handjob

12 Days of Girly Juice 2020: 5 Sex-Savvy Superheroes

Kate Sloan
tfw you’re stuck inside most of the year because of COVID but you still wanna stay up-to-date on the latest sex news

Each December I write about 5 people whose teachings on sexuality were significant to me throughout the year. Since in-person workshops and conferences weren’t available to us for most of the year, sex education looked different for me in 2020 – most of it happened while reading books or blogs. However, I still feel like I learned a lot more about sexuality this year, including deepening my understanding of my own sexuality. Here are the 5 people whose expertise most impressed and uplifted me in 2020…

Angela Chen

I already wrote about Angela Chen’s brilliant book Ace in a previous 12DoGJ instalment, but it bears repeating: this is one of the best books in existence about asexuality. I know it will change many lives. In fact, I’m sure it already has.

In addition to being an outstanding author, Angela is a reporter who covers asexuality, technology, and health. Her essays on subjects like “curing” desire, discovering one’s own asexuality, and the overrepresentation of alloromanticism in fiction are full of ideas that challenge the status quo, both out in the world and within your own mind. She is consistently brave enough to question societal norms and eloquent enough to make me shout, “How can anyone write this well?!” I love everything I’ve seen from her body of work and can’t wait to see what she does next.

Velvet Veronica

2020 was the year that I discovered possibly the best handjob-giver on the planet, Velvet Veronica. Granted, I don’t have a penis so it’s hard to assess that for certain, but my partner does, and attests that Veronica’s skills are unmatched (or at least, they appear to be!).

Though she bills herself as a “soft femdom” porn creator, her style of dominance can actually be wonderfully strict and mean. Her videos show her “torturing” her submissive (whom she calls “pet”) with vibrators, chastity, edging, denial, post-orgasmic overstimulation, and much more. Though I enjoy her work very much on a purely entertainment-based level (what can I say, I appreciate a great HJ!), I also think her videos are remarkably educational for anyone looking to explore dominance. She never shows her face – or the mysterious thigh tattoo she covers up with a garter in every scene for anonymity reasons – but she doesn’t need to, because her power is all about her voice, her presence, and those magic hands.

Ana Valens

I don’t remember how I first became Twitter mutuals with Ana Valens, but I’m so glad I did. She’s the NSFW reporter for the Daily Dot, where she covers everything from gender-affirming sex toys to the healing power of BDSM to transphobia in video games. She’s also a delight to listen to on podcasts, whether she’s talking about social etiquette on my show Question Box or sex work stigma on Canadaland.

The more that internet discourse becomes a tug of war between the right and the left, between “cancel culture” and “free speech,” between “fake news” and true facts, the more I respect and admire journalists of marginalized identities who manage to do brilliant work despite all the pressures they face. Ana’s reporting is always incisive, with a side of humor and whimsy. Her writing makes me feel optimistic about sex journalism again in a way I don’t often feel anymore. She’s a must-read, in 2020 and beyond. (Oh, and she also makes porn.)

Denying Thumper

One thing my spouse Matt and I have in common: when we become interested in a new kink, we research the hell out of it. That’s how they stumbled upon Denying Thumper, who’s been blogging about his adventures in long-term chastity for several years.

As a sex educator, I often tell people who want to introduce their partner to a new kink of theirs that it’s important to be specific. Just because you’ve seen 800 videos about your fetish doesn’t mean that your partner has the slightest clue how to put it into action in a way you’ll enjoy. This is why I’ve found chastity blogs like Denying Thumper so useful as Matt and I have been exploring chastity together: they give me a model of what to do, what not to do, and even how to think about the kink in question. It helps enormously that Thumper is a cogent, witty writer with a clearly bottomless passion for chastity. Sex bloggers fucking rule, man.

My therapist

As I told you earlier in the year, I was lucky enough in mid-2020 to find a therapist who was not only accepting new clients (only over the phone – this is a pandemic year, after all!) but who also happened to be clued-in about kink, non-monogamy, LGBTQ+ issues, and trauma – all important puzzle pieces of my psyche. My therapist herself (who uses both she/her and they/them pronouns) has experience in these areas both personally and professionally, and they have been a total godsend for me this year.

Good therapists, who don’t stigmatize their clients’ natural and healthy inclinations but instead push them to explore their desires free from self-judgment or self-hatred, are so necessary in this world. I end every call with my therapist breathing a sigh of relief, feeling less frazzled, less broken, and less alone. I doubt they’ll ever read this (that would probably be ethically weird), but they helped me get through 2020, and I’m so grateful.

 

Who were your sex-savvy superheroes this year?

Got Chronic Pain But Love Giving Handjobs?

Kate Sloan

I remember the first time I realized my chronic pain disorder might seriously mess up my sex life. I was kneeling in front of a dominant gentleman friend, sucking his cock while he tugged at my hair, when a telltale twinge of pain began to creep up in my knees. They were, at that time, my most painful and volatile body part – and blowjobs were, at that time, my most beloved and calming sex act. I shifted around, tried putting a pillow under me, tried sitting on my ass instead, but it was a lost cause. My knees had cockblocked us both. Defeated, I finished out the encounter with a handjob.

Handjobs have long been one of my favorite things to do to a partner, so this wasn’t exactly a consolation prize, at least for me. But in recent years, pain in my hands has plagued me even more than pain in my knees. It’s a bummer to realize that the sex act I once turned to when I was in too much pain to do anything else is now sometimes off-limits to me due to pain.

Fortunately, I’ve always had partners who were very understanding about this issue. They’ve typically been fine with me cuddling up to them and kissing their neck while they jerk themselves off, or playing with their nipples while they fuck a Fleshlight. But as any handjob-giving aficionado will tell you, sometimes the joy in acts like these isn’t just about observing your partner’s pleasure, but in directly causing and controlling it. And in that regard, there was only so much I could do.

So when a company called Handy emailed me about their new product, I was intrigued. Designed by a Norwegian engineer, the Handy is an electrically-powered mechanical stroking device, much like the unfortunately-named Sybian Venus for Men – but it only costs $169, while the Venus costs a whopping $956. Okay, Handy; I’m listening.

To be fair, the two products aren’t really as comparable as I initially thought: the Venus is custom-constructed to fit your exact dick measurements, and uses different mechanics to create a sensation I have to assume is pretty different from the Handy’s. But if using a Venus is on your bucket list despite clearly not being in the cards for you financially, maybe the Handy would be a good substitute.

So what is this toy? It’s a somewhat clunky, Fleshlight-shaped mechanical cylinder attached to a fabric band which you can wrap around an included masturbation sleeve (of unknown material, though probably some kind of thermoplastic rubber/elastomer, and definitely porous – ergo, don’t share it with anyone you’re not fluid-bonded with). The band moves the sleeve up and down over the penis once it’s inserted, and you can use the 4 buttons on the Handy to control the speed of each stroke as well as the length of the stroke.

Setup is slightly annoying, as you have to keep adjusting the tightness of the band with its Velcro strap depending on how hard your dick is and how much pressure it’s craving at any given moment. But if you’re already pretty hard and aroused by the time you start using it, that might be less of an issue. Lube is also an ongoing consideration, as with just about any penile masturbation toy; the company recommends water-based only, and you may need to reapply during use, especially if your session runs long.

What I love about this toy, as a “handjob top,” is how much control it gives me. When I use my hands on a partner’s cock, I’m not just altering the speed, I’m also altering the length and location of my strokes – so I’m glad to have a toy that can approximate that, however clunkily compared to the nuance of skilled hands. The “left and right” buttons on the control unit are for speed, and the “up and down” buttons control the stroke length; everything is close together, so I barely have to move my hand or expend any muscle energy when I’m using this toy.

One small complaint is that it’s difficult to know exactly what to do during a partner’s orgasm. When using my hand, normally I would either hold still while maintaining pressure, or slow down and lengthen my stroke quite a bit for the duration of the orgasm; when post-orgasmic hypersensitivity hits, it’s easy to remove your hand quickly, but it’s trickier to do that with the Handy. You can hit a bunch of buttons to swiftly slow the toy down, but removing it from the dick in a rush is likelier to cause more discomfort than just leaving it in place would. However, this’ll only be a minor issue for most people, and some might even like it if they enjoy an overload of sensation.

Cleaning is also an annoyance, but that’s true for pretty much every stroker/masturbator. Resist the temptation to fall asleep in a post-orgasmic haze, and make sure to rinse the cum and lube out of the stroker within a few minutes after using it, or you’re in for a gunky, moldy surprise later on.

If this were a standard review, I would touch on the video synchronization and smartphone-control features of the Handy, and I’m sure that they would help folks whose hand pain is even more severe than mine. But for my purposes, I prefer to get as close to hands-on as I comfortably can, so physically holding the toy works better for me.

Overall, if you have pain/mobility/strength issues in your hands and would still love to be able to give handjobs (or jerk yourself off), I think the Handy is a worthy investment. The band-and-sleeve system makes it so that you could theoretically swap out the provided stroker for a different one, if there’s another texture or size you prefer. You can therefore get more variety of sensation out of this toy than many other comparable ones, especially considering the flexibility of the controls scheme. $169 is a bit steep for some people’s budgets, sure, but I’ve never seen a toy of this type and caliber sold for any less – so when fellow sore-handed people ask me how they can keep on strokin’ dicks, now I know to recommend the Handy.

 

Full disclosure: Handy didn’t pay me for this review, but they did send me the product to try (thanks!) and I do get a small kickback if you buy through my affiliate link. Want more sex toy recommendations for folks with chronic pain? I wrote this article recently for Xtra on that very subject!

Links & Hijinks: Murder & the Mona Lisa

Kate Sloan

• Sarah says pleasure is a form of political resistance. “Queer intimacy is revolutionary. Joyfully reveling in ourselves, each other, and our pleasure is revolutionary,” she writes. “For marginalized people, our pleasure shouts, ‘I see your violence, but you do not get to take THIS from me. My pleasure is mine, and mine alone.'”

• Carly has some great thoughts on money and abundance.

• Men discuss which women’s beauty products they use and love.

• Here’s how sexual satisfaction changes over the course of long-term relationships – and here’s how to keep passion alive.

• My friend Taylor is a delightfully brash flirt.

• Men, here’s how to listen when someone discloses their sexual assault to you. Quit #NotAllMen-ing all over important sexual assault discourse, and start actually being part of the solution.

• Interesting, scary, and sad: the shower murder scene in Psycho kickstarted a long-standing trend of sexual violence in horror movies.

• Who knew so much thought and work went into crafting Mona Lisa’s perfect smile?

• First times often suck and that’s okay. (This post also contains a li’l checklist of sexual compatibility + chemistry signs to look out for during a first hookup with a new partner, which I found super interesting and useful!)

• “These days, a good handjob is rare but delightful,” reports MEL. I love giving HJs on intact cocks, but still haven’t quite figured out how to do as good a job on circumcised ones…

• Bex wrote about their spanking birthday party, which was a damn good time.

• Have we reached peak pegging culture?

• This one hit close to home for me: how do I stop obsessing about finding love?

• Tina Horn wrote a beautiful essay on queer culture, bravery, and glitter.

• There’s a new Hollywood film about polyamorous people and it might be poly’s watershed moment.

• Lunabelle reviewed the Teddy Love vibrator (which I’ve previously reviewed) and naturally, it’s hilarious. “Normally I’m at least a little excited to try a new sex toy, but NOPE,” she writes. “Slurpy McBuzzyface and I regarded each other in awkward silence…” This piece is worth reading if just for the utter ordeal Luna endured trying to take her Teddy Love through airport security!

• Merritt wrote about fake boobs and it certainly gave me a lot of boob for thought! Er, I mean…

• A male sex worker answered some questions about his line of work (and made me want to hire a male sex worker).

• Not having as much sex with your partner as you used to? Emily Nagoski has some evidence-based suggestions.

• Some interesting writing about how trans folks’ sexual desires change when they transition.

• Bex has some tips for taking better nudes. “Having dinner with my best friend often means reporting on the selfie lighting in the restaurant bathroom when we get back,” they mention at one point. Can confirm: last time Bex was in town, we got ridiculous BBQ at a place near my apartment, and I took some lovely nudes in the bathroom on Bex’s recommendation.

• A lot of men are bad at fingering and could stand to learn some new tricks.

• Some research on where fetishes come from – a question that has haunted me the entire time I’ve been a sex nerd.

• The great Tina Horn wonders: what do we expect from sex workers on social media?

• Taylor has some advice on flying with kink toys.

• Suz is a major role model of mine when it comes to casual sex and confidence in general. Here’s her advice on how to vet a potential hookup for sexual compatibility before you have terrible, lacklustre sex.

Silly Search Terms

Kate Sloan

When I installed a stat counter on my website, it was only because certain toy retailers wanted to know how many hits my blog gets. I had no idea that it would result in endless amusement for me.

You might say, “But GJ, statistics aren’t funny!” And you’d be right. But you know what are funny? The phrases people type into Google that lead them to stumble upon my site.

I’m not at all intending to make fun of these people – I think it’s awesome that they’re being pro-active and trying to find whatever it is they want. I just thought I’d share some of my favorite search terms with you, and perhaps speculate as to their meanings. I’m not going to edit any spelling or grammar, because often it’s better that way.

1. why are boys so obsessed with cullingus
Setting aside the word “cullingus,” which sounds like either an inconvenient disease or a bland cauliflower dish – I want to know this girl. I want to know what events in her life have led her to this conclusion. Is she constantly being begged by boyfriends to let them go down on her? Has she encountered exclusively cunnilingus porn and gotten the idea that it’s the main kind? Does she just have really awesome selective perception? I’m intrigued.

2. why is my penis smaller when im tired
Is this a thing? I just asked my boyfriend if his gets smaller when he’s tired, and he said, “Um… I’ve never particularly noticed that.” Have you guys heard of this?

3. rubbing own clitoris during sex
This is actually a really common one. I guess either a lot of women are trying to figure out if it’s normal/okay for them to do this, or a lot of men are worried about whether their girlfriends’ pleasure-seeking means their penises are defective. For all you folks out there who might be inclined to Google something like this: it’s okay to incorporate clit stimulation into intercourse! In fact, most women need it to reach orgasm.

4. quietest tenga egg
I laughed. Tenga Eggs are fuckin’ loud. My boyfriend describes it as a “squitching” noise (not squishing, but squitching). FYI, anonymous searcher, the VerSpanken is practically silent, so go nuts.

5. pad porn
I’m not sure if this person was searching for Crash Pad Series clips or if they actually just want to see porn involving menstrual pads. Either way, I applaud them.

6. my boyfriend makes me wear a harness
Dude, that doesn’t sound consensual. Communication is important, and consent is crucial! Not cool.

7. is it easy for a beginner to rub their clit
It’s pretty self-explanatory, yeah.

8. I a man and I want a cock vibrater
I love this guy’s assertion and self-assuredness. No beating around the bush here!

9. how to make a bisexual raver girl like me?
If you ever find out, bro, make sure you let me know.

10. he likes to caress his uncut cock
The usage of the word “caress” is what makes this great, especially when you consider that the definitions of “caress” all involve the idea of showing affection to whatever you’re caressing. This dude really loves his uncut cock. Fantastic.

11. handjob empty completely balls
Is it just me, or does this sound like a porn parody of Yoda?

12. cute awkward girl porn
Is this a new porn genre, in the era of “cute awkward girls” like Zooey Deschanel and Alison Pill? Do we have a collective cultural desire to see dorky girls get ploughed? I’d be down for that.

13. control my boyfriend with handjobs
Is this consensual? ‘Cause if so, it sounds hot.

Ask Girly Juice: Handjobs For Everyone!

Kate Sloan

Anonymous asked: How do I give a good handjob?

Hey Anon, you’re in luck! I’m actually a bit of a handjob aficionado. I attended a workshop on the subject a few months ago, and since then, it’s been one of my favorite sexual acts – and if my boyfriend’s reactions are any indication, I’m pretty good with my hands.

The instructor at the workshop I attended stressed that the three most important elements of a good handjob are lube, variety, and pressure.

Lube is crucial for most guys. Some men, especially uncircumcised ones, won’t require lube to enjoy a handjob, but it provides a different and pleasant sensation that they may not replicate very often when they’re alone, so it’s worth including even if it’s not strictly necessary. My favorite lube for handjobs is Pjur Original Bodyglide – it was the recommended choice at the workshop I went to, and has turned out to be brilliant for this purpose.

Variety is very important because it’s something that most men don’t typically give themselves when they masturbate. I mean, think about it – when you get your own rocks off, you probably mainly focus on the one or two or three techniques that definitely work, without taking any time to experiment. A handjob shouldn’t be a step-by-step re-creation of what the guy does when he’s alone; it should be a re-imagination of what a hand can do to a penis. Mix it up, try different strokes, pay attention to his reactions!

Pressure isn’t a big deal to my boyfriend (he’s uncut and way more sensitive than most guys, so he prefers a looser grip), but most guys are into it. I read a study about the various sexual complaints that men and women have about each other, and one of them was that many men wish women would use more pressure. Don’t employ a vice grip (unless that’s what he likes!) but don’t be afraid to squeeze a little.

One useful trick I’ve learned: establish with your partner that “10” means the pressure is perfect, a lower number means your grip is too weak, and a higher number means you’re choking his dick. Periodically check in with him, asking him to rate the pressure on that scale. It won’t take long for you to learn what his happy medium feels like.

Remember that foreplay and build-up are not just for women – many men like that stuff too! It’s more than okay to spend several minutes teasing his nipples, thighs, pubic mound, balls, lower shaft, etc. before going for the gold. This will increase his sensitivity before you even really get started, making for a more intense eventual climax.

I asked my boyfriend what he values in a handjob, and he said he loves it when I delay the orgasm. As I said before, a handjob should be an exploration of techniques your man might miss when he’s in control of his own stimulation – and since my fella takes a maximum of five minutes to jerk off, I usually try to stave off his ejaculation for at least ten minutes. I build him up to the plateau phase, then back off and do some less intense techniques for a while, like ball-play or stroking his shaft – and then I do it all over again, a few times. This leads to a way more intense orgasm in the end.

Also, keep in mind that there are lots of things you can do to enhance his experience, other than just stroking his cock. I love giving handjobs so much that I usually end up humping my man’s thigh and moaning by the end of it, and he is totally into that. A little dirty talk can work wonders as well. Again, it’s all about giving him what masturbation can’t.

Hope that helps! The skill of giving handjobs is one that’s hard to master and way too much fun.