New Year’s Resolutions for Sex-Positive Do-Gooders

Kate Sloan

December is one of my favorite months, because I love obsessively plotting how I’m going to change when the new year rolls around. Even if the changes don’t stick, that weeks-long period of planning is delicious. But, of course, it’s better if the changes do stick!

I’m going to do another post all about my personal sexual goals for 2015 when it gets a little closer to the new year, but for now, here are some new year’s resolutions you might want to think about adopting for yourself. At the very least, you can use them as a starting point for brainstorming your own big changes and exciting plans!

Volunteer your time at a pro-sex cause.

I have some friends who volunteer at Planned Parenthood’s TEACH program, and some other friends who do work for their local campus sex education centres. I know someone who helps abortion clinic visitors get from the street into the clinic without being accosted by protesters. As for me, I’ve spent years helping out at an emotional support hotline for LGBT youth and an online community for gender-non-conforming folks. These are just a few of the ways you can contribute to your local sex-positive scene.

Volunteering is a really rewarding way to spend your time. It might be something for you to consider if you’ve been feeling a little purposeless or directionless lately, or even if you just want to make some new friends and fill out your days (or pad your resumé!) a little more.

Take up a positive practice for your body.

I don’t just mean “have more athletic sex.” Although, you could always do that too.

In this mind-centered, desk-oriented culture, too many of us ignore our bodies and get all up in our heads. This can result in a feeling of disembodiment, and often, a lot of aches and pains. (I myself have been dealing with a stubborn shoulder-and-neck situation for weeks from overcommitting to desk work. Yuck.)

Here are some habits you could take up in 2015 that would be really good for your body: yoga, swimming, pilates, jogging, long meditative walks, dance classes, cardio classes, strength training, hula hooping, getting regular massages, starting every morning with a few minutes of stretching… Pick something which feels manageable for your body, lifestyle, and finances, and which makes your heart leap in your chest at the thought of it!

Invest in your sexual health.

Throw out all your nylon underwear and buy all-cotton pairs. Get a menstrual cup if you’ve been wanting one. Upgrade your birth control to a longer-term and/or less annoying form. Ditch and replace any toxic or porous toys you own. Go get those STI tests you’ve been putting off.

Make your frequent sex location(s) more inviting.

It is amazing what new bedding and a few scented candles can accomplish!

Think: what bums you out about the place(s) where you most often have sex, and how could you solve those problems? Mood lighting, better heating, air freshener, wall art? Curtains, carpeting, a neater organization system? Groovier music? Make it happen!

Go deeper into your gender.

Weird phrasing, maybe, but here’s what I mean: whatever gender(s) you identify as, you probably feel hotter/cuter/better when you go balls-to-the-wall with your gender presentation.

Think about what visual or tactile elements could increase the pleasure you take in your gender presentation, and try to incorporate them more often. I’m femme as fuck so for me this would mean things like wearing lipstick more regularly, buying warmer tights so I can wear skirts and dresses more often, and stepping up my skincare and haircare so I feel prettier on a day-to-day basis. How could you enhance, and luxuriate in, your gender as much as possible next year?

Be a sex-positive friend.

I’m going to write a full post about this eventually, because I think it’s really important to support your friends non-judgmentally in their (safe, consensual) sexual endeavors.

If you’ve got a friend who’s never been to a sex shop, maybe you could take them. If your buddy gets nervous about going to get tested, you could accompany them to the clinic. If your amigo expresses interest in an unusual fetish or sexual practice, you could help them do their research while affirming and encouraging their explorations. Be like a sexy fairy godmother to all your nearest and dearest!

What do you hope to do differently in 2015?

Sex Writing 101: How to Write a Helpful, Engaging Review

Kate Sloan

They say that you become an expert at something when you’ve spent 10,000 hours doing it. I doubt I’ve spent that many hours reading and writing sex toy reviews, and I’m definitely not an expert. But I do think my two and a half years of experience have taught me some things about what does and does not work in a sex toy review.

I purposely left the title of this post vague because I think most of these rules can apply to reviews of other things, too, besides sex toys. I sometimes review porn, clothing, and even lipstick, and these tips translate well to most kinds of reviews. I hope you find them helpful!

Talk about your experience.

It’s amazing how many reviewers forget to do this, or don’t do it adequately. I can read a toy’s specs and features on just about any site that sells it; if I’m reading your blog, it’s because I want to know what you think of the product, not what its sales copy says.

Try to answer these questions: how did the toy feel for you? Did it work for your body? Did you encounter any issues when you used it? What did the sensation remind you of? Did you find any alternate/unusual techniques or uses for the product?

Usefully compare the product to others.

Granted, not everyone reading your blog will have a lot of toys as a frame of reference for your comparisons, but some will.

Comparisons are also useful as a way of recommending products that might work better for some people depending on their bodies and preferences. For example: in a review of the Lelo Gigi, I might write that someone seeking similar functionality but with more girth and power might prefer the Mona 2.

I specified that the comparisons should be useful and here’s what I mean: don’t compare the product you’re reviewing to a product that’s so obscure that almost no one has it, be very selective in making comparisons to outlier toys like the Hitachi Magic Wand, try not to make comparisons to toys that have been discontinued (this helps no one), and be specific in your comparisons. If you say that one toy reminds you of another, try to specify why.

Find interesting ways to describe sensations.

It can sometimes be helpful to describe a vibrator as “very strong” or a dildo as “very pleasurable” or whatever, but it’s better if you can come up with a more specific, creative and memorable way to describe what you feel.

Here are some examples which are totally cliché but work effectively as sensation descriptors: a vibrator like a jackhammer, a dildo that pounds your G-spot, a butt plug which gives a stretching sensation. If you can come up with more inventive descriptions, so much the better.

I often ask myself, “What does this feeling remind me of?” and find my descriptions that way. That’s how, for example, I decided to describe the Lelo Ida as feeling like a sharp rock in my vagina. I’ve never actually had a sharp rock in my vagina, but that’s what it felt like to me.

Proofread.

I tend to tune out and/or unsubscribe from blogs that have a lot of grammar mistakes, misspellings, and typos. I find it incredibly distracting, even if the writing is otherwise good.

Read your posts aloud before publishing, or show them to someone in your life who’s a good proofreader.

Structure your post for maximum readability and clarity.

The most basic way to increase readability is to use lots of paragraph breaks. Long paragraphs are sometimes necessary but they can feel tiring or confusing.

If your post has subheadings, sections, or any really important points you want to stress, consider bolding them. This helps break up the post, visually, and aids in overall comprehension for your reader.

I often structure my reviews in an “on the one hand/on the other hand” format, by which I mean, usually I’ll list all the pros and then all the cons, or vice versa. I try not to go back and forth too much between the product’s good qualities and its bad qualities; I think it makes more logical sense to list all of one and then all of the other.

Use the “inverse pyramid” structure.

Man, you would be surprised how many of the tips I learn at journalism school translate directly to my work writing sex toy reviews!

At J-school, we learn to structure our news pieces in an “inverse pyramid,” meaning that the most important or exciting information goes first and then the rest of the information is laid out from most to least important, all the way down.

If there’s a huge, glaring reason why I hate or love the product I’m reviewing, I usually start with that. That’s the “headline,” so to speak. The lesser details go farther down.

Introduce and conclude properly.

Remember when you had to write essays for school and they always had an introduction and a conclusion, both of which contained mini-summaries of the points to be made in the body of the essay? A similar structure can be helpful for reviews.

It’s good for comprehension and clarity if the reader knows what to expect before they get into the meat of the post (e.g. that you’re going to talk about size, shape, and texture, in that order) and if your conclusion is a little recap of your main points.

Disclose your relevant biases and quirks.

I have a small-ish vagina, I need clit stimulation to reach orgasm, I often find intense G-spot stimulation overwhelming rather than pleasurable, I loooove A-spot stimulation, and I need moderately strong vibration to get me off. These are all factors which affect how I feel about sex toys, and which may make my preferences different from those of some of my readers.

If I hate or love a sex toy for a reason that has a lot to do with my own unique preferences, I always try to be transparent about that. Someone else might love a toy I hate, or vice versa, if their body and preferences are significantly different from mine, and they should get some sense of that from my review.

What qualities matter to you in a review?

Journal Your Way to a Better Sex Life

Kate Sloan

You will probably never meet a more diehard journal-er than me. If I’m out in public and have nothing better to do, I’m usually bent over a hardcover ruled Moleskine, pouring my heart and soul out onto its creamy pages. I’ve been journaling sporadically since I was a kid, and that habit turned ritualistic when I started doing it near-daily at age 14. Ever since then, it’s been an absolute necessity for my emotional processing and mental health. I don’t function properly without a notebook and pen and a little time each day to make use of them.

It occurred to me recently that, although journaling isn’t strictly a sexual topic, it’s a process that has improved my sex life in many ways and so it’s worth blogging about. Here are some of my best suggestions for honing and upgrading your sex life using a journaling practice.

Do morning pages for clarity and productivity.

“Morning pages” are an invention of The Artist’s Way author Julia Cameron. Every morning, first thing upon waking, you write three longhand, stream-of-consciousness pages. You keep writing, even if the only thing that comes out is “I don’t know what to write,” until you’ve completed your three pages.

I don’t know why or how this works, so don’t ask me to explain, but… morning pages make me noticeably and astonishingly more clear-headed, productive, creative, and energetic. In those pages, I come to realizations about goals I want to achieve and experiences I want to have; I plan adventures and endeavors; I list fears and work through them; I stumble upon feelings I didn’t even know I felt. And then I go out into the world and take all that clarity and initiative with me, making bigger and better things happen in my life than would ever happen without the influence of morning pages.

To give you an example of what kind of changes this practice makes in my life: it was actually my morning pages that helped me realize I needed to end my relationship. One day my pages started with me rambling about a cute guy I had a crush on who was very much not my boyfriend, and by the end of the three pages, I had come to the stark realization that I had to break up with my partner because I just didn’t have the same passionate, desirous feelings for him that I had for some other people. I had been waffling for months about whether a break-up was really necessary, but those three pages showed me without a doubt that it was.

I think morning pages enable you to access parts of your psyche that you might inadvertently be hiding, even from yourself. That’s useful when it comes to sex because even the most open-minded among us will occasionally still bury a secret desire or fantasy if it seems too “out-there” or taboo. And on the flipside, your morning pages might help you come to a realization about a sexual activity or fantasy that isn’t serving you, that doesn’t feel good, and that you can eliminate from your life.

Brainstorm a hundred ideas.

I forget where I first heard this, but somewhere along the line, I learned a neat trick: if you’re stuck on a problem or question, try brainstorming 100 different answers or solutions.

Yes, one hundred. It seems like a lot, and it is. After the first ten or twenty, I always get to an uncomfortable juncture where it seems like I can’t possibly come up with any more. But then, inevitably, I do. And that’s when the real magic starts.

I usually use this technique for personal problems or career ventures, but there’s no reason it can’t be applied to sex, too. If your sex life needs a shake-up, try listing 100 totally new-to-you things you could try with your beau (or by yourself). Don’t censor or judge yourself; just let the ideas flow. You’re sure to stumble on at least a few gems, even if the vast majority of the list gets discarded in the end.

(If, like me, you have a sex-related biz or blog, you might also find this strategy useful for coming up with post ideas, product offerings, etc. The sky’s the limit!)

Look for patterns.

If you’re already a frequent diarist like me, I strongly encourage you to peruse your backlog of entries and look for any elements that keep popping up.

For example: I didn’t realize I had a thing for oral servitude until I started looking through journal entries about my fantasies and desires and noticed that theme coming up again and again. And even once I had realized it, it took me additional journaling to figure out why I was into it, and how I could better integrate that kink into my sex life.

Pattern-hunting can also be useful if you often find yourself getting triggered or overwhelmed during sex. You may not realize, in the moment, what causes you to disengage or panic, but if you write about every detail you can remember (which I realize can be hard, but may be worth it), you might be able to isolate some common elements that you can then avoid in future. Maybe you hate feeling trapped, maybe a specific scent or sound sets you off, or maybe certain dirty-talk words or phrases just don’t work for you. (As always, with any tricky mental health stuff: proceed with caution and consult a professional!)

Script difficult conversations.

Communication is mandatory in good sexual relationships, but it is hard sometimes. If you’re an anxious person like me, you might find it useful to write out a rough guide for what you’d like to say, to make sure you cover all the important points and phrase them in the best possible way.

Here are some examples of hard conversations and speeches I’ve pre-scripted in my journal before tackling them in real life: asking to be dominated in bed, asking to be kissed less aggressively, discussing the possibility of non-monogamy, asking to be rimmed, and breaking up.

Do you write in a journal? Does it help your sex life in any way?

P.S. That’s a real scan from my journal at the top of this post! You can click it if you want to view it larger, you nosy little minx.

Porn Review: XConfessions

Kate Sloan

When asked to explain what “feminist porn” is, one of the definitions I often come back to is: it’s a genre of porn that prioritizes women’s authentic sexual fantasies and desires.

It seems like that’s the definition favored by Barcelona-based feminist porn director Erika Lust, too, since that’s exactly what her XConfessions series sets out to do: bring real women’s sexual fantasies to life on screen. Users of the website submit their juiciest fantasies, and Erika picks her favorites and turns them into porno shorts.

I first discovered XConfessions this past February when I attended a porn pyjama party at my local sex shop Come As You Are (yes, CAYA is awesome and does awesome stuff). Two of the films they screened that night were Erika Lust’s I Ama Verry Badx Secvretary and Let’s Make a Porno. What immediately struck me about these films was that they are beautiful, visually: they use a lot of natural lighting, and they have a lot of genital and face close-ups that are fabulously dirty without being porno-gross.

Audio is important to me in the porn I watch, and XConfessions gets it right, in my view. There’s a good mix of music and natural sex sounds (moans, the slapping of one body against the other, etc.): neither overpowers the other. Overall these scenes have the production value of a really well-done indie movie. I think it was smart of Erika Lust to prioritize quality visuals and audio so highly; it seems to me, to generalize from purely anecdotal evidence, that women tend to care more about these things than men do, and so if you wanna make a women-friendly porn site, you have to make sure it looks and sounds nice.

While XConfessions could do a better job of featuring non-normative bodies (fat folks, trans folks, folks of color, etc.), they do feature an impressive amount of body hair, including pubic hair. There’s also a lot of sexy accents in these films: French, Spanish, British, and various others. These are small details but they add to the overall appeal of the scenes for me.

Some of the fantasies depicted are fairly “normal” and close to vanilla: romantic sex, lesbian sex, sex with a male escort. Some are a little kinkier: spanking, pegging, being bullied by a sadistic personal trainer. But the scenes I find most interesting are the ones that really push boundaries and explore territory that other feminist pornographers might shy away from.

There’s a scene about being taken advantage of while drunk, one in which a couple roleplay as a pair of animals in a predator-and-prey situation, and even a scene that takes place in a slightly creepy kids’ playroom (it reminded me of that weird scene in Wolf of Wall Street). These scenes are risky, sexy, unusual, and brave. They’re in line the same feminism I subscribe to, the one that says no sexual activity is “unfeminist” so long as it’s mutually and enthusiastically consented to.

Some of my favorite scenes include Cinéma X (sex in a porn theatre, including some fabulous cunnilingus on top of a piano), I Believe in Happy Endings (a sensual woman-on-woman massage followed by manual and oral stimulation), and A Weekend in the Garden of Eden (an idyllic outdoor fuckfest that begins with the handsome British star explaining the benefits of fruitarianism). Most of the scenes are between 10 and 20 minutes long, which I find is ideal.

A lot of these scenes build up slowly, taking a few minutes to create context and atmosphere before getting to the sex. This plays well with the old stereotype about women preferring “storyline” porn, but if you’re not into that, you could either skip the first 2-3 minutes of each scene or skip the site altogether. Personally, I don’t mind a little backstory in my porn.

Tech-wise, I sometimes have issues streaming the videos directly on the site, for reasons that might have to do with my setup or with theirs; I don’t know. Luckily, however, members can download videos in HD or SD, so I quite often do that instead of streaming them. I know that it can present piracy issues for porn providers to allow their videos to be downloaded, but I always appreciate when that option is offered, since it enables me to watch even when I’m having internet problems or experiencing any other barriers to accessing the streamed versions.

Membership is $19.95 per month if you sign up to be billed month-by-month, but as with many porn paysites, you can get a discount if you sign up for multiple months in advance. It’s $39.95 for 3 months or $99.95 for a year. I think those prices are very reasonable, considering what you get: full streaming or download access to the 38 films already on the site, plus the two new ones posted every month. Membership also allows you to submit your fantasies to the XConfessions database and to read and comment on others’ fantasies.

Overall, I really, really love this site. This is the kind of porn I am always looking for, and I know lots of other women (and men, and non-binary folks!) who would love this kind of thing too. It’s visually stunning, well-produced, sexy as hell, and it’s based on real people’s relatable and delicious fantasies. Yes, yes, yes!

Thanks so much to the good people at XConfessions for letting me review their beautiful porn!

What I’m Into: Glory Hole Porn

Kate Sloan

I’m trying out this new thing where I’m going to write semi-regular posts about “what I’m into.” Bex really hit the nail on the head with her tweet to me about it – it’s all about tracking how my sexuality and desires shift over time and giving you all a nosy little glimpse into my fantasy life. (Do you get nosy about that kind of stuff? I know I do…)

I have a proper porn review lined up for you and coming really soon, about a feminist porn site you’re going to love, but today I don’t have a lot of time to write so I wanted to briefly tell you about my other current porn obsession: glory holes. Specifically, amateur glory hole porn.

I think I’ve had a slight glory hole fascination ever since I first heard about them. Anonymity and oral servitude are two things that really appeal to me in fantasy-land, and those are also the two absolute mainstays of glory hole porn. You have no idea whose dick is poking through that hole; all you get to see is someone enthusiastically sucking it off, for the sheer pleasure of it.

I forget if I’ve told you before that I have a weird blowjob porn obsession. I’m calling it weird because it’s a porn preference that doesn’t translate to real life for me; I don’t like giving BJs all that much. I think they show up in the porn I watch because I empathize with the guy getting his dick sucked, not the fellator. I don’t have penis envy; it’s just that BJs are a lot more demonstrative and visual than cunnilingus. A good blowjob translates to video better than good pussy-licking.

My recent kick of watching glory hole porn started with this video, in which a “chubby fag” (so says the video title) blows a couple of guys through a glory hole while a saucy-sounding woman talks dirty to him from behind the camera. The juxtaposition of gay male sex with a female narrator is very strange, and yet I can’t deny that her ongoing commentary adds a little something to the overall effect.

After that, I fell down the rabbit hole of glory hole porn, so to speak. I watched this and this and this. And I consistently found it all really fucking hot.

The only thing that’s missing from this sort of porn, in my view, is reaction noises from the man being blown. Moans and grunts and growls are very important to my enjoyment of porn and it’s a slight ladyboner-killer for me when there aren’t any.

What are your thoughts on glory hole porn? What are you into right now?