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How to Enjoy Giving Head More

Kate Sloan

I enjoy giving head – but this was not always the case. It took a lot of practice, self-reflection, and kindness (both from my partners and from myself) for me to find the aspects of giving oral sex that resonated with me, sexually and otherwise.

With that journey in mind, I thought I’d take this opportunity to distill some of my thoughts on how to give a blowjob you might actually enjoy, as a giver. (A lot of these tips probably apply to going down on someone with a vulva too, but BJs are definitely what I have the most experience with.)

Before we begin, though, it’s worth noting: If you don’t wanna give head, you don’t have to. Period. Anyone who makes you feel otherwise is not a safe person for you to be around, or at the very least, not compatible with you if giving oral is on your “hard limits” list. It’s absolutely fine to have that limit; as with any other measure of sexual (in)compatibility, it’s all about finding a partner or partners whose tastes and preferences line up decently well with your own.

Now, let’s get to it. Here are some things you can try, if you’re not the biggest fan of giving head, but want to be.

 

1. Identify the reason(s) you dislike it, and address those if possible.

Some examples:

  • Find that it always makes you gag? Do it more shallowly, tell your partner that thrusting into your mouth is strictly off-limits, and/or use a product like the Ohnut to keep the dick from going fully into your mouth.
  • Does giving head remind you of a traumatic experience from your past? If so, therapy may be warranted, if you’re able to afford/access it. There are other, at-home interventions that can be helpful in working through trauma for some people, like journaling or using a book such as Jay Earley’s Self-Therapy, but these are riskier and less effective than getting the help of a trauma-informed mental health professional.
  • Is your partner’s personal hygiene lacking? If so, can you have a chat with them about that, and/or give them head immediately after a shower or bath?
  • Do you find cum upsetting, for any reason? If so, your partner doesn’t need to orgasm in your mouth and can give you a warning when they’re about to come so you can finish them off with your hand, and have them come on your chest or elsewhere.

 

2. Find something you can find hot about it.

There are about a zillion ways to make a blowjob kinky, so if you’ve got kinks, you can probably “kinkify” oral.

If not, you might still enjoy aspects of oral, such as your partner’s moaning, or the pride of being complimented and praised during the act. Give some thought to what would be hottest for you and ask your partner about incorporating (more of) that.

 

3. Consider flavors and barriers.

If tastes and/or textures are the main problem for you, you might want to experiment with some workarounds, such as:

  • Flavored lube
  • Flavored lube on a condom
  • Flavored condoms
  • Regular ol’ condoms

A lot of these admittedly don’t taste as candy-like as one would hope – many are more in the neighborhood of “children’s cough syrup” – but if the taste of dick and/or cum is what’s getting in the way of your enjoyment, these might be enough to shift things for you nonetheless.

Keep in mind that you shouldn’t switch to vaginal sex after using one of these products, at least not without switching to a different condom (or putting one on, if you weren’t using one before), because the sugars in flavored products can cause vaginal irritation/infections.

 

4. Add some sexy stimulation.

Arousal can make a big difference for many people. Some say it can even lessen your gag reflex. (I have definitely found this to be true.)

Get very turned on before going down, in whatever ways work best for you. You may even want some stimulation while you’re giving head, whether that’s using a vibrator, grinding against part of your partner’s body, or something else you enjoy.

 

5. Watch porn for inspiration.

But not just a narrow genre of mainstream porn. Watch various different performers giving head in various different styles.

This can be especially useful if you’ve internalized certain messaging about how, for example, giving oral is “degrading” or inherently submissive. When you see the broad range of ways people can look and act while sucking dick, you might understand better that you can create your own narratives of what giving head means and what it can look like and feel like.

 

Hope that helps! And remember: “No” is a complete sentence. And so is “I’d like to give you a handjob instead; pass the lube, please.”

 

This post contains a sponsored link. As always, all writing and opinions are my own.

Why “Amateur Porn” is My Fave Kind of Porn

Kate Sloan
An Instax photo taken of me in my twenties. BTW, if you want more like this, click here, here, and here. 😇

It took me a long time to start enjoying porn. I had already been masturbating and reading erotica (especially erotic fanfiction) for several years before porn became a regular part of my solo sex routine.

Up until then, it just… hadn’t really interested me. What little I’d seen of it, online or while flipping through TV channels late at night, had seemed ridiculous to me: over-the-top, unrealistic, melodramatically acted. I’d never had sex, so I didn’t know what sex was “really like,” but I knew that the images in those videos didn’t resonate with me (or my vagina) anywhere near as much as the flirty banter in a great fanfic story, or the frisson I felt when talking to a crush at school. If devising fantasies and replaying memories felt more exciting than watching porn, why bother watching it?

There were a few exceptions; I liked the punk-rock pinup pics on the website SuicideGirls, and I had watched that one notorious Nina Hartley cunnilingus tutorial so many times that it had eventually earned a place of honor on my iPod Video. (Now there’s a throwback!) But most porn, especially most straight porn, was off-putting to me. I just didn’t get it.

 

Eventually, though, I discovered amateur porn. In comparison to the slick overproduction of mainstream studio porn, these amateurs making sexy videos from their bedrooms or basements felt like a revelation. Their work turned me on, not just because their bodies and lives looked closer to my own, but because – what with so many amateur porn makers being real-life couples – they showed me a vision of what a future sex life could look like for me: intimate, fun, sometimes a little silly, and hot. Very hot.

I was always the type of anxious kid who would Google things like “how to know if someone wants to kiss you” and “what do dicks taste like?” so there was something calming about watching real couples have the kinds of sex they apparently regularly had, even when the cameras were off. They showed me that you didn’t have to be an industry professional to be “good at sex” and to be thought of as sexy. That comforted me.

I’ve also always been turned on by the idea of someone knowing your body so well that they can get you off easily and consistently; I eroticized the thought of being known that deeply. And there’s no better place to watch that fantasy unfold than in amateur porn, where performers are often intimately familiar with one another’s bodies and know all the right buttons to press. This seemed romantic to me, and helped me dream about the sexual futures I wanted for myself.

 

While “amateur porn” is still an extremely popular porn category, the term itself has evolved over time. Its popularity prompted many mainstream porn studios to adopt an “amateur” aesthetic in some of their work, hoping to draw in some viewers who (like me) had previously been unimpressed with big-studio porn.

Meanwhile, the internet continued evolving, eventually empowering some performers to attract bigger and bigger audiences and to use more powerful platforms to reach new people. Both then and now, it almost feels disingenuous to call some of these people “amateurs” when they may have as much industry knowledge as, if not more than, many performers for mainstream companies because they’ve always been responsible for doing their own lighting, filming, editing, etc.

Some purists might argue that the well-lit and well-marketed independent performers on OnlyFans, ManyVids, etc. aren’t amateurs in the true sense of the word, because their production values are too high or their videos are too pre-planned and performative. While it’s fine if you prefer the low-res, low-lit amateur videos of yore, I actually think it’s wonderful that video technology has become accessible enough that you don’t have to have big studio bucks to make porn that looks great. And I also know – particularly from talking to friends of mine in the industry – that just because something is “performed” doesn’t necessarily mean it’s inauthentic. Some people find exhibitionism exciting, and so, in their videos, you may see performativity and authenticity blended together seamlessly into something gorgeous and hot.

 

Still to this day, it’s incredibly rare that I watch porn made by mainstream studios. Most of it just doesn’t interest me and doesn’t turn me on. I can’t relax and enjoy myself if I don’t feel that the performers on-screen are also relaxed and enjoying themselves, ideally with someone they like to fuck off-camera as well. And sure, that kind of thing can be found in some mainstream porn, but it’s much more readily available (and more believable to me) in the “amateur” category.

I want to feel like what I’m watching could plausibly happen in my bedroom, or my friends’ bedrooms. I want to feel the performers’ real flirtation and attraction and deep knowledge of one another’s bodies. I want real orgasms, real squirting, real giggles and real romance. And I want to pay creators directly (or as directly as possible) for what they’ve made, with no bigwig middle-man standing between us. I want to feel connected to the porn I watch, and to the people in it, almost as much as I feel connected to my actual sexual partners and my friends.

And so, I still love amateur porn, and probably always will – although I hope it’s eventually given a name more befitting of the immense work and expertise that can go into making real-life sex look real damn beautiful.

 

This post contains a sponsored link. As always, all writing and opinions are my own.

Review: Bestvibe Seven Rolling Licking Rabbit Vibrator

Kate Sloan
All images via Bestvibe

I like vibrators. I like tongues. I like being fucked. Why not combine all those things into one toy?!

That’s exactly what the Bestvibe Seven Rolling Licking Rabbit Vibrator aims to do. Let’s find out how it performs!

 

What is the Bestvibe Seven Rolling Licking Rabbit Vibrator?

This is a dual-stim vibrator that has three different functions: vibration in the external part (though this is falsely advertised as “licking” – more on that below), vibration in the internal part, and the back-and-forth rolling of some small balls under the surface of the toy’s shaft.

Things I like about this toy

  • There are three buttons on this toy and each corresponds to one of its three functions, so you can control them independently from each other. You still have to cycle through each function’s 7 settings by pressing its one button, which can be annoying, but is probably less annoying than it would be to have an “up” and “down” button for each of the three functions.
  • The “rolling” function is easily my favorite, because it’s the most unique: little balls or beads move in tandem under the surface of the shaft, but instead of rotating around the shaft like they do on many standard rabbits, these ones move up and down the shaft. This creates a sensation that feels surprisingly like thrusting when it’s inside me, despite the fact that the shaft itself is staying still. This is an interesting way of approaching the “it’s hard to thrust with rabbit vibes without losing clit contact” problem.
  • Furthermore, amongst the rolling function’s 7 settings are some that focus more toward the base of the shaft, some that stay closer to the head, and several that traverse more length than that. This makes for an interesting variety of sensations and is something I don’t often see implemented in toys for vulvas (some “blowjob simulator”-type toys do similar things for penises, allowing you to focus on specific parts of the shaft at any given time).
  • While the marketing copy for this toy claims that its internal portion targets the G-spot, I actually find it to be more A-spotty, which I love. The long shaft and very slight curve at the tip are classic features of an A-spot toy. When I push this one deep enough, the rolling balls on the shaft can get pretty close to my A-spot while still rolling across my G-spot, which feels awesome and unlike any other toy I can think of.
  • It’s waterproof!

Things I don’t like about this toy

  • I feel it’s misleading for Bestvibe to call the clit-stimulation function of this toy “licking,” because – while that part of the toy is made out of little silicone “tongues” – the tongues just vibrate, and don’t actually move/flap/lick, the way something like a Sqweel does. Moreover, because the tongues’ vibrations are so overwhelmingly buzzy, they don’t tremble up and down to any significant degree while vibrating, the way a rumblier motor might cause them to. In fact, focusing these wildly buzzy vibrations into such small, pointed shapes is downright uncomfortable at times, at least for my relatively sensitive clit.
  • On that note, the vibrations – both internally and externally – are so buzzy as to be basically useless for me. Any body part that stays in contact with them for more than about 30 seconds starts to feel numb and itchy. Not my cup of tea at all, but if you like buzzy vibrations, you might enjoy this toy.
  • Each of the vibration settings only has 3 steady speeds followed by 4 patterns. Generally I need a wider range of steady speeds to be able to get off with a vibrator. There’s not even that much of a discernible difference between the speeds on this toy, possibly because my bits are so numb by that point that I can’t tell when the vibrations get stronger.
  • The clitoral arm is too short for me. If I get it into a position that actually feels okay for my clit, then the internal arm loses contact with the spots that feel good inside, and vice-versa. For similar reasons, you can’t manually thrust this toy in and out, at least not if you want the clit arm to stay in contact with your body.
  • As often happens in multi-function toys with less-than-stellar engineering, each of this toy’s functions noticeably loses power when you turn on another one of the functions. This often has the effect of ruining orgasms because (for example) if I’ve been using the rolling + clit vibration functions and need a little more power to get me there, turning on the internal vibrations would just weaken all three at that crucial moment.
  • The rolling function is pretty loud, and mechanical whirring isn’t exactly a turn-on, but what can ya do.

Final thoughts

I can’t stand aggressively buzzy vibrations so I really didn’t get along well with the Bestvibe Seven Rolling Licking Rabbit Vibrator. I wish its motor was way rumblier, largely so that the tongues on its clitoral arm would flutter pleasantly, rather than just aiming a concentrated beam of discomfort at my clit.

However, I really like the toy’s rolling balls function and wish more dual-stim toys made use of technologies like this, to create sensations that are more interesting and unique than just G-spot vibration. I also dig the length and shape of the toy for A-spot stimulation; it’s hard to find dual-stim vibes that do this well.

Overall though, I can’t really recommend this toy, especially since it costs £52.99 (about $65 USD or $86 CAD). That’s too much to pay just to have your genitals numbed out.

 

This post was sponsored, meaning I was paid to write a fair and honest review of this product. As always, all writing and opinions are my own.

Review: Bestvibe Thrusting Rotating Vibrating Heating Realistic Dildo

Kate Sloan

What is the Bestvibe Thrusting Rotating Vibrating Heating Realistic Dildo?

This toy is a realistic silicone dildo, with a longer-than-usual handle to help with holding it and thrusting it. It vibrates and also thrusts.

 

Things I like about this toy

  • While it’s a bit of an eyesore to have a big plastic handle attached to the bottom of your otherwise-realistic dildo, and might take some people out of the moment fantasy-wise, I found it good for accessibility reasons. As someone whose hands get sore sometimes due to my fibromyalgia, I appreciated having an easier way to hold onto this toy than the claw-hand position I usually have to adopt with handleless realistic dildos.
  • The vibrations are actually pretty good (except for the fact that there’s only 2 steady speeds, as mentioned below). They’re on the rumblier side of what I was expecting, albeit still buzzier than rumbly classics like the We-Vibe Tango and Swan Wand.
  • I like the dimensions a lot. The insertable length ranges from 5.1″ to 6.3″ (it expands and contracts when its thrusting function is engaged) and the diameter is 1.6 inches. For me, that’s filling and satisfying but still comfortable, which is ideal.
  • I like the realistic appearance of this dildo, and am glad that more body-safe realistic dildos are available at lower price points now than those offered by, say, Vixen Creations or Tantus.
  • You can control the vibration and the thrusting separately! Hooray!
  • Unlike some other thrusters of this type, this one never pinches my skin awkwardly when it’s thrusting.
  • It’s waterproof!

Things I don’t like about this toy

  • When used the way I assume you’re meant to use it (balls facing down, rather than blocking my clit), the buttons are on the side of the toy that’s facing away from me, so I can’t see them during use. This is incredibly inconvenient and distracting.
  • The thrusting tends to slow down/weaken as soon as the toy’s inside me, and especially when I clench my vag muscles around it. This should not happen and can really mess with my build toward orgasm.
  • This toy has no curve whatsoever, which noticeably reduces the pleasure it could otherwise give me. I have to tilt it in pretty specific ways to get it to rub over my G-spot and/or A-spot.
  • The vibration function only has 2 steady speeds. That is not enough steady speeds.
  • The thrusting function sounds like a witch cackling. I don’t know how to explain that further. It just does. It’s very loud, erratic and distracting.
  • Apparently there is a heating function (there’s even a heating button on the toy), but it just didn’t work for me at all, no matter what I tried.
  • Bestvibe also advertises this toy as “rotating 360 degrees” but this is misleading, as there’s no rotation function. I think they mean that the handle makes it easier to manually rotate the dildo inside you if you want to, but 1) why would you want to? and 2) that’s not what people are gonna assume it means when you say that your product rotates.

Final thoughts

I’d definitely consider using this Bestvibe toy if I wanted to jerk off with a realistic dildo but was lacking the hand strength that day to thrust it myself. Its thrusting function is good and its handle also makes it easier to thrust manually even when my hands are feeling weak/sore.

But it has so many functional problems – especially its button placement, noise level, and the thrusts’ tendency to slow down as soon as any pressure is applied to the toy – that I find it hard to justify recommending this to anyone. Another Bestvibe toy I reviewed recently is a way better realistic thruster and can get me off much more easily and enjoyably, so go check that one out if you’re interested in this type of toy.

 

This post was sponsored, which means I was paid to write a fair and honest review of this product. As always, all writing and opinions are my own.

Review: Tantaly Britney sex doll

Kate Sloan
All images courtesy of Tantaly

Well, it happened again: I was offered a sex doll to review, and had to figure out who in my life was both 1) willing to receive and test the doll and 2) reliable enough to give me useful feedback on it so I could write a review.

This is one of those weird logistical problems that people never think about when they ponder the realities of being a sex toy reviewer. See, I don’t have a dick (except for the kind you can strap on), so I’m not a member of most sex dolls’ target demographic – and while my lovely and dependable partner does have a dick, they already reviewed a sex doll for me and were disinclined to make more room in their small New York City apartment for a new member of the family. Likewise, a friend who also reviewed a sex doll for me previously was (I assumed) not up to doing so again, having given away his doll to a friend (!) for reasons I can’t quite recall but that may have had to do with moving house and not wanting to lug a 68-pound torso onto a U-Haul truck.

So this time I asked another friend, someone I knew would give the doll a fair shot and tell me his uncensored thoughts on the experience. After he’d had a few weeks to test out the toy, I took him aside in his kitchen and we chatted about the finer points of the Tantaly Britney over prosecco and beer. It was yet another delightfully weird day in my career as a sex toy reviewer, although frankly, I’ve had weirder.

Choosing the Tantaly Britney

It might seem like it’d be exciting to receive a message saying, “Which doll would you like from this website?” but I imagine the decision can actually be somewhat daunting. Tantaly carries a wide array of dolls in varying sizes; the one my partner reviewed was a petite 14 pounds, but the more lifelike models can reach weights of nearly 70 pounds.

This time around, I asked my appointed tester why he’d chosen the Britney model, and he said, “It was the lightest, while still being the most of a person.” In other words, he wanted the realism of having a full torso-size doll, so as to more closely replicate the experience of having sex with an actual human – as opposed to just being a butt or whatever – but he didn’t want masturbation to turn into a deadlift workout. The Britney weighs in at a reasonable 28.6 pounds.

Interestingly, he also asked his partner for her opinion on which doll he should choose. I think this is brilliant, having seen – both in my own friend group and in hotbeds of online sex discourse like Reddit – the havoc that can be wreaked on a relationship if one partner buys a sex doll or another “big commitment”-type sex toy without their partner’s knowledge or approval. Your solo sex life is your own, certainly, and I’m suspicious of anyone who thinks they get to non-consensually control your masturbation habits – but at the same time, I can imagine feeling a bit blindsided and hurt if a full-size sex doll showed up on my partner’s doorstep one day and they hadn’t even asked me how I’d feel about them owning one, y’know?

Although he had already looked through the options and thought Britney seemed like the best pick, my friend showed his partner the site and asked which one she thought he should go with – and she actually liked the Britney best, too, because its breast size was more average than that of some of the cartoonishly busty models on offer. I’ve gotta say, when it comes to measures of compatibility, I can think of worse ones than “similar taste in sex dolls.”

Using the Tantaly Britney

Mr. Tester was, for the most part, quite happy with the Britney. He’d never tried a sex doll before, but had used strokers like the Tenga Flip Zero. He said that the dick sensations were pretty similar between the two, but the overall experience of using the doll felt “less clinical” and made it easier to imagine that the toy was a real person. This fantasy aspect is probably the main reason to consider getting a sex doll rather than a stroker, plus the fact that you can get on top of a sex doll and thrust into it in a way that can be hard to achieve with a stroker. (Something like a Fleshlight mount can make this easier to do with some strokers, however.)

The Britney doll has two “tunnels” – a vagina and a butt – and my friend didn’t observe much difference in sensation between the two. The main factor as to why he might pick one over the other for any given session was related to positioning: certain positions work better for one hole or the other, such as standing at the edge of a bed.

Having a squeezable pair of boobs right in front of you is also a strong selling point, and something that my friend enjoyed. I mean, I get it. Boobs are great. If you’re into them, they’re definitely a major benefit of having a doll rather than a stroker or a disembodied butt or pussy.

The main issue with the Britney – and with seemingly every sex doll – is the cleaning. All three of the people I’ve asked to review sex dolls for me have described the post-session cleaning process as “a production” – you have to wash the toy’s orifice(s) out right away, resisting the urge to bask in the pleasant afterglow of orgasm, because any jizz or lube you leave in there can eventually get moldy and ruin your very expensive sex toy. (Hot, huh?)

Smaller dolls like the Scarlett can be washed out in a sink (depending on the size of your sink, natch), but dolls with more lifelike proportions like the Britney will need to be dragged into a shower or bathtub for their ritualistic post-fuck ablutions. The physical effort of doing this, and of carefully rinsing out all the cum, can be annoying enough to deter you from using the doll as often as you otherwise might. My friend said he’d be likeliest to use this doll at times when he had at least an hour free – not because he lasts that long (he said jokingly), but because realistically that’s about how long the full process takes, from dragging the doll out of her storage spot and setting her up on the bed to washing her out and drying her off after using her.

Another problem is that these dolls are prone to leaching dye onto your sheets – but fortunately my friend had read the user manual before fucking the doll for the first time (always a good idea when you get a new sex toy of any kind!) so he was prepared for this eventuality and laid down a towel under the doll.

Final thoughts

My friend thinks the Tantaly Britney is a high-quality product for its $329.99 price point, and that if you’re in the market for a sex doll, this one is definitely worth considering. Its soft curves and pleasurable orifices make for a masturbation experience that feels much closer to partnered sex than using a stroker. Unlike some of the other pals I’ve asked to review sex dolls for me, this friend thinks he will actually use this toy on a semi-regular basis even now that the review is done, because in many ways it’s a significant step up from simpler/smaller/cheaper toys like those by Tenga.

But with great pleasure comes great responsibility, and when it comes to sex dolls, mainly that means cleaning. If you can contend with the aggravating need to wash out the doll immediately after using it – and if your living situation and physical strength are such that you can transport the doll back and forth to the bathroom or kitchen as needed without too much trouble – then you might be a good candidate to own a sex doll.

Real-life sexual partners may not require you to clean them after sex, and may not stain your sheets with their skin like a sex doll can, but there’s still something comforting and exciting about the near-realism of a doll like the Britney.

 

This post was sponsored, meaning I was paid to write a fair and honest review of this product. As always, everything I’ve written here is something I actually believe to be true.