The Adventures of Sir and Babygirl by Kayla Lords

He kissed me hard, his hand tangled in my long hair, and when we were both breathless he lifted his head to answer my question. Proof that masculinity – and dominance – doesn’t have to be based on brutality. Oh, and crucially, there’s tonnes of explicit and enthusiastic consent. And he’s willing to admit when he’s wrong. He’s not threatened by Sophie’s success in her career and explicitly doesn’t use his position to sexually manipulate her. The romantic relationship between Neil and Sophie is built upon trust, mutual respect and actually getting to know one another, not upon fear and bullying-masquerading-as-dominance. If you like billionaire-older-man romance, Neil Elwood is a much more positive antidote to Christian Grey. Neil Elwood – The Boss, Abigail Barnette

“Are you still upset with me?” he asks after a long silence. Bruce’s struggle to let go of the past, his enduring love for Paige, and his desire to save everyone – even to his own detriment – combined with the older-man sexiness make him a romantic character I can’t resist. The sex is hot as hell (of course) but it’s the emotional depth of this novel that really gets me. What I love about him is that he’s confident as hell (to the point of juuuust occasionally coming across a tad arrogant) but is actually a complete softie and quite vulnerable underneath it all. Let’s dive in, shall we? Bruce Shepherd – The ‘Swingularity’ series by Cooper S BeckettĪnyone who has read these books will be unsurprised to know I have a huge character-crush on Bruce. Because Fifty Shades of Grey is all well and good, but Christian Grey is fundamentally a misogynist and a rapist – literally the embodiment of toxic masculinity in sexy-pants, richer-than-God, sold-100-million-copies packaging.

And this is a sex blog, after all! So in celebration of International Men’s Day, I wanted to share with you some of my favourite examples of positive masculinity, as portrayed in erotica. They’re a symptom of patriarchy, the fucked up system under which we all live, and which also harms men – in different ways to the ways it harms women, sure, but harm nontheless.īut plenty of better writers than me have already said all of these things much more eloquently than I have. What I don’t believe, however, is that feminism – or women – are responsible for these issues. There are tonnes of really important issues affecting men today – from lack of mental health support which leads to a much higher suicide rate for men, to male victims of rape or domestic violence going unacknowledged. As a feminist, I’m in favour of many of the aims of International Men’s Day.

The Adventures of Sir and Babygirl by Kayla Lords