Much has been written about this phrase, some of it by me.
It’s not something I’ve ever said easily, and the impulse to say (or type) it is one I’ve only developed over the last year or two, with the substantial help of one or two women in particular, who, to hear them tell it, would fairly quiver on hearing or reading the words. Or even simply “GG.”
I rarely speak the words aloud. Doing so feels trite, almost silly. A few times, I forced myself to growl it into a woman’s, ear, always to great effect. But it always has felt just a little… unnatural.
That said, I’m pretty fully sold on its use in email or text. Somehow, not having to speak it, to be seen and heard while saying it, liberates me, and nowadays, I sprinkle it liberally (though, of course, only when earned) throughout various virtual interactions. Almost always to (virtual) great effect.
I’m ambivalent about it, but have come to enjoy at least typing it, if not speaking it.
But the other day, after the snarky Luna complied with some or other request of mine, I replied, “Good girl,” and for a moment, I thought I’d lost her.
“Don’t call me a good girl. It’s unoriginal and I hate things that are generic,” she wrote. (Oh, snap!)
Well ok.
I’ve written before about my struggle with second-wave feminism and its impact on my ability comfortably to objectify. For the most part, I’m over that particular hurdle.
If you’re hot, I have no qualms about telling you you’re hot; if I want to fuck you, I’ll tell you that. If I want to see your ass, I’ll tell you to turn around, or to bend over, or to take something off. Always politely, respectfully, and often in the form of a question, or a request. But I’ll tell you. And you won’t mistake the form of the communication for its meaning.
But even though I’ll do all this comfortably, you’re still a woman to me, not a girl. A woman with power and agency. If you’re not, if you are a girl, that’s a turn-off. It’s why my appreciation for shaved pussies – greater today than it was when I wrote this – remains ambivalent.
I like women. When a woman submits to me, complies with me, the arousing potency of the act derives from her starting position of power and strength, and not from her assuming a role – the role of the “good girl” – but rather from her departing from her normal ways of interacting, even as she remains a powerful woman. She’s submitting as an expression of her agency, not her helplessness.
This is why I have such a complicated relationship to this expression.
What do you think? Guys, do you say it? Feel it? Mean it? Women, what do you think? How does it make you feel? Why?