When people gather anonymously to talk about dancing in the shadow of drugs and sex, the energy in the room glows with a warm ball of white light. This feeling, I think, must be the immanence of healing. So much …
The vengeful ex-girlfriends of TikTok
The girl in the TikTok video is wearing joggers, a lime green bra, and — for some reason — a pink ski mask. Her hair is blonde and stringy. She climbs atop the kitchen counter, attempting a yoga arm balance …
How conservatives misunderstand grooming
Philosophers sometimes like to talk about “technological affordances” — basically, the possibilities of action that a new technology affords. Twitter’s affordances include the capacity to destroy one’s enemies without leaving the platform or otherwise breaking a sweat. This is the …
JK Rowling works her magic again
The launch of a sexual assault support centre for women is always good news but, when it is the brainchild of J.K. Rowling, it is very big news. Especially given the feminist philanthropist and world famous author has smartly taken …
Was the sexual revolution a government psy-op?
In the young, online manosphere, there is growing movement to refrain from masturbation as much as possible. This manifests itself every year in No Nut, or NoFap, November, a time for total abstinence from “fapping“, as certain online circles call …
Michel Houellebecq’s sexual apocalypse
Looking back, the National Public Radio building in midtown Manhattan felt like the centre of a dying world. I was set to appear on Fresh Air with Terry Gross, where, two days before my 33rd birthday, I would join the …
The forgotten genius of Compton Mackenzie
It was a most fortuitous shipwreck. The S.S. Politician floundered on rocks near the island of Eriskay in the Outer Hebrides in February 1941, cutting short its journey from Liverpool to the USA. The hull was breached and the ship …
Demisexuals are scared of sex
For the ten years leading up to 2019, I was the author of a teen advice column, and my agony aunt inbox was often an early warning system for whatever youth-driven phenomenon was on its way down the cultural pike. …
What’s wrong with queerbaiting?
Years ago, I wrote reviews for the imaginatively titled Film Review. One of my fellow critics was another gay man, who automatically loathed all gay-themed films, sight unseen. His stance was simple and forcefully expressed: “It’s always awful.” And he …
The year of the femcel
You may have already forgotten, but 2022 is supposed to be the year of the femcel. In case you have forgotten or never knew, a femcel is the female counterpart to an “incel”, or involuntarily celibate male, a woman who …
Mr Deepfakes can make you a porn star
It would be naive to assume that, because you’ve never performed in a porn video, you will never appear in one. In fact, these days, anyone with access to an image of your face can, in a matter of seconds …
How Smiley’s people conquered Britain
John le Carré, real name David Cornwell, was a spy, an absurdly successful English novelist and, we now learn from two new books about him, something of a shit. He is also an author whose work spoke to a particular …
Liberals have a fetish problem
Under what conditions should a person be free to indulge his sexual fetishes in public? This question was brought into stark relief last week at a school in Ontario, where the attire of a male teacher now identifying as a …
MeToo killed Game of Thrones
It must have been some time after the first brothel scene, but well before Jamie Lannister threw a child out of a window after being discovered mid-coitus with his twin sister, that the first audiences of HBO’s Game of Thrones …
A sex room won’t save your marriage
Looking back, I feel profoundly pleased that I was a hottie when I was: after the Pill but before AIDS. The Seventies brought to the masses the sexual free-for-all that the “Swinging Sixties” had only really offered the few. A …
