Asides

Dr Eleanor Janega on Sarah Everard and the idea that we need the return to chivalry and knights in shining armour:

I am very sorry to tell you this, but those [knights saving pretty ladies] were not real. No grails were found. No Green Knights bested. Thinking this literature is indicative of actual events on the ground would be like believing that superheroes exist based on our cultural output at the moment. It just is not the case.

Choice quote from a lovely parenthood read for this Saturday morning:

More recently she has made the decision to avoid males altogether until she meets one who is grown up enough to be worthy of her.

If necessity is the mother of invention, then pain is the mother of words.

Going Medieval’s post on masculinity and disease is so good 👌🏻. Maybe I should just start posting every single thing she writes.

Let’s see if this wets your appetite:

Within this system, men were by definition considered to be hot and dry. Women, defined in opposition to men, were therefore cold and wet.

Such a lovely post by Amy over at Coffee & Kink:

And sex with someone I’ve loved forever? For me, that’s where the really good stuff is. When there’s no pressure to be perfect. No worries about what if we don’t fit, what if it doesn’t work, what if what if what if…

I had heard of the Hite Report but really was unaware of the work and career of Shere Hite, who died a few weeks ago. Dr. Marty Klein has a good resume of the impact of her work.

Reading the Going Medieval blog is my current addiction:

The thing about women, even those who meet […] the ideal is that we are not convenient. We are people. We aren’t energy bunnies. We can take care of the anchor, and we’re offended when you act like we can’t. We are aware of the male gaze, how it attempts to turn us into a list of attributes and strip away the “us” at our core as it does. The opinions, the flaws, the objections to profit from our own work – all of these things have no place alongside the ideal and so when they emerge they are attacked as proof of our own unworthiness, an example of how we can never really be “perfect” and why constructions are preferable.

Just saw this little sex-positive nugget:

[…] to see sexuality as celebratory and life-affirming.

From Marty Klein.

I’m a sucker for evocations of touch and this little piece in The Guardian by Hannah Jane Parkinson hits the spot:

But it was touching that woman and her touching me […] that altered my life. It shook my brain and restarted my heart, but most of all, it elevated touch to a whole new level.

Not that I would recommend that stuff (seriously, there are so many great options out there for sex play), but out of a moment of shear curiosity I found that the meaning of the K and Y in “K-Y Jelly” is unknown. For a product introduced in 1904, I’m not sure whether that’s interesting or concerning…