Blue Balls Score 5 Points

Women don’t owe you sex. You expected sex? Your expectations are honestly your problem.

Ever been accused of leaving a guy with blue balls? ‘Blue balls’ AKA a mildly painful feeling in the testicles when a dude gets turned on and then doesn’t get any. It’s my least favourite urban legend cited by men trying to pressure me into sex (closely followed by Bigfoot), and it’s getting really boring at this point. Even if they are a little bit uncomfortable, I would rather men learnt how to have a wank and stop expecting me to sleep with them when I don’t want to, so that I could go back to associating the phrase with Gonzo from The Muppets and inflatable ball pits, but whatever.

I got a bit of a reputation in our first year of uni for being a massive cocktease, and honestly, it was brilliant. I was in a new city, clubs were still open (RIP), I was fresh out of a relationship and honestly hot shit. I had absolutely no issues dancing with a boy in a club and making out and then boogieing swiftly away. More than once I walked all the way back to someone’s house, only to change my mind and dip back to the club to keep on vibing. It wasn’t some master plan to hoodwink and manipulate men. I still slept with strangers, but only when I wanted to. I was just getting better and better at checking in with myself about sex I *wanted* to have, and sex I felt *socially obliged* to have. And often the sobering walk from the bowels of a club back to a student apartment was enough information to tell me that I really didn’t want Marcus the architecture student’s penis inside me, even though he HAD been a good snog and an even better dance partner.

10/10 would recommend a slutty prude phase to a friend. You get to wake up in your own bed, with no chance of a pregnancy scare or an STI moment. You do what you want to do on your terms. All of the rush and none of the regret. The only thing that sucked low-key was the stigma.

“Poor guys,” “how does HE feel?” and “don’t you feel bad about the number of guys you’ve left with blue balls?” were all actual things my friends said. In a well-meaning way, but still. That’s without mentioning the things that men said to me, to try and change my mind about sleeping with them. “Total fucking cocktease”, “you’re not gonna leave me with blue balls, are you?”, and “skanky bitch” were among my favs.

But here’s the thing: I am a delight. I am super excellent in so many ways. And I’m gonna assume that you are too. So it honestly baffles me how someone could have literal hours of good time dancing with a girl, maybe even get in a quick snog, and then reframe that whole experience as a bad thing, just because they didn’t get their willy wet. That’s like, if someone gave you a slice of cake and a cup of tea as a gift, but didn’t let you take their really cool denim jacket as well just because you thought it looked pretty sick, and you threw a strop. Actually so rogue.

(Ironically, how a lot of men seem to think a date works. A pint + a giggle = access to your vag?? And if u don’t get access to my vag then the pint + the giggle = worthless??? Right.)

The Blues Run the Game 

What about the infamous ‘blue balls’? The excruciating and medically very important testicular pain that men feel when a sexy lady wiggles for them and then they don’t get to stick their penis in her fanny?

Yeah, unfortunately for the fuckboys of this world, ‘blue balls’ are not a real thing. The internet says that ‘very little data exists regarding the condition’ and ‘there is scant information in the scientific literature’, which is code for ‘men made it up to try and shame women into have sex with them’. The classic move – if I make the woman feel guilty for not having sex with me, I can pressure her into changing her mind. (This is fucked up btw, and not how consent works.) ‘Blue balls’ are about as real as the Easter bunny, or Atlantis, or good fried chicken in North London.

I can literally hear you all piping up to tell me about YOUR balls, or some balls that YOU KNOW, or some balls that a friend of a friend’s cousin encountered once in a camping site toilet while on holiday in Cumbria. And honestly, that’s great. I am not here to tell you that your lived experiences aren’t happening. And hey, maybe your gonads are actually really sore. There are a number of reasons why someone’s balls might be in pain, including pelvic muscle spasms, prostatitis, infections, ejaculatory duct obstruction, urethral stricture, varicocele, hip joint issues, banging your nuts against something hard… if you twist your balls in a 360-degree motion like that girl’s head in The Exorcist, they might even actually turn blue. The cure for these very real issues though, is a trip to the doctor’s, not some coerced reverse cowgirl. If your partner is trying to talk you into anything, it should be a lift to A&E.

And if you are coming down with a real case of I-mistakenly-thought-I-was-gonna-get-to-shag-someone-but-was-clearly-wrong-itis (not as catchy as ‘blue balls’, but we move) then we would politely suggest a wank. It won’t fix your penile pain, but it does tend to make us feel better. 

The low down on blue balls? Women don’t owe you sex. Did you expect sex? Your expectations are honestly your problem.

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