Musings

In Defense of Fantasizing During Sex

Kate Sloan

I remember the first time anyone said those magic words to me during sex. “Think about whatever you want.”

He was a vanilla boy with a nonetheless toppy sensibility. His craving to evoke moans and expletives out of me was a recurrent theme in our fucks. He was happy to get into any position that made me yell into a pillow, happy to spank me if I explained how and why, happy to use my favorite dildos and vibrators and butt plugs with me whenever I asked. So it makes perfect sense that he wanted to use another crucial “sex toy” of mine that we had at our disposal: my mind.

See, fantasies are powerful when you’re trying to feel good and get off. If you’ve ever fantasized while masturbating, it’s likely you know that they can spike arousal, alter headspace, and make already-pleasurable sensations feel somehow even more pleasurable. Why wouldn’t that be true during sex with a partner as well?

The common argument against fantasizing during sex goes as follows: You should focus on the person in front of you (or, uh, behind you) while you’re having sex. You should be mentally present, and anything less is unfair to your partner. You especially shouldn’t fantasize about sex with someone other than the person you’re currently having sex with. How rude!

There’s a lot about this argument that I actually agree with. I agree that being mentally present during sex can create deeper intimacy and connection, and that not being mentally present during sex can be a sign that something is going awry with the sex or the relationship. I also agree that for some of us, it can be hurtful to hear that your partner was fantasizing about someone else while you were fucking them.

However, I don’t think any of that is sufficient grounds to completely dismiss the idea of fantasizing during sex as a categorically bad and rude thing to do.

In the years since that toppy friend-with-benefits first encouraged me to let my mind wander while he fingerbanged me, I’ve fantasized during sex countless times. I’ve fantasized about the partner I’m currently fucking: the face and sounds they make when I go down on them, how good it feels when they do a sex act other than the one we’re currently doing, different situations I’d like to fuck them in. I’ve pictured alternate-universe versions of the person banging me – like a dommier version of my vanilla fuckbuddy, or my spouse if they were a withholding English professor. I’ve placed myself in wild situations with faceless strangers – like in a brightly-lit film studio with a porn cam trained on me, or being gangbanged by the cast of a musical after the final curtain call. And yes, sometimes I have thought about actual, real people other than the one in my bed at the time.

This is a very complex subject, morally speaking. (That time I almost got a philosophy minor is definitely gonna inform what I’m about to write.) Some people would say you should always tell your partner if you think about someone else during sex, and that doing anything else would be dishonesty tantamount to cheating. I disagree; I think Orwellian “thought police”-type notions are terrifying, and I don’t think any thought can be inherently immoral if it’s never acted on in the real world. I feel strongly that you’re allowed to sexually fantasize about whatever the hell you want – these thoughts only become problematic when and if they start to influence your IRL behavior. Which, to be clear, can happen. I would imagine, for example, that watching a ton of racist porn would tend to deepen any existing racist biases a person had. There’s also lots of debate over whether watching child pornography makes pedophiles less or more likely to assault a child, but I would guess the answer is sometimes “more.” (These are extreme examples with too much complexity to really get into here, unfortunately, but you get the idea.)

My position is that you don’t have to tell your partner if/when you fantasize about other people, but you might want to, for a few reasons. First of all, a secret becomes less of a threat when it’s not a secret anymore. My partner knows I have a thing for butch women in leather jackets, and pretty much always have, so if I fantasize about one, it doesn’t mean I’m gonna leave them for one – but if I had that fantasy and kept it a secret, that would seem immediately more suspect and hurtful. Secondly, communicating your fantasies about third parties can actually, ironically enough, promote the very intimacy and connection that their critics say they threaten. If my partner is fucking me and knows I’m thinking about the barista around the block, then they know where I am mentally and can join me there if they want, by talking dirty about the fantasy and even including themselves in it. Thirdly, the more you let your partner into your inner erotic world, the better they can understand it. If I was in a hyper-vanilla relationship but kept fantasizing about dominant folks, telling my partner could prompt a conversation about kinky stuff we could explore together. How can they know about your fantasy if you don’t tell them?

All of this presupposes that you have a partner who is not so far gone into Toxic Monogamy Land as to think that fantasizing can be cheating. If your partner does think that way, well… that’s a tough spot. When two people want to be monogamous to each other but their definitions of monogamy differ, either they have to compromise or they have to break up. It’s a difficult choice, and I wish you strength in making it. My view is that pretty much everyone fantasizes about people other than their partner from time to time, and sometimes that means they’d rather be with that person than their partner, but most of the time it doesn’t. It’s just a normal human thing that happens. Personally, I would rather use those fantasies as a catalyst for greater pleasure and intimacy than see them as an obstacle to those goals.

My spouse is a dirty-talk master, brilliant at weaving filthy narratives that keep me present and focused. But they also know when to use my own brain the way they’d use a vibrator. “Let your mind go wherever it wants to,” they’ll say as they work their way down my body for a luxuriant oral sex session – and I lie back and breathe a sigh of sweet relief, knowing the thoughts in my head can be all pleasure, no guilt.

 

This post was sponsored. As always, all writing and opinions are my own.

5 Unexpected Ways Music Can Improve Your Sex Life

Kate Sloan

Music is an important part of sex for many of us. Whether we prefer to set a sultry mood with some rainy-evening piano jazz, summon our inner goddess with a Beyoncé album, or rock out to Nine Inch Nails while taking a nine-inch dick, it’s clear that music can affect the vibe of an encounter – for better or for worse.

I learned about the “for worse” side of things when a Tenacious D song came up on shuffle while I was blowing my boyfriend at age 20… and again, when I fucked a singer/songwriter and one of his own songs started playing mid-bang… and again, when I had an ill-advised one-night stand with a random Tinder guy who insisted on listening to terrible white-boy rap while we got it on, and didn’t have a Spotify Premium membership so our flow was interrupted every few songs by a cheery ad reminding us to pony up for a subscription. (I could’ve let him borrow my login for the evening, I suppose, but then I wouldn’t have gotten this weird story out of it…)

That said, beyond just establishing a sexy atmosphere, there are other potential uses for music while engaging in sexytimes. Here are a few of my faves…

Set the tone for a roleplay. You may not be a fan of chamber choir music/classic 1970s rock/Enya-esque atmospheric crooning, but maybe your character in a roleplay is. Fans of sexy roleplay use many different tricks to help them get into character, from wardrobe to fragrance to changes in vocal inflection, but I find that music can put me into the headspace of a particular persona more quickly than many other routes. Listening to the Backstreet Boys, for example, takes me right back to my wistful teenage yearnings, while my favorite EP by A Yawn Worth Yelling makes me feel like the type of pop-punk princess I’d only ever embody in fantasy.

Keep rhythm more easily. Many people struggle with maintaining a rhythm during sex, and while it doesn’t always matter, sometimes it very much does. Whether you’re trying to fuck someone at a consistent speed with your strap-on so they can get off, playing with an impact bottom who loves a rhythmic flogging, or just enjoy making cool soundscapes with the odd noises sex produces, having a song on in the background can help you maintain the steady beat you’re looking for.

Set yourself a timed challenge. When I was 15, I had a super-loud “body massager” I’d bought for $6.99 from a local discount shop, which I liked to use as a vibrator. Because it was so noisy, I’d often turn on some music before I began. For a while I had the beloved album Holiday in Rhode Island by the Softies in my CD player all the time, so its first track, “Sleep Away Your Troubles,” underscored a lot of those wank sessions. After a while, I started issuing myself little “challenges” – mostly, aiming to reach orgasm before the first song ended. It was 3 and a half minutes long, so – while I probably wouldn’t be able to do this now, with my 29-year-old body – at 15 it was no problemo. If you want to do something similar, you could see how many times you can make your partner come over the duration of a favorite album, “make” your submissive take a nasty whipping until the current song ends, or edge yourself for three whole songs and then let yourself come during the fourth one. Or make up your own strange challenge!

Process pain with aplomb. Along with methodical breathing and a hefty dose of cannabis, music is one of my favorite tools for mitigating pain during sadomasochistic scenes. Before giving me a spanking, sometimes my partner will put on an album I know well, like The Party by Andy Shauf or Landmark by Hippo Campus, and I’ll sing along (to the extent that I can) while getting beaten. I swear it reduces the intensity of the pain for me by at least 20%, without reducing the yummy side effects of that pain, like the endorphin haze and feeling of sweet submission.

Keep one foot on the ground. My friend Bex has told me before that he sometimes struggles with dissociation or wandering thoughts during sex, and that music can reliably help with this. I have found the same thing – it’s all too easy for me to float off into my own head when the room is silent during sex, while listening to music (especially music I’m very familiar with) helps me stay aware of the passage of time, and of the sexy things that are happening.

Is music an important part of your sex life? What role(s) does it play for you?

When Sex Toy Companies Take Credit for Other Companies’ Designs

Kate Sloan

I feel passionately that plagiarism is indefensible, in the sex toy industry and outside of it. It’s one thing to garner inspiration from someone else’s work, and even to “try on” their style while figuring out what your own style is – heaven knows I’ve done that – but to steal someone’s entire idea, and (even worse) pass it off as your own? Not cool.

I suppose this staunch belief of mine stems in large part from being a creator myself. It sucks to work on something for a long time, fine-tuning the concept and its execution, making sure it’s as good as it can be – and then see that someone else has totally ripped it off. This is especially egregious in cases where the imitator ends up making a ton more money than the originator, as with big companies like Shein stealing from small, indie designers. Too often, this process ends up concentrating cash into the hands of already-wealthy, privileged people, while financially devastating the oppressed and overlooked creators who made the thing in the first place. (Many of the designers Shein has plagiarized are Black women.) I get fucking incensed thinking about it, to be honest.

The latest instance of this that I’ve heard about is a kerfuffle between sex toy companies Osuga and Biird. When the former reached out recently to offer me their flagship toy, the Osuga Cuddly Bird, to review, I got major déjà vu. “Haven’t I already reviewed this?” I wondered, and then realized the toy looked exactly like the Biird Obii, which indeed I had previously reviewed.

I asked the folks at Osuga if the two toys were one and the same, and they replied to tell me this wild story: Biird had offered their services as an overseas distributor for the Cuddly Bird, since Osuga had not gone international yet, and despite Osuga’s explicit instructions that Biird was not to misrepresent themselves as having actually created the toy, they went ahead and did exactly that.

Evidently, Osuga had worked hard on this design. It’s an elegant and simple sex toy with a millennial, Instagram-friendly sensibility. It doesn’t “look like a sex toy,” per se, which I know is an important factor for people who value discretion or aesthetics. It’s such a great design, in fact, that it won a Red Dot Design Award in 2019. The chief designer on the project was Siting Lin, an industrial designer from Shenzhen with an impressive portfolio; it appears that some (or possibly all) of the other designers are Asian women as well (yay, underrepresented groups in tech!). But sometime after Netherlands-based company Biird took over some of the Cuddly Bird’s distribution, they renamed the product the Biird Obii, and began publicly taking credit for the design.

My contact at Osuga told me that when reviews of “Biird toys” started popping up on the internet (including here on my blog, for which I’m genuinely sorry – I should’ve done more research beforehand), they reached out to Biird to ask that they change the product name back to the Cuddly Bird and stop promoting it as if it were their own creation. Biird only half-complied with this request, changing the name back but continuing to claim on their website to this day that they created the toy “after years of research and tinkering.” Enraging!!

I’ve been informed that Osuga recently notified Biird that they are terminating the working relationship between the two companies, understandably. I have to wonder what Biird will do, now that they’re no longer able to take credit for other people’s hard work. Will they launch some new sex toys of their own? Doubtful. In my experience in this industry, “once a plagiarizer, always a plagiarizer.”

If you’re wondering what you can do about this injustice, I would suggest buying an Osuga vibrator directly from them if you’re in the market for one. The toy in question, the Osuga Cuddly Bird, is a great little pressure-wave clitoral stimulator that doubles as a bedside lamp (?!). They also make a toy called the Osuga G-Spa, which pairs clit stimulation with G-spot vibration. If you use the code “girlyjuice,” you can get $40 off your order, which is a great discount on toys that are already reasonably priced for how high-quality and well-designed they are.

Another thing you can do is something I neglected to do before reviewing the toy Biird claimed was theirs: do your research on sex toy companies. Some are ethical, and many are less so – and if that’s a factor that matters to you when shopping for sex toys, it’s best to be informed so you can support the folks doing good work. When painstaking labor and cutting-edge creativity go into the making of a product, I think it’s best to support the people who actually did that work – not the people who thought it was acceptable to coast on others’ success.

 

This post was sponsored by Osuga, but to be perfectly clear: as always, I really do believe everything I wrote in this post. It really does piss me off that someone ripped off their design, and I really do think it’s a fantastic design.

“Are You Really Who You Say You Are?”: On Gatekeeping & Senseless Elitism

Kate Sloan

It’s weird when a thing that’s been a part of your life for a long time suddenly gains mainstream popularity. I remember feeling this way when the Fifty Shades novels and movies went viral, popularizing kink and BDSM among people who previously might have sneered at it or not known it existed at all. It reminded me, oddly enough, of when Pokémon Go became a hit game in 2016 and it instantly seemed as if everyone I knew was obsessed with the same game franchise I used to get bullied for liking when I was 8. Cognitive dissonance, man.

In moments like those, an internal war always erupts between the snobby, snarky part of me that loves to gatekeep, and the more mature and compassionate part of me that just wants everyone to be happy. Like, is it really that big a deal that way more people can recognize a flogger (or a Mewtwo) on sight now than they could a decade ago? Is it actually helping anyone when I roll my eyes at these people and dismiss them as “not real fans” or “not real kinksters,” or is it just enabling me to feel high and mighty, like an indie-rock snob whose old-school fave just hit the Billboard Top 50?

I feel especially conflicted about this when there are smart people making good points on both sides of the argument – as with the debates this past year about the “gentrification of OnlyFans.” Porn performers who’ve made their livings on the site for years are understandably upset that controversial celebrities like Bella Thorne and Caroline Calloway can sweep in at any moment, earning a fortune in a single day, while long-time sex workers still have to struggle against the stigma and logistical hurdles placed in their way by our sex-negative culture. On the other hand, I also understand why so many people during this pandemic went, “Wait, how much money do pornstars make?!” and created an OnlyFans page to help make ends meet during this tough time. Granted, those folks don’t have nearly as much of an economic impact on other sex workers as celebrities do, nor do they have nearly the same amount of institutional power to sway public opinion about sex work, but it can be hard nonetheless to turn off the judgmental, elitist, self-protective voice whispering in my ear about people “jumping on bandwagons.”

I’m not an OnlyFans user, as either a creator or a fan, so I can’t really speak to the politics and ethics of that site and the people on it. But I’ve been thinking about this type of gatekeeping lately because it seems to be coming up in a lot of different areas right now. I recently heard a rumor that a guy I used to know had come out as demisexual, like me, and I found myself reflexively rolling my eyes. “I don’t know if that’s true,” I scoffed derisively. “I knew him for years and he never seemed that demi to me. I think he’s just jumping onto the bandwagon.” But as soon as those words left my mouth, I could hear how horrible they sounded – and how much they actually sounded exactly like my own self-judgments when I came out as demisexual. I know, of course, that not all demisexual people “seem demisexual,” that a person’s sexual behavior doesn’t always match their sexual identity perfectly, that sexual identities can shift over time, and that people have the right to self-identify however they choose. I realized in that moment that I was 100% just projecting my own insecurity and self-doubt onto this guy who hadn’t even done anything wrong, and who is almost certainly just as demisexual as he says he is.

The farther back I peer into my own sexual history, the more of this type of gatekeeping I can remember. I was frequently gatekept when I came out as bisexual at age 15; friends and internet strangers insisted I was actually gay, or actually straight, or would grow out of my identity. My long-time volunteering gig at a queer organization became untenable when a new coordinator was hired and noticeably treated the femme queers (myself included) worse than everyone else, in a way that felt like she low-key didn’t believe we were really queer. Some random person booed me when I kissed my (queer ally) boyfriend at a Pride event, as if they’d never heard of bisexuality.

Thinking about these incidents makes me deeply sad, because each and every one of them was invalidating beyond measure. Queer and trans people are already at higher risk of social ostracization, stigmatization, and suicidality than straight cis people; is it really necessary for us to perpetuate these forces against people in our own communities? Who does it actually help when we boo a bisexual, or insist asexuals have no place at Pride, or tell a newly-out enby that they’re “not trans enough”? Aren’t we just picking up the same weapons that’ve been used on us forever, and turning them on the people who most need our love and acceptance?

Let me be clear: it’s not that I think gatekeeping is never appropriate. Those OnlyFans celebs demonstrably made life harder for sex workers on the site; likewise, I don’t think it’s always appropriate for straight cis allosexual people to be in LGBTQ+ spaces, I don’t think white folks have any right to infiltrate POC-specific events, and I don’t think anti-trans bigots get to call themselves feminists. But these are extreme cases, and most gatekeeping in the queer community seems to target people who it makes no sense to target.

Next time you find yourself thinking, “That person doesn’t seem like they belong here,” or “What a poser,” or “Are they really who they say they are?” maybe you’ll think twice, and instead ask yourself: Does it really help anybody when I gatekeep? Or does it just isolate and invalidate someone who could really use the support of a loving, accepting community?

 

This post was sponsored. As always, all writing and opinions are my own.

How Audio Porn Helps Me When I’m Depressed, Insecure, or Sexually Apathetic

Kate Sloan

I think I liked audio porn before I ever liked visual porn. And I don’t think this is an uncommon experience, particularly for women.

It makes sense. Much like some people prefer novels over their movie adaptations, sometimes you want to be able to visualize and fantasize inside your own head while consuming a piece of media, rather than having the visuals spelled out very literally for you.

But there are other reasons I still, to this day, often prefer audio porn over the traditional, cinematic variety. Namely:

1. Words are hot. There is not nearly enough dirty talk in most mainstream porn for my personal tastes, especially from men and masculine people, who are often nearly silent, I guess to keep from grossing out their cis-het male viewers?! As someone whose sex life has been 70%+ phone sex for the past few years, and who has spent her life writing about sex, I’m perhaps more attuned to the eroticism of words than the average porn consumer. Generally I’d rather listen to someone describing cunnilingus than watch them perform it, for example – in part because it’s a sex act where, if you’re doing it right, often nothing all that interesting will be visually apparent from the outside.

2. Sounds are hot. Moans, quickening breaths, the animalistic sound of someone desperately stroking their cock – these things are often the most exciting parts of porn to me, to the point that if a clip has been muted, or has poor sound quality, I tend to close that tab and move on to the next. In audio porn, obviously the auditory elements of eroticism are played up and focused upon, plus they tend to be rendered in higher quality because of the performers’ proximity to their (often) fancy, ASMR-quality mics.

3. It makes me less insecure and self-critical. While I reject the notion that female porn stars aren’t “real women,” because obviously they are, they tend to be a lot more conventionally gorgeous than me, which can bring up uncomfortable feelings while I’m just trying to turn myself on and get off. Some audio porn describes the characters therein, but much of it is created to be intentionally vague, so that the listener can slot themselves into any fantasy they want without having to compare themselves to the preexisting people in that fantasy.

4. It’s physically easier to consume. I didn’t always care about this, but now that I’m chronically ill, there are some days when the effort of holding up my iPad to watch porn – or orienting myself in bed so that I can comfortably see the screen – is just too much, especially if I want to have energy left over afterward for masturbation or sex. I like that with audio porn, I can put my headphones on, hit “play,” and stay perfectly still in whatever position feels comfy while I listen.

5. It’s often in the second person. I know some people hate this about audio erotica, and would be comfier if it only ever described third-person scenarios (“She took his cock into her mouth,” etc.) rather than being in the second person (“You’re going to take my cock into your mouth now, pretty girl”). But I like the second-person ones, and especially enjoyed them when I was in my early 20s and had only just admitted to myself that I might be kinky. (LOL. What an understatement.) Hearing kinky dirty talk that was from a stranger, but that still felt like it was aimed directly at me, helped me become comfortable taking on a submissive role before I ever actually acted out those fantasies with real-life partners.

6. It’s comforting. I don’t know if I’m quite an “ASMR person,” in that I don’t often experience the characteristic “brain tingles” reported by those folks upon hearing certain sounds or encountering situations that trigger them. But I do find it oddly calming to be talked through a sexy scenario by a kind-hearted stranger who requires absolutely nothing from me, in terms of participation or prettiness. It’s like the grown-up version of when you stay home sick from school and a loving parent reads aloud to you from a fantasy novel.

 

Have you listened to much audio porn? What are your thoughts on it?

 

This post was sponsored by the folks at Sofia Sins, the cool new audio-porn platform from Sofia Gray. Check ’em out if sexy audio turns you on! As always, all writing and opinions here are my own.