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12 Days of Girly Juice 2017: 8 Classic Tweets

Kate Sloan

Once again this year, Twitter‘s been my favorite medium for jokes, puns, and short-form rants. It has its problems, certainly – like lacking a good system for dealing with harassment, and adding unasked-for features like extra characters when what people really want is an “edit” button – but I love my community there so I’m stayin’.

Here are 8 of my fave things I tweeted this year. Aww, memories.

This joke has everything. Chocolate. Allusions to spanking. One of my very favorite emojis. 10/10, would make again.

More times than I can count, I’ve heard friends and acquaintances say that diagrams of the internal clitoris “look like a Pokémon.” Most couldn’t specify which one they meant, but I knew it was clearly Lapras, so I made this handy shareable comparison…

Love a good sexual portmanteau. They’re so useful. (See also: cunstructive cliticism, cumblebrag, Peenex.)

The ethical misandry is so real.

Several people replied to say it would be ideal if you could say all three things on the same occasion. I look forward to the day when I can.

I tend to only play video games when I have very little going on in my life, so, y’know, this makes sense. (Also: two separate Pokémon references in one blog post?! Damn, I have outdone myself.)

When my then-boyfriend said this, I laughed so hard and for so long that I thought I was going to die of asphyxiation. He had such genuine confusion in his eyes when he said it. I love good-hearted kinksters so much.

One more portmanteau for the road. You’re welcome.

12 Days of Girly Juice 2016: 8 Classic Tweets

Kate Sloan

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Increasingly, I document my life in tweets. When doing year-end summaries and round-ups, I used to look at my journals; now I mostly look at my tweets. They’re wee little in-the-moment expressions of excitement, devastation, contentment, rage. They’re bite-sized emotional journeys. Or sometimes they’re just dumb jokes.

Here are 8 of my favorite things I’ve tweeted this year. It was really impossible to pick the 8 best ones, because I’ve tweeted thousands upon thousands of times this year. But here’s a few that I think are pretty good.

My Twitter followers have come to expect goofy puns and portmanteaux from me – I’ve coined terms like femcouragement, Tindirge, sexthaustion, dilgrimage, and cumedian. “Cocktimism” was one of my favorites this year, though. I just think it’s a nice idea. (The opposite, incase you were wondering, is – of course – pessijism.)

I’ve had this thought so many times. The BJ thirst is real, y’all.

This is not a joke; I really do think that if you’re sexually active, you should consider keeping a Magic Wand on hand, just incase. As I’ve told you before, I greatly appreciate past partners who’ve handed me a Hitachi mid-bang, purely to increase my pleasure. What angels!

This is a sick burn that you can feel free to use, the next time a man slides into your DMs demanding free nudes with the shameless entitlement of a cartoon Donald Trump on steroids.

This tweet is utterly emblematic of my transforming attitude on blowjobs. Where there was once reluctance, there is now only extreme enthusiasm. Funny what a good dick can do.

I think I tweeted this while drunk, because I don’t remember writing it. I just know that every time I stumble across it again, I burst out laughing.

As someone who has met most of my sexual and romantic partners online, I have a lot of feelings about “modern romance.” I get nostalgic about MSN Messenger, sappy about Twitter avatars, and precious about Spotify playlists. Read receipts make my heartbeat quicken; Snapchat notifications light up my smile. Internet-era dating is just gonna get weirder as time goes on, folks, and I am 100% okay with that.

This happened after I’d given two BJs in a 24-hour period and then gone to a dentist appointment, so, needless to say, it really threw me for a loop. I don’t think my dad had the slightest clue why I laughed so damn hard.

What were your favorite tweets of 2016?

12 Days of Girly Juice: 8 Classic Tweets

Kate Sloan

I originally started tweeting as a supplement to my blog, but it’s become much more than that. Moreso even than this space, my Twitter feed has grown into its own little community of sex-positive weirdos. We’ve got femmes, geeks, kinksters, bloggers, sex workers, pornographers. We crack each other up, debate with one another, and cheer each other on. When I dreamed of “internet fame” as a wee young lass, this was what I envisioned: a merry band of like-minded dorks, all of us sharing in each other’s trials and triumphs; a vibrant social community that was online but no less real for that.

Twitter’s also, I should mention, where I met and/or got to know most of the people I had sex with in 2015. So there’s that.

I’ve compiled 8 of my favorite tweets of mine from 2015 here for you, since my tweets are now arguably just as much a part of my “oeuvre” as my blog. (Tell that to the haterz who assured me Twitter was an inane waste of time when I joined in 2007!)

I wrote this in a coffee shop while working on a fanfiction story. Writing fanfic is amazingly fun as is, but I quickly discovered it’s even more fun if you live-tweet the writing process and ask your hilarious followers for language contributions. (Randy suggested “cunni-dingus,” “clit twit” and “lacklustre labia licker,” all of which I loved so much that I found a way to fit them into the story.)

This was an idea I pondered all year, and it kind of ended up being the theme of 2015 for me. I want to be smart and sexy, vivacious and valued, naked and knowledgeable. There are a lot of people in my internet following who value me only for my cleavagey selfies and titillation quotient, but for those of you who acknowledge and appreciate my tits and my brain: thank you, it means a lot.

Forever looking for ways to turn sexist narratives on their heads and strive for sexual equality. This is one particularly amusing strategy. It’s best said with your eyes slightly narrowed in a withering stare, upper lip drawn back in a subtle sneer. Go forth and level some dudes with your feminist sass, please!

Being a sex-and-language nerd gets me into interesting situations sometimes. (See also: that time I discovered that the plural of clitoris is apparently “clitorides.”) If you’re wondering where the above phrase actually ended up, it’s in my blog post about breakupiversaries.

I wrote this while scarfing an arugula salad and hot chocolate by myself at 7 West. I’d had tentative plans to go on a date with a boy that night and he cancelled on me, so I got thoroughly dolled up and went on a self-date instead. This is a lovely ritual I’d like to enact more often in 2016!

This tweet happened while I was bored out of my mind in a tattoo parlor waiting for my friends to get their touch-ups done (I’d already had mine). Apparently I pun when I’m antsy.

We’ve all heard the Oprah-ism, “‘No’ is a complete sentence.” I like “Naaah” even better because it’s dismissive and disrespectful – much like the rude sexual requests I’m often responding to when I say it.

This makes me smile for two reasons: 1) Boys who are down with period sex! Yaaaay! and 2) I love doing post-sex recaps and analyses with friends. It often helps me come to realizations about my own desires and experiences that inform how I approach sex from then on. I was lucky enough to have lots of friends who’d happily listen to me ramble about sex in 2015!

Here’s to another year of goofy tweets! Thanks for following me and being part of my weird little web of companions.

Why You Should Never Follow the Person You’re Dating on Twitter

Kate Sloan

I signed up for Twitter when I was 15 years old. That means I’ve been on it for more than one-third of my entire life. (Oh god. What a nerd.)

When I first became involved in social media, it wasn’t nearly as widespread as it is now, and I encountered a lot of pushback. Friends and classmates often told me I put “too much” of myself online, and that “some things should be kept private.” I wasn’t using my social media much differently from how most people use it today, but because it was such a new phenomenon, my passionate early adoption of it looked weird to onlookers.

That was a time when so few people had social media that I could freely talk about my crushes and beaux on Twitter, Tumblr, and so on, without worrying that they would see it. The internet was still this weird secondary dimension where I mostly communed with other nerds, not “real people” from my “real life.” So I ranted and raved all over the place about people I was sexually or romantically involved with. It was okay; they’d never read it.

Now, though, pretty much everyone I interact with “IRL” has a strong social media presence; that’s just how our world works these days. So I have to be more careful about what I say online – we all do.

I’ve recently arrived at the belief that you shouldn’t follow people you’re dating on Twitter. The reasons for this are too nuanced to be tweet-sized, so I’m blogging about it. I’d love to know if you agree or not…

 

Reason 1: Anxiety and obsessiveness.

This won’t apply to everyone, obviously, but for those of us with nervous hearts, following your beau on Twitter can render you totally bananas.

You’ll see them tweeting at other folks in a semi-flirty way and you’ll wonder what the hell it means. You’ll grow to hate the smiling faces in the profile pictures of the people your beau interacts with, even if those interactions are far more innocent and chaste than they appear.

If you text them and they take a little while to answer, but they tweet in the meantime, you’ll wonder why they have the time to tweet but not to respond to you. (Hint: someone not responding to your texts immediately doesn’t mean they hate you – although you might forget this in the heat of the moment.) You’ll comb their tweets for evidence that they’ve lied to you or made up a fake excuse as to why they couldn’t hang out.

You’ll obsessively check their tweets multiple times a day to see what they’re up to. Their digital presence will allow them to stay front-and-centre in your mind, so you feel psychologically glued to them all the time instead of getting the mental space you both need.

Some people are mentally healthy and well-adjusted enough that this isn’t a risk for them. But if you, like me, have a tendency toward the obsessive, it might be beneficial for you to keep your romantic prospects out of your digital sphere.

 

Reason 2: Mystery and freshness.

My ex and I were both extremely prolific tweeters, and toward the end of our relationship, it became a problem. Several times in any given conversation, one person would start to tell a story and the other would cut them off: “Yeah, I saw that on your Twitter already.”

Granted, we were at the stage in our relationship where the magic had worn off and we didn’t particularly care about impressing each other – so we weren’t always as polite about this as we could have been. But there is something to be said for the loss of mystery when you follow each other’s daily minutiae on Twitter.

When I spend time with someone I’m seeing, I want us both to be bursting with new information to share with each other. Codependency and boring relationships are bred when you do everything together and never go adventuring on your own, and that effect can be replicated if you’re constantly keeping tabs on each other via Twitter. Your separate existences should be discrete enough that you’re excited to come together and catch up.

Besides which: some people post the most boring, inane shit on Twitter even if they’re dynamic as hell in real life, and you don’t want their dull online persona to kill your attraction. Your love will probably seem foxier if you don’t know what they ate for lunch or how bored they were at work yesterday.

 

Reason 3: Space and privacy.

Some would say you forfeit your right to privacy when you post stuff online. “Don’t put stuff in public that you want to keep private!” they’d argue. And they’re not wrong.

But that’s also a bit like saying that the conversations you have with friends in public – at a coffee shop or restaurant, say – are fair game for public consumption just because they’re happening in a public space. There is such a thing as a private exchange within a public context; you are allowed to expect respect and discretion from the people who might be overhearing your dialogue, whether it happens in real life or on the internet.

Likewise, although your beau might post stuff online where anyone can theoretically read it, they might not want everyone to read it (including you). It doesn’t mean they don’t like you or don’t trust you; they might just need a place to work out their thoughts and feelings without worrying about how that stuff will be perceived.

We all need time and space away from our partners from time to time. When someone tells you they “need space,” probably you imagine they mean physical distance, but nowadays we all need some digital distance too. Our online social lives are largely interwoven with our “IRL” social lives, so our needs and wants in both areas are similar. If your partner is the type who fiercely needs their independence and solo space, you might be able to help give them that by unfollowing their Twitter stream.

 

Do you follow your partner(s)/date(s)/crush(es) on Twitter? How do you feel about it?

How to Reply to Women on Twitter Without Disgracing Your Entire Gender: A Guide for Dudes

Kate Sloan

Being a woman on Twitter guarantees some level of harassment. That’s doubly true if you’re a woman who tweets about sex.

I created this post for two reasons: a) for the benefit of dudes who badly need this kind of instruction, and b) as a resource for women to send to douchebags on Twitter (and in other mediums, too, if they feel it’s useful in other contexts).

For that latter reason, I’ve put some page-jump codes into this post so that you can send dudes the link to the specific rule they’ve neglected to follow. Here are those links for easy sharing: Don’t mansplain, don’t answer questions no one has asked, don’t reply when a favorite would suffice, don’t favorite too many tweets, don’t be redundant, make valuable contributions, pay attention to context, read before you respond, don’t ask for pics, don’t oversexualize, don’t explain someone’s joke to her, accept you might be wrong, don’t demand anything, don’t tweet an email-sized query, proofread your tweet, and be generally respectful.

Without further ado… Here are my dos and don’ts for dudes on Twitter. These rules aren’t hard to follow, and yet you’d be shocked how many people break ’em.

Avoid mansplanation. Don’t explain things to women as if you know more than them, unless they’ve actually asked for an explanation or advice. Especially don’t explain women’s own experiences, ideas, and bodies to them – we’d know better than you would. Not sure if you’re mansplaining or not? Words like “actually” can be a tip-off.

Don’t answer a question that no one has asked. If I wanted to hear about your dick, your preferences in women, or what you think I should wear (or not wear), I would ask.

If your comment can be expressed by favoriting their tweet, do that instead. You probably don’t need to express your approval in multiple different ways. Favorite, or reply, or retweet. Don’t do a zillion things.

…But don’t go overboard with favoriting. Please don’t be the dude who combs through all my selfies and favorites all the sexual ones in a row. That’s just gross. Back off, dude, your inappropriate boner is showing.

Make sure what you’re saying hasn’t been said by someone else (including the woman you’re tweeting at). Redundancy is boring and not useful. You’re probably not as original and brilliant as you think you are. Especially don’t repeat a woman’s exact point in different words. If you desperately need to express your agreement, see above re: favoriting and retweeting.

Make sure what you’re saying is valuable, relevant, and actually contributes something to the conversation. Don’t just shove yourself into my day for no reason. If you don’t have anything particularly useful, interesting, or new to say, then you don’t need to say anything.

Stay aware of context. If you’re confused by someone’s tweet, flick through her previous tweets, bio, recent blog posts, etc. for possible clarification before you ask her about it. Please don’t be that idiot who has no idea what’s going on. And along those same lines…

Before tweeting about a blog post or link, actually read said blog post or link. I guarantee you, you will come across as a buffoon if you neglect to do this. If you haven’t read a post, you aren’t equipped to write about it, even on Twitter.

Avoid any and all variations of “Pics or it didn’t happen.” If a woman wanted to post a picture, she would do it. Asking for photos of her outfit, face, body, or anything else can come off as intensely creepy and inappropriate. Don’t do it.

Don’t make everything about sex. I know it’s hard for some dudes to get this through their heads, but even people who are openly sexual and sex-positive (e.g. sex bloggers) don’t want every interaction to be lascivious. Use your social intelligence (or if you don’t have any, get off Twitter until you do!) to figure out when a flirty response is appropriate (hint: very, very rarely) – and if in doubt, keep things respectful or just don’t reply at all.

Don’t explain a woman’s own joke to her. It’s surprising and strange how often this happens. It’s like some men don’t comprehend that women are actually capable of being funny, and so they assume that the jokes we make on Twitter are actually serious statements or we just don’t “get” that we’ve “accidentally” made a pun or joke. Assume we are brilliantly funny babes who know exactly how clever we are, and go from there.

Accept that you might be wrong. Exercise humility accordingly. I’m not sure if it’s due to systemic male privilege, or the argumentative nature of the internet, or cultural misogyny, or all of the above, but plenty of men on Twitter have the tendency to believe that they know best and that it’s their job to school other people. Practice saying (and typing!) the words, “You’re right. I’m sorry.” Use them when you need to – which might be more often than you think.

Don’t demand anything. Don’t ask us questions if you can find the answer on Google or elsewhere. Don’t ask us for “proof” of what we’re saying, especially if it’s something unprovable like a matter of personal experience. Don’t start sentences with “You have to.” In general, please remember: you are not entitled to our time or attention.

If your tweet requires a response longer than 140 characters, send it via email instead. Please don’t ask me a barrage of questions on Twitter and expect me to respond instantaneously, or at all. Seek out my email address and contact me there. It’s not hard – most folks will have theirs listed on their website, to which their Twitter profile will link. If you can’t find their email, tweet at them to ask for it, and be gracious if they decline to give it to you.

Proofread your tweet. I can guarantee that I will mock you if your tweet is riddled with errors. Also sometimes typos or autocorrect problems can make it impossible for me to understand what you were actually trying to say. If you care enough to type a tweet, you should care enough to make sure your message will be received and understood.

Just generally: be respectful, polite, and a decent fucking human being. It’s not that hard. If you don’t think you can follow these simple rules, a quick solution is to disable your Twitter account!

Anything I missed? What have you always wanted to tell dudes on Twitter? Got any horror stories to share?