“I don’t perceive many things as taboos because I have few sacred cows of my own. I did once play a scene that involved two people playing the parts of my religious uncle and aunt, although obviously we weren’t related in real life, beating the shit out of me because they caught me masturbating. As they beat me with a strap they told me to beg Jesus for forgiveness”. Surely you can’t publish this, can you?
Girl On The Net is an anonymous sex writer, with an immensely popular blog with a purpose to “be a sticky, filthy look at sex” and a book which is “part erotica, part manifesto”. She seems shocked that Vision is allowed to answer the probing questions I ask, and the frank and honest (and slightly naughty) answers she gives in return, repeating “are you allowed to publish this!?” at regular intervals!
Her blog has a wider message than just writing about her sexual conquests and getting people off; she emphasized that “sex is still often seen as something that men want and women give to them, rather than something we women can revel and delight in for the sheer joy of doing it. Every day I see something new that implies men want sex and women want money, chocolate, shoes: anything but sex. The blog’s my way of challenging that.”
She, of course, has to be anonymous. Most jobs, sadly, would not hire someone who openly wrote on the internet about how they enjoyed men ejaculating into their arsecrack. “I’m pretty sad that I have to be anonymous, to be honest. It’s mainly because – until I can guarantee that I will make enough money from sex writing, I have to keep the doors open to having a ‘clean’ career.
Regardless of how open people might be about sex, there’s a worrying increase in the number of companies who’ll raid your social media profiles and either fire, or refuse to hire you if you say something controversial. That may or may not include talking about what you do with your fanny.”
Anonymity isn’t always a bad thing though. Girl on the net receives stories, confessions and pictures of peoples genitals to her email, from people who open up because of her anonymity. “It is hands down, the best thing about what I do. People email me and say “hey, I did something really filthy the other day and I’ve no one to talk to about it, so I’m just going to tell you the story because it sounds like you’ll appreciate it.” And I really do.”
When I asked about the most taboo thing that a fan sent her, she couldn’t answer to protect their anonymity. However, she did share one story. “a guy once sent me a video of himself jerking off in a nappy. Nappies don’t really do it for me, but it was so clearly something he LOVED, and he made this intensely hot grunting noise just as he came, and it made my head spin with lust. That was pretty amazing.”
Sex is a two (or more!) way street. GOTN’s blogs all involve other people, I asked what her sexual partners made of being wrote about in such a way. “Most of the guys I write about know they feature. Some of them have deliberately not read what I’ve written because it might be sad for them to remember. Others have gleefully embraced it. Others have masturbated furiously over it, then emailed me to say “I have genuinely never seen myself in such a hot light before.” I love it when that happens.”
One of the great things about GOTN’s writing is that sex isn’t written about as if it is a hushed sacrament- it is exalted for the messy, sticky and awkward thing it sometimes can be, which is a fantastic thing, because we are all human and are not going to all act like pornstars all the time in the sack. I asked her about her funniest sexual mishap.
“Here’s a story I haven’t told: when I was with my first boyfriend, as soon as we were alone together in a room we would get naked and do sticky things to each other. One day, we were doing exactly this, and the phone in his house rang. His Mum grabbed the cordless phone from the kitchen, and wandered into his room. “Gotn,” she said, “it’s for you.”
“It was only when she got to the end of ‘you’ that she realised we were both entirely naked and entwined like we wanted to meld into one being. She stood there for about three seconds looking a bit surprised, then calmly walked over to the bedside table, put the phone down, rolled her eyes and left. That eye-rolling still kills me to this day. She was a fantastically sarcastic lady.”
Although sex can be funny, GOTN still thinks that sex is something that we should take seriously. “We should take it seriously as a societyand also as individuals understanding and embracing what you like (or don’t like) sexually, makes for much happier people. In my opinion.
Also, from a ‘sex and comedy’ perspective, if you squeeze my boobs and make honk honk noises, I will get someone to play the Benny Hill music while I drop-kick you into the sea.”
Sex is something that lots of us treat as a taboo, we speak about it in innuendoes and hushed tones, and would probably look at someone like they were mental if they started shouting about it like Samantha in Sex and the City. GOTN spoke to me about the relationships between taboos and sex.
When asked whether sex should be a taboo, she gave an emphatic “Hell, no!”. However, “Breaking taboos can make for more playful sex. For instance, I am a big fan of consensual non-consent. This is deeply controversial, but actually it’s just a fun thing I do with my partner, because I like the physical sensation of struggling against him. But is it really breaking a taboo? I persuade myself at the time, although in reality, whenever I get unhappy, he’ll break off and go and make me a sandwich.”
I asked whether the taboo nature of the stuff she writes, and the phrases she uses (“Fuck me in the ass because it’s filthy”) is done on purpose to draw people into the blog. She said no; “I use language like that because I love language, and I adore words, and I particularly adore those words. I sometimes spend hours reviewing certain blog posts because I feel like they’re hot but the language I’ve used hasn’t actually summed up exactly how hot it is. Plosive, angry, sweary words get across the guttural, animal lust way better than flowery metaphor and euphemism, in my opinion.”
She gave us a sneak peek into her book; which you can by from Amazon here
There’s a wide, deep, stormy ocean of difference between something that’s sexy and something that’s hot. Hot hot. It’s the difference between something that makes you go ‘ooh’, and something that makes you go ‘unnngh’.
If a guy grabs me around the waist and pulls me towards him gently, there’ll be a tingling sensation in my limbs, something that says ‘hey, this is interesting. Pay attention.’ That’s an ‘ooh’ moment, and it’s sexy as hell. But if that same guy puts the same hands firmly around my waist and spins me around before pulling me towards him, pushing his swollen cock firmly up against my arse so I can feel it rubbing against me? That’s ‘unnngh’. I feel a kick, deep in my stomach, as my whole body responds. I have no control over it – I don’t need to pay attention, it happens automatically. My muscles tense, my cunt starts to get slick, and waves of longing shoot up and down my arms.
That feeling? That’s the feeling spanking gives me. Not for the whole session – I’m not overcome by gut-punching lust throughout. There’s a ‘pay attention’ atmosphere as I’m lying, or kneeling, or sitting semi-naked and waiting for the first thwack. But then, inevitably, something will happen that brings that hot hot feeling to the fore.
The first slap. Unnngh.
A whispered “pull down your fucking knickers.” Argh.
The sound of a belt being pulled through the loops of his trousers. Oh God.
It’s those things I’m chasing, not the pain. The pain is a sideshow. The pain is an accessory. The pain is not the point.”
So, her writing is more frank and natural than a publication like Cosmo which talks about sex in hushed ‘cheeky’ innuendoes. However, Cosmo and the like are not seen to be breaking taboos. She answered; “because Cosmo goes just far enough to be able to describe it as ‘naughty’ but never far enough to shock people. Consider your own sex life – all the details, the mistakes, the messes, the hilarious farting incidents, the fantasies in your head that you’ve never told anyone: does it sound like a Cosmo article to you?”
Cosmo is mainstream because it goes so far but no further. So it benefits from this reticence by being able to be widely shared and talked about, and grab ad dollars aplenty. But the huge detriment of this is that… well… it’s just not true. While individual sex tips might work for some people, and some Cosmo articles might ring true to individuals, the narrative they use is one of a homogenous mass of womanhood, who all desire the same things in the same ways. And that is so far from the truth it makes me sad for the people who’ve been encouraged to believe it.”
To close, I asked her to give us a non-Cosmo sex tip.
“I used this for someone else the other day and they didn’t print it, but I’m going to keep using it as my top tip because it’s great:
Never ever “confess” your fantasies – enjoy them, boast about them, revel in them. Enthusiasm is one of the greatest aphrodisiacs.”
Follow her blog here and buy her fantastic book on Amazon!
Helena interviews Helena.