloves, rather than medical, so probably would be a bit too heavy-duty for sex. Brilliant for costume though! And this page made me really happy.

Do you have better sources? Link me to them on twitter, and I’ll add them to the list!

Cheap, quality toys: Babes n Horny, you’re doing it right.

So, look. Silicone’s expensive, right? Really good dildos are kinda complicated to make, and add in producing them in a place where you’re not exploiting legions of workers and then shipping them all over the world, and we’re looking at something that’s going to cost quite a lot, really.

Now, I love silicone. I love really good silicone dildos. Colourful, pretty, warm and slightly squishy… run a well-designed website or shop with loads of beautifully-made, patterned silicone dildos, and I’ll be there for hours. I own quite a few. And I’m saddened when I see the cost of silicone dildos marked up massively because they can be called a ‘luxury’ product.

Bollocks. Silicone isn’t a luxury product. It shouldn’t be marketed and priced as such. Silicone is easily sterilised, non-porous, body-safe, feels good and looks pretty. That should be the bare minimum for any toy.

What are the accessibly-priced alternatives to expensive, ‘luxury’, silicone toys? They are made of dodgy ‘jelly’, PVC and rubber. They’re full of phthalates, often contain latex, they can’t be cleaned properly, they stink and they’re unsafe. Phthalates have been banned in kids’ toys and dogs’ toys for years: they should not have ever been near sex toys. The sex toy market is unregulated, toys are sold as novelties, and manufacturers are using the fact that the law doesn’t care about our bodies to sell us complete rubbish.

So, I was really heartened to see that there are companies out there making really good silicone toys and selling them at a reasonable price. I’ve spent many hours admiring Babes ‘n’ Horny’s utterly gorgeous patterned dildos - they’re trained sculptors, based in London, and, while I haven’t corresponded with them myself, I’ve heard lovely things about their customer service. Now, while most of their dildos are (rightly) on the pricey side, and the patterned ones (clouds! flower petals!  seriously, how do they make these ferns?! even more so, there’s also… this.

That’s the value range. It is just as much 100% silicone, just as much handmade in London, as the others: the shade used is the cheapest colour of silicone available, so they’ve made a whole range of different shapes out of it and priced them appropriately. Now, how awesome is that?! Not being able to spend £80 on a dildo doesn’t mean that you’re resigned to the realms of scary jelly dildos, because there are wonderful silicone ones available for £22.

This is how improving financial accessibility should be done: right there. Throw out the jelly, never make toys out of dodgy materials again, and, by all means, make a beautiful range of stripy, spotty, flowery, multicoloured toys - but include a range of cheaper ones alongside it. And make the cheaper toys using the same workers, the same materials and the same moulds: cut the cost in production only where it can be spared. Material cannot be compromised upon: colour can. (And if you’d like to alter it, there are always coloured condoms!)

I’m so pleased to see that this exists, and I wish the trend would spread elsewhere.

Meta: Happy NaNo! I’d like your help to write more blog - ask me questions!

Recently, this blog’s been a little quieter than I’d like to it be, and in general, I’d like to do more writing and to get better at it. National Novel Writing Month is an event in November where thousands of people all over the world all aim to write a 50,000 word novel in one month: the quality is irrelevant, it’s only the word count that matters. The idea is to get loads and loads of practice writing, and to get better, and to end up with a pile of raw material to edit.

I’m going to use NaNo to kick-start writing more blog - I’m not aiming for 50,000 words (there’s other stuff I’d like to do this month!), but for at least thirty drafts of articles or posts. I need your help!

I’d like you to ask me questions. Ask me stuff, and I’ll write out long rambly answers and later on edit them into sparkling articles and posts. I like writing about, and know loads about, the following list, but in general, please, please feel free to *ask me anything.*

Ask via the ‘ask’ button on Tumblr, above, or by email to in dot silicone dot valley at gmail dot com.

- Ethical non-monogamy: getting into it from a monogamous background and brain, the practicalities, the personal stuff and the wider political stuff. Negotiating privilege gradients (eg. if one of you is male, making stuff not suck), how organising events works, the community, books.

- Sex toys: if you want a specific sex toy for a specific thing, I’ll probably know the one. If you want to know what’s the weirdest toy I’ve seen, or the scariest, or the biggest, ask. If you’re interested in why I love sex toys so much, or which ones are my favourites, or you’d like to see more reviews of particular things, or you’d like to know more about sex toy materials, manufacture, design, or specifics of different companies (plus the intersections with feminism and anti-capitalism!), I’m your gal.

- Kink, or non-normative sex that involves power exchange: negotiating existing gender-related power dynamics (eg. dealing with male privilege, being feminist and kinky, etc.), what sorts of things kinky people can do, the ways in which kink is seen by mainstream sexual narratives, personal stuff, community stuff (how do dynamics work at sex parties? how can we make stuff awesomer?), political stuff. You name it, I’ll chat about it.

- Non-normative vanilla sex - ie. that doesn’t necessarily include power exchange. I’ll chat more about het intercourse not being all that (even though it’s also awesome), about the ways in which women can shag each other and why everyone can learn from that, and I’d love to chat about pegging. I absolutely love pegging. Ask me what the hell it is, ask me why I love it, ask me why it’s going to make us a massive gender revolution. Ask me about strap-ons and sex toys. Ask me whatever you like.

- (Identity and lived experience) - being queer and (seen as) female: in general society (ie. the one where gender inequality, rape culture, gender stereotyping, narrow definitions of sexuality, etc. exist and aren’t acknowledged), in bi spaces (which are queerer and have some of that stuff noted and fought), in feminist spaces (again, it’s recognised and fought), in multiple relationships, in bed with men, in bed with women. Being seen as female, and that not always matching with the ways in which I see myself.

- anything else you’d like to chat about. Let’s have a conversation!

Lesbian sheep syndrome: what it is, how it works, what we can do about it

There’s a big problem I’ve noticed in bi and queer spaces, and among bi women in general. Loads of loads of bi women don’t seem to be dating or shagging other women all that much: instead, they’re mostly dating men. I want to acknowledge and talk about this a bit more, and also consider what we can do to redress the balance (where that’s desired.)

So, when male sheep get horny, they go around and hump stuff. When female sheep get horny, they stand very still and wait to get humped. So, when two female sheep are attracted to each other, this narrative tells, they’ll both stay very still and look at each other across a field (or party, or dancefloor, or cafe) and neither will take the initiative to come on to the other. And so, they don’t ever get together.

This is the thing. In general, men (who like women) tend to be assertive and forthright: they take an active role in flirting, and come on to women strongly. (Often that’s not desired and may be problematic: there are bigger conversations to be had about that, too.) Women tend to flirt quite subtly, and (probably as a result of these strong come-ons) are pushed into (or take) a more passive role. It’s that whole sexual dynamic, right? Men push, women yield, and that’s how it works with flirting as well as in bed itself.

So while women are subtly, quietly batting eyelids at each other and no-one is taking the initiative, they’re also receiving strong, clear, assertive come-ons from men. And it’s easy to say ‘yes’, and men are brilliant and really fun to shag, and, quite frankly, it’s really annoying to never get assertive, clear come-ons from women. So they go and shag and/or date the men.

And so, my experience of bi spaces is actually that they feel really… het. Loads of loads of women are with men, and relatively few are paired with women. Bi and queer spaces are also notorious for being populated with straight cis male ‘allies’ looking to date hot bi women (and/or find threesomes) - that weighs the scales too, and adds to the general het feeling.

(Sorry: some are actual allies. Many, I’m kinda suspicious of.) (Also, the phenomenon of bi women dating bi men, and that not being a het thing, needs to be acknowledged. In fact, by definition, a bi woman dating a straight man is not a het relationship. This gets complicated…)

What about me personally?

I’ve always been assertive with men, and I wholeheartedly encourage all men-who-fancy-women to have a go at stepping back the flirting a bit and find out how much fun it could be to be chased for a change. It’s more complicated for me with women: I’m already an assertive, confident, masculine-ish woman with a whole load of social-organiser status and stuff, and I’m also a consent geek. I’m not interested in any interactions where the other person is passive - I want to know I’ve got their full, enthusiastic consent and I want to know they fancy me enough to come and get me! Also, I’m awesome. And, generally, women don’t come onto me that much. (I know that I’m being sheepy here too! It’s really difficult.)

I’m railing against it a bit, too. I’m considering leaning more towards ‘lesbian’ in my sexual identity, and only going on new dates with women. But I feel like the numbers work out such that even if someone felt like a Kinsey 5 (almost entirely gay), they’d still end up dating mostly men: just because there are more men-who-like-women than women-who-like-women. (Also, I love men. I don’t want to cut them out entirely just because they’re kinda overpopulated, y’know?)

I’m starting to feel like the only ways in which I can find and date women would be to go and hang out in lesbian spaces (and deal with all the biphobia that’d undoubtedly come with.) It’s really frustrating.

So what can we do?

Well, I don’t feel like a constructive solution would be to start banning men from everything and kicking them out of our spaces and stopping them flirting. Men are brilliant, mixed-gender spaces are brilliant, and dating and shagging men is loads of fun: it’s just not something I’d like to do exclusively!

I think that in general, it’d be awesome if more women (who like men and/or women and/or other genders too) were assertive and took an active role in flirting and indeed in bed. It’s really cool to own one’s desires, to tell cute people they’re cute and to take the initiative in bed. I’d love to see more of that happening, and I wonder whether it’s something that can be taught or skill-shared.

I think all-female spaces for dating would be really useful in bi spaces, and I might look in to running something to that effect: all-female speed dating, or parties (or maybe speed dating with ‘no men allowed’: rude as that label sounds, it’s much easier than making a list of all the people who aren’t men who are welcome in a space!).

I kinda feel like the answers to loads of social difficulties around sex and relationships come back to teaching comprehensive, feminist sex education. I want to teach people that non-pressurey assertiveness is brilliant, and flirting is awesome, and that we should all take responsibility for our desires, and for saying and receiving a genuine ‘yes’ or ‘no.’ And part of that means acknowledging rape culture, and the social norm that men push and women yield, and so part of it must also mean encouraging men to step back a bit more and women to step forward: it’s an imbalanced that’s needed, for now, to counterbalance an existing imbalance, and when we’re equal, the assertiveness-balance can be equalised too.