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Should You Be Able to Rate & Review Sexual Partners?

Kate Sloan
I wrote this in high school but lots of it still rings true…

In 2013, a new app called Lulu was released which allowed female users to anonymously rate and review their male acquaintances, including friends, exes, and past hookups. The men were rated on a 10-point scale, for criteria like humor, manners, ambition, and willingness to commit.

There was immediately a media panic about it, with outlets referring to Lulu as “Sex Yelp” and speculating on what it portended about human relationships in the 21st century. Dating-app giant Badoo later acquired Lulu and shut down the ratings component of the app, but the question remained: is rating and reviewing sexual partners useful? And perhaps even more pressingly: is it ethical?

I’m sorry about the cissexism. We were young and shitty.

I thought about this again years later when a friend and I devised a rating scheme for penises we had known, featuring criteria like “hygiene,” “soft skin,” “taste of cum,” “testicular perkiness,” and so on. It seemed harmless to me at the time, a hilarious joke perpetrated while tipsy, but upon reviewing it in the light of day, I realized how objectifying it was. What I’d originally conceptualized as a tool for discussing sexploits with friends (“The dick I sucked last night was an 86 out of 100, can you believe?!”) now seemed like a process as cruel and dismissive as swiping through Hot or Not or scoring selfie-submitters on the “Am I Ugly?” subreddit. How could I call myself sex-positive and body-positive if I was literally assigning numerical scores to people’s anatomy? I couldn’t.

There are some cases where rating sexual partners seems fine, or even prudent. Sometimes clients offer public feedback about sex workers they’ve seen (check out USASexGuide for more on that), which can inform prospective johns’ decisions and drive clientele to service providers. There are also always backchannels where women and other marginalized people exchange notes on their dates and hookups with others in their community, warning friends away from abusers and boundary-crossers. These discussions are crucial for keeping people safe who would otherwise have trouble staying safe, because of the unfortunate ways our dating culture and sex work laws are set up. I don’t begrudge anyone for sharing info about “bad dates” and reading other people’s info of the same sort; sometimes these behaviors are the only recourse you have.

But rating people’s bodies and sexual skills is a different thing entirely. Sex is deeply personal, and sometimes embarrassing, and a lot of people have a lot of hangups about it; the same things can be said about our fallible human bodies. It seems unjustifiably cruel to rate people on these criteria in a venue as public as an app or a website, unless they’ve specifically solicited that feedback, like people do on “rate me” forums. (I often wonder if these people are suffering from low self-esteem, or discovering a sublimated objectification/humiliation kink, or both.) In a culture as sex-negative and body-critical as ours, you hardly need say anything at all to fuel someone’s deepest fears and insecurities. Even the most seemingly innocuous criticism can set off a spiral of self-hatred in those of us who are susceptible to this sort of thing, which is most of us.

So I can no longer justify rating and objectifying people (or penises) in the ways I used to. Eradicating sexual shame and encouraging self-love are two of my key goals, professionally and personally, and critiquing bodies and sexualities runs counter to these objectives. This is true not only for other people but for myself: the more you cast a critical eye on how other people look and what they’re doing in bed, the more you’ll tend to judge yourself in those areas as well, perhaps without even meaning to. These mental habits are dangerous, and insidious, and must be actively fought against to be extinguished.

Tell your best friend about last night’s mediocre hookup over drinks, if you like; write in your journal about genitalia that confounded you, if you must. But sharing these judgments online doesn’t really serve anyone, in my view, and it may even contribute to society-wide shame cycles. If you want to create a better world for humans who have sex, one of the best ways to start is to view everyone’s body and sexuality with the same compassion you’d hope they would extend to you.

 

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

8 Pieces of Useful Wisdom From Sex Workers

Kate Sloan

Each time I’ve dabbled in forms of sex work, like putting on cam shows and selling my used underwear, one of the best things about these endeavors has been connecting with other people doing similar work. I can’t think of a group more passionate, open-hearted, and resourceful than sex workers. They provide crucial services to people who need and want them, despite frequently encountering crushing stigma and legal roadblocks like SESTA/FOSTA. (See the last point on this list for more on that.)

So I’m delighted that I’ve partnered with Escorts & Babes – Sydney Escorts to put together this list of some of the major lessons I’ve learned from genius sex workers in my social spheres. Anyone who says you don’t need skills or smarts to do sex work is fooling themselves.

Trust is hot. Sex and kink, in my experience, just seem to get better and hotter the more trust there is between the participants. I imagine it must be hard to establish this trust as quickly and thoroughly as you would need to in a sex work context, which makes it all the more impressive that so many service providers do it on a regular basis. Their work invites me to look at my own sex life and ask: Where could I be more trusting, and how might that improve my experiences? And, inversely, where am I being too trusting, and how can I solve that?

Dirty talk is magic. After all the many, many hours I’ve spent having phone sex and being erotically hypnotized, I’ve come to think of dirty talk (and related sexual oration) as a form of literal magic: like casting a spell in the Hogwarts universe, you say some kind of incantation and it has real, observable effects in the body and brain of the person you’re talking to. Sex workers tend to wield this power better than anyone I know; it’s often a sharpened and well-loved tool in their toolbox, and part and parcel of what keeps their clients coming back. Hearing these stories makes me want to step up my own dirty-talk skills!

Disabled people can be (and often are) sexual too! I can’t believe there are still so many people who don’t understand this, but there you go… While it sucks that our ableist world too often tries to paint disabled people as unsexy and unsexual, I know some who’ve sought sex workers’ services and found them immensely healing and helpful. Obviously it sucks that this route is financially inaccessible for many, and that ableism continues to exist, but I’m glad some disabled folks have the option to pursue sexual touch on their own terms by hiring a sex worker. (Did you know there’s even been a recent push in Australia to get sexual services for disabled folks covered by national disability insurance? I hope the Aussie government comes around on this eventually; it could be a big life-changer for many disabled folks, as well as Australian sex workers, like those at Escorts & Babes – www.escortsandbabes.com.au.)

When it comes to kink, more communication is better. I admire the thorough negotiations many sex workers (especially pro dommes) insist on doing before sessions, and I think every sexually active person could benefit from adopting similar practices in their own sex lives. No partner can give you the mind-blowing sex you’ve been dreaming of if they don’t know what gets you hot. Share your likes and your limits – it can only make things better!

Kink can be startlingly intimate. Granted, just like vanilla sex, kink can feel awkwardly distanced, deliciously connective, or anywhere in between. But I find that intimacy and kink tend to go hand-in-hand moreso for me, and I can access depths of connection through kink that I didn’t even know existed back when I thought I was vanilla. I’ve heard from sex worker friends and acquaintances, over and over, that a large part of what their clients are seeking isn’t just sexual gratification but some sense of emotional communion with another human being. That’s what kink feels like to me, when it’s at its best.

Asking for consent isn’t hard. It’s sex workers’ job to ensure their clients have a good time, so of course they would tend to prioritize consent highly in their transactions. We all should take a leaf out of their book, and weave consent check-ins into the tapestry of our sexual encounters. This doesn’t have to be as unsexy as some people insist – as Lo points out here, there are tons of super hot turns of phrase you can use to make sure your paramour is into what’s happening and wants it to continue. You truly have no excuse.

Knowing what you want is half the battle. This is a major lesson I’ve taken from kink and repeatedly applied to my own life: you can’t progress toward the objects of your desires until you’ve identified what those desires are. Sounds simple, but it’s often deceptively difficult to figure out what your heart is actually calling out for. This type of soul-searching is worth doing, and is one of the initial steps on the path to enduring happiness.

SESTA/FOSTA is killing people and must be stopped. This is the most important item on this list, so listen up. If you don’t know, SESTA/FOSTA are “anti-trafficking bills,” signed into law in early 2018, that have actually taken aim at sex workers by raiding and shutting down escort listing sites (yes, this is why Craigslist’s personal ads got slashed) and getting tons of adult content banned from various platforms. It will come for us all eventually – and has already started to – but it mainly impacts sex workers, especially those who live and/or work in the USA. You can help by raising awareness about these laws in your networks, donating to sex work advocacy organizations like Red Light Legal and SWOP Behind Bars, contacting your political reps to demand they take action, and supporting sex workers directly by hiring them, buying their content, and giving them money.

 

What wisdom have you picked up from sex workers in all their industrious brilliance?

 

This post was sponsored by the folks at Escorts & Babes – Sunshine Coast Escorts. As always, all writing and opinions (except, of course, in quoted tweets) are my own.

5 Types of Lingerie to Incorporate Into Regular Outfits

Kate Sloan

Lingerie, like manicures and 9-step skincare routines, is one of those things I’ve always wished I was more into than I actually am. It seems like an important hallmark of a certain type of femme presentation, one I long to embody but just can’t be bothered to pursue most of the time. After all, lingerie is expensive, sometimes cumbersome, and not even guaranteed to be seen by many people – so when I have a little spare cash to spend on feminine treats, usually I’ll go for a new dress or lipstick in lieu of a new bustier or garter belt.

That said, I’ve read a couple of articles lately on incorporating sexy-wear into your everyday ensembles – this one by Rae and this one by Cora – and it got me thinking about the few types of lingerie I do like to wear, often outside the confines of my bedroom (scandalous!). Here are some of them…

Slips

I love slips, and their closely related cousins, babydolls and chemises. Not all of them are long enough – or opaque enough – to don as outerwear, but when I find one that is, I immediately start plotting outfits.

As you can see in these photos, you can wear a slip in various different ways to make it look like a dress, a skirt, or a shirt, depending on what you layer over top of it. It can appear casual with a T-shirt thrown over it, or you can emphasize the ornate formality of a lacy slip by pairing it with tights and heels. A cardigan is a good happy medium between the two: it “dresses down” your slip a little, so you don’t look like the weirdo who showed up to a frat party in fine silks (although: you do you!).

I particularly like to wear slips in the summer, when “real clothes” can feel oppressively excessive. They can look like a fully thought-out outfit when worn with ballet flats and maybe a coordinating hair accessory, but they’re actually super easy and quick to put on, and comfortable enough to wear all day.

One tip: since slips are intended to be underwear, they don’t always conceal stuff like nipples and panty lines very effectively. For this reason, you might want to layer an additional slip or half-slip underneath, or a bodysuit.

Bodysuits

Speak of the devil… There are tons of gorgeous bodysuits in the world that are only supposed to be worn behind closed doors. Fuck that! If a piece of clothing I own is beautiful, I want to wear it outside, dammit. It’s just a matter of figuring out how to make these items more appropriate for public wear.

My favorite way to do this is to tuck a pretty bodysuit into a high-waisted skirt or a pair of jeans. You’ll probably want to wear a bra or bralette underneath to prevent flashing people, and this admittedly isn’t an appropriate type of outfit for, say, a church service or your grandmother’s potluck luncheon, but it’s a super eye-catching style that makes me feel like a total babe.

Pro tip: when shopping online for lingerie you intend to wear outdoors, always check out the loungewear section first. In my experience, it tends to contain the most street-appropriate bodysuits, camisoles, slips and chemises you’ll find anywhere on the site.

Bikini tops

I think I originally picked this up from teen magazines in my youth and it’s never really left me… If you’re wearing a high-waisted garment on your bottom half, and don’t mind showing some skin, you can get away with wearing a bikini top as a sort of abbreviated crop top. It’s not the most mature or sophisticated look – it makes me feel like a blonde PacSun model circa 2003 – but it works for some casual summery occasions.

If subtlety is more your style, you can also wear a bikini top under a dress or shirt, like a bra (see the rightmost outfit pictured). They usually peek out a little bit, offering a visually appealing flash of color or sparkle, and giving you the air of someone who’s ready for beach adventures at a moment’s notice. Of course, if you do intend on dropping by a beach/lake/pool/whatever, it’s nice to be prepared in the chicest way possible.

Garter belts and stockings

These are usually too finicky for me to bother with, but it’s nice to have them in your toolkit for when you want to feel really sexy and fancy. While currently mostly relegated to the sphere of the bedroom, garter belts and stockings used to be daily-wear items for women in the mid-century and beyond. They add some timeless panache to your ensemble when they peek out the bottom of a skirt or dress.

If a garter belt is too much work for you (and I truly don’t blame you), look for “stay-up” or “hold-up” stockings, which usually have some kind of sticky material on the inside of the cuff to keep them from sliding down your thighs. Genius!

Corsets and bustiers

I wore these in high school when I would go to see Rocky Horror, and they were the ideal thing, styled with shiny skirts, high-heeled boots, and ever-present fishnet tights. But let’s face it: that’s not exactly office attire.

A beautiful corset or bustier under a blazer might be, though, especially if you’re also wearing an elegant skirt or pair of pants, plus ideally heels. A lot of high-end fashion houses have even pulled inspiration from the realms of lingerie and fetishwear in recent years (and, well, recent decades), so – depending on your field – it may not be that weird for your outfit to contain a pop of lace or silk or corsetry. You might even look like the most fashionable person there!

Do you like to incorporate lingerie items into your everyday outfits? How do you do it?

 

This post was sponsored by the fine folks at Honey Gifts, which has a robust lingerie section containing all sorts of lovely and luxurious items!

5 Non-Standard Things You Can Do With a Sex Doll

Kate Sloan
Image via sexdollmarts.com

Sometime last year, I got the kind of email that sex bloggers hope for, pray for, live for. It was an email offering me an item that was not only free, but weird.

The company in question produces and sells adult dolls, and they were reaching out to offer me one of my own – no strings attached. Apparently they had made a surplus of dolls for a recent film shoot and now thought they might as well try to distribute them as promotional samples. Despite living in a tiny apartment already bursting with my possessions, I was elated. This felt like the pinnacle of my entire life as a sex writer. What’s cooler than being offered a free life size sex doll?

This act of generosity didn’t end up coming to pass – the company ghosted me, as so many do – but for those few hopeful days, I thought a lot about what I would actually do with a sex doll. I don’t have a dick to stick inside her, and the thought of fucking a silicone doll with a strap-on cock doesn’t exactly thrill me. But, when I managed to set aside the potential creepy factor, I still viscerally wanted that vapid blonde to be propped up on a chair in my room, peering at me, keeping me company. Why?

Here are a few fun things one could do with a sex doll other than fucking its orifices…

Play dress-up. I mean, this is the obvious one for a femme comme moi. I haven’t entirely grown out of my youthful, Barbie-influenced desires to put cute outfits on beautiful, inanimate human facsimiles. Just as you might swap out certain decor elements in your home to mix things up from time to time, I could put my doll in different outfits to suit my mood on any given day. She could be like a sartorial mascot of my bedroom, setting the tone for the day with her ensemble du jour.

Kinkspiration. As I’ve told you before, my Sir and I are entranced by the idea of using erotic hypnosis to make me think I’m a sex doll. Of course, you don’t need an actual doll to be present for this activity – that’s kind of the entire point – but I did request that my partner show me some photos of sex dolls before and during the trance induction to give me a mental image of what I’m aiming for. Having a sexy real sex doll right there in the room with us would be even better! I could observe her up close and get a more concrete sense for how she occupies space, thereby enabling me to be a better doll when the time came.

Exhibitionism. I’m sort of interested in being watched during sex in theory, but in practice I don’t seem to like it that much. It makes me too anxious and self-conscious, which I’m sure is common. For that reason, I think having a sex doll in the room could be a kind of happy medium – I could suspend my disbelief enough to imagine someone was peering at us from the shadows, without needing to actually contend with the anxiety this would produce if the voyeur was human. One step at a time, you know?

Pictures. Would I look cute kissing a sex doll? Or kneeling between her legs? Or sitting on her face? I don’t particularly think so, but my partner probably would. ‘Nuff said.

Practice. There are a lot of physical kink and sex skills one could practice on a sex doll – flogging, face-slapping, foot worship – but I am thinking mainly of more cerebral ones. For example, I want to work on my dirty talk, especially in a more dominant mode than I’m used to, and practicing by speaking aloud into my empty bedroom doesn’t always cut it. Gazing into the eyes of a doll – however vacant and constructed they might be – would at least approximate the oft terror-inducing experience of saying filthy words to someone’s face. And then maybe I could ramp up to addressing an actual person that way, someday.

What would you do with a sex doll, if you owned one, besides fuck it?

 

This post was sponsored by the folks at sexdollmarts.com, where you can buy premium sex dolls customized to your specifications (fun!). As always, all writing and opinions are my own.

10 Things I Could Do If I Hired a Male Escort

Kate Sloan

I thought a lot about male escorts when I was younger, because the thought of sex with men worried me and I wanted someone to shepherd me through it non-judgmentally. I wanted to be taught tricks and strategies, and to thereby embolden me for future (non-transactional) sexual encounters with men. When young male virgins write to me now to ask for advice on building sexual confidence and “getting into the game,” I’m being very serious when I suggest they see a sex worker – because I strongly considered taking this route myself.

However, I ultimately decided not to, because 1) I didn’t have enough money, 2) I was scared, and 3) I fell in love with a man who was just as patient and kind about my sexual inexperience as I had hoped an escort would be. BUT. Even still today, I think about hiring sex workers every once in a while, as an indulgence if some extra dough ever fell into my lap. Being demisexual, however, I don’t think I would employ them for sex – and some escort agencies explicitly say that their workers don’t even offer sex. So here are 10 other things I might consider doing if I hired a male escort…

1. Massage. Yeah, I should really just hire a masseuse if this is what I’m after, but there is something different about a massage that is allowed to be flirty or even sexy. It has a different energy and I’m able to relax into it in a different way. Sometimes it’s nice to be touched in a way that is sex-adjacent but not explicitly sexual, y’know?

2. Masochism. As a masochistic submissive, I crave pain and subspace almost as often as I crave sex. But unlike pleasure and orgasms, good pain isn’t easy to administer to myself. Outsourcing the task would be better, especially if I found an escort who was experienced in whatever activity I was craving (let’s be honest – probably spanking).

3. Topping practice. Granted, I would imagine submissive male escorts are harder to find than dominant ones (correct me if I’m wrong), but I think some “hired help” could allow me to hone my topping skills, like impact play, face-slapping, and even just dominant dirty talk. It’s less embarrassing to practice on someone who does this stuff all the time than on someone who could literally break up with you if you mess something up.

4. Vacation accomplice. A while ago I was invited on a press trip to an all-inclusive swingers’ resort, and I had to decline, partly because of scheduling issues but also partly because my partner wasn’t available to accompany me and I would’ve been in social anxiety hell if I went alone. It’s a pipe dream that I’d ever have enough cash to splurge on a whole weekend or week of an escort’s time, but in a dream world where I do, they’d be a good date to a getaway.

5. Flirting. So underrated and so important! Sometimes – especially when you’re single and/or lonely – you just need somebody to make you feel wanted and wantable. I could see hiring an escort for a fun dinner-and-drinks date for the express purpose of being flirted with. Mmm, crushy energy.

6. Cuddles. Some studies show human touch is actually necessary for our well-being, and I believe it. It would be nice to hire a professional cuddler in the midst of a particularly lonely dry spell, or to comfort me at the end of a hard day.

7. Wedding guest. Weddings suck if you’re sad about your romantic life. I have definitely cried at them for totally self-absorbed reasons as well as the normal reasons people cry at weddings. I could imagine hiring an escort to be my +1 if my originally-planned date dropped out for some reason (like a breakup) and I didn’t want to go alone.

8. Photos and videos. Provided the escort was okay with it, it might be fun in an artistic-collaboration way if we shot some sexy pictures or clips together, either to sell (with profit-sharing, of course!) or just for personal perusal. Seeing myself from different perspectives is sometimes a good way to boost my self-esteem when I need it, and “entwined in intimate embrace with a hot escort” is certainly a different perspective!

9. Tourism. When you visit a new city, your experience of it is vastly influenced by the person or people who show you around. My Toronto is different from a Bay Street banker’s Toronto or a hippie artist’s Toronto, for example. It would be neat to hire an escort while visiting a new place, and have them lead me around to some of their favorite spots.

10. Learning. I have known enough escorts to know that they have skillsets almost nobody else has. They have to have above-average emotional and social intelligence, in addition to whatever sex and kink skills they may use in their line of work. I find that inspirational and could put similar skills to use in many areas of my life, so it would be cool to get some one-on-one tutelage from a willing escort on these topics.

Would you ever hire an escort for a non-sexual reason?

 

This post was sponsored by the folks at Gentlemen4Hire. As always, all writing and opinions are my own.