Content note: This essay discusses the nonconsensual sexualization of minors (namely, me) by older internet strangers.

I was 14 when I started posting outfit photos almost every day on Flickr, and strangers started having Opinions about my pictures almost immediately.

The comments I received were a mix of 4 basic categories:

Content note: This essay will touch on sexual assault and coercion, alcohol, victim-blaming, and rape apologism. I should also say that I’m writing this how I remember it, which may or may not be fully accurate to what actually happened.

In the 12th grade, I took a class called Writer’s Craft, which ended up teaching me a vital lesson about feminism.

The class was a broad survey of various different writerly forms. We studied, and then wrote, everything from Shakespearian sonnets to sitcom scripts. Toward the end of the year, we were tasked with doing some journalism of sorts: going out into the world, interviewing people, and writing about what we learned.

Note: This is an article I wrote in 2020 for a sex toy company who have since majorly fucked me over (not in the fun way), so I feel no qualms about sharing it here 😂 Hope you enjoy!

There are lots of skills you learn as a person with chronic clinical depression. How to explain your mental health history to a new doctor. How to procure yourself a decent meal when you can barely get out of bed. How to gently decline a social invitation when chipper small-talk feels impossible. One of the skills I’ve had to learn in my journey is how to adjust my sex life when depression comes a-knockin’.

Contrary to popular belief, depression doesn’t automatically drain the sexual desire from those it afflicts. Mental health advocate JoEllen Notte conducted an informal study of depressed folks for her book The Monster Under the Bed: Sex, Depression, and the Conversations We Aren’t Having, and found that more than a quarter of her respondents reported an increase in libido during depressive episodes.

For nearly 10 years, I have been receiving the same type of feedback when I tell people that part of my job entails testing and reviewing sex toys. “Must be nice!” people will say, or “So you get paid to masturbate?!” or “How can I get that job?!” That last one particularly annoys me, because this is not really a job you get, it’s a job you make, a job you choose and chase and work toward (and it is, itself, a privilege to have the time and money to do that). No one taps you on the shoulder with a dildo-shaped sceptre and says “I now pronounce you a sex toy reviewer.”

I am well aware how whiny and spoiled it makes me sound to shout “Putting pleasurable objects on my genitals for a living isn’t all fun and games, you know!!” but I really feel that most people don’t know what they are actually talking about when they say it sounds like a desirable job. It is a desirable job, but for me, the desirability is moreso about the flexible schedule, the largely self-directed workflow, the ability to be my own boss. The actual testing-sex-toys part is not always pleasant or fun, in the same way that it’s not always pleasant or fun for a book critic to slog through the latest schlocky tome, knowing they’re on deadline to write a polished, thoughtful essay about it. People tend to get into literary criticism because they love books – and, likewise, I got into sex toy criticism because I love sex toys – but that doesn’t mean the work isn’t work, and sometimes work is annoying and boring.

There are times when sex toy reviewing thrills me to my very core. These tend to be times when a toy genuinely surprises me with how good or interesting it is, or when a company I love releases a new toy and I get to try it before almost anyone else.

However, there are many, many times when it feels more like being a book critic who has to review the latest Fifty Shades novel. “Again? Another one? And it’s as bad as all the previous ones? What can I even say about this? Will the publisher get angry if I describe the book (accurately) as terrible? What if it’s actually just mediocre and dull? What can I say that hasn’t been said before? What can I say that is true, and also interesting to read, and also won’t piss off the author, and also won’t make me fall asleep at my keyboard as I’m writing it?”

“Are you mad at me?” is one of the questions I have asked most often in every romantic relationship I’ve ever been in. It’s a relic of trauma, neural leftovers from a childhood where my dad being mad at me meant I was about to be shouted down into a triggered puddle of sludge. If you learn something is dangerous to you, dangerous to your wellbeing and your world as you know it, you’ll do your best to avoid that thing in future – and for me, it feels very, very dangerous for someone to be angry with me. Especially someone important to me. Especially if I don’t know whether they’re actually mad, and so the question hangs in the air like a raincloud threatening to burst open and pour.

It’s only been the past year or two that I’ve even felt comfortable referring to my childhood experiences of emotional abuse as abuse, as trauma. Prior to that, I didn’t have that language (or at least, didn’t feel able to claim it), and so I found myself unable to adequately explain why I kept asking partners “Are you mad at me?” The question became a Chinese finger trap with some of my more reactive partners: the more I pulled, the more painful the situation got. Their irritation level would creep up gradually with each iteration of the question, so that “Of course not!” became “No” which then became a gruff “I already told you: no.”

They didn’t understand that I wasn’t just asking out of some insecure curiosity (which, frankly, should’ve been alright too) – I was asking because the possibility of my partner being mad at me felt like a potentially world-ending risk. I was asking because the difference between “yes” and “no” was also the difference, in my body, between panic-inducing terror and happy relaxation. I was asking because I needed to know.

The flipside of this Chinese finger trap analogy is that if you want to escape the trap, the best way is to approach it gently and slowly, rather than yanking with your full fury. The gentlest way a partner can answer this question is to say some version of “No, not at all,” and to answer in that same way every time the question is asked (if indeed that is true). Paradoxically, the annoyance of being asked the question multiple times in one day is only likely to transpire if the question is answered with irritability. If it is treated as a normal, neutral, non-annoying question, and answered as such, then the asking becomes less and less urgent, and thus less and less frequent.

Impractical shoes have much less of a place in my life now than they did in my party-going, shots-drinking, wobble-home-at-2-a.m. youth. In fact, I almost never wear them anymore, except for when I’m having sex.

My spouse Matt and I share an interest in financial domination and “sugar dating” as kinks. I view those two interests as being two sides of one coin; the balance of power in our dynamic on any given day decides whether them buying me fancy things feels more like I’m a little girl being spoiled rotten by her daddy or an imperious queen being mollified with gifts by her loyal subject. As a result of these pervy interests, my collections of mid- to high-end bags, shoes, and lingerie have grown over the past couple years or so, to my femme delight.

Content note: This essay contains discussions of 13-year-olds being sexualized by other 13-year-olds, albeit in a way that was ostensibly consensual.

I was in the seventh grade the first time I saw a girl kiss another girl in real life – and she had been paid to do it.

Let me back up a bit. I went to a middle school that was located a couple blocks from Bessie’s Pizza, a convenience store that also had a giant pizza oven in the back and would sell slices of the most succulent, authentically Italian pizzas I’d ever tasted at that age. Bessie’s was the prime lunchtime destination for all the “cool kids,” and the kids who wanted to be cool. We’d trek over there in small groups to buy our slices of pie alongside chocolate treats, soda and Gatorade. Bessie herself presided over us, snapping furiously in Italian if we got too raucous in her store, which we often did.

You know, it’s funny – if someone asked me, I wouldn’t tend to say that Mean Girls is one of my all-time favorite movies, but it is one of the only movies that I still enjoy watching from start to finish regardless of how many times I’ve seen it before or how recently I’ve last seen it. I just don’t seem to get tired of it. It’s a masterwork.

One of the best things about this movie, in my view, is Rachel McAdams’s performance as popular teen queen Regina George. It is a luminescent, terrifying portrayal that absolutely jumps off the screen, right up there with Rosamund Pike’s conniving Amy in Gone Girl and even Jack Nicholson’s horrific turn in The Shining. Although it’s Lindsay Lohan’s Cady that we’re encouraged to empathize with throughout the film, and Cady’s story that we follow most closely as she rises through her new high school’s social ranks, Regina is the character who comes to mind for me immediately when I think about Mean Girls. Regina is the keystone of the entire story, the dictator who rules her high school’s social hierarchy, the beautiful, brilliant, blonde bully who makes the rules and punishes transgressors. Regina is the engine and the fuel of this story, practically from start to finish.

When I was 25, I went on a date with a cute boy from OkCupid named James (name changed). He was in my phone as “James Punnilingus” – and still is, to this day – because his dating profile contained a pun related to his passion for performing oral sex (hot). Obviously, I had high hopes about the date.

We went to my favorite restaurant for lunch, because he worked nights at a local TV station (also hot). I barely remember what we talked about, because he was a babe and kept making me laugh so hard that I snorted beer out my nose. At one point he mentioned that he’d gone to my alma mater, Ryerson, to study TV & radio (also also hot).

We had a good time, but he told me later that he was feeling polysaturated (polyamorous lingo for “too many women want to date me and I am only one man”), so we didn’t go out again.

HOWEVER.

Content notes: dentistry, nitrous oxide (“laughing gas”), marijuana, spanking, sadomasochism, addiction, death, anxiety, hypochondria, local anaesthetic.

I knew as soon as they slipped the heart rate monitor onto my finger that I was fucked. The machine beeped and numbers lit up: 98, 103, 105. They seemed to get higher the more I looked at them.

“Feeling a little anxious?” the hygienist asked.

Content note: This is a piece about weight, body image, anti-fatness, etc., and as such, it will touch on fat-shaming, calorie-counting, food/dieting, losing and gaining weight, anti-fat bias, etc. If that stuff is tricky or triggering for you (as it is for many of us), feel free to skip this one, in which case, I’m proud of you for knowing what you need and taking care of yourself. 💜

I don’t recall the first time I consciously thought “it’s bad to be fat.” That’s part of the problem, isn’t it? This shit starts early.

I remember my parents fretting about their weight, my dad going on the Bernstein diet, sticking to a regimented and restrictive menu of foods and going in for regular vitamin injections to get the nutrients his food wasn’t giving him. I remember eating cake and ice cream sometimes and feeling vaguely bad about it, the way I felt vaguely bad when I slept in til 1 p.m. or skipped class. I remember billboards and magazines, and my own mirror reflecting a very different image back at me.

Given how much of a pervert I am, I can’t believe how long it took me to realize I could get spanked with my own book. I mean, at this point it’s been more than two years since I received the initial book deal offer email, which said clearly that the tome would be a hardback. I guess I was a little distracted by the whole “holy shit, I’ve got a book deal” thing.

But when I mentioned to Matt that it had just occurred to me someone could spank me with my own book, they said, “Oh, I know.” They’d been thinking about it already. Classic Matt.

Content notes: semi-public sex, daddy dom/little girl language

My ex-girlfriend knelt on the carpeted floor in front of me at a post-Pride Parade party and looked up at me with her enormous doe eyes. On a cartoon character, the expression in those eyes may have read as “Please help me!” or “Please be nice to me!” but on this particular ex-girlfriend, I knew to read that expression as “Please let me go down on you!”

This moment was the culmination of all-night-long semi-flirty repartée about how we used to fuck and would maybe fuck again someday. While that’s not the type of thing I’d joke about with a cis male ex – mostly because he would almost certainly take it as an invitation – this ex-girlfriend and I did joke about it fairly often, largely because we were still part of the same close-knit friend group and it would’ve been weirder to not mention our shared history than to talk openly about it. However, just because she wasn’t a cis man didn’t mean she was immune to taking these jokes as invitations.

Content note: trauma / emotional abuse, panic, breakups, daddy dom/little girl language

They say memories live in our muscles and bones, stored up like the debris of life that accumulates in your closet. “The body keeps the score.” The body notices, feels, and remembers.

Last night around midnight, I began crying inconsolably, shoulders shaking, breath trembling, pillow thoroughly soaked. Looping in my head was a chorus of depression voices: “You’re garbage.” “Your partner’s going to leave you and then you’ll be alone forever.” “You don’t deserve love or happiness.” “What if you fuck it all up?”

Content notes: mentions of death

---

“Do you come here often?”

It’s the cheesiest question, often the first question a horny stranger will ask you at a bar or a nightclub or – as was the case for me that night – in the heated swimming pool at the local sex club.

“We should watch that new show Sexy Beasts together,” Matt said. “It’s very demisexual.”

While it is not uncommon for us to describe particular people as “very demisexual” (e.g. “Wow, the host of the podcast I’m listening to just used the word ‘recalcitrant’ in casual conversation and I’m way more attracted to her now; god, I’m so demi”), it’s rare for me to hear a piece of media described this way, so I was intrigued.

Brief demisexuality explainer incase you don’t know what that word means: it’s an identity on the asexual spectrum. Demisexual people, like me, don’t develop sexual attraction until an emotional connection has formed, or at least until they feel like they know the person in question beyond a surface-level familiarity.

Content notes: spoilers for the 1999 movie Eyes Wide Shut; discussions of cuckolding, infidelity, and racism.

“Why did no one tell me Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise made cuckolding porn together?!”

I often shout at the TV screen when I watch a movie while lightly blazed, and this was perhaps one of the better things I’ve ever shouted. This exclamation happened, of course, while my spouse and I were watching Stanley Kubrick’s 1999 masterpiece, Eyes Wide Shut.

Content notes: discussions of trauma, emotional abuse, non-consensual spanking, invalidation, and social media harassment; mentions of daddy dom/little girl roleplay and death threats

It feels weird to be a sex writer and still be scared to share stuff that’s “too” personal, “too” vulnerable.

Of course, everyone is entitled to their boundaries and their privacy, including sex writers. But this sense of protectiveness over my private life is relatively new for me. In my early twenties I regularly and happily recounted tales of my wildest wishes and hardest heartbreaks, my weird hookups and tumultuous relationships. It felt like – and was – a way to process what was happening to me, and what I was learning. It felt useful, and indeed, I got plenty of messages from people who told me that my intimate overshares helped them feel less alone, less broken.

This month, my partner gave me an assignment: I had to choose a sex/kink skill I wanted to get better at, put together a list of educational resources focused on that skill, and then write a short essay summarizing my findings and suggesting some potential future steps we could take together to improve my skill level in that area. I chose touchin’ balls. Here’s what I wrote.

Although I’ve received copious compliments on just about every blowjob I’ve ever given, when it comes to touching balls, my skills are lacking. (#Humblebrag, #sorrynotsorry.) Sure, I graze and stroke them here and there, and give them occasional attention with my lips and tongue, but for the most part, I’ve long been too nervous about hurting a partner to really go ham on those ‘nads.

However, in reading and watching numerous resources on scrotal stimulation, I’ve picked up a few new ideas. Here are some of the key findings that emerged in my research:

What if I told you there’s a movie that incorporates bondage, choking, costumes, crying, daddy doms, D/s, fear play, financial domination, hair-pulling, high heels, humiliation play, impact play, intoxication, knife play, objectification, predicaments, primal play, public sex, puppy play, roleplay, seduction, stripping, subspace, verbal degradation, voyeurism, and aftercare… and it’s not even a movie about kink?

Sounds far-fetched, I know. But it exists. And it’s fucking excellent.

(FYI, that paragraph above also serves as your list of content warnings for this essay. There will also be spoilers below.)