When the blood had spilled and screams for the 14 dead women faded into muffled tears, it was found that the gunman had left a note explaining his actions — he’d wanted to kill feminists for making his life so much harder, thanks to quotas and changes in hiring practices.

I don’t remember where I was when I’d heard about the killings, but I remember slowly growing aware of what happened and why. I remember the confusion I’d felt as as a 16-year-old and the anger and fear this massacre opened in me.

In 1989, things were pretty “advanced” for women already. We had the old soul sisters Annie Lennox and Aretha Franklin belting out that “sisters are doin’ it for themselves,” and movies like Baby Boom were showing that women no longer felt they had to have a man in order to make a “family” work.

I knew I could do anything I wanted to — that being a female really didn’t mean much anymore. Or did it?

Then, all my naivete changed.

In only a moment I realized our advances weren’t done. We weren’t equal. There was hatred out there and confusion, and while we were getting ahead, some men were getting left behind… and that isn’t equality.

Despite my understanding that, there is nothing in this world that justifies what Marc Lepine did that day.

But in the years since, I’ve come to learn that one person’s advances at the price of another person’s compromises, it doesn’t fix problems, it just changes the problem and makes it someone else’s.

Today I worry about still-pushy, still-militant extremist feminists who are happy to trample on men’s rights in order to have more rights for women. Tilting the imbalance in favour of either sex is wrong. It always has been, it always will be.

I believe in feminism. I believe I am able to do anything I want. I believe the world is more or less ready for this from me. I have faith we’re mostly headed in the right direction.

That doesn’t mean I don’t think we have problems still.

It’s a good thing the movement isn’t defined largely by the militant voices out there, but when those militant voices speak louder than any others, it’s important that those of us with voices of reason wade into the fray as well.

Feminism isn’t the problem. Assholes are.

Anyone who thinks their needs are more important than others? They’re an asshole.

When we fight with the whole “my side is more important than your side” argument — in politics, love, society — it always drives a wedge between us. Look at Red vs. Blue in the United States since about ‘98. Is that approach improving anything? How could it possibly help in any other social struggle, then?

Sigh.

So, when December 6th rolls around every year, it reminds me how tragic the consequences of divisive ideologies can be. It reminds me how crucial it is that we remember our society is deep and vast, and no one group should be left out in favour of the others. It reminds me how much the forgotten, marginalized classes can stew in rage, and how explosive the fallout can be when left unchecked for too long.

But December 6th’s lessons don’t stop there for me.

Yearly, I remember how important my freedoms as a modern femme are.

And I remember how angry I get at youthful women who don’t understand the prices paid long before them so they can do whatever they want, while some seem to throw the rights away on a whim.

And I remember how much it hurts to see girls today dumbing themselves down to get the boys they want, when these 14 women were murdered because they believed they were as smart, or smarter, than the boys, and went to engineering school to prove it. (One of my best rants ever, about the dumbing down of femmes, is here.)

And I remember that, only 100 years ago, it was only white men who held all the cards in society — not women, not blacks. Just white men.

And I remember how far we’ve come, how far we have to go, but in so doing, I also am aware of how much the dialogue has changed and grown.

In remembering, I find myself hopeful — despite all the flaws in society and the fears I feel looking at a largely ignorant generation of young girls — that there are enough quality people with dreams and ideas for a better place in the years ahead.

After all, in only a hundred years, we’ve toppled the pedestal upon which the mighty white male was perched for so long. There’s a black president, gay marriage, women in office, female billionaires who’ve never married, and so much more. All in a hundred years, after thousands of years of oppression and division.

In the end, I remember most of all that the change is gonna come. As a society, we’re now mostly moving in open directions. Right usually overcomes wrong. The populace has a greater voice than ever. We don’t need to use militant force anymore, we don’t need to drive hateful wedges between us.

We need to remember we’ve come so very far, and we’ve further to go, but the faster and harder we get there, the more confused and angry some people might be when left behind.

And that leaves me remembering on December 6th that the most important thing I can do is to never, ever forget.

Les femmes, souvenons-nous: 6 décembre 1989.

There’s an app for everything!

Like iPeriod.

Men, before you go “ACK, NO, NOT PERIOD TALK” — think about the brilliance here. AN EARLY WARNING SYSTEM. A bitchy-factor crystal ball! All for you! You wanted it… they invented it.

What if you KNEW when your wife’s period was due? What if you could plug into your little iPhone what days she’s being REALLY bitchy for no reason, and your iPhone could track patterns and warn you about when to expect her moody days, when her cycle will start, and when you should be worried?

iPeriod is making a lot of women very happy because they finally have a more scientific way of knowing when Nature’s Course Will Run, and also because it’s teaching us more about how cycles work — not really something we’re ever taught by Moms, schools, or doctors.

If men think our periods are confusing, wait’ll you try living on the other side of one.

Either way, this app is fucking brilliant. Its applications for women AND men are fantastic. I wonder how much simpler it’d make some marriages if guys could just check their iPhones and go, “Uh-huh. She goes on the rag on Saturday. Jesus, now it all makes sense.”

Personally, I think the Vegas rule should apply to PMS too.

What happens during PMS, stays in PMS. After all, we all know PMS is easily one of the stupidest fucking phenomena around. I mean, it’s a DEFENSE FOR MURDER! Let’s not kid ourselves here. BOTH sexes can prepare for the Stupid Asinine Parade of Shitty that comes wrapped up in the guise of Women’s Bodily Mechanics? Wow, well, both sexes COULD use a little less randomness with that crap.

Perhaps even MORE encouragement for men to be interested in this? Well, any SAVVY guy knows a women is most, um, aroused and horny the day before a period arrives. Imagine what that kind of powerful knowledge might do for the average undersexed suburban husband, huh?

I open mine up today and an alert flashes that tells me it looms in a few days. I can cancel things if I want, plan my work week as well as workouts in anticipation of it, and just generally be aware that, yes, I’ll be increasingly short-tempered for no reason in the next few days, and now I can plan ahead to try and out-think the stupidity of PMS.

But if I was a man, I’d be just as thrilled for the early warning. At least I could hide or arrange a golf-day with buddies.

iPeriod, saving sanity one cycle at a time.*

*Worth noting that the same developers have come up with iPregnant, worth investigating if you’re expecting.

Do YOU follow me on Twitter? Why don’t you? You can, and you should. Do so here.

I’m not much of a reader anymore, though, so the book has woefully sat there in the pile of “things I really do want to do, but wish I had the time to get around to” and NOW is the time. Some 25 pages in, I’ve scanned over the book, and while it may not be something _I_ will sit down and read in one sitting (let’s face it, it isn’t Harry Potter), I think it covers a fantastic range of topics and I’m really looking forward to being inspired by the way she tackles some of them.

So far, I think Herbenick hits all the right notes that most women need to understand about sex — it’s not just “well, if you put this here, it’s great”, but it’s not rocket science either. It’s mostly about overcoming your shit, being comfortable with your body, and being more confident about what sexuality is and requires.

Basically, it’s about reading books like this and learning more about yourself. I’ve found myself nodding about 20 times, just in reading the little I have and scanning the rest of the book. I’m pretty comfortable in thinking it’ll be one I’m happy to recommend. Too many sex books focus on too few areas, and too many expansive ones don’t talk about things in an accessible way. I think this falls in the middle.

Which, when it comes to sex, I find is a pretty good place to be. Let’s see where it goes. Instead of a traditional “review” posting, I’ll be writing a few posts based on the book in the coming weeks, and will review aspects of it in each.

Meanwhile, I’m off for Thanksgiving turkey! Happy Thanksgiving, Canada!

But it doesn’t really ease my mind.

The reality is, I know something’s different. So if that’s not it, what? But I’ve changed so much in my life in the last 18 months, and so much has changed on me, that a starting point for what’s going wrong is not so easy to find, since change isn’t always easy to peg as “right” or “wrong”.

See, my problem is, I was a perenially sick kid. They didn’t know what was wrong with me, but serious shit was. Turns out I had a rare kidney disease (wound up documented in medical journals for it but it has long since gone into remission) that affected me until I was 13 or so. But they did test after test after test after test that never indicated anything “really” was wrong. Except for my nearly-dead left kidney, that is, and the fact that I kept missing school and winding up in Emergency.

So I don’t really trust tests. They’re misleading.

I’m not gonna sit around all paranoid and doomsdayish, either, but I’ll certainly be a little concerned, I’m sure. Why shouldn’t I be?

Fortunately, it’s only for about 3 or 4 days every second month that I have any issues, so I can put it out of my mind most of the time.

After all this, I’m motivated to really take a look at the diet and nutrition areas of my life these days. Moreso now out of fear of the future and a desire to change an outcome I may have predetermined with my three decades of horribly unfit living. It’s never too late, I’m told. And now’s a good time, right?

Not like I don’t have momentum. Or like I haven’t been doing the inside-the-box thinking along the lines of healthy eating and such. But now I’m thinking outside the box and willing to take bigger actions.*

Later this summer when, I hope, my finances should settle down a bit, I want to start sessions with a naturopath. That’s the next level, after dealing with the aesthetics of weight-loss, the actualizing of the health I’ve always longed for.

When it comes to health, I’ve got a laundry list of issues I’ve dealt with, lived with, or overcome in my life, and the road to where I’m going is still very much uphill.

I don’t have the resolve for healthy eating I really need, not yet. But I’m eating less crap all the time, and my choices keep improving, even if only in bits. Well, most of the time. I still have butter in the fridge, for instance.

Little scares like this, though…

They make you go, “Whoa. What am I doing to myself, really, over the longterm? More importantly, what am I doing FOR myself?”

And, sure, I’ve made FANTASTIC achievements in my health-realm. But I need more. That I need to accomplish more and have further to go doesn’t discount what I’ve done already, not by a long shot. It just reinforces how much is possible, given the magnitude of what has already been done.

I will get there.

I just hate reminders of how far from the peak of this I am. But I guess that’s life for us, we’re always never where we’re going; we’re always journeying. So it’s not really about where you need to get to or where you’ve been, it’s more about whether you’re standing still or keeping on keeping on.

And I suppose that’s some of what’s frustrating me — my injury, etc, I’ve been stagnating and standing still, but moreso because I’ve chosen to act differently. I’m drinking more is the one big change in my life — and now my weight is standing still again. All because I’ve fallen in love with wine again. At least I’m not gaining, but I’m not doing what I want. If I could exercise at the capacity I’d like, that wouldn’t be an issue. But I can’t, so it is, and whose fault is it? Precisely.

Ahh, well. Rome wasn’t built in a day. That’s what I wrote on the first page of the journal I began to commemorate my struggles. Not in a day, not in a year, not even in a lifetime, was Rome built.

This I know.

And now I know the answer to my ultrasound, too. Am I convinced? No. But I’m a little relieved, and that’s something.

I will get there.

*Something occurred to me last week, funny enough, after I saw something in passing in the media… perhaps I’ve got some lead in me. You know, heavy metals? I doubt I’d have much lead-poisoning, but it’s possible. See, I’ve been eating daily for the last 2-3 years off of the dishes my folks bought in Mexico in ‘79, and Mexico and China are famous for using leaded glazes. So, I thought “Oh, I wonder what the symptoms are.” Peeked. And hey, I have most of those symptoms in any given week. Really mildly, right, but they’re there.

They’re on the table, awaiting discarding now. I need to figure out what one should do with potentially lead-unsafe dishes. Still, it’s kind of funny. Fuck, I love those dishes! So does Gayboy, he’ll be disheartened. I’ll get a blood test and then be done with this theory too. :)

I have nothing more to really say about it. I know nothing. Que sera sera.

I had an ultrasound. Anything there? I don’t know. When my technician found the ovaries, her demeanour changed. The conversation about my mother’s disease/death unravelled me a little at the start.

She had made somewhat-small talk with other orderlies around the waiting area and struck me as the nosey obsessive type who likes details, before I even knew she’d be my ultrasound-reading-chick. Thus, I’m trying not to read much into her work methods.

But it is what it is. I knew an air of intrigue would accompany things. I know I’m statistically probably fine. Good. Great. Then let’s get there and affirm that, shall we?

And yet, no.

So, I wait. So far that has meant eating rather bad food and watching lots of movies. We do what we gotta do so we can do what we wanna do.

But the ultrasound itself? Dead on-time. I was out of the hospital 20 minutes from my appointment time, even went in early. No big deal. That’s the easy part.

The hard part’s what takes place underneath my skull. And inside my chest? Whew.

That’s a real fuckin’ humdinger.

Either way, I come out of this with some changed perceptions. Welcome to Life By-Bump-In-The-Night 101. Buckle up.

Please comment, but don’t do the well-meaning “Oh, Steff, you poor thing” stuff, ‘cos that usually gets me worked up and thinking I should be feeling sorry for myself rather than succeeding being strong.

_________________

So, I know it’s a full moon night. I know I’m overtired anyhow. I know my week was daunting the fuck out of me to begin with. I know these things. I’m sure this is nothing. I know THAT, too.

Nonetheless, my mind went spinning a million directions. Tears were had. More than once. And in my open-space office, even.

But you don’t even know why, so now we’ll back it up a bit.

In April, I had a pretty horrifically painful menstrual cycle that went off-the-rails different from what it normally has been like. “Different” isn’t good, methinks. My friend at work asked me if it was bad like that EVERY month lately, or just every second month. That’s when I first realized it’d been every second month of late, but that I was able to dismiss it because of my back injury. Maybe it wasn’t, it could be something with just one of the ovaries, then, she suggested, and mentioned I should see the doctor. Good point, I thought.

Well, I finally got there last week, and casually mentioned it to him, and said I had some concerns, given my mother died of very rare and aggressive ovarian & uteran cancer.

He sort of shrugged it off and said, “Oh, there could be a lot of minor reasons for that, nothing to have big concerns about. But, hey, let’s get an ultrasound anyhow.”

Well, this is Canada. Land of Waiting. I don’t need to PAY for the ultrasound, not even a user fee, but we do usually wait a matter of several weeks.

So, I get the call this morning. “Okay, your ultrasound’s on Saturday, and it’s important–”

And then, suddenly, wham: Alarm bells.

Now, I’m smart enough to realize “Hey, it’s Saturday, the summer, weather’s great… someone’s probably cancelled and they squeezed me in to be on the safe side,” but the girl-who-lost-her-mother inside of me, well, she’s got a different take on things.

Her take’s a little more emotional paranoia. “This week? In a socialist system? THAT CAN’T BE GOOD. ”

That’s the way that cookie crumbles, though. When you’ve gone through these things, THAT is your frame of reference. “Mom went in for something minor; six months later she was dead.”

THAT is MY frame of reference. And try as I might, as an intelligent and strong and passionate woman, to fight that mentality with logic and probability and everything I know about psychology, well, it’s a rocky battle and one with no clear outcome.

Because the heart often overrules the mind. If we don’t know this already, we should. The heart inspires the worst of crimes, the greatest of tragedies, and the most enduring of stupidities. Trying to bitch-slap it with logic is pretty futile at the best of times, and I’m smart enough to grasp that in all its importance.

I have The Fear. I know The Fear. I’m well-acquainted with The Fear, but it’s been awhile since we spent a night together.

Shaking these things off and beating myself up about them is the wrong way to go. I have EVERY reason to be reacting as I am. Anyone would have any reason to do so.

It’s not like I’m over here quivering with terror, making a will, or anything moronic like that. No, my reaction was to:  cancel a couple appointments later this week to take the pressure off my schedule, tell my friend I was bailing on him for my concert, go into work, tell them I need a personal day, work a good and productive day to clear both my slate and my conscience, go to the grocery store to stock up on healthy eats, and plan a 35km bike ride on my day off.

THAT’s how we “give in to The Fear” at Chez Steff.

Tonight is for me. Tomorrow too. And I’m not going to feel sorry for myself or get all wimpy in the face of being scared-and-waiting, instead I’m using it as a good time to reassess where I think I’ve been going wrong with my life of late. (Because as much as I’ve been doing right, there are many areas I feel I’m failing in. I mean, if I’m honest with myself. Because how often are we, really?)

But I’ve been thinking. I’m one of these people who’s often more content to “ride it out” when it comes to feeling like shit or thinking I’m off-kilter. My assumption usually is, “It’ll be fine.”

Well, I suspect that’s why my mother died at 57 instead of living long enough to see me become the woman she’d always wanted me to be more like. She didn’t worry much about herself, and never as often as she should have, either. She had Selfless-Mother Syndrome, like many women out there do, and she’s dead now because of it. [Which gives me an occasion to say this: Care more about yourselves, Moms, instead of always putting your kids first, because not caring about yourself might make you dead sooner than you should be, and that's no fucking way to put your kid first.]

I’ve been trying to change that irrelevance-of-self nurture that was instilled in me. I mention more to my doctor now. I swallow more of my pride, even when it involved icky bodily functions none of us enjoy mentioning. I figure it’s time. It’s time I get invested in this live-as-long-as-I-can thing. It’s time I don’t just eat “all right” and get good exercise, but that I confront any physical worries I may have as soon as I’m able, and with a real-live professional, not some faceless authority on the internet.

Well before this morning I had already thought about the possible connection to my mother’s health — since the only cancer I’m at direct risk of, regardless of all the other cancer in my family, is what my mother died of, but even that isn’t known to have direct genetic links. Thank god. It’s still possible, though, I’ve been told, and something we’ll aggressively screen me for yearly, as of this year. Something about getting that call this morning, though, and my to-be-expected reaction of “That SOON? In socialist medicare?” and my dealing-with-it-ness went right off the hook.

But I handled my meltdown textbook. I’m still in a shitty mood, but I’ve handled it textbook. I’m owning it, experiencing it, challenging it, and using it as an opportunity to effect change, regardless of the outcome when I get that ultrasound.

Deep down inside, I expect this will all be just fine. Better yet, I think it’ll make me a better and more compassionate person. Most adversities tend to grow me a little. I suspect a week or so from now I’ll have a little more appreciation for my oh-so-ordinary life.

And I suspect that, at the end of this, this will all have been for the better.

But that still leaves tonight. And tomorrow. And all the curious hours of unknowing and waiting in between.

Yet? Que sera, sera.

[I may not know for a week or two what the results are. Don't ask me or pester me. Thanks. You know what you need to when you need to know it.]

A particular blog post from someone in the sex blogging community is ridiculously sexist and moronic in its simplicity, in my opinion. Because I don’t feel the need to sling mud and hurt anyone’s reputations, I’ll leave it anonymous.

The blogger in question had a shitty day. Some guy, after she admitted she was responsible for causing a car accident, mouthed off with “It’s always the woman’s fault.” Because of this, she turned around and decided to slag all “privileged white males” as being asses.

Now, if she’d gone and said instead that she WORKS with privileged white males who are all asses, that’d be different, but her post more or less painted all as the same, and THAT is something I have a problem with.

Here’s the deal.

Life’s tough. It’s difficult. We’ve got billions of people on this planet, and every one of us thinks we’re entitled in one way or another. We have to play well with each other.

You can believe in anything you want, but when it comes to getting six-billion-plus people onto a pretty even keel, the best way to tackle things is with a heavy dose of Immanuel Kant — whatever works for the greater good and the greater good would be served if we could all just get past this who’s-better bullshit and agree that we’re all in it together.

Feminism isn’t about hating men. It’s not about being better than them. It’s about saying HEY, WE can do that too. WE are just as smart. WE are a part of the solution. WE can contribute. WE have ideas that can benefit us all. WE deserve equal pay for equal work. WE have earned respect. WE can be whatever we dream.

It’s not about “well, you had your time, MEN, and now it’s OUR time, so fuck off and die.” What is that bullshit, anyhow?

If you’re the kind of feminist who has to spell “women” as “womyn”, then I’m probably going to disagree with you, because when you even have to change the spelling of the pronoun, you’re trying to say you have NOTHING in common with men, that you’re entirely different, and thus deserve to be treated as such. Which… correct me if I’m wrong, is kind of what got us into this pickle. Seriously. Stick to the issues and get over the spelling bullshit, okay?

Which brings us back to the actual struggle for rights.

If you are gaining anything at the expense of someone else, then that person is still losing. The scales are still tipped — just in a way that caters to YOU, not them.

This isn’t about either side being victorious. It’s about finally figuring out a way to get all the paddlers in the same boat heading in the same direction. That’s all. The future of our planet depends on it! Look at all the problems we face — the environment, finances, human rights, food shortages, water levels. We NEED EVERYONE working on this shit. We need every idea we can get. We need teamwork, not exclusion, not hate, not division.

And, while we’re at it, the women hating on men? They’re not “feminazis”, and I’m sick as fuck of hearing that term, even though I LOATHE the exclusionist ways of those women. They’re EXTREMISTS, not Nazis.

I’m sick of the overuse of the word “Nazi”, period — whether it’s denigrating some dictator like Hugo Chavez or some militant person in charge of others,  I don’t give a shit — I won’t sling the word “Nazi” around like everyone else does.

Nazis killed 6 million Jews and more folk besides. Let’s keep “Nazis” exactly where they belong in history — as one of the most destructive regimes to ever rule — and not belittle the horrors they committed by slapping their moniker on people who are a little too gung-ho for our tastes just because it’s cute and makes those folk look meaner.

If you’re a feminist, great. Be proud of your sex, celebrate your abilities, and don’t let anyone tell you that you “can’t” just because it’s usually men who “can”.

But don’t go hating on men and thinking that makes you better than them. It just makes you a hypocrite. Want to be better than narrow-minded people? Then don’t be one.

Enough said. Get over yourself.

(Oh, and chauvinists can fuck themselves too. Extremists on both sides need to get over their shit and open their eyes. The rest of us are waiting.)

Periods are a necessary evil in every woman’s life. What can we do? It’s there. Monthly. Looming dangerously and tauntingly on every lunar cycle.

My time used to be the full moon. Now, for some reason, I’m magically on the waxing half-moon. Which means I got caught by surprise at work. On a Monday. So, yeah, that happened. Nothing horrible, thank goodness. Just “Well, this is five days early. That’s lovely. And fuck you too.”

I never had a cunty-phase, though. I always have a “cuntday” a couple days before my period, sometimes the day before. I generally always have one great “ranting” bog post a month. You do the math.

Sometimes the angry-angry-femme mood breaks like a waving crashing over you on California, right when the period happens. It’s a weird thing. Just, it’s there, then whoosh, it’s suddenly not. Like a Hogwarts class in disapparating.

Men can’t ever understand it, but god knows I hope they do. I’m on a mission that way. It’s doing us both a favour if men ever really start to understand what an utter mindfuck the hormonal yoke of period is. Really.

Let me digress a moment: I hate talking about periods. I won’t EVER tell you about my flow. Women who talk about that shit fucking ANNOY me.

Three things I don’t EVER need to know about with any of you, okay? How you’re pissing, shitting, or flowing. Please. NONE of us needs to know that ABOUT ANYONE. EVER. Ugh. Big pet peeve of mine. B-I-G.

But here’s what I will share.

Today I’m a little grumpy, but mostly I feel emotionally dead. Just… pfft, dead. Nothing’s there. I don’t even have apathy in me. Flat. Except for my mini-emissions rant there, I’ve had nothing to impart on anything, for anyone, today.

Even the weather didn’t want to argue with me. It was grey, flat, and dead like me. I felt like the odd, bleak, desparate landscape in Tim Burton movies like Sleepy Hollow and Sweeney Todd. Occasionally interesting but never emoting.

And I hate this feeling, this place. I do. I want to be outside of it. Tomorrow, I will be. This is entirely hormonal and temporary. And thank god it is. I prefer living my life amped and interested and involved and invested. Not dead, on the peripheries.

I spent a couple months feeling this way a year or two, though. Oh, fun times! See? Hormones, they suck. Except when they’re getting you laid. Then, best-friends-EVAH.

But I know it’ll ebb away tomorrow. That’s what it does. I have a nice day planned. Sun’s on tap, they say. One forecast claims record-breaking warmth. Unlikely. I’m good with “sun” and above zero. As a result, I plan to cycle to work, and I’ve cleared a shorter day to enjoy it.

Because sometimes peace of mind needs to come first. Sometimes the soul needs more attention than your schedule. And you gotta be wise enough to know when those sometimes come round.

Like I do now.

It’s funny. The only thing I have much feeling about right now? The quality of my feeling. I’m angry about feeling what I feel, and I’m optimistic it’s to be short-lived.

It’s strange when your very state of emotion is paradoxical. But welcome to period hormones.

You lied.

You said your paper was soft and pure. It is, you claim, a “premium” paper.

Sadly, my clitoris disagrees.

I don’t know if you realize, but girl parts are sensitive. Nice soft fleshy bits, hypersensitive to touch and even sensation? Very?

My clitoris feels your product isn’t premium. That it, in fact, is cheap-ass. And scratchy. And turning Clitty into a very cranky, and raw, little thing. Poor Clitty.

At this point I would deem your product falls under FAIL. And I, too, fail for buying 36 rolls. And my clit fails for being an innocent bystander.

All I can now say is, Toughen up, Clitty. It’s gonna be a long, rough ride.

Thanks for nuthin’, not-so-premium paper company.

Regards,
A Girl and Her Clit

First, I want to explain how a few things work for all y’all, since I know sex-blog readers see these reviews all the time, and, personally, I see that 95% of them are positive, so I could understand how review-readers might skeptically dismiss us one and all as rabid sex-toy fans who love everything that comes our way.

What you need to understand is, there are a couple different ways sex toy companies operate. Some will contact bloggers and go, “Hey, want to review toys?” and when our broke asses reply, “Dude! Yeah! I need me some O’s!” they’ll send us a box of toys, it gets opened, and inside is a bunch of shit they couldn’t sell and now the poor sucker who opened the box is on the hook to review hundreds of dollars of piece-of-shit toys. I threw out the toys One Company To Remain Unnamed sent me a couple years back — they weren’t fit for my body, for reviews, for nothing.

There are two or three Big Companies, though, like VibeReview, who don’t operate under such stupid methodology, considering a sex toy isn’t just something you foist on someone. Instead, these better companies, like VR, they’ll say “Hey, wanna review toys? Choose what you like, and we’ll start there!”

So, instead of getting some random-ass box of toys to review, folks like me are lucky and we receive toys that we actually WANT to review. See how that works? Toys we WOULD buy are the toys we are sent, so, you know these are toys that are up our alleys, at the very least. Hence why we’re more likely to like than pan the products we receive.

Because, like you, The Purchasing Public, we too can log on to VibeReview, see that there’s 15 well-written four-star reviews that routinely have joyous glee peppered throughout, and think, “Hey, that looks good!”

Personally, I’ve been broke off my ass for a few years. Money’s not something I take lightly, and I take my reputation seriously, too, so I won’t be telling you to spend hard-earned dollars on toys I think aren’t worth it.

In short: We luck out, get sponsorship, and if we’re lucky, they send us a custom-ordered shipment of toys appropriate for us — our tastes, and our bodies — then we share our discoveries with you, and if you like what you see in our reviews and buy something by clicking through our review, we might even get a few bucks commission.

So, is that clear now? You get how this works?

Today’s pleasure-causing object for review? The Stubby G.

From the esteemed Fun Factory brand, The Stubby G’s a g-spot toy that delivers. It gets four-stars on its VibeReview page, and I think they’re well-earned.

This is one of those good-to-go toys that arrives with batteries and lube in the box. Once you clean it, you’re ready to rock.

I find that most toys who boast “ribbing” can be scoffed at quite easily. You’d think sex-toy makers thought every woman was the fairytale princess who could feel the pea under the stack of mattresses. “Oh! My lord! That microscopic ribbing will make such a difference in my orgasm! Yay for microscopic barely-there ribbing!”

Who’s kidding who? Most ribbing is pointless. NOT, however, on The Stubby G. I mean, lord, look at this thing! When you pull it out or push it in, imitating thrusting, you KNOW something’s moving in and out of you.

Which is kind of the point, isn’t it?

Its curve is perfect for angling up and questing for your g-spot, and it’s easy to rotate it for better contact. Outside, the fluted flange at the base provides great exterior stimulation, so when you’re in deep, you’re getting it in all the right places — on the g-spot, the clit, and everywhere in between — because the width and shape and design is just perfect for multi-pleasing fun.

The Stubby G is splash-proof, not waterproof, so you can toy about in the shower if you’re into waterplay, and is made of phthalate-free silicone so it’ll clean up well.

The vibrating power isn’t anything wildly new or different. But it’s strong. It vibrates. It’s a graduated dial, so you seamlessly move through the several varying speeds, instead of clicking through, and that’s always nice.

A word about the dial itself. There are women who write reviews lauding how great the dial is. Really? When I first opened The Stubby G, I liked the dial. I thought, “OH, that’ll be easy to turn and use during play!” because the flower design on the dial is slightly raised, so you think “cool, traction” for lube-y fingers, right?

Wrong. I found the dial sort of frustrating, myself, when my fingers were all covered with lube and I was trying to toggle through speeds. I had to figure out the grip. Since I sometimes have problems with my right hand where it might get sore or seize up after too much working out, I find the dial pretty frustrating with wet well-lubed fingers, which are generally the case when we girls have to take care of bizness. I found this could be easily dealt with by having a box of Kleenex by the bed or something.

All in all? Definitely a toy that’ll be living bedside in my Chosen Toys Box, for sure. Apparently I’m the only person who thinks Fun Factory dials can be improved, but hey. The rest of The Stubby G makes for good times, and that’s what we’re after. And it’s what I’ve certainly had in playing with this stubborn little G.

Let’s recap toys I’ve reviewed in the last while:

*I quite liked, and rated as a “buy”, the economy-priced cousin to the Rabbit, the “Lovely Rose“, and you can read my review here.
*Lelo’s Gigi is a toy I love (still!)– madly, truly, passionately, debauchedly. Read my review here. If you don’t own a Lelo toy yet, you DON’T know what you’re missing.

Click here for a VibeReview 10% off coupon that expires at election time, but can be used without limit until then!