While I spent a lot of this year writing books, doing book promotion, and writing articles for other publications, this blog was still my foremost and favorite home on the internet (in large part because my audience here is so awesome!!). Here are my 11 favorite posts that I published in 2021; maybe you’ll file these away and flip through ’em over the holidays, or send the links to someone you think needs to read them!
I’m a sentimental creature, so when I realized it had been over 10 years since one of my favorite musical works was released, I knew I had to write a post about it. “My Favorite Album is a Decade Old (& Absurdly Romantic)” is my love letter to an EP called Feathers by an artist named Jeremy Larson, whose music touches my heart and makes winter mornings more bearable. This piece is ostensibly about music but really it’s about love, romanticism, optimism, and obsession (frequent themes of this blog, if you haven’t noticed!).
It was interesting to revisit memories from 2011 while writing this post. In many ways, my life now is a bigger, brighter echo of what my life was like then: I’m still deeply in love with a very kind human (albeit a different one), I’m still optimistic about my prospects, and I’m still easily swept up in big feelings about beautiful art like Feathers.
I wrote “I Felt Guilty About Findom, Until I Didn’t” while struggling with the question of whether I could really consider myself a financial domination kinkster if I mostly liked receiving presents for materialistic reasons rather than sexual ones. Ultimately I think the answer is yes, because my spouse and I play with findom in a sexual/kinky way, even if it’s not always a directly sexual experience for me.
In any case, findom played a big role in helping me build self-confidence as a dominant this year. I love stepping into the Veruca Salt-esque role of a little girl who likes – nay, demands – to be spoiled by her devoted daddy, and findom gave me an avenue to do that while also building my collections of fancy bags and shoes. It’s a win-win!
Like many folks, I spent a lot of this year at home, so loungewear was of utmost importance. My chronic pain, fatigue, and other symptoms also ebbed and flowed (mostly flowed) a fair bit this year. These two factors inspired me to write “Building a Chronic Illness Wardrobe,” a piece that lists and discusses several of the most indispensable items in my pain-friendly loungewear collection.
I’m sure I’ll continue rocking modal slips, cashmere sweaters, and warm Ugg boots throughout the winter, fashion police be damned.
Have I talked about squirting in every medium available to me? Yes. Will I keep talking about it? Also yes. There are still way too many people who believe that squirt is pee (or that pee cannot be a sexualized fluid, for that matter), which is why I wrote “8 Reasons the ‘Squirt is Pee’ Study is Bad.”
A huge amount of sexual science is deeply entangled with sexism (not to mention racism, cissexism, heteronormativity, ableism, and so on), and I think the Salama study is one example of this. The researchers’ own sexist preconceived notions seem to have shaped the way they interpreted the results of the study, leading to widespread dissemination of the lie that everyone who squirts is actually peeing. I hope my rebuttal can help change some minds on this, even if only a few.
In the run-up to my first book being launched, I started thinking about the roles I hoped it would play in people’s lives, which is what inspired “Kinky Cuties & Their Book-Spurred Adventures.” Through little vignettes about fictional characters, it explores some of the ways a person could use a book like mine to broaden their sexual horizons, come out to a partner about a kink, and connect with new friends.
It’s been really touching to see real people doing stuff like this with my book in the real world. I love you all!
Although I’ve been writing about my sex life on the internet for about a decade, occasionally I still share things that I’ve never felt brave enough to share before. “Cybersex in Roleplaying Games Made Me Who I Am” was a disclosure along those lines; it chronicled some of my earliest sexual adventures on the internet, which took place before I was considered old enough to do such things. But I didn’t experience those cyber-encounters as a violation – for me, they were a revelation.
Underage sexuality is a tricky topic to talk about, but I believe strongly that teens and preteens can and do have sexualities. They’re not the same as adult sexualities, of course, and thus can’t be used (as some people insist on using them) as justification for abuse and assault of minors by adults. But I think we do a disservice to youth when we act as if they could not possibly be sexual beings until they turn 18, which is part of why I share my own stories of sexual exploration prior to “coming of age.”
Sometimes, people ask me the same questions over and over again for so long that I decide to address them once and for all. Hence writing “A Penis Size FAQ.”
The truth about penis size is something that many people with penises seem to have a hard time accepting, whether because of deep-seated insecurities, cultural influences, trust issues, or some combination thereof, but it really is this simple: some people care about penis size and some people don’t. Some people like bigger ones, some like smaller ones, some like average-sized ones, some don’t care. That’s the main thrust of my argument (so to speak) in the FAQ. I hope it helps people.
Being in a pandemic really forced me to confront my demisexuality, because it turns out that when I have very few opportunities to form new emotional connections with people, I have little-to-no desire to have sex with any new people either. One of the posts I wrote about demisexuality this year was “Can Demisexuals Have Casual Sex? (& If So, How?!)” and it covered some of the most common questions I get asked about this identity.
Will I ever have casual sex again? Probably. Will it be different from how I used to have it pre-COVID? Almost certainly. This post was an opportunity to think through my own relationship to casual sex and how I can make sure it’s satisfying and uplifting for both me and my partner(s), despite the “constraints” (if one could call them that) of being demisexual.
I hardly ever publish guest posts; when I do, they’re only ever written by people I know personally and have asked to write something for my blog. “Guest Review: Tantaly Monroe Realistic Sex Doll” was one such post, and it’s gotta be one of my fave things I’ve published here all year, or maybe ever. It was written by a friend of mine who is frankly hilarious, and contains so many turns of phrase that make me howl with laughter, like when he refers to the sex doll’s plastic packaging as a “powder-coated placenta” or describes the doll after use as “a buxom semen-filled effigy.”
Periodically, sex doll companies reach out to me to ask about getting a review published, and at this point I’ll probably have to reach out to yet another friend if I get another request like this, because once you have one sex doll, you probably don’t have room in your home for another. Being my friend has its perks, I guess 😂
I covered a topic I felt very strongly about in “5 Reasons No One Should Spank Their Kids.” It’s filled with scientific research, philosophical arguments, and my own opinions on the matter.
Going to trauma therapy for the past year and a half has made me more aware than ever of the ways my childhood punishments have stuck with me, making me more fearful, distrustful, and easily triggered than I would have otherwise been. It’s nice to see how much science exists now to back up the belief I’ve held since childhood that nonconsensual spanking is ineffective, harmful, and indefensible.
Finally, I gotta include “Review: Balldo” on this list. It’s not often that I get to write a review with this much silliness and wonderment in it. Here’s hoping I get to try lots of absurd toys like this one in 2022 as well!
Thanks so much for reading my words this year, babes. I appreciate every single one of you! ❤️