Category: cunts

Content note: this post discusses food. And pussies.

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I know I tend to hold controversial opinions, but an opinion of mine which draws most gasps is that I don’t like cake. There, I said it. I don’t like cake. And the reason I don’t tend to like cake is because I can’t fucking stand eggs, and I find that when cake is made with eggs, it tends to have a kind of… egginess. Meanwhile, vegan cake is better, due to the non-egginess, but often, it has a bit of a heavy texture.

Now, though, I’ve made a cake I actually like. It’s not eggy, because it contains no eggs, and yet it manages to have the softness and lightness of a non-vegan cake! Let me introduce you to my cunt sourdough cupcakes. Or cunnycakes, I suppose.

I mentioned in an earlier post about making sourdough pancakes that the chemical reaction between sourdough starter and bicarbonate of soda is quite remarkable, and creates a texture similar to having to fuck about with eggs to put air into them. These cupcakes use this same reaction to create lift, with a little bit of help from self-raising flour (1 and 1/4 cups).

I’m a huge fan of chili, coffee and chocolate, so this formed the basis of my cunnycakes. I started off by boiling up 5/6 of a cup of water, and adding it to just under half a cup of cocoa powder, a tablespoon of instant coffee and half a teaspoon of chipotle chili flakes. I adore smokey chili flavours, and these gave the cakes a little kick at the end. I also added a tablespoon of espresso vodka, which is probably strictly optional, but it was kind of vanilla-ish and straight from the freezer, which cooled the mixture down a little quicker. You’ll want to wait till it’s tepid once you’ve mixed it all to smooth.

Usually, I’m really annoyed by recipes which call for mixing dry ingredients with wet, because they often call for tedious folding to keep the air in. I’m just too heavy-handed to be gingerly and gently folding my flour into the wet ingredients, so I cannot be fucking arsed with that bullshit. I’m pleased to report that this recipe requires precisely zero folding, and all the mixing can be done quite quickly. Also, it’s quick as fuck: it actually took longer for the cocoa-coffee-chili mixture too cool than it did to mix everything together and bake it in the oven! The baking is literally ten minutes at 180C in a fan oven!

For the dry ingredients, I used the self-raising flour and 3/4 cup of sugar. I went with caster sugar, as I had some in the back of my cupboard, I have no idea how it’d turn out with other forms of sugar. And, of course, for raising, I used half a teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda.

Bicarbonate of soda is alkaline, so needs something acidic to react with. Sourdough starter is an acid, so half a cup of that goes in. You all know all about my sourdough starter, which includes a bit of vaginal yeast. Obviously, that bit is optional. Sourdough starter has a pH of about 4-4.5, which is roughly similar to a human vagina anyway–our minges have a pH of around 3.5-4.5! However, I wouldn’t recommend just using pussy juice instead of the sourdough starter, as you’d have to do some sort of arcane calculation to figure out how to change the flour ratio. For extra acidity, I also added a tablespoon of lemon juice.

So, basically, I mixed my dry ingredients with the sourdough starter, lemon juice, chili-chocolate-coffee mixture and half a cup of coconut oil. This was the first time I’d ever cooked with coconut oil, and because it was a hot day, it was ideal. To turn it from a solid, which it is when it was cool, to a liquid, I just left it on my balcony for about five minutes. What wasn’t completely liquid at room temperature quickly melted when mixed with the tepid chili-chocolate-coffee mixture.

That all got mixed together with a whisk, until it formed a smooth batter, which basically resembled… cake batter. Like, normal cake batter. Unfortunately, it doesn’t taste anywhere near as good, because uncooked sourdough starter tastes pretty funky. If licking the bowl is your favourite thing about baking, you’re going to be disappointed, but your disappointment will soon be alleviated by some tasty fucking cakes.

I had no idea how many cakes this recipe would produce. I expected maybe about twelve, but as I started spooning the mixture into cake cases, it turned out to be much more. Much, much more. You can get about 24 cakes out of this recipe.

At this juncture, I still had no idea what to expect. Would they rise at all? Would they resemble cakes? Would they rise too much and take over my oven, claiming it as The Autonomous Republic Of Utterly Failed Cake Baking? I suppose, what I expected was that kind of close-textured thing you often end up getting with vegan baking.

I was wrong. Midway through the bake, I needed to turn the tray around, because my oven is much hotter at the back than it is at the front (even though it’s supposed to be a fan oven). “Fuck me,” I said, out loud. “I’ve made cakes.”

And when they came out of the oven, they were definitely cakes.

More like conventional, non-vegan cakes. More like the sort of thing you usually make with eggs!

And reader, they were really fucking good. They had a coconutty taste from the coconut oil, which tempered that pleasant bitterness of coffee and cocoa. At the end, there’s a very light chili kick. I took a bunch of cakes round to a Scarlet Ladies meetup, and they were proclaimed delicious.

Using the sourdough-bicarb reaction, I expected to produce something edible, possibly even bordering on passable. Instead, I managed some really good, yummy cakes, which I’ll definitely be making again. I hope you have a go at cooking these tasty girls yourself. You have everything you need to replicate this recipe in this post, but if you want it in an easier format, it’s in basic recipe form on my Patreon.

Happy baking!

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Content note: this post talks about food 

On a conceptual level, I fucking love pancakes. However, there are numerous things which, when it comes down to it, make me unhappy. They’re a pain in the arse to make, with all the elbow-hurting whisking. You can’t just whip them up when you feel like you want pancakes, because you’re supposed to leave the batter to set for arcane breakfast-mancer reasons. They taste a little bit eggy, and I fucking hate eggs.

Before you leave a comment saying “actually, my pancakes don’t taste eggy”… they probably do, you just don’t hate that kind of eggy flavour like I do.

Luckily, following a little bit of experimentation, I have found a way of turning sourdough starter into delicious, light fluffy pancakes without any of the annoying bullshit outlined above, and I’m going to share the good news with you. The recipe does appear in this post, but if you want to just read the recipe without any of my crap, you’ll find it over on my patreon, where you can also access other cool, exclusive content, with more to come.

Now, sourdough starter is pretty cool, because you can do lots of things with it that aren’t bread–although the bread is tasty as hell. As you probably know, I got into sourdough starter when I made one with a dash of vaginal yeast. It started out as a joke, but I kept the starter going and I’m still using it loads. Not just for bread, but also for more exciting things. Like pancakes.

One of the particularly awesome things about sourdough starter is it’s slightly acidic. This means that it has quite a culinarily-useful chemical reaction when mixed with something alkaline like bicarbonate of soda. I’ve used it, instead of trying to find buttermilk in small metro supermarkets, to make soda bread. I’ve also used the reaction in making crumpets. And, it turns out, really good pancakes without having to resort to eggs. You can have pancakes within five minutes of having decided you fancy them.

I suppose we’d better address the elephant in the room at this juncture. Yes, my sourdough starter is that one. Well, all right, it’s actually a second batch, which also may or may not contain vaginal yeast (I still can’t tell if my yeast did anything, though it certainly performs ever so slightly better than a control, cunt-free starter). I hope the starter will outlive me if it’s well looked-after.

Sourdough starter needs using up regularly between feeds, so this recipe is ideal for when you need to use up 3/4 of a cup of starter. It’s also a great recipe if you’re vegan. While I used goat milk, you can also use any of your favourite milk substitute–I imagine almond milk would be delicious if you wanted your pancakes with a sweet topping–I suppose you could also use regular cow milk, if you’re that way inclined and/or a Nazi.

First things first, you have to water down the sourdough starter somewhat. I keep my starter at 50% hydration, so it’s quite thick, because it doesn’t need feeding as often, and I find it easier to work with. I know a lot of people prefer it runnier at the 100% hydration. If your starter is thick, like mine, you’ll likely need about half a cup of your chosen milky liquid, but if it’s runnier, a third of a cup should work. I chose goat milk, because I like it and it sits better on me than cow milk. It’s also got a nice goaty flavour to it, which makes the pancakes slightly savoury: I ate them with beetroot and quark. Whisk it together until nice and smooth. Luckily, you shouldn’t need to whisk it all that much.

Then it’s time to thicken it up again, by whisking in about a heaped tablespoon of wholemeal flour. Again, this doesn’t take long at all, and is significantly less faff than beating eggs and whatnot. By this point, you’ll have a smooth batter, no matter how hungover you are. I wasn’t hungover when I invented this recipe, but I think it’ll probably turn out to be perfect for hangover breakfasts when only 30 pancakes really quickly will suffice.

At this point, I left the batter for a bit, because I wanted to go for a shower. This step is completely optional, and if you don’t fancy a shower, you can go right ahead and start heating the frying pan.

By the way, I just want to apologise for this profoundly annoying format of this recipe. I have slouched through far too many baking blogs that do this, and I’ve picked up the style. You probably just want the fucking recipe. Well, so far you’ve had most of it: proportions for three of the four ingredients, and the first two steps from a five step method. If it’s pissing you off a lot, I’ll remind you that patrons get just the recipe with a list of ingredients and how to make some fucking pancakes, without this guff. Honestly, I could do with a few more patrons, because I’m quite broke at the moment, and I am planning some cool patron-only stuff that will include bullshit-free recipes, but also very likely, short stories.

Now your batter is mostly made, get the pan on the heat. The reason for this is that the chemical reaction, when you add just half a teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda to the batter, is very quick. You’ll want your pan oiled or buttered up and ready to receive pancakes when you whisk in the bicarb. Incidentally, I used goat’s butter for frying. I’d bought it out of curiosity, and it’s delicious. Warning: it does make your sweat smell faintly of goats afterwards, though.

As soon as you whisk the bicarb in, you’ll see your batter turn bubbly. It doesn’t fizz up like a salted slug, but you’ll see those bubbles coming in almost immediately. This means it’s ready. Put small flat blobs of your batter into the pan. In a largish frying pan, I found it possible to do four pancakes at once. They take about thirty seconds each side.

And that’s it. Once you’ve fried up your pancakes, stack them up (or fold them like blinis) and eat with whatever topping you like. They taste almost exactly Scotch pancakes, although they’re a bit lighter, so you can have more than you’d usually have. The texture is also lighter and fluffier. I was genuinely surprised to discover how much they tasted like Scotch pancakes, although without any egginess. As I said earlier, I had mine with beetroot and quark, and tried to eat them like blinis, which was reasonably successful, although it looked somewhat like I’d committed a grisly murder afterwards. I didn’t eat all 30 of them myself, I shared.

Try it for yourself. I promise, it’s really fucking easy and quick.

Content warning: this post discusses medical procedures performed on vaginas

This week is Cervical Cancer Prevention Week, so let me start by saying if you have a cervix and haven’t had a smear test in the last three years (or you’re over 25 and have never had one), book yours now. Sometimes you won’t always get the reminder letters–this seems to especially be an issue for trans men (GP surgeries often only bother sending the letters out to those marked “female” on their records). So, get your test.

Smear tests, from my own personal experience, are fucking unpleasant. I’ve had three now, and it’s grim, but the worst of it quick. My experience is entirely with GP surgeries, although some sexual health clinics also do smears. It goes a little bit like this:

Booking:  You need to book your smear test for a day you’re not on your period. My surgery likes it two weeks from the first day of your period, although that’s not set in stone. What they want most of all is for you not to be bleeding out of your cervix while they’re trying to swab it.

For me, booking a date isn’t difficult, because my periods are regular as clockwork thanks to the combined pill. If you’re lucky enough not to have periods, then book for whenever the hell you want. If you’re irregular, I would suggest calling up to book your appointment on the first day of your period, so they can schedule it for exactly two weeks’ time, which saves you having to faff about with calendars, apps and ouija boards to work out when’s good.

Preparation: Some people like to make their cunts look nice for their smear tests, by shaving or waxing. This is strictly optional, and unnecessary. Nonetheless, if hair removal is something you like to do, there’s no harm doing it either.

Don’t wash with soap or special fanny soap or apply special fanny perfumes before your smear tests. Not because it will fuck up the test result, but because you don’t need that shit anyway. Your cunt is self-cleaning, and almost certainly smells fine.

Personally, I’ve never bothered with hair removal. Before my last smear test, though, I decided to apply conditioner to my pubes to make them nice and soft–this is something I sometimes do before dates or orgies, too. Unfortunately, on this occasion, the conditioner I used was smoothing conditioner. Do you know what this does to pubes? It straightens them. And so I turned up at my smear test with a bush that looked exactly like Vegeta. The nurse, being a well-trained NHS worker was too polite to comment, and while I cringed, I know she’s probably seen weirder.

Before the test: Before the nurse does the test, they’ll sit down with you and have a quick chat to verify that you definitely need the test, that now’s the right time to do your smear, and to see if you have any symptoms.

They’ll ask you about if you’re sexually active. As healthcare workers, they will be non-judgmental about it. In my experience, they won’t call you a slut (or even side-eye you), but they won’t high-five you either (sadly). It’s OK to be vague if you don’t want to go into exact numbers. Even if you’ve only had sex with other people with vaginas, you need to get your smear test because the HPV virus, that causes most cases of cervical cancer, can be transmitted by sex involving two or more vulvas.

You’ll also be asked about discharge and all sorts of things like that. Be as frank as you like. If something’s worrying you about your downstairs and whether it’s normal, mention it.

When all the small talk is over, it’s time to get behind that curtain and wiggle out of your tights, because it’s time for your smear test.

Assume the position: You lie down on the couch and spread your legs in a different way to the way one would if anything pleasant were to happen to your cunt. For the smear, you put your ankles together, and let your knees drop.

The nurse will probably talk to you throughout, letting you know what they’re going to do. If the nurse doesn’t offer the information, ask them to. You’re well within your rights to.

The speculum: A speculum is a plastic doohickey that looks like a cartoon duck. They should use lube when they put it inside you–if they don’t, ask them for lube. I once had an STI test where a speculum went in without lube and it was the second most horrible cunt experience of my life (here’s the most, not for the faint-hearted).

Even with lube, I’m not going to lie to you. A speculum does not feel very nice at all. As it goes in, it feels like any phallic object penetrating does–so if you have any issues surrounding that feeling, take a lot of time to psychically prepare yourself and do what you need to do. Then after that, the nurse cranks it open, and that feels downright weird: you feel yourself getting a bit bigger on the inside. I imagine it’s how the TARDIS feels when anyone steps into her.

The speculum is not painful, but it is uncomfortable.

However weird it feels, you’re not actually being cranked very far open, just big enough for the nurse to be able to see your cervix and insert a small plastic brush.

At every smear test I’ve ever had, at this point the nurse has exclaimed over what a “beautiful” cervix I have. I do not know if this is a normal part of the procedure, or if I have a particularly aesthetically-pleasing cervix. I’ve never plucked up the courage to ask, and I always forget to bring a hand mirror so I can have a little shufti myself.

The actual smear test bit: Most resources about cervical smears say the procedure is completely painless. For me, at least, that is untrue. I am not going to lie: when they swab my cervix, it hurts a bit. Not much, and not for long, but it hurts.

The little brush they use to take the swab has stiff bristles. The nurse scrubs it around for a second or two on your cervix. It feels exactly like a stiff-bristled brush scrubbing around on your cervix. Have you ever caught the side of your hand with steel wool while washing up? It feels like that, except up your fanny. Oh, and with the added sensation of that weird feeling when something bangs on your cervix.

So yes, it might hurt. But–and I cannot stress this enough–it’s over within seconds. Again, if you have issues with this sort of thing happening to your vagina and cervix, prepare yourself. Have your self-care prepared, try to dissociate through the procedure… whatever will get you through it, because it’s not nice, but it is important you get it done.

Afterwards: The speculum is out of you before you know it, and you’ll be handed a tissue to have a little wipe with. It’s usually just lube, although during my second smear test I bled slightly from vigorous swabbing. The test shouldn’t do any physical damage which will prevent you from getting home immediately (although, once again, if you have any issues surrounding things being done to your vagina, you might want to take a few minutes to be sure you’re OK to go).

For me, I get slight twinges in my cervix for a few hours after a smear: not pain, exactly, but discomfort. This is perfectly normal and happens to some people, although some people feel nothing afterwards.

Results: You’ll get your results within a couple of weeks, usually by post. The letters are quite clear as whether the result was normal, abnormal or inadequate, and what you need to do with that information. Luckily for me so far, I’ve always had normal results.

For a normal result, that means “see you in three year’s time”, and congratulations, you’ve made it through your smear test. If it’s inadequate, bad luck, you’ll have to go in again because they didn’t collect enough cells during your smear. If it’s abnormal, don’t worry yet. My mum and my sister have both had abnormal smears and both are fine–my sister had her first baby recently, and my mum celebrated her 60th birthday! It doesn’t definitely mean you have cancer, and when they catch anything abnormal on your cervix, they can deal with it before you have any problems. It could save your life.

So, to conclude, get your smear test. It is approximately five minutes of awkward conversation, thirty seconds of discomfort and slight pain, and then, potentially, decades added to your life.

This post has now moved, find it here. 

 

It’s 2015, and I am fucking tired as shit of two things:

1. Products which are designed to make your nethers less gross
2. Twee fucking euphemisms while marketing such things

Lucky for me, today I learned of a product which does both of these things: SASS Intimate Skincare. A takedown of a lot of the issues has been posted by Jade Moulds (warning: contains cissexist language: of course, vaginas are not just the domain of women, although this product has clearly been marketed at cis women; I wish the author had acknowledged this): namely that this product increases shame surrounding vaginas, and that it’s not very good for you to be rubbing scented soaps into a mucous membrane.

To add to the critique of how bad it is for you to be putting scented soaps on your cunt, I’d like to add that a lot of SASS’s marketing focuses on “pH balance”. This is obvious marketing jargon: the term is bandied about with basically anything you put on your skin anyway, and I wonder if by applying this pseudoscientific twaddle to products you whack on your cunt it’s trying to imply that maybe it won’t throw things out of kilter so much as other products which you’re meant to de-gross your minge with. Let’s pretend for a second that this is actually true: that SASS Intimate Skincare products are the exact same pH as your vagina, and this will definitely negate all of the problems chemicals making contact with a very sensitive body part could cause. If that’s true, to what point of the cycle is SASS Intimate Skincare pH balanced? For most of the month, the vagina is about as acidic as orange juice, but during periods, it becomes closer to neutral as the acidic natural juices mix with the pretty-much-neutral blood. And for whom is it pH balanced? There’s some natural variance, with the off-period pH being somewhere between 3.5 and 4.5, depending on the individual.

The acidity of the vagina is useful, because it kills bacteria. It’s also fucking badass, and why sometimes it looks like you’ve bleached your black knickers–you have.

I looked at the SASS website to find out, but I couldn’t, because everything is completely fucking vague. The takedown I posted earlier is equally annoyed by the vagueness of language used, but I couldn’t even necessarily work out what body parts some of the products were for. The term “intimate use” and “the area” is used a lot on the site, and I am 95% sure it doesn’t always refer to the same place. Like, seriously, these people sell shaving gels as well as things to be used “in and around the area”. Maybe I’m weird as is every cunt I’ve ever had the joy of putting my face in, but as far as I’m aware the part that you shave and the part that’s “in” are completely different.

One of the products is so vaguely-described I have literally no idea where you’re meant to put it: the Intimate Protection Barrier Cream. During exercise, it’s meant to protect… something. Apparently “intense activity can take its toll on your intimate area” and it will “help reduce friction” during intense physical activity. Er, what? I’m genuinely struggling to work out what this does. Is it for stopping your upper thighs rubbing together? Is it for people who live in towns where all exercise gear is made of sandpaper glued right to your flaps? What sort of exercise do they mean?

Alas, I have neither the money, nor the disregard for my own vaginal wellbeing, to test this stuff out. It’s pricey, and I don’t want bacterial vaginosis, thank you very much. I would also be enormously alarmed if my cunt started smelling like anything other than my cunt: it would be like that fancy culinary trope where you cook something that looks like something but tastes like something else, and it’s kind of weird and personally I really don’t like having food expectations violated and it always makes me enjoy it less and–

Cunts are the perfect anarchist. If you leave them to it, they tend to get along just fine, cleaning up after themselves and doing their thing. This is exactly why we don’t need yet more expensive products profiting off of a manufactured need for them not to just do what they do.

 

 

As you may know from the little button on the sidebar, I’ve recently got involved with Scarlet Ladies, a new initiative encouraging women to be more open about sex. On Thursday, I was part of a panel where we discussed our quims.

Along with founding members Sarah and Janette, I joined burlesque performer Effie Vescent and orgasmic meditation instructor Claudia from TurnOn Britain in opening up a discussion of our nethers to a small intimate group in a pub. Occasionally, a member of staff would wander through looking mildly horrified, because this is not what we’re meant to do. 

I first discovered the importance of talking very frankly about my cunt when I discovered the power of the Dear Nadine Dorries project. For those of you who don’t remember the halcyon days of 2011, this was when me and a bunch of other people (note: not just women) wrote crass letters to an anti-choice Tory MP in the hope of sating her desire to intrude on our uteruses. Her bill failed, and she whined about receiving letters describing bodily functions in graphic detail in Parliament, so technically, I might have had the most famous minge in the room since mine is recorded in Hansard. The thing the Dear Nadine Dorries project taught me most of all was the thirst to be able to talk openly about everything your cunt does: the good, the bad, and the downright queefingly disgusting.

With that in mind, I told a couple of stories pertaining to how I’d thought I wasn’t normal, but it turned out I was. I told the story of when I was 15 and I thought I’d wanked myself incontinent because I didn’t even know that squirting was A Thing. I told of my wonky flaps–which I describe as looking like the Before and After photos in a labiaplasty advert–and how I didn’t know that the wonkiness wasn’t some terrifying weird mutation until I started muff-diving. This was a natural segue into tale of when I wounded my cunt in a narrowboating accident, and just briefly, my flaps were the same size because of the swelling.

Later in the evening, I became part of a competition: to identify what my tattoo was.

Yes, that’s an anatomically correct, roughly life-sized clitoris, and unfortunately, nobody could recognise it. It’s hardly surprising; medical science didn’t recognise it until the nineties, or map it properly until 2009. And that’s part of the reason I have that tattoo, as a symbol of the abject failures of scientific disciplines in identifying something that has been right there all along: they’re fucking crap at listening to experience and believing in it.

The rest of the panel–and indeed the audience–had had radically different experiences to me. Most of the group, unless they’re queer like me and Effie, or their job involves quite a lot of cunt-based workshops, like Claudia, had never really seen another person’s cunt in the flesh, and this led to a resulting level of mystery. The mystery is deepened further in that it’s a pretty difficult body part to even get a good look at yourself. One of the guests, a Hindi speaker, contributed that there isn’t even a word for “vagina” in Hindi.

So talking about it is empowering in its way. The floodgates opened, and we began to talk, honestly and openly, about our experiences and our feelings. We even drew ours: there’s a photo of our artistic forays over on Scarlet Ladies’ write-up.

Experiences of living a cunt are highly diverse, and the Scarlet Ladies discussion was something I felt was much needed, although I wish it had been slightly more diverse. As far as I could tell, everybody was cis, and it would be nice to open up such discussions to a less cis audience.

Aside from that caveat, I had a thoroughly wonderful time. It really is a delight being in a room full of people and able to talk about such things with the assurance that nobody will go “eww”.