Boxers, Or Briefs?

“Boxers, or Briefs?” Well, that wasn’t exactly the response I anticipated when I told a co-worker that I wore men’s underwear.

“Briefs, the shorty kind”, I answered, after all she did ask, and I was to flummoxed to come back with any kind of retort other than the truth.

It was there that the conversation organically came to end.  Not because of the material we were discussing, more like, we should be doing some work not talking about our underwear.  I’d also like to add that this isn’t the conversation that Playboy or like envision when they picture women discussing their underwear.

I prefer to wear men’s underwear for one simple reason.  Comfort – seriously they have the female market beat and begging for mercy when it comes to comfort.  My secondary reason is price.  By and large men’s underwear – and I’m not talking your fancy Calvin Klein/Armani branded fare, just your bog-standard brands you find at your local K-Mart or Target – are approximately half the price of their women’s counterparts.  Just to be clear, if comfort weren’t a factor, I wouldn’t bother with men’s undies simply for the price – when it comes to underwear, comfort trumps all.

Some of you may be inclined to think that, if you are a women, that women’s underwear will be more comfortable for you because, you know, they make it for women’s bodies.  But think about, women come in shapes and sizes, some petite, some fat, some tall, some short, some with wide hips, some with slim thighs – the list goes on.  Women’s underwear manufacturers do indeed make underwear for women’s bodies – unfortunately, only a certain type of body.  That body is not mine, it’s likely not yours either.  Men’s manufacturers on the other hand don’t have nearly as many body policing agendas to push and so a wider range or variety, styles and cuts is available.  Men’s underwear is primarily about comfort, women’s underwear is primarily about being ‘sexy’.  And a narrow definition of sexy it is.

On the one hand it sucks that as a female I am having the ‘sexy underwear at all times’ agenda shoved down my throat.  On the other, I am very privileged that I can make that choice to wear men’s underwear and not have it be an issue.  I can tell a co-worker and it will go no further, it won’t be a point of gossip (to clarify, this isn’t due to the good nature of the co-worker in question).  But turn this situation around.  If a man were to reveal that he preferred to wear women’s underwear for comfort, he wouldn’t be met with the “Really, g-strings or bikini-cut” question.  He would likely be reported to HR, gossiped about, called a sexual deviant, in severe cases harassed and bullied, and that’s even if he were bold enough to reveal that in the first place – which is unlikely.

I offer no solution to this situation.  Except to add once again that comfort trumps all!

Well, it should at least be the standard to which adhere to most of the time.  I’m looking at you Dita Von Teese.

Art, Science, Vocation, Hobby

Masturbation.

Precisely, female masturbation.  However, I take issue with the need to add ‘female’ as a prefix here – it is all just masturbation.  After all, getting ones rocks off all amounts to the same thing whether you identify as female, male or gender queer.

I masturbated before I even knew what it a thing.  I just didn’t have a word for it, nor did I set out to ‘masturbate’ or however I categorised it in my brain, I simply did it when I wanted too.  Yet, I was secretive about it.  Despite being too young to have a vocabulary able to verbalise what I was doing, I still had this innate sense that what I was doing must be kept private.  Perhaps, in part because it involved my privates, and whilst I was too young to understand the concept of masturbation, I wasn’t so young that I didn’t have the sense to keep said privates private.

I can’t remember exactly how I came to start masturbating.  I’m not sure exactly how old I was either.  But I do know how.  The bath.  Bath time fun had a whole different meaning for me.  I won’t go into the itty-bitty details; you can use your imagination.  What I find funny is I actually tried to recreate this method a few months back – it just didn’t work for me anymore.  What I also find funny, when looking back on my self-pleasuring history, is wondering what on earth I was thinking about.  No, really.  I hadn’t seen porn, I had no point of reference – hell, I didn’t even know what I was doing, just that it felt good so why stop.  Nowadays, I picture past experiences of a sexy nature, or porn I have seen in order to get the juices flowing.  Back then, who knows what was going through my pre-prepubescent mind.

If you are ever short of proof that women are oppressed sexually you need only look at the shame surrounding women who masturbate.  Young boys spend most of their young life with their hands nestled between their legs firmly (or gently, whatever) grasping their penis.  It’s barely noticed, after a while one or both of their parents may school them to avoid doing such a thing in public, but that is something they would likely pick up in society anyway.  Teenage boys are expected to masturbate.  Whether they do or not will probably depend on the type of person they are, how sexually oriented they are more than anything.  None of this is to discount the shame campaign some overzealous families may employ to curb such habits developing.  No it will not fall off, you won’t go blind, and it will not make baby Jesus cry.

As with most shitty gender narratives there is often a counter affect for the opposite sex; that being if men are meant to be raging wanking beast, then women are meant to be chaste, pure and keep their hands neatly folded in their lap.  Because if women do indeed masturbate, why, that would make them just like men – masculine – and we can’t have that.  So now we have generation upon generation of women who haven’t even propped one leg on the toilet and looked at their snatch.  Oprah had to tell them to do it, and boy did they squirm.  Ask a man if he has ever seen his penis, he will probably look at you like you just grew one in the middle of your forehead – ask a woman, and chances are she hasn’t.

This is changing slowly, with generation Y being the veritable forefathers/mothers of the sexual revolution.  They share everything online, with everything for everyone to see.  They have no qualms about it, and this is resulting in the walls that were once strong, built on a foundation of shame and ignorance, crumbling down around us.   We have two choices; we can either duck for cover, or, grab our crotch let the good times roll.