Advice From A Teacher

In McSweeney’s, Helena De Bres offers fourteen items of Writing Advice To My Students That would Also Have Been Good Sex Advice For My High School Boyfriends. Here’s one of those items:

Avoid making bold assertions you’re unprepared to back up.

Similar Sex Blogging:

• This Erotica Kills Fascists: Mädchen in Uniform
• For The Penises
• How To Write Dirty
• Half-Cocked Canadian
• Bad Sex Advice
• Education Just Isn't What It Used To Be

50 Sex Things

If you’re thoughtful about sex, mulling some of these aphorisms and unpacking them in your brain will cost you some time:

50 Things I’ve Been Meaning To Say About Sex

By Maggie Mayhem.

Sex Advice From A Magazine

Here’s Emily Nagoski on getting your sex advice from the writers who write for pop magazines:

The ubiquity of sex writing that neglects actual helpfulness or accuracy and focuses exclusively on entertainment just makes life harder for anyone whose job it is to untangle the sociopsychological knots that popular culture, including these columns, create in people’s sexualities.

People really, truly want to know how to be better lovers, understand what their partner wants, and how to be more attractive to their crush object. People are starving for this information. It’s why they read the columns, at least in part. I can’t be the only person who, at 18, read these kinds of things ravenously, only to be left bloated and disappointed. It’s like giving candy to a starving person: hell yes it will taste good and it might even make them feel full, but it won’t actually nourish them.

And, know though I do that Emily meant this in complete seriousness, I still LOLed when I read it:

Then again, you can ask me but you won’t particularly like the answers because they are not entertaining; they involve you doing stuff you don’t want to do. What you really want to know is how to meet a man without having to sieve through dozens of people you’re not interested in, without having to depart your comfort zone, without risking rejection. And what you really want to know is how to turn on a woman with something that turns YOU on, rather than with empathy, consideration, and affection.

It funny because it true.

Similar Sex Blogging:

• Sex, Defined
• Condemning The Very Idea Of Sex As Sin
• Expert Advice On Sexual Torment
• Religion Is Bad For Your Sex Life
• Fuck The Bell Curve

Good Advice

I wish somebody had told me this sometime during puberty:

“That woman was sexy…Out of your league? Son. Let women figure out why they won’t screw you, don’t do it for them.”

Bad Sex Advice, Summarized

So I was looking at this random adult blog, trying to decide whether to do my usual link-and-quote. The blog itself was mostly a porn blog, with a list of affiliate links six times bigger than the blogroll, plus a lot of random porn pictures. Some of the articles were interesting, but many of them had a fakey “this-reads-like-it-was-written-by-a-man-even-though-the-author-name-is-female” feel. Then I got to an article which purported to be a how-to on the fine art of fingering a woman.

It looked promising. Started out strong, with several hints and tips I’ve used myself to good effect. Lots of advice on finding her G-spot and making it go all bumpy-happy. So far so good.

In the middle part, the advice got a bit questionable. Not the substance of it (obviously if she’s dry, you’d better stop rubbing like a madman, unless you are trying to give her a burn) but the tone. (Was it really necessary to call the reader a moron?)

And then I got to the punchline. After paragraphs and paragraphs of how-to material, the breezy warning (paraphrased): “Of course your lady won’t ever get an orgasm from this, but who cares? She’ll love it anyway.”

Gasp, sputter. She’s not supposed to come when I do that? I must have been going about it all wrong.

It must be true: them as can’t do, teach.

Similar Sex Blogging:

• Expert Advice On Sexual Torment
• Most (Almost) Purchased Sex Toys
• In Thrall To The Machines
• More On Fisting
• Being Handy
• Baloop, Bump
• Hands On (In?) Sex Education

“Honest, Officer, It Was Marital Advice I Read On A Blog”

From time to time I can’t help revisiting Why Your Wife Won’t Have Sex With You (although I do it in the same spirit as a man goes to the racetrack to watch a demolition derby). The prevailing view over at Why Your Wife on this too-frequent lament of the modern American husband tends toward the “try acting more like a woman and she might … just might, so don’t get your hopes up … decide to have sex with you again someday” variety.

Like the flying squirrel said, “Aw, Bullwinkle, that trick never works.”

On the other hand, there’s a comment over in a “Sex And Marriage” post by Quiver. Quiver gives some potentially useful advice to a man in those unhappy sexless straits, only to have a commenter share a rather more robust strategy:

“If all else fails (or if you prefer, before trying anything else) put her over your knee and with one arm firmly around her waist to hold her in place, yank her knickers down and spank her bare bottom very hard until she howls. Then spank her vigorously again until she begs at the top of her voice to be allowed to spread her legs and offers her pussy (which will probably be glistening wet by now). Then allow her to service your cock in whichever way you please. A woman who has just been spanked often sucks exquisitely well, and on her knees doing it she can look deliciously beautiful, so that may be a good starting place.”

Kids, don’t try this at home. Enormous downside potential if it doesn’t work — complete with sirens and handcuffs and a well-deserved orange jumpsuit.