The 10 Commandments of Sex

Human sexuality comes with a list of rules long enough to traverse the earth five times: Thou shalt get hard on command or we shall declare your sexuality pathological. Thou shalt not take more than 10 minutes to reach orgasm. Thou shalt have a tidy vagina that lubricates on cue, and once you've peaked, thou shalt have a short refractory period.

If you're a man, thou shalt not enjoy sex so much that you get carried away. Think about your Aunty Mabel and practice breathing techniques complicated enough to become a new kind of yoga because, if you forget about our expectations of your orgasm, you might just have too much fun.

If you own a vagina, thou shalt always enjoy sex enough to get carried away. Yes, every time. Thou shalt become the Scream Queen of Smut or we shall declare you a crap lay.

For women, an early orgasm is an achievement. For men, it's a disease.

We want cocks that aren’t too big or too small, and we want them uncut (or cut). We want vaginas that aren't too slack or too dry, and we want breasts that don't droop. Where men are required to finish later, women are required to finish sooner. This is our cookie cutter, and if you can't fit into it, you have a sexual disorder. Yes, this sex business is serious, especially when it comes to kink.

If you aren't the most extreme of submissives, your description of yourself must be preceded by the word "just." Nobody 'round here is a bottom. Nope. They're just a bottom. Get it right. There's a hierarchy in BDSM, and slave is right at the top of the list. Bottoms and tops are lesser mortals because we forgot that this stuff is supposed to be rewarding. If you're a service top, don't even think about admitting it. Sometimes, I wonder if we're really more sex-positive than our vanilla brethren.

Sex-positivity is defined as "having or promoting an open, tolerant, progressive attitude towards sex and sexuality." The kink scene gets some of that right. We foster tolerance when we first find Fetlife, but then we stumble on that godawful hierarchy and decide we'd really rather be the best one on the pile.

Sex has become performative, so thou shalt only have fun if you meet this list of 5, 000 expectations. This is serious business. God knows there aren't any starving children in Africa to worry about, so there's plenty of time to judge Frank for owning foreskin. 

I don't fit into round holes or square holes. My spine has enough of a hollow to qualify as a canyon and my knees have fallen in love with each other. I run like a duck, left foot splayed towards Kabaa and right, towards Antarctica. My heart is too small and my palate, too high. Only three quarters of my hair is straight. I have perfect spirals at the ears because Zeus decided I should look like an Hasid.  I don’t have time to ask him why because I’m too busy ironing my sidelocks. 

You could say I have a quirky body </understatement>, but my father taught me that that was a good thing. "Imagine if everyone was exactly like you," he used to say. "How boring the world would be."

I once asked him if he was disappointed in me. He said, "I love you. You can't disappoint me," so if you don't mind, I'm going to stop apologising to people I've never met for things they'll never know. I'm just an ordinary person who's finding joy in her world.

Isn't that one of the finest goals any of us can have?