“I have a small penis”, Edmund White announces as he introduces his sex memoir, Loves of my Life. But this shortcoming, as the self-styled paterfamilias of queer literature reminds the reader again and again, has not prevented him from racking …
Beware the impurity spiral
Doomscrolling through the timeline this week, my eye was caught by an arresting headline. “I WAS A PASTOR. NOW I MAKE BANK ON ONLYFANS AND HAVE NEVER FELT MORE FULFILLED” it blared. Clicking despite myself, I found the story of …
There’s nothing sophisticated about sadists
The Marquis de Sade was obsessed with the torture of women. “Sex without pain is like food without taste,” he wrote — and his life was positively a buffet. When he was not writing horny screeds from behind bars in …
Neil Gaiman and the perils of BDSM
In the literary world this week, a hackneyed writing genre got an unexpected revival: the stern-faced #MeToo callout. Fearlessly exposing a famous person’s sexual impropriety for the scandalised enjoyment of all, the long read in New York Magazine took as …
On choking during sex
I don’t remember when I first became aware of the choking craze: I’m pushing 70, am barely online and generally not paying much attention to other people’s sex stuff. But I dimly recall maybe five years ago seeing an online …
How the internet perverts desire
Romantic love, one of the great organising forces in Western societies, is in crisis. Just look at the low fertility rates, and correspondingly high rates of singleness and sexlessness, in the contemporary West.
Or take divorce. Even high-profile advocates for …
Sex strikes are hot again
There are four simple principles to South Korea’s 4B movement. These are all refusals, since the “B” stands for “bi”, meaning “no” in Korean. No heterosexual marriage (bihon). No childbirth (bichulsan). No dating men (biyeonae). No sexual relationships with men …
What feminists get wrong about kink
If Oxford’s needlessly infamous sex-party scene (think the Piers Gav, or termly ketamine-fuelled fumblings in someone’s Cowley living room) is anything to go by, it’s a wonder anyone at all takes kink culture seriously. My sources assure me that spending …
Jilly Cooper knows what women want
How do you solve a problem like Rupert Campbell-Black? Since 1986, Jilly Cooper’s fictional show jumper has been mounting his way across the wives and daughters of her invented (but awfully familiar) county of Rutshire. Through 11 novels, the most …
How DEI is harassing yoga
A man named Javier urgently needs my help. He’s just hired a new associate named Raphael at the company where he works as a manager. Raphael is openly gay, which Javier is fine with, he quickly assures me — but …
How vanilla is your sexual fantasy?
If you are a child of the Seventies or Eighties, chances are that your formative sexual education was considerably influenced by rifling furtively through a Nancy Friday book. Even today, thanks to well-thumbed titles like My Secret Garden and Forbidden …
Will we survive the sex war?
Throughout history, the happy convergence of men and women — and their by-product, children — has driven human civilisation. No less than Freud saw this need for family as intrinsic: “Eros and Ananke [love and necessity],” he writes in Civilisation …
The march of Kamala’s brides
In a recent appearance before the National Association of Black Journalists, Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump caused a furore by questioning the racial “identity” of Democrat Kamala Harris. “Is she Indian or is she black?” Trump wondered. “I respect either …
Why prison guards have sex with inmates
As Britain’s summer of crisis continues, the penitentiary industrial complex could soon be overwhelmed. Not because of a lack of resources: estimates put the prisons’ budget at £4 billion. And it’s not for a lack of bipartisan thinking: the Labour …
Freud is coming for your kids
According to an old joke, Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung are enjoying some pastries in a Viennese coffee shop. The younger analyst hesitantly asks the elder: “Tell me, Herr Professor Freud… vat lies between fear und sex?”. With furrowed brow, …