Out From Under

Yes, you can! No, you can’t. Yes, yes you can!

Yes, I know the election is over. This time we’re talking vibrators. (Again.)

Sex toys are legal in Texas!! Of course, they have been for months, as you know. But only last month, women in Texas were complaining that they couldn’t purchase a Vibrating Touch fingertip “massager” from the online site.

And sure enough, they couldn’t. What gives? It’s supposed to be legal now, right? You could use them till the 70’s, then they were illegal, then they weren’t, but somehow now they’re illegal again? There are legal sex shops in Texas, but people are still being banned from purchasing them? Back and forth and yes you can and no you can’t. It’s sort of like being gay and married in California.

When WILL this country get out of the bedrooms of its citizens? Whose business could it possibly be but the party(ies) concerned? The mind reels at the gall of it all.

What’s even more galling? In some of the states which prohibit “3-D” sex toys, 2-D sex items are allowed. “2D”, aka porn mags. Because we surely can’t deny (straight) men their rightful outlets, can we? What’s that you say? Vibrators are solely about pleasure, while porn has strong exploitative elements? What’s that got to do with anything? Boys will be boys, missy.

A curiosity: I wonder if gay porn’s allowed? In a contest between women (gay and straight) and gay men, who’s lower on the heirarchy of the redneck straight male? Meh. We’re probably all in a jumbled heap at the bottom. The only ones who are allowed to get off are men. Real men. Manly men. (You know, the ones who are so shit-scared of female sexuality that they have to ban vibes? Those manly men.)

A commenter on The New Republic offers an explanation about process which assures that as of November 1, frustrated Texan women should indeed be able to purchase their toys whenever and from whomever they choose.

I sure hope so. Lest Texan legislators forget, the li’l wimmins can tote them guns they so value, too…

HA! Too funny!

Only I could never actually send that to a guy. Too cruel. (But if I wanted to, I could order it from here.)

Well, maybe if I’d had sex with him once, and he’d turned out to be a total selfish dork. And then wanted a repeat. Maybe then.

Or there was that guy on the British TV series, Sex Inspectors. Ever heard of it? A simple set-up: A male-female team of sex therapists helps couples with dysfunctional sex lives achieve the happy, orgasm-rich unions they deserve.

So they go to one couple in which the fellow has just found out that in their entire relationship, his partner has been faking orgasms. About five times a week. Is he angry at having been deceived? Not at all! Is he dismayed that he hasn’t been helping her get there? Nope.

“We have a great sex life,” he declares. “Only one of us gets off and the other one doesn’t.”

One wonder if he’d be quite so blithe about it if he were the one not getting off. He deserves this card. Assuredly.

Or that time when I met with my ex-husband to discuss certain contentious issues — in a coffee shop, because neither of us trusted the other enough at that point to do it privately — and he suggested we could best work off the tension of the conversation by getting naked?

DEFINITELY then. Abso-youfucker-lutely.

But mostly I figure it’s the card you buy when you’re feeling pissed off with a Certain Someone to make yourself feel better. Or you give it to the girlfriend who’s just broken up with Mr. I-KNOW-what-I’m-doing-shuddup.

It’s the sort of card that ends up pinned to a bulletin board, that girlfriends giggle over, that gives you a certain savage lift in your pissed-off spirits when you’ve taken a romantic kick in the teeth. It’s for your own entertainment, not the mortification of That Guy I Used To Date.

What about you? Could you ever send this card? And if you could, what would be the provocation?

Yes, we can!

We can, but did we?
Did you?

No, not vote. I offically presume every eligible citizen of voting age votes. To withhold your vote in order to express some sort of displeasure with the system is about as meaningful and effective as the child who holds their breath when angry. Sooner or later the kid will just pass out — and then they start breathing, whether they want to or not. You live in a democratic country, you’re part of a democratic system, whether you want it or not.

Refusing to vote is little more than the simplistic negativity of a toddler, and shows about the same level of global awareness. There are millions upon millions of people on this planet who would fight to the death for the right to vote, and yet some among we privileged choose not to vote because they’re feeling a little pissy about the event, or worse, couldn’t get off their lazy asses? I have no patience for it.

(There. Phew. I sure feel better now.)

So. Let’s pretend we all voted.

And if you’re among those who were delighted by the results, or maybe if you were just delighted the whole roadshow is finally over… did you?

Get it on, I mean.
Do the deed.
Indulge in a little celebratory sex.

(And if you did, want to brag a little? Hop over to the Chicago Tribune website and take their little poll. So far the sexual sluggards are in the lead, and what does that say about the libido of the people?)

The Urban Dictionary already has a term for it: Obama baby. A little premature (the term, not the infant) perhaps, but an entertaining notion. I can see it: take a liberal waft of euphoria, a dose of jubilation, a couple of consenting adults and a largish sploosh of alcohol, and you could well conceive of … well, conception.

On the red end of the spectrum, take a conservative jolt of rage-fueled adrenaline and a spark of passionate disavowal, add that same largish sploosh of alcohol, and you could have just the right mix for some very steamy consolation sex. You never know.

Will there be a surge of American babies born in July, 2009?

Meh. Prolly not.

But as for the celebratory sex? I’d be willing to bet there was a decent amount of indecency occuring the night of Nov. 4.

So. Did you?

via: The Chicago Tribune

I’ve always been a bit of a map geek. It started when I was eight years old, and had decided I was going to Run Away From Home. Sensible child, I realized that a map would come in handy, though precisely why is unclear, given I had no clear destination other than “away”. At least I’d know where I was, though, right??

(The idea came to a crashing halt a short while later, when I realized that running away from home would entail being out alone all night long. A problem, given I was afraid of the dark.)

The urge to run away receded. My newfound fascination with maps did not.

Which is why I’m loving Franklin Veaux’s Map of Human Sexuality. Here’s a teeny piece of it:

(The picture is a link to Veaux’s map. When you get there, click again to get the full-size version.)

I’m loving it not so much because I’m learning new stuff about kink — I’ve long since decided that there is nothing out there that doesn’t turn someone on (plush toys? vomit? amputation? toothbrushes? farts?) — but just how one might go about grouping and categorizing all these multitude of fetishes.

North of the Impassible Reaches, you have Snuff Films, Castration, Nullification, and other uplifting stuff. The domain of Sleep Sex is adjacent to Amnesia Sex. Over on the Isle of Mundania (where, let’s be honest, most of us happily spend most of our time), you have The Plains of Sexual Position, the Oral Lowlands, Sex Toys and the Anal Peninsula. (You thought your experiments with anal made you a true sexual dare-devil? Nope. In the endless and intricate range of human kinks and fetishes, it’s way at the vanilla end.)

Fascinating stuff, and a lot of it. Because when it comes to sex, people are nothing if not imaginative.

It will never be complete, of course. I’ve looked and looked, but I don’t see “grandma’s cinnamon bread” in there anywhere.

via: Erosblog

When I was fourteen, I was a stick. A toothpick girl. Moreover, I was shy. I was the sort of kid who wore a t-shirt at the swimming pool, not because I was embarrassed by my curve-less body, but because it was unnerving to be that exposed.

(My, how far I’ve come. That picture up there in the right? I looks an awful lot like me…)

The only way I’d have been able to get the attention of a boy would have been to carry a neon sign. Not that I was about to, because that whole “sex” thing? It pretty much scared me silly. ‘Unnerved’, that was me at fourteen.

I was every mother’s dream daughter.

Unlike these young misses.

They are all 14 and 15, and lookit the blossoming curves on those sweeties. No t-shirts in sight, either. Heck, you can barely see a swimsuit. Doesn’t look like “unnerved” is in any of their nubile little vocabularies.

No need for any neon sign with these chicklets.

Try telling them that, though. See the smudges on their backs? Take a closer look. On each toned and curvy back that’s not sloppy sunscreen application, it’s…

her phone number.

Yup, these girls have decided that the best way to attract attention is to emblazon their phone numbers on their backs with sun screen — making their number a permanent part of this summer’s tanlines. And on their BACKS, so they can’t even take note of who’s taking note.

Talk about giving up every pretence of control.

These girls are every mother’s nightmare.

via: Boinkology

Yes, that is what it looks like. Well, it isn’t, of course, but it’s supposed to look like what it looks like.

It’s a Popsy. A plastic, alcohol-filled spermatazoa.

A shooter sperm. A sperm shooter!

A commenter on Failblog notes that “Popsy” sounds like “popp sie”, the German colloquial for “Fuck her”. And the little sperm guy on the advertisement? He’s shouting out “Ich komme!”

Three guesses what that means.

Tacky? Absolutely. Funny? Yes. (And funnier with every one downed, I’m sure. 15% will do that.)

And useful, too! Yes, really!

Because the kind of girl who squeals with delight when she sees one of these, the kind of girl who’d just love to slug one back in a bar full of horny guys? She’d just LOVE a bunch of these for her bachelorette party! Public sperm-slurping? Bring it ON!

And really, she has a point:

1. It’s shaped like a sperm.

2. It’s filled with creamy liquid.

3. Alcoholic, creamy liquid.

4. Sweet, alcoholic, creamy liquid.

A pretty significant improvement on the prototype, wouldn’t you say? The packaging falls short, I grant you. The sturdy responsiveness of the flesh-and-blood variety has got to be better than a stiff plastic tube. (Oh, never mind with the comments about the usefulness of stiff plastic tubes. You know the original wins for packaging.)

But the contents?

I leave it with you.

via: Failblog

You know, as equality of the sexes marches on, it can seem like women are getting the short end of the stick.

We get access to those “traditionally male” jobs — but our pay is still, overall, some 30% lower. We can continue our careers after we have children — and we keep doing 90% of the childcare and housework. We’ve bust out of the kitchen — but we’re still mostly the ones cleaning it.

You know how we said that if men had to have the babies, the human race would die out? If men had periods, PMS would be a recognized health issue, covered by all health plans? A lot of women firmly believe that most men simply couldn’t deal with the hard parts, the messy parts, the really annoying parts of being female.

We’ve stepped boldly out into the “men’s world”. We’ve shouldered the negatives of that world. And the men? Are they shouldering a similar share of our negatives? There’s been some change, for sure. But it’s a small minority of men who put in an extra hour or two after work every evening doing housework. We have it all, while men still only have to do half of it. Hmph.

Not to worry!

Justice is on its way.

Thus proving that men can take on the tough, stupid, pointless parts of the whole “female” experience:

Pantyhose for men.

Uh-huh. Women don’t wear the damned things any more. Well, only when absolutely necessary — and “necessary” no longer includes weddings, most jobs, or funerals. When cool, shaved, polished legs are now appropriate for all but the most formal of occasions for women, men are going to take up with the hose.

If that’s not a small balancing of gender imbalances, I don’t know what is.

Now, we can’t mock them because pantyhose are “just for women”. There was a time in history when men of cutting-edge fashion wore brightly-colored silk hose, often tied at the top with a ribbon. All the better to show off their manly calves, don’t you know.

For that matter, there was a time in history, much more recent history, when men were expected to have chest hair, and being bald was a sign of age, not fashion-savvy. (Why shave your head when eventually nature will do that for you?)

We can’t mock them because it looks silly, either. All fashions look silly until “everyone’s doing it.”

But it does look silly, doesn’t it? Really, really silly.

You know why?

Not because those are men wearing pantyhose. (Oh, I know. It does. I kinda snorted even as I typed that, but I’m trying to look beyond this moment in fashion history.)

Why does it look so very, very silly? Look at those pictures. Hose, nice hose … with shorts? Cargo shorts? Cut-off JEANS shorts? Not even kinda dressy shorts, but cut-offs!

Guys? Pantyhose are uncomfortable. They are hot in summer. They are itchy, especially under pants. They are fragile. They snag and run. In short, they are AN INCREDIBLE NUISANCE. You only suffer that sort of pain and inconvenience when it’s ESSENTIAL. It is not essential with shorts. It is not essential with pants of any description. Because pants? They COVER YOUR LEGS.

(And if pantyhose under pants binds and cramps the crotch of the average woman — and you know they do — what on earth are they going to do to the rather, er, lumpier crotch of the average man?)

And those shoes! You don’t wear pantyhose with deck shoes, guys. Nor with Converse. Ugh. If you’re going to wear the hose, do it right. Yeesh. The fellow below doesn’t do too badly, actually:

And guys? If you’re going to wear sheer hose — those beauties above are 8-denier — you have GOT to shave those hairy legs. (Just like the (oh, so manly) fellow in the picture!) Because a mat of hair mashed up under super-sheer hose? It ain’t a pretty sight. Really.

So.

Men wearing pantyhose. Hot, itchy, pantyhose. Men shaving hairy legs. Men wearing dress shoes (with dress shorts?). Men having to worry about their rough heels putting a run in their expensive 8-denier hose?

I think Justice may just on its way…

via: the frisky

Husband is driving, hands wife the map.

“It’s about time we stopped for lunch, honey. When we get to the next town, let me know when to turn, okay?”

The next town passes while honey is still orienting the map so it’s facing the direction the car is going.

Wife is reading in the living room. Husband calls from the bedroom upstairs. “Have you seen my iPod lately?” Why does he ask? Because he knows his wife will know just where it is. She always does.

Sound like something from a 50’s sitcom? The sort of family where Father Knew Best and mother wore frilly apron and heels? Research is proving these generalisations, sexist though they may seem, are firmly grounded in biological reality.

In general terms, men are better at manipulating abstract objects in space than women (this is a map-reading skill); women are better at recalling where stuff is — and not just because they’re the only ones who ever put anything away.

(So, you don’t know exactly where you’re going and you’ll need to be consulting a map? Honey should be driving and he should be reading the damned map.)

Giving a 21st-C nuance to these proven generalizations, researchers at the University of Warwick considered not just the categories “male” and “female”, but broke these down further into hetero, bi, and homosexual males and females — six categories in all.

So now let’s look at locating objects, a skill at which women seem to have a natural aptitude that men lack. (Exasperating as this may be for many women. “It’s on your bedside table, right where you PUT it!”) Take a look at this, from best to worst:

1. Heterosexual women
2. Bisexual women
3. Homosexual women
4. Homosexual men
5. Bisexual men
6. Heterosexual men

If you were considering map-reading, you’d simply turn the list on its head, with straight men at the top, and straight women in sixth place. Generally, if one gender tends to be better at a skill, straight members of that gender perform better than bi or gay; if one gender performs worse, straight members perform worse than bi and gay.

Fascinating, huh?

And if this annoys the ever-living crap out of you, take heart: we all, straight, bi, or gay, lose our skills and abilities with age, and at about the same rate.

Except men of all orientations lose ‘em faster than women. Of any orientation.

Does sex get better with marriage?

I’d always thought the consensus was that it got worse, sort of slipped into well-tried, too frequently boring and passion-free patterns. “You put your hand here, I move my hips so, you get off, I get off, you get off me, and we both go to sleep.” Until next month. The blah-ness of marital sex is a truism which may or may not be grounded in research, but it’s a pretty prevalent one.

And yet, over half the women who took part in an (unscientific) survey at Brides.com believe their sex life will get better after the “I do’s”.

Blink. Blink. Blink.

Okay, then. If they’re among the 11% (according to the authors of The Case for Marriage) who wait till marriage, this will undoubtedly be true. Even mediocre sex is better than no sex. (Not that I’m suggesting that people who save it for marriage will have mediocre sex, only that a) if they do, it’s better than none, and b) they have no basis of comparison, and thus, complaint.)

But the rest of bridal couples? The 89% who are gleefully indulging before marriage? They think it’s going to get better?

Why? Aren’t they trying? Are they saving their best efforts for when it’s legal?

You might be in enough romantic denial to say that your sex life will always be as passionate as it is when you’re in the first throes of love and lust. You are a bride-to-be, you are planning a life of Wonderfulness with your Beloved. You’ll love each other 4-evah, he’ll be your BFF, and you’ll be his. Of course you will. Those nasty 50% divorce statistics have nothing to do with you! (Lest I sound too cynical here, divorced woman that I am, this is how you *should* feel as you approach your wedding. I think it’s rather sweet.)

Naive, but sweet.

But better?

I’m having a hard time wrapping my head around the idea that OVER HALF of brides-to-be surveyed thought it was going to get better. What were they thinking?

Oh, I know!

They are thinking that WEDDINGS ARE SO STRESSFUL! PLANNING IS SO HARD! THE FINANCIAL PRESSURES ARE CRUSHING! THE FAMILY POLITICS ARE EVEN WORSE!! It’s so bad, maybe they should just elope.

(WHAT? And miss the chance to be Cinderella for a day??)

But, really! Wedding Stress! All brides know about Wedding Stress. With all that Stress out there, it’s no wonder the sex is a little low on the priority pole. They get to bed, they just want to sleep. Or maybe she can’t sleep, what with all the Stress, and she’s up all night with the wedding-planning software.

So, when all that stress and politics and pressure is OVER, of course, they’ll just be able to wallow in the wonderfulness that is 21st-Century marriage. And the sex will be hot, hot, hott! Hotter than it ever was.

Because they won’t struggle with time pressures, in their two-career marriage, oh no. And if they spent the average almost $28,000 on the wedding (28K! On ONE DAY! I am not kidding!), they won’t be under long-term financial pressure, oh no. And the family politics? They are just going to vanish like the mist under the warm beams of their sunny new married life. Uh-huh.

Okay. Someone has to say it: Walking down that aisle does not magically make everything better.

What you have now, sunshine, is what you’re going to have. If your sex life suffers under the strain of Wedding Planning, it’s going to suffer under the strain of Job Stress, or of Promotion Anxiety, of Potential Procreation, of Job Loss, of Buying a House, of Should We Move, of Balancing Friends and Spouse, of any number of dozens of normal, everyday stressors. And you and your spouse? You are not going to change. You are who you are.

With attention, respect, time and love, though your sex life will change as the years go by, it won’t tank. It won’t, that is, if you can lose this assumption that something about surviving The Big Day is going to radically, magically, improve the situation between the sheets. Because if that’s what you think, you sweet little bride you, reality is going to truly, truly bite.

via: Boinkology

Hallowe’en is coming! What are you going to be?

Are you the sort who goes for the goofy — a big bunny, a clown, a giant, walking stalk of celery? The classic — ghost, witch, Frankenstein’s monster? Or maybe, being a reader of this blog, you have a penchant for the sexy.

You’d think there’d be a wealth of choice in the “sexy” category, and there is. Sort of. You can be a sexy justaboutanything. You can poke all kinds of fetish buttons. Offend the religious and go as a tarted-up nun.

Tweak the submissives with an uber-sexy “corrections officer”.

Encourage pedophilia by going as a naughty schoolgirl.

(Why, I ask, why would a woman do this?).

Show your lack of cultural awareness by going as a sexy geisha, like this little hottie.

She is not a real geisha, of course. Below are real geishas. Not a helluva lotta exposed skin there: it’s all about nuance, implication, suggestion; a muted, ritualized femininity of a sort, which, for good or ill, we don’t “do” in this culture. (And we all know they’re not prostitutes, right?)

Perk up the sports fans with your baseball player costume. The submissive sports fans will like the stern referee…

So, variety of a sort. But the more you look at the costumes, the more they look the same: lotsa boob, lotsa leg. Mondo cantilevering in the top, drop waist micro skirt, skin-tight or bare middle, fuck-me heels. And that’s all fun, of course. If that’s your preference, you’ll have a lot of choice.

But what about the women whose idea of sexy goes beyond “if ya got it, flaunt it”? What if you like a bit of tease? What if your belly, or your thighs or (pick your part) isn’t quite up to that kind of exposure? Dimpled butts are cute only on babies.

You’ll have to look outside the standard costume sites, is all. Ballerinas are pretty sexy (even if you can’t do that with your feet. Ouch.)

You can go retro, and try out some burlesque-style sexy. Burlesque, bless it, allows for curves on a voluptuous woman.

And there’s always that tried-and-true classic, subject of so many fantasies, the erotic possibility of seething heat beneath the demure exterior, the Sarah Palin Sexy Librarian.

Need more inspiration? There are more below: