Musings

“Every Feminist’s Ideal Boyfriend…”

Kate Sloan

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During the shitstorm of anti-feminist trolls I faced after the publication of my Establishment article, the funniest criticism I received was this: “Every feminist’s ideal boyfriend is a Hitachi Magic Wand.”

A conservative blogger had written about me and my degenerate sex toy collection, and I clicked the link while at a party with a bunch of friends. When a concerned pal saw what I was reading, he cooed, “Aw, don’t look at that,” and tried to take my phone from me so it wouldn’t ruin my night. But I wasn’t sad or angry; I was giggling my ass off.

It struck me (and still strikes me) as so funny that these anti-feminist, anti-woman, anti-pleasure curmudgeons think sex toys are incompatible with the presence of a real-life partner. These people honestly believe that by sheer virtue of owning dozens of vibrators and dildos, I am scaring away anyone who might want to bang me. This couldn’t be further from the truth.

I’m throwing clothes and toiletries into a backpack, getting ready for a weekend at my boyfriend’s place. It’s a rarity: he has the house to himself, with his family being out of town. We are going to fuck on every available surface.

My eyes land on my sex toy drawers and I realize some important decisions need to be made. “What toys should I bring?” I text my love. While waiting for him to respond, I idly graze my fingers over my Tango, Orchid, and Wahl.

The reply comes back: “Your Eroscillator. Duh.”

I should have known. He loves how hard that toy makes me come, while his cock is deep inside me or his fingers probe my G-spot. Sometimes he even hands it to me during sex without me needing to ask – a non-verbal assertion that, yes, he values my pleasure, it’s important to him, it turns him on, and he can’t wait to feel me clenching around him.

I wrap the Eroscillator’s cord carefully around its body and slide it into my bag, then skip off toward the subway station.

27 percent of the people I’ve banged have owned their own Magic Wand (to my knowledge, anyway). That’s no small number. That’s 1.3 in 5. Those odds are pretty good, compared to the world at large. I have excellent taste in partners.

Though self-pleasure is obviously an important ideal to me, I’m especially charmed by cis men who own a Magic Wand purely for the usage of the women they bone.

These are usually men to whom their partners’ pleasure matters a great deal. They’re the type of men who want you to come, but who will back the fuck off if you tell them it’s probably not gonna happen tonight and you’re okay with that. The type of men who will patiently offer up their fingers, mouths, dicks, and talented toy-wielding hands if it means they get to watch you writhe and convulse beneath them. The type of men who will never judge you for getting sweaty, red-faced, breathless, loud, and incoherent during and after your orgasm, because to them, that’s not unattractive – it’s the whole point.

When I’m flirting with someone new and sex toys come up in conversation, sometimes I learn that my flirtee owns their own Hitachi. It’s usually mentioned so casually and offhandedly, I could miss it if I zoned out for just a moment. But it’s info that perks my ears right up, because I know what it’s likely to mean.

“I bought it for an ex-girlfriend, but she didn’t want it,” he says with a shrug as he plugs it in.

“Lucky for me,” I fire back, unwrapping a condom to pull over the thing’s unwieldy, porous head.

I’m already wet from his deft fingers, so he can push them right into me again once the Hitachi is settled on my clit. I turn it on just as he finds my A-spot and have to bite down on my own hand to keep my moans at a reasonable decibel level. The deep vibrations rocking my entire clit combine with his sweetly insistent fingers, and I zoom right into “about to come” territory within seconds.

It doesn’t take much. I’m just thinking that I wish he would say something nurturing and domly to me to push me over the edge, when he leans in and mutters, “Does that feel good? Yeah? Like that?” And then I’m coming all over his fingers, sinking my teeth even deeper into my own skin. The vibrator rattles noisily against my sudden wetness and I leave it there until I can’t stand it anymore.

“Man, I love that thing,” I breathe. He laughs and says, “Yeah, I could tell.” We curl up to sleep: him spooning me, and me spooning the Hitachi.

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The way I use sex toys with partners, it’s a way they can prove to me that they trust and respect my authority over my own body.

I rarely just hand a partner a toy and let ’em go wild with it. Usually I’ll hand it to them while listing some very specific instructions. “Push it all the way into me, tilt the tip up toward my belly, and move in and out in small motions. Yeah, like that. A little bit faster, please.”

Or sometimes I’ll just hold the damn thing myself. I’ll press a vibrator against my clit or external G-spot while my partner fucks me with fingers, a toy, or his dick. Since my clit is a total princess, it’s often easier if I handle that part myself, freeing him up to do other things.

I don’t attract the type of person who’d pridefully try to control my toys against my wishes. I wouldn’t want to bang that type of person, anyway. I only want to be with people who respect my autonomy, my knowledge of my own body, my pleasure preferences. And when a partner hands me a vibe without getting butthurt about it, without sulking in disappointment, without seeming to feel devalued or unneeded, it just proves he trusts me to know what’s best for me.

It’s a feminist act, in some ways. It’s a man saying-without-saying, “Your body is yours, you’re smart and experienced, and your pleasure matters. I’d love to be a part of that, if you’ll let me. And if not, that’s fine too.”

He’s got one hand on my chest and the other inside me. My Tango is wedged against my clit, thrumming helpfully, but I’m just not quite getting there.

I see a look come over his face that I can’t decipher, and then he says, “I don’t think this is strong enough. Do you wanna switch to the Hitachi?”

My appreciation for this man, in this moment, is grander than I can translate into words. My heart melts, and so does my vagina. Far from being scared or put off by vibrators, he’s getting annoyed with the one in my hand for being too small, not strong enough, not giving me enough pleasure. He wants more for me, because my enjoyment is paramount to him. And not in some selfless, detached way: me getting off is a direct turn-on for him. And I know that’s why he shuts off my Tango, retrieves my Magic Wand from the bedside table, and places it in my hands.

A few diligent minutes later, I come so hard that I’m babbling, sweating, lost in rumbly reverie. I’m vaguely aware that he takes the vibe from me once I’m totally done coming, and I hear him set it on the table before climbing back into bed with me.

Maybe it’s the orgasmic neurotransmitters talking, but I’ve rarely felt so cared for, respected, safe, and seen during sex as I do now. He knew what I needed and delivered it not with complaints but with extreme enthusiasm. It wasn’t even a big deal to him. He wanted me to come, so, duh, he made sure there was a suitable vibrator in my hands. It was the obvious thing to do, and he did it because he cares about me.

I drift off to sleep in his arms. His hands still smell like me.

The Dildorks Podcast: Dorky Discourse on Sex, Dating, and Masturbating

Kate Sloan

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My best friend Bex and I are on the same wavelength about practically everything. We like the same sex educators, the same porn stars, the same restaurants, the same pop songs, even occasionally the same boys. We agree on just about every issue; it’s what makes us #BrainTwins.

So I wasn’t surprised when, last October, we discovered we both wanted to start a podcast. It made perfect sense. Like it was destined to happen all along.

In the months that followed, two things happened in my friendship with Bex: we became a whole lot closer, and we talked more and more about the podcast we wanted to co-create. It began to take shape in our many conversations about sex-related media we loved and hated. Our favorite stuff was the deep-dive, sex-nerdy shit that got into the nitty-gritty of sexuality the way we did in our own conversations with friends. We loved Tina Horn’s kink philosophizin’, Epiphora‘s blasé snarkiness, Sinclair Sexsmith’s profound discussions of D/s, Allison Moon’s goofy sluttiness. We dreamed of creating a resource for sex nerds that was silly, authentic, informative, and that went beyond the “sex 101” stuff plastered all over the internet.

In one of our many brainstorming sessions over Skype, Bex came up with the name: The Dildorks. (‘Cause we’re dorks and we like dildos. Get it?!) I coined the tagline: “Dorky discourse on sex, dating, and masturbating.” And then, with trepidation and with love, we recorded our first episode.

We were blessed to receive contributions from some super talented people: our art is by Amy and our theme song is by Protodome. I am so excited about this project because of all the cool folks I get to work with – most especially Bex! ♥

You can listen to our podcast in an on-site player, download the file directly, or subscribe to us on iTunes. I hope you’ll join us for this episode and all our future ones!

8 Things Nobody Tells You About Getting the Backs of Your Thighs Tattooed

Kate Sloan

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I love my new tattoos more than I can possibly express. It gives me great joy on the daily to spot them peeking out of my skirts or shorts in the mirror, or to hear the squeals of delight when someone notices them for the first time. They are exactly what I wanted and look even better than I had hoped.

However, the healing process has been an ordeal, y’all. I took good care of my tats, washing them once or twice a day with Dove soap and moisturizing obsessively with unscented Lubriderm, so I didn’t get any infections or complications, knock wood – but infections aren’t the only thing you have to worry about when you get tattooed. The body part you choose can affect your life in lots of areas. Here are some things I wish someone had told me about getting the backs of my thighs tattooed…

You won’t be able to sit properly for a while. For some reason, when I pictured getting my upper thighs tattooed, it didn’t occur to me that that’s what I sit on when I sit down. My thought process was, “The tattoos won’t be on my butt, so I’ll be fine.” Nope. Your thighs are directly implicated in the sitting-down process. Some of this issue can be dealt with by just sitting less, e.g. working at a standing desk, which I did. But in my day-to-day, I didn’t want to subject my fresh or healing tattoos to scratchy couch cushions, filthy bus shelter benches, or fancy theatre seats – so I adopted a sitting position for the first few days post-inking that involved pulling my knees up so my thighs wouldn’t touch the surface below me. Not only does this look super weird (especially in more conservative environments, like the theatre), but it also started to feel not-so-great after a while: my bad knees didn’t appreciate being bent for that long, and I needed to take pain pills to get through those first few days. Yikes.

Using the toilet is risky business. Time for some real talk! What I just said about your thighs being involved in the sitting process? That’s true for sitting on the toilet, too. I experimented with sitting really far forward (often resulting in spraying the bathroom floor), sitting with my knees up (effective, but requires flexibility and impeccable aim), and even straddling the toilet so as to pee into it from above (hard on my knees, hard to aim, and looks goddamn ridiculous). This isn’t so much an issue at my own house, where I know the toilets are more-or-less clean; it was more a concern in public bathrooms, which are, as you know, a festering cesspool of bacteria. If I had this process to do over again, I would invest in a stand-to-pee device.

Spanking is off the table. I don’t think I fully realized just how integral spanking is to my sexuality until I got these tattoos. I took a spanking hiatus that lasted from a week before getting the tattoos to a week after, and that felt like forever. During that time, I read books about spanking, watched spanking porn, researched spanking physiology, sexted with beaux about the spankings they would give me once they were allowed to… I was a girl possessed. And in fact, I wish I’d waited longer to get spanked again after getting inked, because the people topping me, while well-intentioned, didn’t always have the best aim and sometimes smacked me right on the tattoos. I found, oddly enough, that spanking other people scratched that particular kink-itch for me – not completely, but enough that I could get through those spankless weeks without going off the deep end.

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Your sex positions are limited. Do what I say, not what I do: avoid getting doggy-styled for at least a couple weeks post-tattooing. I am an idiot and got fucked from behind three days after Tattoo Day – in a park, no less – because I was drunk and just wasn’t thinking about the health implications. I’m extremely lucky I didn’t scratch or irritate my new tattoos on my partner’s thigh hair or pubes, and that I didn’t get any dirt, dust, or lube in there. When I got inked, I initially intended to take a break from any kind of sex involving my genitals (BJ Week, woooo!), but I have zero self-control and that didn’t happen. Still: if you must get boned after getting your thighs tattooed (and trust me, I understand), just be careful, choose your positions accordingly, and wash your tattoos after, just incase anything got in there that shouldn’t have.

Dudes think they’re extremely sexy. I guess I knew this on some level. My tattoos are explicitly meant to be sexual, after all. But, wow, I still managed to underestimate just how much attention they would attract. Whether I’m in a sex club or just walking down the street, fully flashing my tats or just letting them poke out the bottom of a skirt, they certainly get me noticed. Sometimes this level of attention is welcome, and sometimes, less so. I think I’ll be careful from now on to keep my ink covered if I’m in a “please, nobody touch or talk to me” kind of mood.

You will end up showing a lot of people your butt. Your tattoo artist, for one. Your friends. Your partner(s). Your relatives. Pretty much anyone who’s heard about your new tattoos will want to see them, and if you oblige what they ask, that will involve turning around, bending over, and pulling up your skirt/pulling down your pants to show ’em what you got. I’m not normally too bothered by showing people my ass, but I did have a couple of close calls – for example, the time a conservative family member wanted to see my tats and I accidentally gave her an eyeful of fresh spanking bruises along with the ink. Whoops.

They’re hard to get pictures of. This is not a joke: you should probably buy a selfie stick if you’re about to get the backs of your thighs tattooed. I consider myself fairly skilled at taking butt selfies – it involves a lot of spine-twisting, arm-reaching, and clever angling – but your thighs are even farther away from your hands and your eyes so there is even more contortion involved. Do yourself a favor and pick up a selfie stick, because even if you don’t intend on taking “sexy” photos, you’ll probably at least want some pictures of the healing process for posterity. (Posterity… Posterior… Get it?!)

You can’t really even see them. Wow, I didn’t expect this! Without the help of a mirror or a smartphone’s selfie mode, I literally can’t see my tattoos at all. No amount of twisting and rubber-necking allows me to see any part of them. That might be due to my particular body (thigh size, lack of flexibility, and so on), but still: if you want tattoos you’ll be able to see all the time, the back of your thigh is a bad spot. As for me, I’m okay with it – I don’t mind looking in the mirror to see my ink, and I suspect I’d get sick of a tattoo faster if it was in my sightline all the time.

What do you wish someone had told you before you got a tattoo?

10 Activities That Are More Fun With a Butt Plug In

Kate Sloan

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I am always looking for “life hacks” that will make my day-to-day feel more joyful, more decadent, and more rewarding. I think this stems partly from my struggle with depression: if there’s any way I can convince myself to get out of bed on a bad day, I’ll try it, even if it’s something small and silly like putting on red lipstick, cranking some uplifting tunes, or – yes – inserting a butt plug.

If you like anal play, wearing a plug can bring a little extra magic into just about any endeavor. Slather your plug with anal lube, slide it in, and try any of these activities – if nothing else, they’ll be more interesting!

Penetrative sex. You may have tried this already. It can be a grand old time. If you have a prostate, the plug will rub against it with every thrust – and if you have a vagina, wearing a plug will make you extra tight, which your partner might enjoy. I’ll never forget the time I got fucked while a large-ish plug was in my butt, and my partner exclaimed, “Jesus Christ, you’re so tight! Who turned the sleep number up to 100 in your vagina?!”

Receiving oral sex. Gettin’ head can feel fantastic, but sometimes it just isn’t quite enough to get me off. A partner’s fingers inside me can add a little extra stimulation if need be, but that requires a lot of co-ordination on the part of the giver. Using a butt plug while receiving oral can circumvent this problem. The plug will shift and undulate slightly with the turned-on pulses of your pelvic muscles, creating a mild sensation of getting fucked that might help push you over the edge.

Giving oral sex. Going down on your sweetie can be a massive turn-on; even moreso if you have something to squeeze around while you do it. The giver’s enjoyment and enthusiasm are a make-or-break factor in good oral sex, so you’re doing a favor for both yourself and your partner if you find a way to crank up your pleasure even higher.

Getting spanked. Sex educator Tina Horn has said that one of her favorite things about spanking is just getting to handle a butt, because butts are great. In my experience, this isn’t uncommon: oftentimes, when someone is into doing stuff to butts more generally, they’re into spanking, and vice versa. So if your partner likes smackin’ your ass, they might enjoy the added excitement and extra squirming that results when you wear a plug while they do it.

Running errands. Look, no one said grocery shopping or going to the bank was going to be a rip-roaring good time. But you can make these things slightly more thrilling by doing ’em while plugged. It’s a fun secret you can carry around with you. (Bring extra lube so you can pop into a public bathroom for a quick reapplication if needed!)

Housework. I loathe cleaning my room, putting away my laundry, and organizing my desk. If I have to do these things (which I do, because I’m an adult and I don’t have on-staff maids), I might as well have a happy butt while I’m adulting. Bonus points if you put on some Taylor Swift or Carly Rae and dance around while you clean your space.

Working. I wouldn’t recommend wearing a plug at an actual workplace, although I know people who have. But if you work from home (or from cafés comme moi), wearing a plug can stiffen your spine and wake up your brain. This is especially true if you’ve got a dom-y partner who’s told you, for example, that the plug should serve as a reminder that they are expecting you to get your work done or you’ll get a punishment…!

Facing a fear. Speaking of dom-y partners: often it is easier to do something that scares you if someone you adore has commanded you to do so. A plug can be a tangible reminder of this, as you take on whatever’s terrifying you, from public speaking to air travel to returning the clothes your ex left behind at your house. Even without a partner bossing you into bravery, a plug can still give you something to focus on while you tackle your fears, like how meditators are instructed to focus on their breathing. It sounds silly, but the sensation of something in your butt can ground you and keep you present when your anxiety-brain is pulling you out of your body.

Posing for pictures. Tyra Banks famously advocates “smizing”: the modeling trick of smiling with your eyes, not your mouth. It creates an approachable warmth that looks lovely in photos. I think wearing a butt plug could do the same thing! You’ll have a glimmer in your eyes that says, “I have a secret.” The goofiness of this situation might even help relax you, so your natural charm and beauty come through in whatever boudoir shots or glamorous headshots you’re posing for.

Getting ready for a date. If your beau is into butt stuff, you can prepare your ass by wearing a plug before and/or during your date – how thoughtful of you! But even if not, sporting a plug during your pre-date prep could help get you in a sexy, flirty headspace. As your butt muscles relax around the plug, so too will you relax, loosen up, and lighten up!

What are your favorite activities to pair with a butt plug?

This post was sponsored by lubezone.org, and as always, all writing and opinions are my own!

Meditation, Mindfulness, & My Slutty Mouth

Kate Sloan

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Two major things happened to me in February: I had one of the worst depressive and anxious spells of my life, and I became obsessed with giving blowjobs.

I don’t think it was a coincidence that these things happened at the same time. We’re drawn to what we most need at any given moment: when your body’s deficient in magnesium, for example, you might crave chocolate. And likewise, I see now that when I most needed to clear my mind and focus up, I craved the sexual act that gave me that experience most readily.

This connection didn’t really hit me until the owner of my favorite BJ dick skipped town and I found myself in a fellatio drought for a while. As my anxious and depressive episode worsened, I craved blowjobs the way I’ve craved other life-affirming touchstones: nutritious food, quality friend-time, creative expression, cat cuddles. It ran deeper than my typical carnal hankerings. It felt more like a core psychological need.

When you struggle with anxiety and depression, people constantly offer unsolicited advice. So I’ve heard it all. “Get more sunshine!” “Try yoga!” “Eat more greens!” One suggestion I’ve heard many times is mindfulness. This seems counterintuitive at first blush – if my issue is feeling sad and scared, won’t focusing on those feelings just make me sadder and scared-er? – but I actually find it works the opposite way. Acknowledging my negative self-talk, greeting it like an old friend instead of slamming the door in its face, diffuses some of its power. And then I refocus on my breath and my body instead of my buzzing brain, and those quotidian sensations are calming in their simplicity. It’s not a magic pill, but it’s something.

That’s what blowjobs can be for me: a venue for mindfulness. They force me into my body and don’t allow me to fall back into my anxiety-brain until the deed is done.

When I first started giving BJs at age 19, I didn’t find it hot at all. “My mouth just isn’t an erotic zone for me,” I remember telling a friend. I felt all those mouth sensations very vividly – the weight of a cock on my tongue, the texture of the skin sliding over my lips, the smells and tastes – and they captured my attention so completely that I couldn’t focus on other things, like my own arousal or pleasure. I hadn’t yet developed a concept of sexual enjoyment that didn’t centre on my own genitals, so I interpreted my BJ dalliances as, “My mouth just isn’t eroticized.” Wow, how wrong I was.

That sensory overwhelm is the main reason I enjoy BJs so much now. They are unique among sexual acts for me in this way. When someone’s fucking me, fingering me, or even going down on me, I can tune it out to some extent if I want to. My mind can wander into anxiety-land, and sometimes I need to remind myself, “Oh, right, I’m having sex right now!” I never, ever experience that with a blowjob. I can’t. My mouth is so front-and-center in my perception that I can’t think about much else when I’m slobbin’ on the knob. It’s just me and the dick, and nothing else matters.

Leo Babauta calls this concept “the universe of a single task” (albeit in a rather different context!). He writes that you should “make each task its own universe, its own specialness.” This is an approach I try (and often fail) to bring to my relationships, my creative work, my very existence as a human. But for some reason, when it comes to blowjobs, I succeed. A beej can be my entire world for its whole duration and I don’t feel deprived or distracted. It is my everything.

This is highly affirming at times when I feel like a fuck-up in every other arena. Maybe I’ve missed a work deadline, or I’m fighting with someone I love, or my financial situation is unsteady. It doesn’t matter. Faced with a dick to suck, all that other shit fades away. A blowjob is a task with crystal-clear parameters and expectations, unlike many other challenges we face. I know exactly what I am supposed to do and how to do it, especially if the person I’m blowing is someone whose body and preferences I’m familiar with. I’m not an Olympic-level cocksucker, but I feel fairly confident in my skillz. Giving a good beej makes me feel empowered and successful even when I don’t feel that way about my life as a whole.

Of course, I’m a kinkster, so my brain is forever swimming in kink, and that probably informs the psychologically restorative way I experience BJs. Being a good girl – in this case, by giving good head – is a way for me to feel valuable when I otherwise don’t. My boss, editor, dad, and best friend could all be fuming at me, but if I’m pleasing a dom partner, that’s all I’m thinking about at that moment – and I’ll feel great about it. Maybe that’s fucked up, but there’ve been times when the satisfaction I glean from pleasing a partner was the boost I needed after depression dug me into a hole in every area of life.

Giving head is also an activity that gives you moment-to-moment feedback on how you’re doing. That is precious and rare in this world of anxiety-provoking uncertainty. I can try out a new trick during a BJ and know in under five seconds whether it’s a flop or a worthy addition to my repertoire. Nifty!

This all makes it sound like I approach fellatio as a zen monk would approach his meditation cushion, and that’s not quite right. True, sometimes kneeling at a partner’s feet to take his dick into my mouth feels akin to prostrating myself before a statue of a revered deity. But there is, of course, a sexy element too. Beyond just having a straight-up BJ kink – which I absolutely do – I also think the psychological calm I get from sucking cock takes the pressure off my sexual brakes. The less anxiety and overwhelm I’m feeling, the easier it is for sexual arousal to flow into my body and mind. Abraham-Hicks says your mood is like a cork held underwater, and it rises fast as soon as you let go of it; I find it’s the same with my arousal. The less I cling to my anxiety, the quicker I turn into a hot puddle of arousal in the presence of things that turn me on. Hence, a meditative blowjob – or other anxiety-quashers like marijuana, booze, and sleepiness – makes me hornier by sheer virtue of eliminating my stressors.

Naturally, this process relies on having a partner I trust – someone who I feel safe relaxing around. But I’ve found this penile peace with more casual partners, too. It’s a nice moment for both of us – him luxuriating in pleasure, and me zoning out on his dick. It’s why, for example, my Tinder hookup in Minneapolis asked me mid-beej if I wanted to “do anything else with that cock,” and I looked up at him with confusion in my eyes and said, “…No.” It had been a couple months since I’d had a hard dick in my mouth, and dammit, I needed my fix.

 

Do you find certain sexual acts meditative or calming? Got any stories or suggestions?