Sex

Whatlington (population: 320) is near Battle. I grew up there. Opposite the church and a mill-house formerly occupied by the famous sage (once deputy editor of this newspaper) Malcolm Muggeridge, runs an attractive bridle path with farms on each side. I know it well because I used to ride along it as a boy.
Two years ago, a campsite opened in a field next to the path. Such sites are quite common in pretty rural spots and are often permitted on agricultural land under various rules, including a maximum-use limit of 60 days a year. They usually raise few objections.
This site, however, is rather different. It advertises itself online as “an adult-only naturist camping site”. On Facebook (later taken down), it added that it was a swingers’ site. It also publishes its club terms and conditions about the circumstances in which customers can “play” there. The site’s name is Turn a Blind Eye.
Possibly, if it had been easy to do so, a blind eye was what the village would have turned. After all, if naturists want to drive hundreds of miles in their caravans to find other nudist caravan-owners with whom to “play”, that is – literally – their own affair. Perhaps they imagine their activities are in keeping with the locality’s designation as an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.

It has everything, doesn’t it?

Naughty! British! Caravans! I mean, really, only the British would use caravans to be naughty in.

And they’re doing it by the street where they might frighten the horses too.

Pity Sid and Babs aren’t still with us to film the documentary.

My husband left me for a man. It was a uniquely painful betrayal
After more than 40 years together, finding out that the father of my children was gay and had been having a secret affair blindsided me

Not a Fnarr, Fnarr there in the headline.

But, sorta, which is worse? Hubby doesn’t like women therefore it’s not which woman I am that’s the problem? Or hubby doesn’t like women which is a worse betrayal?

Obviously, her call on that. But, logically, it is possible for it to run either way, no?

However, it may not always have been like this. Research suggests that in the Victorian era and early 20th century, Northern Ireland was much more tolerant and accepting of gay men.

“I was expecting to find repression but there was a sort of benevolent toleration,” said Tom Hulme, a historian at Queen’s University Belfast and author of Belfastmen: An Intimate History of Life Before Gay Liberation, which is published this week.

“Among friends and families and employers it was sort of known and understood that a man may have desires for another man and that might be why they remain unmarried or live alone or have many close male friends.

“To reveal the open secret would have been problematic. While these things remained unsaid they could essentially kind of exist. We’re not talking about people walking down the streets, holding hands. It’s a much more closed, secret kind of culture.”

Hulme said tacit ignorance and public silence enabled male queerness to flourish with only rare exposure, condemnation or regulation, with a “live and let live” ethos especially prevalent in the working class.

Mrs. Patrick Campbell’s not in the streets where you’ll frighten the horses idea comes to mind. And is also, around and about what most places were like, no? Certainly, that’s what I’ve always assumed.

Yes, there were hangings for sodomy, so it wasn’t all sweetness and light – I have a strong suspicion that some to many of those were for rape, not consensual as well. But, agreed, not all.

I’m also amused by this:

In the 1980s and 1990s, the Royal Ulster Constabulary used plainclothes officers to bait and catch gay men in parks and public toilets.

It’s wholly possible to be actively ignorant about what happens behind closed doors and also think that cottaging ain’t all that great. Though in very recent times I have seen some argue that cottaging is their ‘uman right, see, which does seem to be taking matters much too far.

To be arrested, charged and jailed was an “awful” ordeal for gay men, but on release many returned to their former lives, with communities turning a blind eye to sexual orientation as long as there was discretion, said Hulme. “A careful game goes on between gay men and their friends and families. Knowing nods and winks, ‘oh, he’s not the marrying type’.”

Quite.

Weight loss drugs transformed our sex life
A couple who lost 17st between them say Mounjaro gave them more than weight loss, restoring confidence and closeness

I am reminded of a story – a story, not something fact checked.

A farmer’s wife – and of the size and shape of a proper farmer’s wife – decided she desired to lose weight. Further, that the manner of doing so was to have lots and lots of sex. She was rural, but not that rural, so this required the cooperation of hubby. Which duly arrived and everything was fine – she lost weight.

As happens with these things so did he lose weight and apparently he was 6 stone when he fainted off his tractor.

Obviously not fact checked because who would want to destroy a story that good?

I was sucked in by the money, but it wasn’t like I wanted a Lamborghini. I just wanted to be able to buy myself a house, buy my family a house, travel, and not worry. Within the first six weeks, I got a £3,000 pay cheque. I come from a low-income family where no one has come close to making that amount in just over a month. I thought: “This is the kind of money that’s going to change my life.” And that was just the start.
I was soon making between £10,000 and £15,000 a month on a regular basis. In my highest-earning month I made between £25,000 and £30,000.

Couple of years of tits oot fer the lads and she’s made for life. No, really, be able to buy a house off that and once you do own your own house – outright – at 21 or whatever then the rest of life is, financially at least, a bit of a breeze.

Now, yes, this is also a life course that might be regretted and so on. But to whinge that it was actually TikTok that forced you into it is rather cakeism, no? And that everyone else must have their ability to use social media restricted as a result is well over the top. Very female – I’m not giving the money back but I am complaining – too.

OM is a mindfulness practice with a strict choreography. It is done in pairs typically composed of a man and a woman. During the session, the woman lies back on an arrangement of pillows and blankets known as a “nest”. She is unclothed from the waist down, with her legs open in a butterfly position, while the “stroker”, usually a man, uses his left index finger to stroke the upper left quadrant of the woman’s clitoris for 15 minutes.

Mindfulness, eh?

“Serious practitioners often OMed four times a day or more,” Huet wrote. “Twice in the morning, twice in the evening.”

Just where does the whole day go, eh?

The lawsuit claimed that an unnamed girl was drugged and raped by both Jay-Z and Combs at a party after the MTV music awards in 2000.

Always believe the woman, of course.

The suit alleged that Jay-Z and Sean “Diddy” Combs raped a a 13-year-old girl at a party in 2000. Combs and Jay-Z denied all allegations after the lawsuit was filed in late 2024, and the case was voluntarily dismissed in February 2025.

Filed, erm, 24 years later? When there’s no possibility at all of any evidence?

Erm, right. Difficult, right? So, erm, why should we always believe the woman?

A California jury found Bill Cosby guilty of sexual assault in a civil trial on Monday, awarding Donna Motsinger $59.25m in damages. Motsinger alleged in the case that while working as a restaurant server in 1972, she was drugged and raped by Cosby after he gave her a glass of wine in his limousine.

Motsinger sued Cosby after California amended its laws to change the statutes of limitations on when accusers can file sexual assault cases.

The statute of limitations is there for a reason. Even, a number of them. One of which is what evidence was there here which could be tested? Personal statements from more than 50 years back? No, obviously I don’t know but there’s no real way that anyone else can either….

The HR Executive caught on a kiss camera at a Coldplay concert with her boss has claimed that he lied to her about his relationship status.

Kirsten Cabot, 53, a former HR manager at the tech company Astronomer, was filmed in a romantic embrace at the concert in July with Andy Byron, who was CEO of the company.

She was getting divorced, he said he was but wasn’t.

Shocker, eh?

Mr Clinton told the hearing: “I wish Chauntae had told me [she was being abused]. I liked her.”

“I didn’t think it was anything unusual, I can’t tell you how many aeroplanes I’ve been on where rich people ask me to go and they had someone offering me a massage,” he added.

Definitions matter, eh? Massage means what? The definition of is is? What, in fact, is sex?

Danny Kruger, a recent defector from the Tories, who would rescind no-fault divorce, with a return to household taxation, as though that would cement families and raise the birthrate. “We are suffering from having a totally unregulated sexual economy,” he says.

If consenting adult is to mean anything that’s probably what we would say it should mean, right? That it’s regulated by the consent of the adults involved?

Social Market Foundation’s report, Baby Bust and Baby Boom: the liberal case for pronatalism shows most women in England and Wales want more children than they have, enough to keep the birthrate at a stable 2.1, but instead they only have 1.4.

That’s an error. For that same research – the line of, not this piece of – shows that women have, for generations, wanted one more baby than they did have. But, obvs, not actually want enough to have that other. This was true when the fertility rate was 6, when it was 4 and so on. It’s just one of those things, that desire for another baby in the house.

Governments everywhere are struggling to raise birthrates – not even communist China or the mullahs of Iran can stop them plummeting.

And that’s the actual problem. No one, anywhere, through any means, has managed to get that birthrate up again. No, not even the Nordic free everything for all, always.

Me? I say the cause is being rich and the economic freedom of women. Opportunity costs – with more to do in life any one thing inevitably gets done less. Thus the only solution is to reverse either of those – riches or freedom. And, you know, we probabl;y aren;t willing to pay that cost – or those costs – so therefore it’s not a viable solution.

Using specialised technology known as the sexual trafficking identification matrix, the research identified that the 12 sites had 63,000 listings during a few days last month and over the course of January attracted 41.7m visits.

Of the sex worker advertisements from the 12 sites analysed, 59% had three or more indicators of exploitation or trafficking, and 39% had four or more indicators.

Indicators include the same phone number appearing across multiple ads, references to drug use, a menu-based list of a broad range of sexual services, young-age claims, and phrases like “new to the area”.

They’re just making things up now, aren’t they?

Bill Gates has said he “regrets” ever knowing Jeffrey Epstein, as his former wife Melinda French Gates alluded to “muck” in their marriage, and insisted the Microsoft founder has questions to answer over his relationship with the deceased child sex offender.

Allegations that Gates hid a sexually transmitted disease from his wife after contact with “Russian girls” surfaced in the latest release of the Epstein files, which have provided remarkable insight into the disgraced financier’s multiple celebrity connections and activities.

One accuser said that Maxwell told her that Epstein had to leave his house but that there was a friend staying who she could massage. During this encounter, this associate allegedly offered her money if she engaged in sex.

The woman alleged that she did so and that this friend paid her money. A “prosecution memorandum” dated 26 January 2021 and signed by assistant US attorneys from the southern district of New York described this encounter and said that when the woman’s lawyers showed her a photo of the disgraced movie mogul Harvey Weinstein, she identified him as this man. The names of the US attorneys are redacted.

Man offers woman money for sex. Woman agrees. Now, true, laws differ around the world. But under English law at least there’s nothing illegal about this at all. Assuming the lass is of age of course. And she’s not a victim either – it’s a voluntary transaction.

Just to be careful about it. Allegedly a software executive got the clap from a bird organised for him by a disgraced financier. Which could, you know, explain the ex-wife’s rage etc.

Ah, a development. The story is – hotly denied – that the s/ware guy then tried to slip his wife antibiotics without her knowledge in order to…..hotly, hotly, denied.

Prof Michael Jennions, study co-author, added: “While the human penis functions primarily to transfer sperm,…..

A sexologist who says that has really missed a very large part of being human.

Face to face mating, the existence of tits, the female orgasm, pair bonding, convealed ovulation eetc. All point to hte idea that the penis has a distinct function in pleasuring the female – and the male, obvs – rather than just being a sperm transference tool.

Some sex workers’ groups and campaigners have advocated a return to certified brothels as a solution to the difficulties they now face.
Prostitutes have had to work in parks and other potentially dangerous places as a result of a 2016 law intended to improve their lot.

Ho Hum.

In the fall of 2017, shortly after the emergence of the #MeToo movement, Larry Summers, the economist who resigned as the president of Harvard University over statements he made suggesting that women were less intelligent than men, wrote to Epstein to complain that if you “hit on a few women 10 years ago” you “can’t work at a network or think tank”. Epstein also wrote multiple emails to the billionaire venture capitalist and rightwing mega-donor Peter Thiel, including one with the subject line: “that was fun, see you in 3 weeks.” In another email, Epstein offered to introduce Thiel to Woody Allen.

There is no evidence that these men participated in Jeffrey Epstein’s habitual sexual abuse of girl children. But their interactions with him suggest a kind of blithe tolerance of his presence in their midst, a seeming comfort in exchanging intimate – and sometimes lewd – exchanges with a man they must have known to have sexually exploited a child. Many of the emails to and from Epstein are marked by a tone of haughty knowingness, a kind of worldly, smug cynicism I’ve encountered before in people who think that they are smarter than everyone else. Maybe in the haughty world of billionaires and private jets, it is considered provincial to think that adults should not have sex with children. Maybe to them, morality is for the little people.

Can you hear that high horse being clambered upon?

E-commerce company Shein has announced it will ban sex dolls from sale on its sites, after French authorities condemned the company for featuring some that resembled children.

Does banging a piece of plastic that looks like a child increase or reduce the amount of child banging that goes on? Ban them or subsidise them?

We waited until the fourth date to have sex. Leo then told me he was in an open relationship, but they were on the rocks. I said if you want me, you’ll have to end it with him. So he did. Leo has only ever been in open relationships, whereas I’ve always been monogamous, which has been a bit of an issue between us. I’m also only really interested in being a submissive bottom, whereas Leo’s versatile, and I’m conscious that an open relationship would give him the chance to flip more.

Waited, fourth date…..OK, different from how I remember dating being but then male on male sexuality, eh?