How do I respond to the assertion that I “shouldn’t advertise what’s not for sale” with my choice of dress?
Response #1 (The High Road): “It’s insulting to imply that my sexuality is for sale, and it’s disrespectful to make comments that commodify my body.”
Response #2 (The Middle Road): “How I dress is none of your business.”
Response #3 (The Low Road): “You wish you had these tits.”
Are drugs bad?
Nope. Addiction is bad. Human weakness is bad, but drugs are just a bunch of chemicals, and chemicals are morally inert.
Is Amanda Bynes just playing a huge joke on everyone?
She’s fucking around a little, poking the celebrity machine with a stick during her free-fall into obscurity, but don’t confuse her twitter account with performance art. Amanda Bynes is no Andy Kaufman.
Sometimes casual sex makes me feel powerful and sometimes it makes me feel hollow. What’s up with that?
It’s not the sex. It’s whether your expectations meet with reality.
What’s the best way to form an opinion on something?
With as little ignorance and as much rationality as possible.
Can you love (romantically) two people at once?
Sure. Happens all the time. It rarely ends well, but hey, good luck.
Are you afraid of being in love with someone?
Nope. I’m much more afraid of someone being in love with me.
I need ideas for dirty talk in the bedroom. I’m not into ‘slut’, but ‘that feels so fuckin’ good’ is just getting old…
The trick to dirty talk is using the second person imperative mood to describe the physical action as it’s taking place in the moment. When in doubt, just fall back on basic “verb (suck, lick, fuck) that adjective (hard, wet, hot) noun (cock, pussy, ass)” sentence structure.
Is it OK for me to send a mean-spirited text message to my husband’s ex-girlfriend who still pursues him (not a real threat because he’s not interested)? On one hand it would feel kind of shitty, but it also seems like it would be satisfying.
I feel sorry for your husband.
I keep typing Deaf Coquette.
Use your middle finger.
What do you think of the “topless jihad” protests FEMEN is doing in order to try and “save” Muslim women from their hijab/niqaab etc?
You’re missing the point. FEMEN activists aren’t trying to save Muslim women from their traditional dress. They’re trying to provoke a response through disruptive activism, and they’re doing a damn good job.
You have to understand, this is what radicals and reactionaries do. In this case, the radicals are breast-baring feminists and the reactionaries are fatwa-issuing muslims. It’s Boobs versus Rubes in an international, counter-cultural game of shirts and skins.
The radicals cry out against the systematic oppression and institutionalized subjugation of women through religious patriarchy. They deliberately provoke and offend through staged demonstrations in the hopes that the reactionaries will live up to their name and react.
Right on cue, the pseudo-intellectual reactionaries cry western imperialism and hurl accusations of Islamophobia while the fundamentalist reactionaries cry blasphemy and hurl stones.
It’s really quite fun to watch everyone pick sides, especially the socially conscious cultural relativists whose pointy little heads are about to explode from all the cognitive dissonance.
Obviously, I’m rooting for team FEMEN. Duh. Boobs are awesome and organized religion is evil, but it doesn’t even matter how the rest of this game plays out, because as is always the case, the radicals automatically win just by getting the reactionaries to show up and open their stupid mouths.
What would you have as an alternative to the police? Do you think there’s a way to keep people from breaking laws without having a state monopoly on violence?
Don’t be ridiculous. The state’s monopoly on violence doesn’t keep people from breaking the law any more than the church’s monopoly on damnation keeps people from living in sin.
Let’s be clear about the real problem: Our laws don’t exist to maintain justice. Our laws exists to maintain order on behalf of a ruling class. The criminal justice system is a means of social control. Justice may occasionally be served, but it’s incidental and never at the expense of order.
Fundamentally, the police aren’t even the issue. It’s the laws themselves, specifically the ones that do nothing more than criminalize socially unacceptable behavior. The crown jewel in this argument is the war on drugs, but things have gotten so ridiculously out of hand that in this supposedly free country of ours, even the size of your sugary soda is up for regulation.
I don’t necessarily need an alternative to the police. I just want an alternative to their de facto purpose. Emergency first responders and criminal investigators are vital roles in a functioning society, but when police officers spend the majority of their time selectively enforcing victimless vice and public-order law, that’s when they start earning their reputation as jack-booted thugs in service of an Orwellian regime.
What are your thoughts on the new Pope? Is his humbleness just some marketing strategy from the Vatican?
Displays of piety are always a marketing strategy, and let’s not forget that this asshole considers himself to be the infallible voice of god on earth. If you’re impressed just because he doesn’t wear the shiny red shoes, you seriously need to adjust your definition of humble.
My favorite movie is Roman Polanski’s Cul-de-Sac, a fact which shocked my boyfriend, who said that he refuses to watch any Polanski film because of the rape charges. So, Coquette, can you separate the art from the artist?
Of course. One can and should separate the art from the artist. That still doesn’t change the fact that you’re a pretentious douche with horrible taste in movies.
I can’t get across my college campus without some mouthbreather hassling me about going to church. I usually smile and say no thanks but it’s getting harder. Should I just tell them what I really think sometimes? I’m a very stringent atheist who feels that abrahamic religions do far more bad than good. Or should I just find new ways to keep my cool?
Moments like that are a golden opportunity to practice the art of keeping cool while looking someone dead in the eye and telling them to fuck off.
My uncle was a member of the original free-loving, Vietnam War-protesting, acid-taking hippie movement. Though he used to be an avid drug user, he told me he would never take the drugs being sold now because of how synthetic they are and all of the extra ingredients in them, making them more dangerous. I thought this was an interesting point, but at the same time our food has evolved in the same way, carrying many more insecticides and other chemicals than are on the labe
So Coquette, what is your opinion on the evolution of drugs and their safety now?
Oh, please. Drugs have always been dangerous. There have always been adulterants. There have always been impurities. LSD isn’t any more synthetic now than it was in the 60s, and I’ll take the Pepsi challenge with your uncle’s Woodstock biker crank and Mexican ditch weed any day of the fucking week. Those filthy hippies should have been so lucky as to have readily available ecstasy and today’s refined strains of pharmaceutical grade marijuana.
Every generation has its drug warriors, and as with every subculture, the old-school old-timers will always have shit to talk about the new kids on the block. Your uncle might be saying that his drugs were more chemically pure, but what he’s really trying to sell you is that his drugs were somehow more ideologically pure.
He’s making an emotional argument masked as a scientific one, and it’s uncut hippie bullshit. If your uncle doesn’t want to partake in better living through chemistry, that’s his business, but unless he’s got a gas chromatograph in his tool shed, he’s just talking out of his ass.
So is Beyonce black or white?
Beyonce is gold.
How important is money?
Wealth is important. Money is just paper.
What do you think of Sheryl Sandberg and her ‘Lean In’ book?
I think it’s the literary equivalent of vanilla scented hand sanitizer, but hey, kudos to Sheryl for squeezing $24.95 out of everyone who owns a pant suit.
Do you believe if you work hard enough, you’ll get where you need to be?
Of course not. Work hard, sure, but there are no guarantees in this life. Wherever you end up, it’s definitely not going to be what you expect.
Why can’t my mom just be happy for me?
Because there’s nothing in it for her.
How long is too long to hold a grudge before it starts to become pathetic?
Eleven minutes.
What do you do if you have no inner strength?
Find external sources of strength and exploit them.
Why do I always fall for guys that I barely know?
Because they’re a blank slate onto which you can project your fantasies.
I just want to date myself. Or at least someone very similar to me. I know it’s narcissistic, but is it wrong?
You only think you want to date yourself because you’re blind to the fact that you’re insufferable. (I promise, you wouldn’t put up with your own bullshit.) What you really want is to date someone who allows you to be yourself, despite the fact that you’re an asshole. Good luck.
how do i know if my poetry is any good? will you read it?
Nobody wants to read your shitty poetry.
You are one of the nastiest and most judgemental people I have ever come across on the web.
You live a small and sheltered life.
I’m 17 and 2 weeks ago my boyfriend of three years hit me. We were fighting, which rarely happens, and he was drunk. It was the first time he’s ever been remotely aggressive. But it happened and it freaked me out, so I broke up with him.
I’ll admit I’m a sheltered person, I live in suburbia and go to a private high school. In my entire life I have never felt unsafe because of where I live or who I hang out with. Thing is, I know I’m better than this. I don’t care if it’s been three years. I don’t care if it was even a one time thing. I simply won’t allow this to happen to me. But since breaking up with him, he won’t leave me alone. He’s constantly apologizing, with tears, and explaining that it was an accident. I still love him, but I’m done. I’m done and I know it to my bones that this feeling won’t change.
The problem here is that since breaking up with him all of our mutual friends have become angry with me. At school my ex-boyfriend and I were like “that couple” who everyone thought was going to get married. It’s so ridiculous, people are acting like I’ve broken some sacred rule. As a result, I’ve gone from being a well-liked person to a social pariah. I’m lonely, but all this is still not enough to make me be his girlfriend again.
I just don’t know what to do. This has been so confusing and painful, and I don’t know anyone whose gone through something similar. I’ve looked through your archives but so far I haven’t seen anything titled “on getting bitch-slapped by a lacrosse player”. So please, help me out.
You don’t need my help, kiddo. You’re doing just fine.
You did the right thing by breaking up with your boyfriend, and even though it’s making you a bit miserable at the moment, you’re proving that you have mature adult levels of both self-respect and inner strength.
Most importantly, you’ve set a rock solid precedent for all your future relationships. You’ve drawn a hard line at the the kind of abusive behavior you simply refuse to tolerate. It’s impressive, and you have my respect.
Keep it up. Don’t bother listening to your ex’s bullshit apologies, and do your best to ignore the shallow high school politics. I promise, you’re not a social pariah. You’re just learning who your real friends are. It’s tough, but it’s a valuable fucking lesson.
Also, for what it’s worth, three years is a good run for a high school relationship. I know you still love him, but you were never gonna marry this little douchebag.
Try and take the long view. Spend your senior year single. Date around a little, and go off to to college without any baggage.
I’m seriously considering becoming a “sugar baby.” I’m a college student, just got fired from a poorly paid job and ended a relationship with an older guy. Honestly it would be nice to go on dates with a successful guy for a change, and get paid for it. Would you do it? Should I? Or is it just a nice name for an escort?
Escort is a much nicer name for it than sugar baby. Whatever label you want to use, let’s be clear, you’re deciding whether to become a prostitute. That’s fine. Do what you like with your body and your life, but don’t kid yourself about what kind of game you’re playing.
My family likes to talk about relationships. I don’t. I believe it’s none of their business who I’m dating, but now, I dread any family lunch because by avoiding their relationship questions, I’m accused of being distrustful and/or of hiding something. I’ll admit that I don’t handle it in the smoothest of ways and get irritated fast, but it’s really annoying. How can I explain boundaries to people?
You don’t have to explain your boundaries. You just have to set them and keep your cool. Don’t get irritated when they start to pry. Learn to deflect, and get comfortable with the phrase, “I’d rather talk about something else.” It’s perfectly okay to tell them flat out that it’s none of their business who you’re dating. (Just do it calmly.)
When they accuse you of being distrustful or of hiding something, recognize it as emotional blackmail, and don’t let it it get under your skin. Tell them that this isn’t a trust issue. (You trust them.) It is simply a privacy issue, and they need to respect that.
Remember, every time they accuse you of being distrustful, you can accuse them of being disrespectful. Every time they accuse you of hiding something, you can accuse them of meddling. I’m not suggesting you start arguments, but you should know in your head that you have firm ground on which to stand up for yourself if need be.