5 Myths About the Clit

Kate Sloan

Clitoris, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways. You are a sensitive seductress, an orgasm-enabler, a prettily-hued part. You thrill and satisfy many a mouth, and you give purpose to vibrators that might otherwise remain unused. You are chronically ignored, epidemically mistreated, but still you rise to meet the pleasurable reputation which precedes you. You are, in short, a hero: responsible for great joys worldwide but fiercely unappreciated for all that you do.

Despite all my rhapsodizing, I still have beef with some of the discourse that exists around the clit. It is, to say the least, a widely misunderstood body part. Here are 5 common myths about the almighty clitoris…

It’s only for foreplay.

As artist Sophia Wallace points out in her Cliteracy project: “Mastered the Kama Sutra? If you are not cliterate, 70% of [people with vulvas] will still be unsatisfied.” These stats vary depending on who you ask, but I’ve seen estimates that anywhere from two-thirds to nine-tenths of vulva-possessing folks need clitoral stimulation in order to get off. These numbers are, presumably, similar to the proportion of folks with penises who need those penises touched if they’re going to reach orgasm… because – surprise, surprise – the penis and the clitoris are anatomically analogous.

I have cringed through many a porn scene or fanfic story where clitoral stimulation is treated as a cursory appetizer to the “main event.” And let’s be real: this attitude spreads to real life, even if clitorally oblivious pornographers and erotica authors claim they only create works of fantasy. Several of my cis male partners have demonstrably not understood how important my clit is to my sexual response – and then sometimes they would seem shocked or offended when their penetrative fumblings didn’t push me anywhere close to climax! Our culture needs to change the way it discusses and treats clits, if we have any hope of closing the orgasm gap.

It’s just the little bump you see on the outside.

The head of the clitoris – that is to say, the part that is most visible – is often mistaken as the clit in its totality. In reality, though, medical imaging has taught us that the clitoris extends into the body, just like the penis does. It has a shaft, long legs (“crura”), and bulbs, which can be indirectly stimulated with fingers or clit vibrators through the labia, mons pubis, and vagina. Some theorists even posit that all “G-spot” and “vaginal” orgasms are actually indirect clitoral orgasms in disguise.

Once you know this secret truth about the clit, it really opens up your options for stimulating this body part. For example, many folks (myself included!) find that the head of the clitoris is too sensitive to be touched directly, in which case, stimulating the sides and top of the clitoral shaft might be a better route to pleasure. Don’t be afraid to suck or stroke the shaft as if it were a tiny penis, either – because it basically is. And there’s nothing wrong with that. (Uh, maybe we could re-frame this to say that a penis is essentially an oversized clit?!)

Only women have them.

Fuck off with your cissexist bullshit. Trans men exist. Non-binary people exist. Intersex people exist. There are people all across the gender spectrum – and beyond – who have a clit. If you ever refer to “women” in your spoken or written clitoral discourse, ask yourself: why? Is it really, truly, actually necessary to phrase your ideas that way? Probably not.

On that note, the marketing for clit vibes is habitually feminine, and it’s disheartening to see. Sex toy companies need to get with the program already; it is 2019, and excluding trans people isn’t acceptable, nor was it ever.

It has more nerve endings than the entire penis.

An often-repeated factoid about the clitoris is that it contains 8,000 nerve endings, apparently twice as many as the entire penis. But that stat can be traced back to a 1976 book about cows and sheep – not even humans. Even if that estimate did apply to people, it would probably refer to the circumcised penis, because modern medicine estimates the foreskin alone contains about 20,000 nerve endings. Yeesh!

This isn’t exactly the moment for me to mount an intactivist spiel, maybe, but while I’m on the subject: no one should be circumcised as a baby unless it is literally medically necessary. Beyond affecting genital function and health, routine infant genital mutilation (whether of a penis or a clitoris) robs the patient of thousands upon thousands of nerve endings that would enrich their lives. If a person wants elective surgery on their genitals for whatever reason, it’s my opinion that they should do it when they’re old enough to make that weighty decision for themselves in an informed way, rather than having it thrust upon them by archaically-minded parents or doctors.

It’s hard to find.

This myth was a staple of 1990s stand-up comedians’ acts, I guess because it’s hilarious when men think their partners’ pleasure is unimportant or too much work?? What a weird world we live in.

It’s true that the clitoris is usually nested in layers of skin – a hood and two sets of labia – which, combined with its size, make it less visually obvious at first glance than, say, a penis. But once you’ve looked at a few vulvas, it’s hard to miss the clit. It’s the protrusion where the inner labia intersect, and you can usually feel it with your fingers, especially when it starts to harden with arousal. (A particularly memorable Vice cunnilingus guide said that the clitoris feels “like a tumor in a pile of earlobes,” which, while horrifying, effectively illustrates the textural differences between the clit and the skin that surrounds it.)

Frankly, if you regularly fuck people who have clits, and you’ve never taken the time to either find those clits yourselves or ask their owners to point them out, you are not even doing the bare minimum as a sexual partner. I get that it can be anxiety-inducing to do something you’ve never done before, but pleasing your partner is more important than your pride. Figure it out, if just because you’ll feel like more of a Casanova once you do.

 

What are your least favorite myths about the clit?

 

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

Fancy a Girly Juice Cocktail?

Kate Sloan

I should’ve known, when I started dating a cocktails aficionado, that eventually he would invent a drink called the Girly Juice.

Truth be told, given that the name of my blog was originally yoinked from an ex-lover who used to refer to my vaginal fluids as such, ideally this drink would include a splash o’ vag. But I’ll leave genital imbibement to bukkake enthusiasts and the author of Semenology.

If anything, I wanted my blog’s namesake beverage to include ingredients I adore – and since my partner has ample experience ordering for me at restaurants, he’s very aware of what those ingredients are. I love bright, sweet drinks made with citrusy juices (see, for example, the Southside or the London Calling), and I love warm spices like cinnamon and ginger.

Obviously a drink inspired by me and my blog should also have, at the very least, a pinkish tinge, because I’m a feminine femme through and through.

So, without further ado… here’s how to make the ~official~ Girly Juice cocktail!

Ingredients:

  • 2 oz London dry gin (we used Tanqueray but my partner also recommends Sipsmith)
  • 1 to 1.5 oz pink grapefruit juice (more if you like a fruitier flavor, less if you like a boozier flavor)
  • ¾ oz cinnamon syrup
  • 2 dashes ginger bitters or cinnamon bitters (we used Dillon’s ginger bitters)

Pour all ingredients into a shaker filled with ice, and shake. Strain and serve in a chilled coupe glass. Garnish with a cinnamon stick and/or a grapefruit peel twist.

Health note: grapefruit juice is known to interact poorly with certain medications, so do some research and make sure it’s safe for you to consume before partaking of this drink! If you want a suitable replacement, my beau suggests an equivalent amount of orange or blood orange juice.

If you try this cocktail, let us know what you think!

My Phone Sex Setup

Kate Sloan

I talk a lot about phone sex on here, but I’ve said almost nothing about the actual logistical tools I use for this particular lascivious act.

And that stuff’s important! The wrong phone sex setup can make you feel farther from your partner when you want to feel closer. You don’t want to be stuck fiddling with Bluetooth settings and charger cables when you could be focusing on your paramour’s pretty moans.

My partner and I have had phone sex almost every night for over a year (YEESH) so I have ample experience and opinions in this arena! Here are some of my phone-sex must-haves…

The phone itself

My current phone is an iPhone XS; it was a Christmas present to myself, because my old 6S was barely functional after being thrashed for 3 years. I love the XS! It’s sleek and sexy, and it sounds great.

My only real beef with this phone is Apple’s decision to remove the headphone jack and force you to use the Lightning port at the bottom for both headphones and chargers – which could be impractical for phone-sex purposes, but I’ve found workarounds, which I’ll explain below…

On occasion, I’ve used other WiFi-enabled devices, like my iPad, to talk to my partner. It’s good to know I have a backup incase my phone ever needs to be repaired or something.

Phone accessories

Call me a basic bitch if you must, but my #1 must-have iPhone accessory for phone sex is just a pair of those basic white earbuds that come with the phone. They have a little remote on one side which lets you control the volume level and even answer calls with one click, and there’s also a little microphone on that remote. Occasionally I’ll switch to my big noise-canceling headphones if I want to hear additional depth and richness in my partner’s voice – like if we’re doing a hypno scene – but for the most part, those standard Apple earbuds work just fine. (I have to use a Lightning-to-headphone-jack adapter when I mix up my choice of headphones, unfortunately. What are you doing, Apple.)

Speaking of that fucking Lightning port… I got tired of having to choose between wearing my headphones and plugging my phone in, so I bought a wireless charging pad for my nightstand. Initially this seemed like a frivolous expenditure, but I use it ALL THE TIME and it comes in handy when my phone battery dwindles while my partner is whispering sweet hot things at me.

On that note, regardless of what type of phone you have, I would recommend getting a super-long charging cable for it (AmazonBasics makes the ones I like). Trust me, you might not think you need a 10-foot-long charging cable right now, but the extra mobility and convenience are worth the $10-20 you’ll spend on it.

Software

My partner and I use FaceTime audio for the vast majority of our aural communiqué. It sounds way better than a normal phone call, and you can hear things like breathing and soft moans more clearly, which, as you might imagine, matters. We’ll also occasionally use FaceTime video if we’re in the mood to see each other (or, y’know, each other’s junk). If I’m having WiFi troubles and FaceTime starts turning me into a low-res robot, we’ll switch to a regular phone call – but it’s definitely not preferred.

When we want to watch something together, we use Rabb.it – which I mention here only because sometimes we indulge in some porn as foreplay of sorts. This app has its problems (it always seems to take us a good few minutes to figure out how to join the same room, because the interface is unnecessarily complicated), but I haven’t really found anything else that does what it does.

Very occasionally, my partner instructs me to look at something – like, say, a spiral or some looping wink videos during a hypno scene – in which case I usually open it up in QuickTime or Preview on my MacBook.

Miscellaneous equipment

Speaking of watching spirals/gifs/porn while talking on the phone – if I want to do that in bed, rather than at my desk, I’ll pull out my lap desk from IKEA (this one is similar) and prop up the computer on that. You don’t want to worry about your laptop overheating while you’re trying to, um, get overheated yourself!

Clothing-wise: this might seem silly, but I love my MeUndies lounge pants for the early stages of phone sex, when we’re mostly just flirting and saying mildly suggestive things. (Clothes start to come off after that point, although sometimes I wish they wouldn’t!) I love these for simple reasons: they are comfy as hell, they’re loose and stretchy enough that I can get a hand or even a vibe inside them without needing to take them off, the fabric is thin enough that I can easily use a vibe through it if I want to, and – best of all – they have FOUR pockets, each of which is big enough to fit my phone. So if I have to get up during phone sex – say, to wash a sex toy or go get a snack – I can just tuck my phone in there while my headphones remain on. Perf.

As with any kind of sex, it’s good to have lube somewhere nearby and easily accessible. I keep a bevy of options on my nightstand. It goes without saying, surely, that my favorite sex toys are also always close at hand, and my Eroscillator is always plugged in.

Finally, I try to always have snacks and water available if I’m gonna have phone sex. You’re saying a lot of words and making a lot of sounds; you should keep your voice lubricated! The snacks come in handy for aftercare; sex across vast geographical expanses obviously doesn’t allow for cuddly, body-based aftercare, so we double up on the verbal kind (compliments, jokes, contented sighs) and yummy treats to bring our bodies and brains back to normal.

What are your must-have tools and supplies when you have phone sex?

Review: Uberrime Night King

Kate Sloan

The email said, “I think we have something that may interest you. Finally, an A-spot toy.” It was from Savva at Peepshow Toys, and he had my fucking attention.

The A-spot, as you might know if you’re a dedicated reader here, is a crucial erogenous zone of mine, located deep inside the vagina, in front of the cervix. The problem Savva alluded to in his email is that there are remarkably few toys made for hitting that spot. My pal Kenton at Funkit Toys makes the Armadillo for this purpose, and I heard a rumor once that one of Fun Factory’s toys was designed with the A-spot in mind, but that’s about it. My fave toys for deep stimulation, like the G-Spoon and the Eleven, are not really meant to be pushed so deep, so they have their problems when used this way: not enough handle length to properly thrust with, for example, or a slightly too-wide head that can only burrow into the A-spot at certain finicky angles. It’s a sad state of affairs, but it’s the best I’ve got, for the most part.

The Uberrime Night King, though, is pretty indisputably an A-spot toy, which is why Savva thought of me when Peepshow started carrying it. It’s absurdly long for a dildo – 9″ total, 8″ insertable – so, much like the Tantus Uncut #1, it can get all the way inside me with a couple inches to spare for thrusting leverage. You could use this toy on your G-spot, but it would be an awkward feat for both hand and vag. It begs to fill up an orifice.

Uberrime is a company that popped onto my radar seemingly out of nowhere. They make individually handmade silicone dildos more beautiful than any I’ve seen in a long while. Peepshow carries various other Uberrime toys, and I hear good things about many of them, but the Night King is the one I’ve fallen head-over-A-spot for.

I first noticed this toy’s increasing indispensability in my sex toy collection when my Sir started commanding me to use it during phone sex more and more. He’s methodical about his toy choices for me, selecting the exact tools he knows will produce the sounds he wants to hear, or will satisfy a craving he can sense in me. (Yes, my boyfriend is a phone-sex genius.) From the very first time I used the Night King at his bidding, he told me he liked the sounds it brought out of me. They are A-spot sounds: deep, warmed-honey grunts, entirely different from my high-pitched G-spot squeaks or desperate clitoral wails. I know when a toy works well for me from how it feels, but I also trust my boyfriend’s opinion on this, since he listens to me much more intently during sex than I ever listen to myself – and he says I fucking love this toy.

He’s right. While I’m not normally a big fan of textured dildos, the swirly, vein-like ridges all over the Night King’s shaft feel delicious rubbing along my vaginal walls. But more importantly: the combination of the head, the coronal ridge, and the curve make this a stellar A-spot toy. Uncharacteristically for a dildo, the head of the Night King is slightly thinner than the 1.7″-wide shaft, and that barely-there taper allows the tip to slide right up into my reclusive A-spot, no problem. The dildo’s perfect upward curve guides it smoothly toward that spot; no cervix-jabbing here. And then there’s that magnificent coronal ridge – deep, but not sharp – providing a satisfying “popping” sensation every time the dildo moves in or out of the snug cul-de-sac in which my A-spot resides. I don’t know if Uberrime meant for this to be an A-spot dildo, but either way, they fuckin’ killed it.

Despite its vaguely extraterrestrial aesthetic, the Night King feels just dicklike enough that I can fantasize about dicks while I use it. (I mean, you can fantasize about dicks while you’re using any toy, or none at all, but I often like my toys to match my fantasies at least a little.) The dimensions of this one are in the same ballpark as my partner’s cock, and it hits my A-spot with similar aplomb, so this dildo is a mutual fave when m’dude and I have phone sex involving good ol’ PIV. Uberrime’s silicone is firm but with just enough squish to feel comfortable, so – much like flesh-and-blood dicks – the Night King feels absolutely decadent when it’s buried deep inside me while I come. Squeezing and clenching around something so simultaneously thick and spongy is… yum.

I like the Night King’s sturdy base, too. It’s easy to grip onto and thrust with – very important in a toy like this that makes me want to thrust a lot. One of my fave weird features of my Night King – which other ones probably don’t have, due to the handmade nature of these toys – is that there’s a little silver marking on the base which helps me keep the toy oriented the right way, with the curve pointed up. With a lot of other dildos, I’ll tend to rotate them slowly over time without noticing it, and often have to take them out and adjust their orientation; there’s no need to do so with the Night King, because I have a visual indicator right on the base.

The Night King is technically harness-compatible, what with that hefty base and exaggerated length; it will especially be a hit if your strap-on recipient likes getting fucked deep. But it’s also so long that it’ll tend to flop around in a harness. If you want something easier to control, I’d recommend one of Uberrime’s shorter toys, like the Splendid or the Essential. Or you could just deal with the floppiness. It won’t move around much once it’s buried deep inside someone, after all. (Cue vaginal drooling here.)

Being a sex toy snob of the highest order, I’m almost never this enamored with a new toy these days. But the Night King has worked its way into my regular rotation, because it’s just that fucking good. If you love deep penetration and can contend with this toy’s girth and texture, I think you’ll find this dildo heavenly. Finally, the sex toy industry has acknowledged us A-spot fiends. I hope this is the start of a trend!

 

Thanks so much to Peepshow Toys for sending me this toy to review! Check out their complete selection of Uberrime toys.

Love Through a Voyeuristic Lens

Kate Sloan

In the age of the internet, it’s normal for our private lives to play out in public. In just a few clicks, you can peek into a beauty influencer’s medicine cabinet, peruse a sex toy blogger’s prized collection (hi), or visit voyeur house private cams where you can watch the life of real people. Not everyone is thrilled about all this openness and exhibitionism, but it’s undeniably part of our culture now.

So, as a sex writer and certifiable member of the Oversharers Club, it surprised me how private I was about my current relationship in its infancy. I talked about it in oblique terms on Twitter, and mentioned to a few friends that I’d been texting with a promising new dude who lived in New York, but for the most part, I wanted to hold those cards close to my chest. Our courtship happened primarily late at night via FaceTime and iMessage, encrypted end-to-end, cordoned off from the rest of our lives. It felt weird to bring it out into the open by talking about it too much – like someone throwing open the door of a darkened closet during a heated game of Seven Minutes in Heaven.

But because this private intimacy was shared between only me and my new crush, it felt almost like it didn’t really exist – like it could be a mirage, a hallucination, a midnight fever-dream. It brought me back to my early days on the internet, when I’d build elaborate romances with strangers in IRC chats and then just go to school the next day like nothing had happened, like nothing had changed. Even as we escalated to using weightier words for each other – partner, boyfriend and girlfriend – still, part of me felt like: here is my “real life,” and here is this relationship, and scarcely the twain shall meet.

So it was quite a jolt the first time my new love – mb – came to visit me in Toronto. Seeing him in familiar locales, like my bedroom, my parents’ living room, and the coffee shop I go to every week, was as jarring as a bad green-screen sequence in a low-budget movie. How could such a cute, sweet person, who had taken on an almost mythical quality in my mind, exist in the world at all, let alone in my life? I felt like Rob Gordon, the antihero of High Fidelity, when he looks up his long-lost college girlfriend: “She’s in the fucking phone book! She should be living on Neptune. She’s an extraterrestrial, a ghost, a myth, not a person in a phone book!”

He met my family. He met my friends. I took him to my birthday party. But none of it quite felt real – until, shortly after leaving the party, I got a text from my friend Suz, who had left at the same time as us. “Okay, so, creepiest thing I have ever done,” she wrote, “but when we departed at the subway, I could see y’all from the other side. You both looked so in love, so I took some creepy stealth pics for you.”

mb and I giggled over the photos, crowing “We’re so cute!” and zooming in to examine our amorous body language. Something clicked. Seeing my relationship from the outside allowed me to believe in it from the inside. I felt validated: Yes, he really exists; yes, he really is that cute; yes, he really loves me! Some part of me had been continually nervous that he would evaporate somehow, that I would wake up from the dream or forget to save my game, and he would be gone. But there he was, in a handful of .jpegs, flirting with me on a Toronto subway platform, irrefutable.

Feeling observed in a feeling can make that feeling all the more palpable. Maggie Nelson writes about it in Bluets: “We sometimes weep in front of a mirror not to inflame self-pity, but because we want to feel witnessed in our despair.” Beauty vloggers know this, as do reality TV stars, theatre actors, Instagram influencers, exhibitionists and voyeurs. Like Schrodinger’s cat, sometimes it is the very act of seeing that heralds the seen object into existence. My relationship would have been real with or without spectators, of course – but my rock-solid, comfortable, life-affirming belief in that relationship? Maybe not so much.

 

This post was sponsored. As always, all writing and opinions are my own. Thank you to Suz for the photos; we love them!