I once translated a short story about a guy wanting anal and the title was something like "To Troy, Helen!" (The main character's name was Helen, or rather Elena, bc the story was Spanish) and that seemed so, so cheesy to me
Like. I was just looking through old emails trying to find link to story and discovered that I had actually written to a woman acquaintance asking if anybody has ever said "let's go to Troy" like the male character in the story does, because I could not believe it. She never replied though, so I still don't know.
That tweet on older women not keeping up with the discourse is so bizarre. I don't think she's talking about keeping up with scholarship from feminist academics. The idea that the self-selected portion of people on Twitter are driving culture shows such a lack of self-awareness.
I dont want to be mean to zoomers but during the 2010s, twitter & the internet did fuel the discourse. If you had a trending hashtag, you could get an interview and/or a debate on Huffington Post Live. Ever since the pandemic, social media & the internet took a nose dive and, frankly, is very detached from reality. They are living in the wasteland without knowing how good it used to be.
It reminds me of western narratives like Red Dead Redemption 2 where the characters still believed the west was wild as civilization continued to creep up on them. The 2000s to mid 2010s internet has been conquered by algorithms & apps.
Like, I get that everyone wants this to be about evil prudish radfems who hate all sex because that’s easier to make fun of. But *that’s literally not what the tweet was about*. It was about choking, anal, (most) fellatio, and the orgasm gap.
Going through its points:
1) Choking *is* dangerous.
2) Even Aella—not exactly a Dworkinite prude!—has found that the vast majority of women dislike anal. (And, btw, men *do* have an anatomical difference that enables them to much more easily enjoy anal—the prostate gland.)
3) The tweet’s point about oral is the most overstated, but there are a *lot* of women who find performing fellatio disgusting and resent the universal expectation of it. Yes, you shouldn’t expect oral without giving it in return. But, as CHH herself has pointed out, many women *don’t* enjoy receiving it—but are still expected to give. The fact that CHH in that article expressed more sympathy for men who don’t like performing cunnilingus than she does here for the reverse is really striking.
4) And the orgasm statistics do in fact show that women are very often having sex that they don’t enjoy purely to please their partners.
For me, the fact that people across the ideological spectrum have been so disproportionately outraged by this tweet has confirmed like nothing else how much porn has fried everyone’s brains. 30 years ago, choking and anal were *not* baseline sexual expectations that every red-blooded hetero woman was presumed to enjoy.
Fellatio is allowed as long as everything finishes PIV and cunnilingus is permitted as well (depending on who you ask, it's actually depicted in the Song of Songs...). But yes, there are valid concerns here. I think porn is evil.
That said, the part about "most women don't have good sex" is sad. And at least in my experience among married Catholic women, untrue. I actually think one of the best things about the Catholic sexual ethic is that so many of the rules are designed to protect women from this type of treatment and exploitative sex within marriage.
I don't want to turn this comments section into a debate about Catholicism but at least anecdotally, several of my friends have avoided pregnancy for years at a time using NFP. The Marquette method is 99% effective. I understand that most people wouldn't be willing to commit to that, though.
Choking has never been the baseline and anal has always been something a man has to talk up a lot before even being considered a thinking. Including oral in this list was the mistake. Anyone who’s disgusted by oral shouldn’t be in a relationship with someone who enjoys it. That should be the basic baseline. That will mean removing the majority of men and women from your options but it is what it is. It’s like men refusing to wear condoms, very few women will accept it and they will have to accept the smaller dating pool.
I like sex with women, except [ABC] is dangerous, [XYZ] is objectively gross, every guy who says they enjoy [DEF] is a dirty dirty liar, and every guy who engages in [UVW] is just doing it to please their partner, which is an extremely not-okay thing to do. Sex with women is awesome!
I’m genuinely confused by why you never acknowledged this in any of your many twitter responses making fun of the tweet. One of the things you retweeted was specifically about “anus-exclusionary radical feminism”.
That one in particular references the TERF, the trans-exclusionary radical feminist. "They are frequently anti-trans" in the 3rd graf in the section refers to this type of radfem.
Yes, I’d love to see a CHH take on this, as well. From everything I’ve heard and read, actual lesbians HATE being the “experiment” for straight women. It’s a byword for heartbreak and drama.
How would you even have a normal relationship with someone you aren't attracted to and why would someone else enter it? If they're bisexual, that's one thing. Otherwise, they're just going to be one-night-stand targets.
Weirdly enough I was friends with a lesbian who did hate the idea of "political lesbians" and saw it as ridiculous. Then she became a TERF and was suddenly cool with it.
As a bisexual woman, I did once go on a date with a woman who later said (on the date) that she has no interest in having sex with women or being in a relationship with them yet continued to identify as a "proud bisexual" whenever Pride came around. I'm generally very open to people identifying as whatever they want but that incident really annoyed me.
pretty simple explanation for that; It’s possible she’s using the label for social signaling; i.e. she doesn't want to be seen as "just" a boring, straight woman
I don’t spend time fixating on it like these people do, since ultimately there are not that many of these people (I remember way back in the 2000s reading something by a “political lesbian” terf who was straight and how clearly she was making herself miserable by barring all relationships with the only people she’s sexually attracted to) but as a lesbian I’m not interested in political lesbians for the same reason I’m not interested in being with a straight woman “experimenting” — I want a partner who is attracted to me. That said, I’ve never found this to be an issue among the various lesbian and bi women I’ve dated, and not for not living in several very Discoursey deep-blue cities, if you will.
I've met a couple of political lesbians and I've actually lived in the southern US my whole life. If it is more common in conservative, Christian areas then I'd guess it's because of people trying to navigate their hang ups about sexuality and gender.
I’d imagine they also see heterosexual marriage as a rawer deal (or at least, more people conclude it is, even if it is in total still not a lot of people) in a place where people are more conservative overall.
From my memory, we split the check. She was recently divorced so I'd like she was exploring her sexuality and didn't realize how she felt about being with a woman until she was actually confronted with it except that she posted about being a proud bisexual months later so who knows.
We avoid them like the plague. No one wants to be a consolation prize for someone who is not actually into other women. Straight women are terrible lays.
I happen to agree with the girls that a lot of anal sex when you’re young is coerced/convinced by young men who’ve watched too much porn. But the way they’re phrasing this sucks. And the inclusion of oral which is one of the great pleasures of sex is dumb.
Well I can say from actual action that the whole taboo thing was just super-motivating (not really any power dynamic for me) but after actual try, yes, once practice met taboo theory totally fell apart.
I suppose sort of effect vaguely like rape-fantasies for women in the chick-lit
Two thoughts: 1) Increasingly, lots of conversation on sex online seems like it's being driven by people who've never had sex with a real human? The most egregious are the online Masculinity Influencers on Elon's Racist Trash Heap, but a lot of people talking about the inherently oppressive nature of types of sex seem to fall into that particular bucket.
2) On the general state of the public sphere. I am an Old Fart. I largely stay on Twitter even after it became what it is now out of force of habit, but it's, idk, kind of unrepresentative of the culture at large anymore? And Bluesky is forty-year-old Tumblrinas. So... where is the actual New, Fresh Stuff happening? I'd assume that for the last few years it's been The TikToks, but I'm too much of an old fart to be on TikTok. I was wondering if it would be possible to have some sort of CHH feature that looks at what the up-and-coming tastemakers are doing.
On your second question, I don't think there really is a space like that anymore. Even if young people are on tiktok, everything on there is too ephemeral to last longer than five minutes.
Yes, really. There’s an entire genre of AI slop featuring strawberries cheating on their husbands with eggplants, or fruit husbands disgusted with their fruit wives for farting. Welcome to the AI future! EPCOT never dreamed of this!
Signal group chats & discords. The internet commons are too toxic and shitty so everything gets silo'd off into more niche channels. TikTok is the big one but it's still algorithms pushing extreme narratives so not the best substitute.
I came across this somewhere online once: “because it feels good” really is a good enough reason for him to ask you to do it. I generally agree. Obviously it goes both ways and applies to both sexual and non-sexual activities - like if your wife wants you take the family apple picking “because she thinks she will enjoy it”, then she should ask for it!
Of course Aham plays himself in a biopic that nobody asked for… honestly this is why I’m a pronatalist, this sort of thing could be avoided if everyone just had two toddlers strapped to them at all times
Why would you punish two hypothetical toddlers by giving them a Baby Mama Making Machine for a father on a trumpet player's salary? There's no honor in pumping out children you don't take care or set bad examples for.
Can we circle back to it apparently being Israeli to like anal sex? Surely it's Greek!
Not in this house it isn't!
IN THIS HOUSE, WE BELIEVE
ANAL SEX IS ISRAELI
I once translated a short story about a guy wanting anal and the title was something like "To Troy, Helen!" (The main character's name was Helen, or rather Elena, bc the story was Spanish) and that seemed so, so cheesy to me
So did the guy remember to wear a Trojan?
we can only hope, the story does not mention protection.
Like. I was just looking through old emails trying to find link to story and discovered that I had actually written to a woman acquaintance asking if anybody has ever said "let's go to Troy" like the male character in the story does, because I could not believe it. She never replied though, so I still don't know.
https://wordswithoutborders.org/read/article/2012-04/to-troy-helen/
That tweet on older women not keeping up with the discourse is so bizarre. I don't think she's talking about keeping up with scholarship from feminist academics. The idea that the self-selected portion of people on Twitter are driving culture shows such a lack of self-awareness.
It kinda pursues the mindset of “it’s not my job to educate you” to its logical endpoint.
I dont want to be mean to zoomers but during the 2010s, twitter & the internet did fuel the discourse. If you had a trending hashtag, you could get an interview and/or a debate on Huffington Post Live. Ever since the pandemic, social media & the internet took a nose dive and, frankly, is very detached from reality. They are living in the wasteland without knowing how good it used to be.
It reminds me of western narratives like Red Dead Redemption 2 where the characters still believed the west was wild as civilization continued to creep up on them. The 2000s to mid 2010s internet has been conquered by algorithms & apps.
Those ancient beings were too busy writing the literature that they couldn't keep up with it?
Though this all seems like brash young people thinking they have the world figured out, version...whichever generation of humanity we have.
Looking forward to “ethics of tittyfucking” being offered as a philosophy course at Oberlin
These Progressive Twitter types are making staunch Catholics like me seem sexually liberated and for that I am grateful
Catholicism forbids anal and oral sex too.
Like, I get that everyone wants this to be about evil prudish radfems who hate all sex because that’s easier to make fun of. But *that’s literally not what the tweet was about*. It was about choking, anal, (most) fellatio, and the orgasm gap.
Going through its points:
1) Choking *is* dangerous.
2) Even Aella—not exactly a Dworkinite prude!—has found that the vast majority of women dislike anal. (And, btw, men *do* have an anatomical difference that enables them to much more easily enjoy anal—the prostate gland.)
3) The tweet’s point about oral is the most overstated, but there are a *lot* of women who find performing fellatio disgusting and resent the universal expectation of it. Yes, you shouldn’t expect oral without giving it in return. But, as CHH herself has pointed out, many women *don’t* enjoy receiving it—but are still expected to give. The fact that CHH in that article expressed more sympathy for men who don’t like performing cunnilingus than she does here for the reverse is really striking.
4) And the orgasm statistics do in fact show that women are very often having sex that they don’t enjoy purely to please their partners.
For me, the fact that people across the ideological spectrum have been so disproportionately outraged by this tweet has confirmed like nothing else how much porn has fried everyone’s brains. 30 years ago, choking and anal were *not* baseline sexual expectations that every red-blooded hetero woman was presumed to enjoy.
Fellatio is allowed as long as everything finishes PIV and cunnilingus is permitted as well (depending on who you ask, it's actually depicted in the Song of Songs...). But yes, there are valid concerns here. I think porn is evil.
That said, the part about "most women don't have good sex" is sad. And at least in my experience among married Catholic women, untrue. I actually think one of the best things about the Catholic sexual ethic is that so many of the rules are designed to protect women from this type of treatment and exploitative sex within marriage.
Not sure how protective the rules are if they can also result in endless pregnancies...
I don't want to turn this comments section into a debate about Catholicism but at least anecdotally, several of my friends have avoided pregnancy for years at a time using NFP. The Marquette method is 99% effective. I understand that most people wouldn't be willing to commit to that, though.
Choking has never been the baseline and anal has always been something a man has to talk up a lot before even being considered a thinking. Including oral in this list was the mistake. Anyone who’s disgusted by oral shouldn’t be in a relationship with someone who enjoys it. That should be the basic baseline. That will mean removing the majority of men and women from your options but it is what it is. It’s like men refusing to wear condoms, very few women will accept it and they will have to accept the smaller dating pool.
I like sex with women, except [ABC] is dangerous, [XYZ] is objectively gross, every guy who says they enjoy [DEF] is a dirty dirty liar, and every guy who engages in [UVW] is just doing it to please their partner, which is an extremely not-okay thing to do. Sex with women is awesome!
Agreed. I’m no prude but those things are not (and never have been) part of my life
I’m genuinely confused by why you never acknowledged this in any of your many twitter responses making fun of the tweet. One of the things you retweeted was specifically about “anus-exclusionary radical feminism”.
That one in particular references the TERF, the trans-exclusionary radical feminist. "They are frequently anti-trans" in the 3rd graf in the section refers to this type of radfem.
Something notable about the movie: Aham is not a very good actor, even when playing Aham.
Should have imagined himself as the trumpet, which it sounds like he can play.
Hahahaha
I nearly died from laughing at the sex discourse. That's some pure old school twitter I used to love.
Right? I really missed this.
I wonder how actual lesbians feel about straight women who switch teams strictly out of hatred for men.
I’ve actually talked to several lesbians who experienced dating women like this and it was horrible lol
Can you please write an article about this
Yes, I’d love to see a CHH take on this, as well. From everything I’ve heard and read, actual lesbians HATE being the “experiment” for straight women. It’s a byword for heartbreak and drama.
Except for the bloc of lesbians whose greatest pleasure in life is bragging that they gave supposedly-straight women the best sex of their lives.
I will second Lana’s request for an article on this
How would you even have a normal relationship with someone you aren't attracted to and why would someone else enter it? If they're bisexual, that's one thing. Otherwise, they're just going to be one-night-stand targets.
Weirdly enough I was friends with a lesbian who did hate the idea of "political lesbians" and saw it as ridiculous. Then she became a TERF and was suddenly cool with it.
As a bisexual woman, I did once go on a date with a woman who later said (on the date) that she has no interest in having sex with women or being in a relationship with them yet continued to identify as a "proud bisexual" whenever Pride came around. I'm generally very open to people identifying as whatever they want but that incident really annoyed me.
pretty simple explanation for that; It’s possible she’s using the label for social signaling; i.e. she doesn't want to be seen as "just" a boring, straight woman
I don’t spend time fixating on it like these people do, since ultimately there are not that many of these people (I remember way back in the 2000s reading something by a “political lesbian” terf who was straight and how clearly she was making herself miserable by barring all relationships with the only people she’s sexually attracted to) but as a lesbian I’m not interested in political lesbians for the same reason I’m not interested in being with a straight woman “experimenting” — I want a partner who is attracted to me. That said, I’ve never found this to be an issue among the various lesbian and bi women I’ve dated, and not for not living in several very Discoursey deep-blue cities, if you will.
I've met a couple of political lesbians and I've actually lived in the southern US my whole life. If it is more common in conservative, Christian areas then I'd guess it's because of people trying to navigate their hang ups about sexuality and gender.
I’d imagine they also see heterosexual marriage as a rawer deal (or at least, more people conclude it is, even if it is in total still not a lot of people) in a place where people are more conservative overall.
Did she make you pay for the date? Seems on brand for someone saving that red flag until after things are arranged.
From my memory, we split the check. She was recently divorced so I'd like she was exploring her sexuality and didn't realize how she felt about being with a woman until she was actually confronted with it except that she posted about being a proud bisexual months later so who knows.
We avoid them like the plague. No one wants to be a consolation prize for someone who is not actually into other women. Straight women are terrible lays.
I happen to agree with the girls that a lot of anal sex when you’re young is coerced/convinced by young men who’ve watched too much porn. But the way they’re phrasing this sucks. And the inclusion of oral which is one of the great pleasures of sex is dumb.
Very silly but what do I know. Many men have told me it’s their greatest dream.
I would say forbidden things intrigue.
Then you try it and realise, hmm this isn't actually very fun or interesting at all.
Unlike oral sex in either direction.
>stinky and logistically difficult
That's what they said when I told them I wanted to go to law school >:(
Well I can say from actual action that the whole taboo thing was just super-motivating (not really any power dynamic for me) but after actual try, yes, once practice met taboo theory totally fell apart.
I suppose sort of effect vaguely like rape-fantasies for women in the chick-lit
But all the sex-positive replies on Twitter were talking about how it’s utterly crazy to see anal as in any way sadomasochistic.
Well sometimes you have to go to the hospital and any and all taboos overwhelm creating a medical emergency imo.
It never made any sense to me other than that it's taboo but also very mainstream, so it's a shorthand for "I like freaky women."
Two thoughts: 1) Increasingly, lots of conversation on sex online seems like it's being driven by people who've never had sex with a real human? The most egregious are the online Masculinity Influencers on Elon's Racist Trash Heap, but a lot of people talking about the inherently oppressive nature of types of sex seem to fall into that particular bucket.
2) On the general state of the public sphere. I am an Old Fart. I largely stay on Twitter even after it became what it is now out of force of habit, but it's, idk, kind of unrepresentative of the culture at large anymore? And Bluesky is forty-year-old Tumblrinas. So... where is the actual New, Fresh Stuff happening? I'd assume that for the last few years it's been The TikToks, but I'm too much of an old fart to be on TikTok. I was wondering if it would be possible to have some sort of CHH feature that looks at what the up-and-coming tastemakers are doing.
On your second question, I don't think there really is a space like that anymore. Even if young people are on tiktok, everything on there is too ephemeral to last longer than five minutes.
Maybe everything they know about sex comes from those AI videos featuring cheating, flatulent fruits: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/24/style/ai-cheating-fruit-slop-videos-tiktok.html?unlocked_article_code=1.W1A._1XJ.IMvfwe_JmEvp&smid=url-share (gift article)
Yes, really. There’s an entire genre of AI slop featuring strawberries cheating on their husbands with eggplants, or fruit husbands disgusted with their fruit wives for farting. Welcome to the AI future! EPCOT never dreamed of this!
It's beautiful.
Signal group chats & discords. The internet commons are too toxic and shitty so everything gets silo'd off into more niche channels. TikTok is the big one but it's still algorithms pushing extreme narratives so not the best substitute.
I think a lot of Social Media - Twitter & BlueSkye is generally comment that are the extreme & often vaguely mentally ill
This FT article although politics focused reviews social media (vs AI models) and notes social media posting tends to political extremes (baselined against reference population views: https://www.ft.com/content/3880176e-d3ac-4311-9052-fdfeaed56a0e?syn-25a6b1a6=1
I think we can extrapolate that generally beyond politics - we get served up the Kooks
As a fellow old, my understanding is that Instagram is still a large driver of twenty-something culture.
I came across this somewhere online once: “because it feels good” really is a good enough reason for him to ask you to do it. I generally agree. Obviously it goes both ways and applies to both sexual and non-sexual activities - like if your wife wants you take the family apple picking “because she thinks she will enjoy it”, then she should ask for it!
Reflecting on blowjobs — a great memoir title
Nothing on the inherent dangers of cunnilingus? Tongue-sprain is a thing, you know...
Didn't Michael Douglas claim it gave him throat cancer? See not so safe now is it
Apparently this is actually possible? Via HPV infection. Very rare though.
Actually there was a headline just the other day that more throat cancers in men are now linked to HPV than to smoking!
Interesting! Although I imagine that on a per-participant basis smoking still “wins”. Then again if you were to smoke 20 pussies a day…
He is vindicated because HPV from oral sex is the leading cause of throat cancer in men.
A lot of oral and throat cancers are now caused by HPV infection. But they are very rare.
"Chasing Amy" was way ahead of you: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wN-YiY4WK4E
I loved that movie.
Bad neck man, bad neck, wrong angle and goddamn it, get a neck ache for like minutes at least.
Of course Aham plays himself in a biopic that nobody asked for… honestly this is why I’m a pronatalist, this sort of thing could be avoided if everyone just had two toddlers strapped to them at all times
Funny enough he does have several kids
The more I find out about the man the worse he seems
Why would you punish two hypothetical toddlers by giving them a Baby Mama Making Machine for a father on a trumpet player's salary? There's no honor in pumping out children you don't take care or set bad examples for.
Wow way to get yourself cancelled by the global trumpet lobby
As a proud sapiosexual feminist every time a partner tries to give me oral I ask that they give me a 800 word essay on gender dynamics instead.
I expected some BJ pushback, but I didn't expect BJ reflection when Dworkin's "Pornography" was reissued last year. Hilarious.
"Then, the same person who said “REFLECT on the blowjob” criticized trans women for defending anal sex because it was “Israeli” of them."
Incredible - hey thanks, I really needed a belly laugh today! These posts are a valuable public service.