My brain broke. When I think of BDSM all I can think of is “Boycott Divest Sanction Masochism” and I can’t fucking remember the original words for B and D anymore because of BDS lol
Folks who got started on sex and drugs younger than they should have, who got stuck in toxic friendships or felt alone-
What did someone do that helped? What kind of friend or adult did you need? What did you want, and what did you need? Why did you start, and how did you stop? What did people tell you that you didn’t believe?
it’s okay not to find your soulmate in your teens. it’s okay to not have your first romantic relationship until you’re an adult. it’s okay to have never had sex or gone on a date. there’s nothing abnormal about you. don’t compare your relationships - or lack of - with anyone else’s. we all go at the pace that’s right for us.
posting a tiktok here bc she really said it all!!!
edit: i don’t have very many followers so i didn’t expect this to get any notes or anything but now it is! and it’s mostly from terfs! and i want them to know: FUCK YOU. THIS IS NOT FOR YOU. MY BLOG IS NOT FOR YOU. GET OFF.
[VD: A TikTok stitch made by user @staceyismom from user @citizenattorney1’s original video. Citizenattorney1, a white man, says, “The [Asian women] that are here are like, not cool, not nice, I rarely meet a sweet one.” It then cuts to staceyismom, an Asian woman, doing a bunch of exaggerated cutesy poses. She says mockingly, “… Hey, guys, do I seem cool, nice, and sweet enough yet? I just really want this 60-year-old guy to like me. Anyway.” (Cut to a shot where she’s holding the camera closer to her face.) “Pedophilia’s all about like power dynamics and control because it’s so easy to take advantage of like seven-year-olds. And it’s so weird because whenever white men with Asian fetishes talk about Asian women, they always talk about us like we’re babies. East Asians are known for kind of having, like, a babyface, and not having a lot of body hair, and there comes the whole submissive trope. This is also why so many Japanese and Korean people hate weebs and Koreaboos, because—” Cut to a shot where she is once again farther away from the camera and doing cutesy poses. She continues, “—because whenever white girls Asianfish, they always put on, like, this stupid little baby act where they’re like ‘Oh my God, I’m just a cute little Asian babygirl.’” (Cut back to her holding the camera.) “They play into fetishization and add on to negative stereotypes by making themselves look more Asian and then becoming a little uwu baby.” (Cut back to her posing. She addresses citizenattorney1 again:) “Just because no one wants to suck your dick here doesn’t mean you get to go to Asia and then prey on young women, just die alone like you deserve.” End VD]
[ID: A graphic of a skull and crossbones with the words “Terfs fuck off.” End ID]
so i’ve been on a comic reading binge lately and recently read alan moore’s “lost girls” (which if you have never heard of it is basically the kind of Problematic Queer Porn antis would tell you to kill yourself for writing, starring fairy tale characters in all their E for Explicit glory) and it wasn’t really to my tastes but because i’d heard it was regarded as a controversial work, i wanted to read over some reviews of it and see what other people’s opinions were and i found this review by Arthur Graham in particular that i read and loved and found extremely relevant to the kind of shit we constantly talk about in fandom discourse.
i’m not going to copy/paste the whole thing because it’s long but three parts that stand out are:
“Any furor that might erupt over Lost Girls is down to the fact that it has pictures,” argues Moore. “After all, far more violent and brutal pornographic prose novels, like those by the Marquis de Sade, are still in print, and no one is currently trying to prosecute them in court.” And though Lost Girls did manage to overcome its initial legal difficulties, it was still refused by several book sellers on the grounds that its visual content was too offensive. This tendency to censor images more strictly than words has been a characteristic of our culture ever since Moses supposedly stepped down from Mt. Sinai with the Second Commandment, which, when taken literally, seems to prohibit images of any kind. In the realm of the sexual image, however, censorship has been even more virulent.
As one example Moore cites William Blake, whose well-meaning followers, upon his death, “completely excised all of the erotic work that he’d done, because they didn’t want people to get the wrong idea of him.” Illustrating the tendency towards self-censorship, Moore reminds us that even Aubrey Beardsley, one of the finest British artists of the late Victorian era, requested on his deathbed that his beautiful illustrations of Aristophanes’ Lysistrata be committed to the flames, along with his many other “obscene” works. In both cases, however, the motivating force behind the censorship was essentially the same: moral pressures of the time simply did not foster a very high tolerance for sex or sexual imagery. And, according to Moore:
the moral pressures of [Beardsley’s] time, looked back on from a more enlightened future, were simply wrong. The moral pressures of his time were what destroyed Oscar Wilde and everybody and every publication that Oscar Wilde had been associated with. I can see why Beardsley was nervous, but he shouldn’t have been, because he’d done nothing wrong. And if that applies to 1820, it certainly applies today.
The prohibitions against sex and sexual imagery, though certainly relaxed two centuries later, nevertheless continue to contribute to the denigration of pornography as inherently dirty, shameful, and generally undeserving of the status accorded to most other forms of art and literature. In response to this, Moore asks, “Why must these often very tender pieces of artwork be damned, consigned to this grubby under-the-counter genre, where there is a miasma hanging over the very word? That is another reason for stubbornly calling [Lost Girls] ‘pornography’, because I wanted to reclaim the word.”
and:
It may be hard to find a single image in all three volumes of Lost Girls that isn’t being used to explore deeper sexual themes and issues, but for the reader who finds sex and sexuality inherently offensive, this may not be enough to affect a pardon. “If we couldn’t offend anybody,” jokes Moore, “then how could it be a transgressive work of pornography? We would have been rightly accused of having done something that was a literary work, which dodged the real issues that it set out to address.”
However, before judging the book’s content or presentation, it is important to remember that the authors aren’t necessarily condoning or advocating all or even any of the sex acts they portray, any more so than the writer of a murder mystery is necessarily advocating the act of murder. “As a work of pornography,” Moore explains, “Lost Girls follows a basic tenet of the genre, which is the thrill of vicariously experiencing something taboo or transgressive.” He continues:
We don’t seem to have much of a problem in distinguishing between fact and fantasy except for when it comes to sex, and I’m not entirely sure why that is, why we make a special case for sexuality. It’s okay to show murders in most of our great art, it’s perfectly okay to show how life can be ended, but there is something suspect in showing the ways in which life can be begun, or just showing people enjoying themselves.
and third:
“The sexual imagination, which is the biggest part of sexuality, is not well served in our culture,” explains Moore, “and I really don’t understand why that should be.” It is this lack of sexual imagination, according to Moore, that limits the ways in which we’re allowed to view, think about, and practice sex. However, if the millennia of erotic art between the Venus of Villendorf and Lost Girls is any indication, “Pornography has always been with us and always will be with us, and nothing’s going to change that. The only question is, ‘Is it going to be good pornography or is it going to be bad pornography?’ And given that most pornography today is very bad indeed, it’s probably about time that people make a serious effort to reclaim this despised genre.”
If bad pornography limits and constricts sex into a very narrow, ultimately hollow commodity, then good pornography should enlarge and challenge our ideas concerning sex and sexuality, finally doing justice to the rich sexual universe we live in. By refusing to cater exclusively to any one sex, gender, or orientation, by refusing to portray the sex act as separate from the deepest self, and by refusing the bounds of physical reality their puritanical reign over the limitless sexual imagination, Lost Girls has done precisely this. Even if it breaks a thousand taboos along the way, so be it: as a work of pure fiction, it could break every sexual taboo known to man and never hurt a thing.
you can read the full review here(TW for NSFW images and topics in the review, keeping in mind that it’s for a piece of NSFW media).
the general gist of it being that there is a difference between fiction and reality and fiction is a safe and healthy place to explore one’s fantasies and take one’s imagination to wherever it can possibly go without harming anyone because that is what what fiction is for.
also,nota point by the reviewer but by myself: if an author as talented and well respected as alan moore can write thiskind story with thiskind of content without it defining his worth as either a writer or a human being and without it ruining his reputation or his life, then all of you fic writers and fanartists and smaller original content creators out there who create work with similar themes certainly don’t deserve to be treated any differently. despite current fandom climate, please don’t believe otherwise.
Ok but, if sex didn’t involve genitals it’d probably be dope as hell. like, kissing, cuddling, making out with your partner, and feeling good together sound hot but we’re not going all the way lol
The church’s view on chastity and sex can be harmful. Not everyone is going to want to wait until marriage. It is so so important to educate young people on safety and everything under that umbrella. Ignorance doesn’t mean abstinence. Waiting is perfectly okay too, but everyone still should be educated.
I work at an adult toy store. Yes, we sell sex toys. Yes, we sell lingerie. Yes, we sell fetish gear. No, we don’t sell porn.
Peoplewill not stop asking me for the Rose, praising the Rose, saying that it’s the best thing they/their friend/that one Instagram influencer ever felt, strongest orgasm, blah blah blah.
It’s bullshit. Don’t buy the Rose.
The Rose is not a great toy. Let’s start there. It isn’t even that good. It also isn’t actually a suction toy, but that’s not a bad thing. Most people don’t enjoy suction; the feeling of something tugging on their clitoris has been often described to me as “too intense.”
It is actually a pulsation vibrator, usually of the sonic variety. I say “usually” because the Rose, unlike any of the other toys I will later suggest, is not made by any one company. The style is not patented, and due to its popularity, everyone is making a version. Usually, what you can buy is about $30 worth of toy, being sold for $60. And if you try to tell me you saw it cheaper on Amazon, don’t buy your sex toys from Amazon. You have even odds of them being somebody else’s used and unwashed returns. You have worse than even odds of receiving what you actually paid for, but that’s just because Amazon stocks the off-brand knockoffs with the on-brand good products, and doesn’t differentiate which ones you are sent.
But I digress.
A sonic vibrator is, in essence, a very small speaker. We’ve all seen the way subwoofers vibrate in time with the music. A sonic vibrator is that speaker membrane, made much smaller. I like to tell people that its basically a tiny speaker screaming death metal at their clitoris.
Sonic vibes are, as far as I can gather, cheaper to make than air pulsation toys, and can be taken underwater, as they don’t have an air intake port to ruin with said water. They tend to have a greater facility for pulse and beat patterns, and vibrate at a higher frequency than the average vibrator. If you like high-frequency, high-power toys that you can use in the bathtub or shower, that’s great!
Personally, I tend to lean more towards air pulsation toys. I find they have a greater degree of subtlety and variation in their power, and I don’t care overmuch for patterns.
Now, a brief history lesson: in 2014, a sex toy company called Womanizer took the internet by storm with their innovative new air pulsation technology. Some of you may recall this. The Womanizer was (and still is) a fairly expensive toy, various models ranging from $80 to $300. In 2016, the Satisfyer brand emerged as a more affordable alternative, though they have, of course, expanded since then. Both brands are considered by many to be the Big Names in air pulsation sex toys, though others have, of course, made their own versions since then.
Now, back to the Rose: it’s cute. But that is all it has going for it. People have been asking me for that fucking thing for over a year now, because Instagram and TikTok just will not. Let. it. Die. So I was predisposed to hate it on principle before my company finally managed to get ahold of some at around Month 6 of this bullshit. And boy, was it every bit as disappointing as I had hoped. The very design of it is the first problem. No matter what company you get it from, the size and shape are the same, meaning the opening for the sonic membrane is very small and round, neither of which are things that actually accommodate most clitorises. The versions we got in generally had 10 settings at most, typically seven. They were all sonic vibes, none of them suctioned despite the advertising on the boxes claiming thus (though to be fair, unless you’ve actually felt a suction vibe and compared it to a pulsation vibe, most people can’t tell the difference). The demonstration toy we got to show customers was weak compared to the other sonic vibes we sell at a similar price point.
Now! Back to the Womanizer. Hate the name, love the toys. They have a large, oval opening over the pulsation membrane, covered with a silicone head that is removable! Because it comes with two different sizes, as not all clitorises are the same! It is strong! It has many settings (up to 14 right now, with the Premium 2)! The Premium and Classic shapes both have a little lip that vibrates with the pulsation, stimulating the nerve endings below the clitoris, which are also important and need much love!
And the Satisfyers! So many shapes! So many styles! If you want a cute pulsation toy, get the Satisfyer Penguin! It has a little bow tie around its neck! If you want a variety of functions, get one of the ones with app connectivity! They can connect to the Satisfyer app via bluetooth and you can literally draw your own vibration patterns! The sky is the limit! It’s so cool! And it’s also only $60 from the manufacturer website, which is the same price as most stores sell the Rose for! It is three times the toy the Rose will ever be, for the same fucking price!
Or the Melt, by We-Vibe! Also app-controlled! But the opening is ovoid instead of circular, which is my one complaint about Satisfyer toys. It’s a little pricier, but the app also has more options for long-distance play, which leads into my infodump on panty vibes, which we aren’t doing here.
Or if you prefer sonic over air, get the VeDo Suki! Effectively 60 settings! It has 10 different functions, each of which has six power intensities! If you’ve ever experienced a toy with the perfect pattern, but not enough or too much power, you’ll understand exactly the frustration that the Suki solves! It’s fantastic! It is also $60!
If you genuinely want suction, there’s the VibroKiss, by CalExotics! Or the Trinitii, by Sensuelle (it has a tongue)! Or the Bendable Sucker, by Evolved, if you want versatility and a phenomenal warranty!
There are so many better options than the Rose. The Rose is trash. Your clitoris deserves better. You deserve better. And no, I’m not getting paid for this. I just hate the Rose that much.
How would y'all feel if I posted an essay on sex toys?
Specifically, the Rose. I work at an adult toy store, and that thing has been haunting me for over a year now. I’ve had multiple customers and coworkers tell me to turn my (by now, well practiced) rant on the Rose into an essay, because they think it’s interesting and informative.
However, I have very few platforms I post anything on, and this is one of the major ones.
I realize that this is wildly off-brand for my blog, but I don’t have a gaming group right now, and no immediate prospects of getting one. And it genuinely is information that people ought to know. That toy is not what they tell you it is.
