Playing bass guitar without a pick.

An online dictionary I looked at defines euphemism as "the substitution of a mild, indirect, or vague expression for one thought to be offensive, harsh, or blunt."

I don't think terms like "jerking off," "jacking off," or "beating the bishop" fall into the category of euphemism. If anything, they're the opposite. Would anyone subsitute "beating off" for "masturbating" when speaking to a little old lady?

She's my new hero.

"I hate shaving, but I shave because I want to be an attractive woman and I don't want people to throw stones at me in the street."

Unless you are walking down the street naked how would "people" know you haven't shaved? BTW, shaving isn't attractive - unless you think having your pudenda resemble a prepubescent girl's is attractive. Which a lot of men do apparently. I've only done the clean-up for a bathing suit and it itches like crazy when it's growing in.

I find Charlotte Roche terribly tiresome and narcissistic in German. It will be curious how she translates into English.

Is because when I go down on a woman I don't want to eat her hair. I've been told that most men don't like to go down on a woman, but I do. Is it too much to ask to have a shaved or at least trimmed pubic area? And before you ask - yes I keep mine shaved or super trim myself - you can't ask for something if you won't do it yourself. Keep shaving ladies, your men will thank you for it!

Roche makes the mistake of thinking her experiences equal universal normality. Everytime she said, "Why can't we...?" I thought, "I do!" and everytime she said "Why do we have to...?" I thought, "I don't!" When you cease the angst-ridden indecisiveness, and do what you want, the Patriarchy dies just that much more. And, believe it or not, people still like you.

I read the very interesting interview with Charlotte Roche, which explains some things I knew about women and some things I didn't know. Anyway, a learning experience. I appreciate the fact that the author is able to describe some women's problems without blaming men (in one point, she blame them but only as much as the women themselves). A refreshing experience. I think I will buy the book.

But, hey, this is Salon and I said "I want to count how many comments it takes for someone of the Salonites to say something contemptuous, hateful or dismissive toward the so-called strong sex". I counted the article as 1, because both the author and the interviewer were quite reasonable.

The first comment, 2. Good. Another comment, 3. OK. Another comment, 4. Very good. The following comment contains that

shaving isn't attractive - unless you think having your pudenda resemble a prepubescent girl's is attractive. Which a lot of men do apparently.

Of course, the dismissive comment about "men" in the fourth comment. This is still Salon. I was worrying that I have written the wrong Internet address. Let the bitch-fest begin, now Brightstar would answer in the opposite way and we have the old good Salon.

So entertaining...

This is warming up. Brightstar, please, come here to spice up a bit the so-called "debate".

Instead of "choking the oyster" I would suggest "rolling the the pearl"...just one possibility in a new area for experimental language.

I think "pornographic" is the wrong word. We use "pornographic" because we don't have enough words to describe what it is. I wanted to write something original, [to] be honest, and the way I write things is explicit because that's the way I see things. I am not a person who would say, "Oh, this is disgusting" and look away. I would look at the disgusting thing and describe it in a very detailed way. Maybe even to overcome the disgusting. You look at it as long as you can and then it's not disgusting anymore.

So... women get to DEFINE men's sexual pleasures, taking a perfectly fine word like "pornography" and defining it as disgusting. Then women come along and name their OWN explicit materials as DIFFERENT THAN pornographic. Interesting psychology going on here, for one thing proving that women think this is all a ZERO SUM game with men-- who gets to overpower and humiliate whom. And, maybe it IS.

You have said that at the very moment where the reader might get aroused, you deflate the desire. There's a sense in which it could excite you, but then you go further, do something else.

She sounds like a barrel of laughs.

There are things in the book that are my lifetime problems, like going to the toilet in public lavatories. As soon as someone would walk in, I would stop because I feel so embarrassed. It's all about being a woman and not being about to shit.

SO, she has a mental illness and WE all get to hear about it.

I think a lot of the book is about recognizing these feelings of embarrassment. Contemporary women are supposed to be liberated, hedonistic, you can go out and get drunk, sleep around. But if we don't have the words to describe the range of experiences other than the old negative ones, then nothing has really changed.

Did not she just describe it in so many words? What words would men have for this anyway that women do not? And what are the negative words that are unique to women? She never let's on that this is the case, only that it IS, again, without any evidence.

If we don't have the words and we don't talk about it, and I would also suggest that we don't even think about it. I have this theory. If you tell any man, "Today I am your sexual servant. You can tell me whatever you want and I'll do it to you," every man would think of 12 things to do. Men have fantasies; they have words for everything. They could tell a woman, "Lie down, do this, lick this." But if I a man said to me, "I am your sexual servant, what do you want me to do?" I would be blank. There's nothing even in my head to allow myself to think what I actually like.

I seem to be a modern, self-confident woman, and people would think that kind of woman would be into dirty talk, high heels, drugs, fucking around. But as soon as it comes to the secret intimacy of my own fantasies, there's almost nothing there.

This would seem, to a typical guy who cannot think about anything BUT sex all the time, a GODSEND to not be trapped in a sexual world in his mind and, worse, being limited in the sexual outlets available to him, as is so common to SO many guys-- AFC or Average Frustrated Chumps in the parlance.

So for me it was about sitting down and thinking, what does the vagina look like? What do all the little bits look like? What could you call them? It was therapy for myself to actually think about this, which I wasn't doing before.

So, she is a lesbian then. NOW we are getting to the point of this article, which is to galvanize women to become more open to lesbianism. I can GUARANTEE YOU there is no straight guy thinking about the details of his fellow guys' penises.

The contemporary woman is supposed to be sexually available, as you say, but when a women is sick, she ceases to exist as a sexual being. Which is why the illness theme in "Wetlands" is really interesting.

Yet a man who is sick is a real TREAT to women?!? How much more disturbing can this article get??? If ANYTHING, a sick man is even LESS desirable than a sick woman. Married men are generally HEALTHIER, which means a sick woman can find a man to marry as long as she is not openly hostile to men, but a sick man, well, he is left to his own DEVICES.

Again, leave it to the man hating lesbian feminists to turn a POSITIVE into a negative. There is a SCIENCE to be developed here, how to TWIST good into bad so that you can extract as much guilt driven power from your enemy as possible.

Menstruation is in many ways extremely annoying and quite disturbing, for all its normalcy. But it isn't really spoken about that much, is it?

But semen is??? WHAT, again, is the point?