I’m Not Your Sex-Crazy Nympho Dreamgirl
2011 27 May
This was originally published on May 12, 2011 over at the Good Men Project.
There’s this cultural image of what it means to be female, and good in bed. The image includes being young and thin and cisgendered of course, and that can be problematic. But it also includes a lot of behavioral stuff: the way you squirm, the way you moan, being Super Excited about everything the guy wants to do, and Always Being Up for It — whatever “It” is. When people think about “good in bed,” for a woman, that’s often what they think.
Here’s a short list of some things I think are totally awesome:
+ Squirming and moaning during sex in a genuine way, out of genuine pleasure!
+ Acting Super Excited when your partner wants to do something you’re actually Super Excited about!
+ Being up for sexual experimentation and trying new things, while keeping track of your boundaries and saying no (or calling your safeword) to sexual things you really don’t like!
Those things are great. They’re great when they happen in all kinds of sex, and I have no problem with how people experience or deal with with those things — whether people get them from vanilla or S&M sex, or porn, or sex with multiple people, or queer sex, or whatever. All consensual sex is fine with me. (In particular, in pieces like the one you’re about to read, I often have to make it really clear that I’m not anti-porn. OK? I’m not anti-porn. Got that? Say it with me now: Clarisse Thorn is not anti-porn. Yay, it rhymes!)
What scares me, however—what continuously gets my goat, what still occasionally makes me feel weird about sex — is how easy it is to perform those three things I listed above. Because I have always, since before I even started having sex, known exactly what I was supposed to look like while I had sex. I don’t even know how I internalized those images: some of them through porn, I suppose, or art or erotica or what have you; some of them by reading sex tips on the Internet or hearing the ones whispered to me by friends. But I can definitely assure you that before I had any actual sexual partners, I knew how to give a good blowjob. I also knew how to tilt my head back and moan, and I knew how to twist my body, and I knew what my reactions and expressions were supposed to look and sound like — I knew all those things much better than I knew what would make me react.
There was a while there, where my sexuality was mostly performance: an image, an act, a shell that I created because I knew it was hot for my partners. I’m not saying I was performing 100% of the time — but certainly, when I was just starting to have sex, that’s mostly what it was. And, scarily, I can put the shell back on at any time. Sometimes it’s hard to resist, because I know men will reward me for it, emotionally, with affection and praise. It’s much, much more difficult to get what I actually want out of a sexual interaction than it is for me to create that sexy dreamgirl shell: hard for me to communicate my desires, hard for me to know what I’m thinking, hard for me to set boundaries.
And hard to believe that a guy will like me as much, if I try to be honest about what I want. Honesty means that sometimes I’m confused, and sometimes we have to Talk About It; honesty means that sometimes I say no, it means that sometimes I’m not Up For It. Something in me is always asking: Surely he’d prefer the sexy, fake, plastic dreamgirl shell? It’s not true, I know it’s not true, I swear it’s not true — I don’t have such a low opinion of men as that. I know this is just a stereotype, the idea that men are emotionally stunted horndogs with no interest in how their partners feel.
So sometimes, I have to fight myself not to perform. But it’s worth it — because the hardest thing of all is feeling locked into an inauthentic sexuality. I tell myself, I try to force myself to believe it: even if a guy would like me more for faking and holding back and being so-called “low-maintenance” — I tell myself it’s a stereotype, but even if that stereotype is true of some men — no man is worth doing that to myself. No man is worth that trapped, false, sick feeling.
Being a sex and S&M writer sometimes increases my performance anxiety. Occasionally I’ll meet guys who seem to think I am equipped to give any man the Night Of His Life — and that this is my goal at all times. Sometimes I feel like I should grab certain guys by the shoulders and shake them and say, “I am not your sex-crazy nympho dreamgirl! I’m a real person and I have real preferences, I do not exist just as your fantasy fodder!” But if I really like a guy and he’s read some of my work, then I feel less irritation than concern that I won’t stack up. It increases the urge to go all Sexy Dreamgirl Shell, rather than attempting to communicate.
Being a sex-positive feminist, I also sometimes worry that other women will read my work and it will increase their performance anxiety. I worry that writing about some stuff I like will be misinterpreted — that it will lead other women to feel like, gosh, is this something liberated sex-positive women do? Is this something I “should” be doing? With some things I write, I get afraid that I’ve contributed to a nightmare world where women are “liberated” only in the sense that we can better perform for men.
I once read a blog post by a radical feminist writer in which she claimed that women always hate fellatio because it’s always degrading and disgusting. She wrote something along the lines of, “I say this for the women and girls who believe that they have to do it.” Part of me felt frustrated by the way she refused to acknowledge that some women really do like performing fellatio (and many other women don’t love it, but don’t mind doing it as long as they have great sex otherwise). In some ways, it felt like that writer was policing sexuality. But I empathized with her goal: She wanted women who don’t like fellatio to relax; she wanted to help them recognize what they don’t like. She wanted to decrease their performance anxiety.
I’d like to do the same thing, but I generally prefer to speak from personal experience rather than making claims about others’ experience. Accordingly, I’ve often thought that it would be great if more sex-positive feminists would make lists of Things We, Personally, Don’t Like. It’s not the easiest project to sell, because one of the big goals of being sex-positive is to destigmatize sexuality and decrease shame. But if we destigmatize sexuality without encouraging good boundaries, then we’re not moving forward; we’re just creating more bad standards.
So hey, here’s an example of a common sexual thing that I don’t like: swallowing after giving oral sex. I love fellatio most of the time, and I like it when partners come in my mouth, but I really hate swallowing. In the past I’ve found a variety of creative ways to deal with this problem, some of which were hot (according to me, anyway) — but usually I just spit it out in the closest sink. (The reason I don’t like swallowing is that it makes me physically ill. No, I am not interested in your armchair theories about why this happens, and yes, it has been thoroughly discussed over here.)
A more complicated example would be facials. As a sex-crazy nympho dreamgirl, I am supposed to love all facials all the time, to which I say: Bah. I’m occasionally into degradation scenes, and facials feel really degrading to me, so there are circumstances in which a guy can come on my face and it’ll be hot — but those circumstances are rare. I’ve got to really respect him and really trust him, and I’ve got to be really turned on and excited about whatever scene we’re playing out. And if a guy were to give me a facial without clearing it with me at some point ahead of time? Serious boundary violation. Not cool.
Have I destroyed your image of me as your sex-crazy nympho dreamgirl? Good.
I think that people of all genders receive a lot of unconscious training about how we can damage ourselves in exchange for the attention of the opposite sex. By writing about my own experience, I don’t mean to discount the experiences of others. I get that many guys feel locked into acting confident and dominant, and that lots of guys hate that role as much as I hate my Sexy Dreamgirl Shell. I get that many women genuinely enjoy reclaiming the Sexy Dreamgirl image, and making it their own; hell, I do it myself sometimes. (Yes, I do it myself sometimes. Sex is complicated.)
People of all genders have a hard time figuring out what turns them on. Authenticity is hard — and sexual authenticity gets harder when you’re feeling low, or you really like someone and really want that person to like you, or when you feel bombarded with messages about how you’ve got to “compete” in a harsh sexual “marketplace.” I believe that one of the best ways to authenticity is to seek understanding of the pressures on everyone, and to grasp that everyone’s got their own nightmare of the Sexy Dreamgirl Shell.
Tags: BDSM, communication, feminism, masculinity, pornography, preferences
I don’t think I can overstate how much I relate to this. In almost every relationship I’ve done the Sexy Dreamgirl Thing early on and then had to backtrack and say what I actually like. It’d probably be a lot easier if I just started with the discussion. Paradoxically I can’t talk about what I actually want until I know a person really well, and by then I’ve convinced that person through action or inaction that my preferences are the perfect complement to theirs. ARGH.
Thank you for this article! I do (non-shitty, alt/ indie) porn, BDSM, and I write about it. I’m in a relationship, so I don’t have to deal with different dudes’ bizarre sexual expectations surrounding this stuff, but just telling someone at a bar about WIITID will have him looking at me differently. It’s the ‘you’re my sex-crazy nympho dreamgirl’ look. Interestingly enough (and maybe it’s because I’m in a relationship and unavailable) this look is always followed by some denigrating comment. Being the sex-crazy nympho dreamgirl (and perhaps also being unavailable) means that you’re a slut, and also stupid.
I will never cease to be amazed by how angry men get when you fulfill their sexual expectations– sometimes even angrier than when you don’t fulfill them.
I don’t think guys actually are into the fake sexy dreamgirl act. The guys I know really do want their partners to enjoy themselves, and they genuinely want to do things pleasing to their partners. If you act like you’re enjoying yourself when you’re not, how is the guy supposed to know what works for you and what doesn’t? It’s a disservice to both when we can’t bring our authentic sexuality into our sexual relationships. You may think you’re being low maintenance, and you may think that’s what he wants, but I doubt it.
Here’s a simple test of whether I’m correct or not. Tell your guy that you’re faking the whole Sexy Dreamgirl thing and doing it just to please him. I’m willing to bet it’s the very rare guy that is okay with that, and instead he’ll want to know – and do – what genuinely gets you off. (That’s not to say he won’t be interested in occasionally acting out a fantasy scene that’s just about him.)
So why do people persist in presenting themselves in an inauthentic way? I suspect it’s because it is easier on the psyche to have a false persona rejected than to have our true selves rejected. But rather than admit this, we tell ourselves a lie that this is what the other person wants. And yes, many times it is too easy to put on the performance, and it can be a damned convincing one too, but everyone is probably better off if we don’t.
Absolutely great post, we need more writers who will stand up and say, “Yes, I’m kinky, but no, I do not like to do xxxxx things and I will not do them in bed.”
A real downside of porn, movies, and even romance novels is the idea that men and women are “supposed” to act a certain way during sex and are “supposed” to like certain sex acts.
Kudos.
The weird thing is that the relationship I’m in is the first one where, when we first sat down to talk about kinky shit, I felt comfortable saying “Okay, I am kinky and have a strong submissive side, but I’m also super sensitive and recovering from some trauma and I don’t want you to say mean things to me or hurt me and honestly tying me up is a little iffy too…” and somehow that led to a relationship where I’m comfortable doing — and greatly enjoying — things I’d never felt comfortable trying before. Because we were starting from the proposition that it was okay for me to set a whole lot of boundaries, and that he’d still love me and want me.
Whereas in past relationships, the lack of that freedom — in particular, feeling like I had to maintain the hardcore Dom role — led to me hating acts that I’d totally gotten off to the thought of.
…Not really? :p
Anyway, I really liked this part:
That’s something that’s easy to miss. The “shell” (both kinds) damages people who feel like they can’t do without it, but it’s not entirely without redeeming value; used properly, voluntarily, by someone who’s more aware of the ramifications, it can be a hell of a great toy.
[Double post; apologies.]
LoriA,
Well, I guess that’s not surprising, right?
If I’m remembering my reading of the Dictionary For Assholes correctly, a slut is “anyone who has sex with people you know, but not with you.”* As opposed to a prude, of course, who is “anyone who won’t have sex with you or anyone else you know.”
(*Or who might be having sex with other people, or who might want to, or who… well, whatever else. I guess “slut” is basically the Duct Tape of Assholese.)
I got that strange set of expectations, from a sex-toy retailer point of view. I had sad/funny/cute experiences with women who didn’t want to use their strap-ons with me, because I was obviously so expert and they didn’t feel like they’d had enough practice. Sigh. Also, I know secrets, right?
And for me, the thing I’ll do when I feel exhibitionistic and want to look hot but don’t enjoy: tit fucking. They’re big enough and now, at 35, they’re soft enough. It just doesn’t turn me on.
Motley
Ha, true. Try harder Clarisse.
corn walker:
I think you're right in some situations. But in others in can just be that it's easier to lie because people believe the lie and the lie is sexier than the truth.
Sometimes pretense is the easy thing to fall back on, I suspect. Especially under pressure. The false, expected, reaction is the one we are exposed to the most; having seen an inauthentic but stereotypical reaction a hundred times in pop culture and in discussion, and having known an authentic reaction half a dozen times in one’s personal life, there is no surprise to me that turn to the inauthentic. They’ve had more training in it.
Just wanted to add that, even were it a psychosomatic reaction, that wouldn’t make it not real. We have this tendency to treat psychological reactions as if they were less serious than “physical” ones, but the fact that they originate in the brain and not in the spleen doesn’t make them any less physiological. The brain is the same gross matter as the rest of the gestalt.
Just wanted to add that, even were it a psychosomatic reaction, that wouldn’t make it not real.
Agreed. What I was actually aiming for was to prevent armchair theorization about my psychology in the comments, because I’ve had that conversation before and it almost always pisses me off unless I’m talking to people who have known me for a while and understand me pretty well. But I could have done that by just saying in the original post, “I’m not interested in your armchair theories” … so I think I’ll just edit the original post to say that ;)
Thank you so much for this post! I had never before had the words to put to the feeling that I always had in my sexual relations; about that need to perform, to live up to my partners expectations – or at least what I perceived as his expectations. In either case, I think that porn played a part in the development of both.
This post has given me so much .
Interestingly, BDSM has helped me rid myself of that feeling that performance is expected of me. It’s sort of impossible to squirm and moan “appropriately” when you are tied down and gagged, and hard to keep up a performance while in pain. BDSM brought sex down to the basics for me, and that was something that I had been missing.
@cornwalker
So basically you’re agreeing with everything Clarisse was saying.
@Motley
Hey, leave duct tape out of this :-P
@rose
“Interestingly, BDSM has helped me rid myself of that feeling that performance is expected of me. It’s sort of impossible to squirm and moan “appropriately” when you are tied down and gagged, and hard to keep up a performance while in pain. ”
Yes, yes, yes!
@LoriA
I think mostly, yes, although I’m not sure Clarisse really got into why it’s easier – which I tried to broach without armchair theorizing about Clarisse. My point is that I think we play these roles (distinct from role-playing, which can be hot) because they feel safer than revealing what you really want, or trying to find out what that is if you don’t already know. It’s okay if Sex-Crazy Nympho Dreamgirl gets rejected, because that wasn’t really you anyway.
My wife quibbles with my saying it’s fear of rejection that makes it easier to inhabit the role. She thinks it’s about avoiding feeling vulnerable, particularly at early stages in the relationship. That sounds like the same thing to me – perhaps someone here can help me understand the difference?
wow, this post really resonated with me.
the whole dreamgirl persona was me for about the first 5 years that i was having sex. i had a really difficult time becoming aroused, and that combined with low self-esteem led me to “act” in sexual situations with guys i was seeing. i never faked orgasms (i didn’t have one till two years ago!) but i knew how to look, and move my body that seemed to satisfy those guys. and the sex was always about them. i did everything i could to please them, so their focus was on themselves and not on me because i was so terrified of…i don’t even know, them being angry with me for not getting aroused? and most guys seemed to be just fine with that. i was so ashamed of not feeling aroused ever that i didn’t speak up. and they never asked – not what i liked, what i wanted, nothing. but, i can’t blame them for my inability to open my mouth. i play-acted to keep those relationships.
of course, they all ended but i don’t know how much my dreamgirl-in-bed persona contributed to that. i definitely feel like my low self-esteem made me think performing was okay.
even now i still have trouble speaking up, but i’m getting better. i can get aroused now (thank you weed!) but i still feel myself getting stuck in that mode of “just please him, don’t worry about yourself.” my current guy, who i’m engaged to, is absolutely wonderful and has helped me tremendously with learning to speak up for what i like.
@Rose -
A few years ago, a friend of mine met a very attractive girl from a fetish website. By very attractive I mean she was slender with boobs and took a good photo. In a fetish community she was very popular. In a big city nightclub? She was cute, but not remarkable.
A few months into ttheir relationship, she admitted to my friend that she wasn’t really into kink. It was ok and she didn’t mind the pain that much, but mostly she liked that she got a lot of attention for being ‘insanely hot’ in the kink community – where she was just the cute side of average elsewhere.
One of my biggest hangups to this day, is that someone I play with might be for whatever reason just running through the performance. It’s the least sexy thing I can imagine in a consensual exchange that doesn’t involve some kind of bodily waste not typically included in sexual encounters.
As a sadist – I love the ‘performance’. I love the body language and the non verbal expressions of my partner. A huge, huge portion of the turn on is the way my partner reacts. But the honesty of the way someone wiggles when they’re suspended, or tied down. The real truth of the noises a stoic masochist makes when you hurt them enough in the right way. The undeniable evidence that someone is incredibly turned on by what I’m doing when there’s no way for them to be performing – that’s like a drug for me. But if I had any inclination that it was faked/exagerated/for my benefit? Meh.
You put it into words. This is what I’ve been struggling with, and now I have a wonderfully eloquent way of talking about it. The dreamgirl shell.
Communicating through it is impossible and using it comes very naturally, shields and cages at the same time. This has been my achilles’ heel. Letting it go is really hard but really satisfactory. I’m much better in bed without the shell and I have my partners happiness to prove it!
Ah, right: Should’ve been electrical tape. My bad.
I have fears similar to the ones Scootah mentioned, although not in a kink context. When you wrote, “What scares me, however—what continuously gets my goat, what still occasionally makes me feel weird about sex — is how easy it is to perform those three things I listed above.” I was nodding my head, because that scares me too – from the other end of things, as a straight male. What the performance is supposed to represent – that is what is most satisfying to me about sex in general. Knowing that I’m giving someone else pleasure is what makes me feel comfortable and is what makes me feel like I’m less likely to be doing something they don’t want me to be doing (enthusiastic consent and all that). So if someone is faking that – it effectively means that I’m more at risk to be doing things they don’t fully consent to, or at least aren’t actually comfortable with (Scary!).
There’s this weird irrationality to the whole thing, though, in that I also sometimes really don’t feel comfortable having my pleasure be prioritized (say, during a blowjob), because all those signs aren’t as obvious in that case or I just generally feel more suspicious towards them for some reason. (It’s more likely to seem like it’s just performing in those cases.) That would be all fine and good, except my partners want that same kind of satisfaction that I do, i.e. they want to make me moan and squirm, just like I want to do the same to them, so effectively my own ways of trying to focus on their own pleasure undermine that goal.
This inherent conflict becomes even more obvious in situations where I want to engage in sexual acts that are focused on my partner but she wants just have intercourse or something that’s more reciprocal. In that case, I get disappointed for not being able to go down on her etc. as much as I would like. But that’s completely nonsensical – if she doesn’t actually want it, then why do I? There must be some extent to which I’m treating my idea of what pleases her as the “truth” instead of actually recognizing that she gets pleasure from all the same sorts of things I do. Like I have some idea about what it means to satisfy her sexually that doesn’t actually fit with what satisfies her sexually.
How did that come about, if this all started with me focusing on what got her off? I think it goes back to the performance thing – I feel more like I get to focus on her response if I’m not getting pleasure also. In other words, it turns me on when I pleasure her but not when she is getting pleasure from pleasuring me – that seems pretty selfish, actually! And denying her sexual agency and all kinds of other bad things. I don’t know how to go about fixing that, though. Is this something you’ve ever heard/thought about?
Another great article! Since I started blogging about sex, I’ve actually been feeling worse about myself sexually because I’ve also been reading more, and I feel like I’m not nearly as sexual or into everything as many of my fellow writers. It’s hard to step back and realize that it’s okay to not like the things I don’t like (receiving oral, for example) even if it seems ‘everyone’ else I know is enjoying it.
Not putting on the fake act is really difficult though in those times when I’m just not in the mood…which is too often for my liking. My partner’s told me time and time again to be honest with him about it, but when it comes down to him being horny and me not, it feels like it would just be easier to go with the flow anyway. Otherwise we end up arguing about it and I end up feeling worse.
Wandering by due to a conversation elsewhere, so very late to this discussion.
As a hetersexual cis-male, I have to say I have experienced some form of this, too, although I suspect the pressure to do it and the rewards gained are significantly lower.
But as others have said, I am deathly afraid of it being the case in my partners. In fact, I am reasonably certain it was in my last long-term partner, and I’m still messed up by the fact.
I *love* getting feedback in bed. “That’s not working for me, can you do this instead?” is immensely reassuring to hear, because it tells me two things. One, my partner isn’t faking it; if she does start moaning and squirming and screaming, it’s because she really feels that way. And two, she knows what she wants and cares enough to explain it to me.
(And three, it takes the pressure off me to be The Decider. The same dynamic that says women are supposed to be responsive to men’s wants, also says men are supposed to assert their wants at all times. As a guy who often struggles with figuring out what I want, that’s pretty intimidating.)
I was in a conversation with a couple friends about whether women like to swallow cum. I said that I thought plenty of women enjoyed it. My friend said that “women hate that.” That same friend also said that he once did it to a girl when they were in the break up phase of their relationship as a way of getting revenge on her. My brain tries to connect things so I thought it was interesting that he both thought that women disliked the act and he desired to do the act in a way that was intentionally humiliating. Sometimes people attribute the meaning of a behavior in terms of their own desires. Likewise I thought that it was interesting that you thought that facials were degrading and you’ve liked them when degradation was what you wanted.
I don’t know what you mean when you say that your pro-porn in this context. Are you saying that facials feel degrading to you or do you feel that the facials that take place in porn are degrading as well? If it’s degrading then is saying porn is okay because it is consenting really enough for one to be able to say that they are pro-porn? Perhaps one could say that they are pro-legalization of porn but thinking that most porn scenes have degrading acts does not seem like a pro-porn thing to say.
It’s a thing, according to this essay, that sex crazy nympho dream girl do facials. But you won’t do facials. Perhaps it’s not so much the idea that you wont do facials that discords with a sex crazy nympho dream girl image as the idea that you find them personally and perhaps generally degrading.
A woman that wants to have a lot of sex and is willing to experiment and be wild really doesn’t sound unrealistic, wrong, or just the product of stupid male fantasying. I am not saying that you think like that but some of these comments here are very derisive of men when they give some sort of look like “hmmm maybe your my kind of girl because your into the things i’m into.” UHHH.
“I’m a real person and I have real preferences, I do not exist just as your fantasy fodder!” But if I really like a guy and he’s read some of my work, then I feel less irritation than concern that I won’t stack up.
Did you really just say that if you really like a guy that that will determine how you will respond even you say you don’t like like it when men have a fantasy projection of you. Yet actually if you like him your only concerned about measuring up to it? Is this just a complete cliche? This is what men are always saying about women. Are you trying to manipulate men to buy your books? You’ve managed to get yourself articles on major feminists websites so you better be for real.
Quadruple A:
Think you missed the context, there. A big part of that point was about being a writer, and about meeting people who’ve read what you’ve written. I don’t have the kind of publishing history that Clarisse has, at least on-line; most of my work has been small press, some years back. But knowing that a potential partner had read it, or had been in a workshop where I’d done a spoken performance of it? Yeah, that definitely created the kind of effect that Clarisse mentioned. Hell, that can even happen after someone sees what I have sitting on my bookshelves, since I tend to keep my inspirations out in the open. Once you give someone that kind of inside view — which is something that writing wracks out of you, whether you want it or not — that concern comes right along with it.
I suspect that this complicates things for women more than it does for men. But the basic experience?
It isn’t “what men are always saying about women.” It’s a writer thing.
“Once you give someone that kind of inside view — which is something that writing wracks out of you, whether you want it or not — that concern comes right along with it.”
In my understanding, which could very well be a misunderstanding, Clarisse seemed to be saying that she felt less uncomfortable when someone HAD read her work rather than more uncomfortable – that is if she liked the guy.
Clarisse seems to say that she is concerned about the burden of fulfilling a man’s fantasy of the sex crazed nympho dream girl when she likes the guy but when she doesn’t like the guy she feels irritation because … well everything she was saying about it not being cool to be thought of as a sex crazed nympho dream girl. Those two opposing attitudes toward male fantasy are dependent on a context that isn’t relevant to the rightness of wrongness of the fantasy and that is where the cliche resides.
“In my understanding, which could very well be a misunderstanding, Clarisse seemed to be saying that she felt less uncomfortable when someone HAD read her work rather than more uncomfortable – that is if she liked the guy.”
And that’s what I’m pointing out: you’re missing the context. It isn’t about more or less comfortable, and it isn’t about a cliché. It’s about being a writer, and meeting someone whom you’re interested in, someone who has also read your writing.
If you’re not a writer, maybe you wouldn’t get that, because you’ve never had the experience. It’s about the compulsion to live up to that fantasy when two conditions are met, not just one: you’ve met someone you’re interested in, and who is interested in you, and that person is already acquainted with some of your disclosures of truth, especially erotic truth, through writing. That second element cannot be separated from the first without changing this situation into a different one, raising a strawman.
And what applies to writing, I’m sure, can also be applied to other forms of art and expression.
Thanks Infra, you totally nailed it here.
Quadruple A — Are you trying to manipulate men to buy your books? You’ve managed to get yourself articles on major feminists websites so you better be for real.
Seriously? Look, if you actually doubt whether I’m “for real” and aren’t willing to assume that people are speaking from a genuine place when they write/comment on my site, then our conversations probably aren’t going to do much for you.