Category: Sexual Awakenings

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Am I BiSexual?

16 Signs That It Ain’t No Lie, You’re Bi Bi Bi

by Lianna Bass

Bisexual (aka bi) peeps are romantically or sexually interested in more than one gender. But NGL, that definition is a bit basic. The sexual spectrum is a vast, beautiful, and sometimes confusing thing.

“Our culture is so oriented to binaries, it can be easy to feel pressured to ‘pick a side’ when it comes to sexual orientation,” says Dove Pressnall, MA, LMFT. “The reality is that, across cultures, human sexual experience and identity fall along a spectrum.”

Bi folks might be interested in one gender more than the other. Or they like all genders equally. It’s also totally normal for your feelings to change over time.

Here are 16 signs that you might be a bi babe.

1. Gender doesn’t matter to you

Can a person be attracted to someone regardless of the junk they’re rocking down under? Heck yes! For bi peeps, it’s more about how you feel about a person. Their gender doesn’t always matter as much.

PSA: This doesn’t mean you’re going to be romantically or sexually interested in everyone.

2. You think TV or movie characters are hot

If you’re into Ross and Rachel… or Jim and Pam… etc. you might be attracted to multiple genders. Maybe you even noticed this when you were a kid.

Obviously, this isn’t a definitive test. But it could help you start an internal chat about what you want, what you really really want.

3. Conflicting feels

Bisexuality — or any sexuality — isn’t black-and-white. So bi feelings can be uber confusing, especially if you’ve preferred one gender your whole life.

These feelings are 100 percent normal. The confusion should get better over time once you explore your feelings and desires a bit more.

4. It doesn’t have to be 50/50

Sexuality isn’t one-size-fits-all. Everyone has their own romantic preferences and sex styles. Bi peeps are no different.

You don’t have to evenly divide your interest between all genders. You can go through periods where you’re more interested in one than another. Or you can prefer one gender romantically and another gender sexually. There’s no exact science here.

5. You question your dreams

You can analyze your dreams all day long but sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. Your dreams don’t have to mean much or anything at all. But if you can’t stop thinking about a bi-tastic dream, there might be a reason.

6. You dig the label

Sometimes the label “bi” just fits. If you feel comfortable with this label it’s a good indicator that you’re bi.

Keep in mind, you DO NOT have to label yourself as bi. You could also relate to labels like bicurious, biromantic, cupiosexual, fluid, queer, omnisexual, pansexual, panromantic, olysexual, or something else. You can also just say “no” to all labels which is totally cool too.

7. You relate to other bi or queer people

When a celeb comes out as bi or queer, do you feel a sense of pride? Or maybe there’s a new bi character on your fave show and you think, “IT ME!”

While this doesn’t mean you’re bi (you could just be stoked someone is coming out as their authentic self) it could be an indicator.

8. You dig different types of porn

TBH porn may not count for much. You can find a genre of porn super hot but also might not be into it IRL. But if you’re super drawn to porn actors of any gender it might be a sign you’re down for a bi experience.

9. You can’t stop thinking about it

If you’re daydreaming about a beautiful bi love affair on the reg, it might be a sign you’re into any gender.

10. You like how it feels

Fantasizing about sex can be the bomb. But until you do the deed for realz, you might not know if you actually like it. Plus, everyone is different. Maybe you just didn’t vibe with the person you hooked up with.

11. You took a quiz

Taking an online “AM I BI?” quiz prob isn’t the best way to see if you’re a card-carrying LGBTQA+ member 🏳️‍🌈. But sometimes these quizzes can help you understand how you really feel which is a good thing.

12. You have a crush or are in luv

A crush can hit you like a ton of bricks. But it can be even more “WHAT IS HAPPENING?” vibes if you have romantic or sexual feelings for someone of a different gender than you’re used to.

Even if your crush doesn’t turn out to be “the one” it could still be a sign you’re interested in that gender in general.

13. You take it personally when someone disses #BiLife

Bi folks have to deal with A LOT of smack from all sides of the sexuality spectrum. Plenty of people assume that bi people are extremely sexually charged and that is why the whole “gender doesn’t matter” thing exists. There’s also the stigma of “you’re not gay enough” or “you’re not straight enough.”

If you’re bi you might take these unfair stigmas personally or feel hurt or attacked by them:

  • “It’s just a phase.”
  • “You’re just greedy.”
  • “You must be slutty.”
  • “You’re down for threesomes.”

And the biggie: “Bisexuality isn’t real.”

Well, let’s end the debate right now:

Bisexuality 👏 is 👏 real 👏. You do you.

14. You can picture a long-term relationship with any gender

A good way to tell if you’re bi is to visualize a long-term partnership with someone from any gender. You might feel more comfortable with one gender than another. Or, it all sounds great.

FYI: Bisexuality doesn’t vanish when you’re with a new person. When a bi person is in a gay or straight relationship, they’re still bi.

15. The bi flag is a source of pride

When pink, purple, and blue are combined it’s a glorious thing 💖💜💙. (Yet there’s still no bi flag emoji UGH!)

When you start to accept and love your bi-mazing self, it’s pretty clear that you know who you are. And you should be proud!

16. It just feels right

At the end of the day, the most important thing is doing what makes you happy. If a bi lifestyle is what works for you, then go for it!

If you’re questioning your bisexuality, here are some things you can ask yourself:

  • Am I attracted to two or more genders?
  • Is thinking about bi experiences fun or exciting?
  • Does the thought of being bi make me feel good?
  • Can I see myself being with any gender in the long-term?
  • Does gender matter to me in terms of a romantic or sexual partner?
  • Do I self-identify with other bi ppl (celebs, characters, or people I know)?

In 2013, the Pew Research Center asked 1,197 LGBT adults which orientation they most identified with. They found that 40 percent of participants identified as bi. Meanwhile, 36 percent identified as gay men, 19 percent identified as lesbians, and 5 percent identified as trans.

Granted, this is just one study. But it does shed a light on how many bi folks are out there!

“While some people will certainly strongly identify as either gay or straight, far more people fall somewhere in the middle,” says Pressnall.

Coming out is a super personal event. You don’t have to tell everyone (or anyone!) you know that you’re bi. But if you do want to come out, here are some tips to make it easier.

Come up with a plan. There’s really no right or wrong way to come out. It’s all about what you think is best. You might want to tell people face-to-face, in a letter, or via text.

Ease into it. You might want to tell a few trusted folks first. This might be easier than telling everyone all at once.

Figure out what you want to say. You can totes just go with the, “hey I’m bi, bye” text. But a lot of bi folks want to fully explain their feelings and emotions when they come out. Again, it’s about what feels right for you.

Decide if you want to give them a heads up. If you go with the in-person route, you can send them a text first. Here’s an example:

“Hey. I have something very important to tell you. But I would prefer to do it face-to-face or on the phone. Please let me know when you have a moment to talk. And don’t worry… it’s great news!”

Be prepared for their reaction. In a perfect world, your friends and family will all be super supportive and happy for you. But this doesn’t always happen. Just know that you’re valid, wanted, and loved no matter what anyone says.

Where to find support

Not everyone has a bisexual sherpa in their life. But you can find solace in other bi peeps on platforms like Reddit, Instagram, or YouTube.

Talk to a mental health care provider if your sexuality — or life in general — is making you feel stressed or sad. A queer-inclusive therapist might be best since they may have a deeper understanding of what you’re going through.

You can also look for local support groups or try a therapy app.

And remember… you’re far from alone ❤️.

The only person who gets to decide you’re bi is YOU! Don’t let anyone else tell you how you should feel about your sexuality. But if you are bi… CONGRATS, WOO!

Keep in mind, you don’t have to tell anyone if you don’t want to. Just remember that you’re perfect exactly as you are.

Reach out to a mental health specialist if you feel sad or confused about your sexuality. You can also find TONS of amazing, supportive bi communities online or in your local area.

You can check out the Bisexual Research Center to look for local support groups and connect with other bi peeps. There’s also lots of fab LGBTQA+ resources on GLAAD’s website.

P.S. There’s a thriving bisexual community on Reddit.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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You shouldn’t feel pressured to define your sexuality

By Peyton Jeffers

How do you know if you’re gay or bi?

If you were like me at 12 years old, no amount of anxiously Googling “Am I gay?” or frantically taking quizzes that promise to reveal your true sexual orientation gave any insight into what your sense of sexual identity or lived experiences would be.

I turned to the internet for information because the messages I received in school or from popular culture about sexuality were not congruent with my thoughts and feelings. I felt I didn’t fit in either category I had been exposed to at the time — “gay” or “straight.”

So, if you’re asking yourself this question, you’re probably trying to describe your sexual identity to yourself and the people around you in a way that makes you feel comfortable. 

Questioning or challenging your sexuality can feel both confusing and isolating, but take a breath. You’re not alone.

Traditional models of understanding sexuality tend to center around one aspect: our sexual orientation. This model says you can be attracted to the same sex and/or gender, the opposite sex and/or gender, or people of either.

These models are limiting because their language and definitions often assume gender and sex are binary. They don’t account for aspects of sexuality outside of gender, such as the different kinds of sex or sensations we like or the levels of physical or emotional attraction we experience with others.

It might be helpful to consider who you are attracted to in these ways. 

Are you attracted to same-sex, different sex or intersex people? People who are androgynous, masculine or femme presenting? Are you attracted to people who are genderqueer, genderfluid, transgender and/or nonbinary? Simply people regardless of their gender presentation or sex?

If you’re afraid of claiming a specific identity because you’re unsure, then know you can also identify as gay, bisexual, questioning or otherwise without any experience or desire for physical intimacy. 

Relationships require vulnerability and an understanding of how to be romantically or emotionally available with other people, and sometimes these feelings don’t align with our behavior or sexual attraction.

Genevieve Labe, a Ph.D. student and adjunct faculty member teaching human sexuality at the IU School of Public Health, said they don’t think there’s a clear answer to the reader’s question because the way people ascribe labels to themselves varies person-to-person.

“How I might feel or determine how I identify could be so different for someone else,” they said. “I think whatever feels right in the moment is good. My question back to you is why do we need that label?”

Labe said labels can help us make sense of the world, but it’s important for us to think about the trauma labels have inflicted on people in the queer community, whether it be lingering stereotypes or forcing ourselves to stick to labels once we’ve claimed them.

How we interpret ourselves is dependent on the tools we have available. Knowing this, we can accept our sexualities are subject to change as new information and experiences become available over the course of our lives.

For example, if you’re someone who has identified as gay but end up feeling attraction to someone of a different gender, you shouldn’t feel pressured to prohibit that based on a label, Labe said.

On the contrary, it’s also completely valid to want to identify yourself with a label that feels most affirming to you when you use it.

“Labels should not be boxes into which we feel we must squeeze ourselves, but rather tools with which to communicate and to begin conversations,” Robyn Ochs, bisexual activist and editor of “Getting Bi: Voices of Bisexuals Around the World and Recognize,” said on her website.

If you feel safe and comfortable confiding in someone close to you, opening up about these feelings might alleviate some pressure. Your sexuality is also yours to share on your own terms — when and with whoever you want to.

Overall, whatever feels comfortable, makes you feel good about yourself and gives you a sense of community is what is right. You’re always allowed to change and reevaluate your needs and desires if you feel your identity doesn’t suit you anymore.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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How I Have Sex

— “I Can End Up Feeling Nothing Even When All the Right ‘Spots’ Are Touched”

By

The first time I remember thinking about sex was at the age of 15, when I started dating my first boyfriend. As teenagers, we were curious about this and started thinking about it more when there was someone else to talk to. I explored sexual behaviors like kissing, fingering, and oral sex between 15 and 18, and 19 is when I had peno-vaginal sex for the first time.

But I hadn’t realized until then that I was demisexual. So even in my early 20s, I was meeting people on dating apps and thought of sex as something you had to do as a “right of passage” after dates. So I did meet up and have sex without really having an emotional connection. Rather, I thought I had some basic level of emotional connection with them — but I later realized that I was just grasping for straws. I was just creating a connection with somebody, but I didn’t actually have it with these people and didn’t enjoy these experiences. My friends kept talking about this amazing sex that they were having, and I realized only later that I was looking at the wrong place.

Since that time sex was something I thought about in connection with someone I had feelings for; I didn’t even think that it could be otherwise. Demisexuality, I would say, translates into kind of a conditional sexual attraction. I think a lot of people don’t know that sexuality, or any asexual spectrum identity for that matter, doesn’t have anything to do with sex drive. There may be some people who are demisexual and don’t experience any sexual attraction outside of their emotional attachment, but that’s not the case with me. Sexual attraction is like a spectrum: ‘Oh, I’ve met this person who I find really attractive’ versus ‘I am actually in love with this person, and I actually want to have sex with them.’ So I can find someone attractive but not want to have sex with them. And plus, sexual attraction occurs very selectively for me, much more selectively than for someone who’s not very sexual.

People say that everyone is a demisexual, that sex is better when you have an emotional bond. It’s not about if it’s better or bad, it’s that you don’t experience sexual attraction at all unless there is an emotional bond.

My current boyfriend and I, we started out as friends — which turned into friends with benefits. After some time, I felt attracted to him, and I wanted to have sex with him, even though he was romantically involved. We had an emotional bond as close friends, but it got better when we got romantically involved because it added another layer of depth to the emotional connection.

It doesn’t matter if my partner is demisexual or not, it’s just the emotional connection between us that counts. In my current relationship, it was emotional, romantic, and considerate. Realizing that I no longer ‘had’ to do this pointless casual sex rigmarole, and incidentally getting into a monogamous romantic relationship where I had deep emotional feelings for my partner, all made it so much better. I was lucky it all happened together.

I would say I feel a lot more agency when it comes to sex life, ever since I came out as demisexual. Instead of going along with the other person’s wishes, I’ve become more confident in vocalizing what I want and saying no when I want to. Earlier, I used to always be like: Okay, I’m not feeling it in this moment, but that’s not how I’m supposed to feel and the other person is expecting me to say yes, so I would just go along with that. I don’t do that anymore.

Building anticipation is the most important aspect of foreplay for me. It’s not so much about the specific acts done during it, as it is about creating that mood and the anticipation, and building up to that moment of urgency where you feel like you can’t wait anymore! One time that I particularly remember enjoying was when my partner made it completely about me and took it really slow. When I tried to reach out to reciprocate, he gently stopped me and told me to let him do what he wants to me. That made me feel like my pleasure was important and cared about, and the intimacy of that feeling made it the best foreplay I’ve ever experienced!

The usual pleasure centers do the trick for me. Nipples are particularly important — just stimulating them alone, without touching any other part of me, can suffice as foreplay if I’m sufficiently in the mood that day. Also, it’s very important for me that attention be paid to the less ‘usual’ erogenous zones—neck, back, torso, thighs. Simply being held like I’m important and desirable to the person is just as important as specific erogenous zones being touched, if you know what I mean. I can end up feeling nothing even when all the right ‘spots’ are being touched if the person doesn’t make me feel like they desire me (as opposed to simply wanting sex). I don’t think this deprives me of any pleasure — as someone who has had sexual experiences without emotional part, I didn’t enjoy them anyway. So I don’t think I’m missing out on anything.

Exhibitionism appeals to me — being watched while engaging in sex. Maybe because the thought of involving someone else in the bedroom feels exciting, but at the same time I’m not fully comfortable with the idea of actually having someone join us in the activity. So someone watching us is the perfect middle ground. I’ve tried clitoral and vaginal stimulating sex toys individually as well as in partnered sex. Clitoral stimulation from a vibrator is the fastest way for me to climax — probably the first time I ever climaxed with a sex toy! Four times in a row was a new feeling for me.

I would say I’m on the higher end of a normal sex drive, contrary to what people believe about demisexuals. People don’t understand the difference between sexual attraction and sex drive: sex drive is the desire to have some kind of sexual experience whereas sexual attraction means wanting to have sex with another person — and those things are not mutually exclusive.

On the whole, lust and love exist as separate frames. Sex drive, for me at least is completely independent of my sexuality. Because sex drive can exist independent of a partner, I can personally have a sex drive alone as well. But the drive to do it with somebody else, that only really occurs if I have a deep emotional attachment with them. But I do have to say that I’m more satisfied with partnered sex because there’s foreplay involved, which I typically get lazy and skip when it’s just me.

Physical attraction matters very little to me — if you compare it with the emotional connection, the physical is insignificant. I prefer people without a gym body. As somebody who myself has struggled with body image issues all my life, I once dated someone who had a six-pack and was a model. It was very intimidating to me and I couldn’t see past that exterior and engage with him as a person. I wanted someone who looked like a regular Joe.

People who actually end up falling in love and having serious relationships and sex within that relationship, and being monogamous with each other, it’s uncommon nowadays. I value monogamy — but I’m not 100% sure if my monogamy is connected to my demisexuality or not. But I am demisexual, and I am also monogamous. You can be monogamous or polyamorous — that’s independent of your sexuality.

Over time, the novelty factor around sex has, of course, worn off, because it can’t stay forever. I also find that I share some of the same thoughts about sex as before: the desire to feel intimate with your partner, when I experience emotions with someone, those things have remained constant. It’s just that the language I use now to talk about it is more evolved. I have become more corporate in how I feel and how I view sex: I feel this pressure to conform and think of it and approach it in the same way other people do. And I realized that your personal and social identity don’t have to be homogenous; everybody doesn’t have to be the same. That’s the most dominant change that I’ve experienced.

As a demisexual and bisexual, it can be kind of tricky to deal with which part of me is more important, so to speak. Am I equally both things? Which of it makes me more queer? There is also the whole aspect of a lot of queer people who don’t think that demisexuality makes you queer — which makes me feel like we’re being nudged. There may be demisexual people out there who choose to say that ‘I am demi, but I don’t feel like I’m queer, I’m still straight,’ and that’s their prerogative. But the problem is that a lot of people who are LGBTQ tacitly assert that you don’t have the right to identify as queer just because you are demisexual. That makes me feel unseen and sad.

I understand that the whole thing of slotting ourselves into a certain sexuality or gender. It’s not a strict label, but rather just a rough way to understand whereabouts on the spectrum a person might be. And that ultimately, to understand a person better, you need to ask them because they are the only ones who can answer those questions for you, because everybody is completely unique — even two demisexual people could be completely different. I’ve had this conversation with somebody else who was also a woman who was demisexual, and bisexual like me, and we still differ so much in how we approach sexuality and love and sex.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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How gay do you feel?

When it comes to sexuality, younger generations prefer the wine, not the label

Dan Levy as David Rose in the Golden Globe-winning comedy ‘Schitt’s Creek’

By Jo Ellison

This week I’ve been wondering whether I might become a lesbian. Or whether I should have been one in the past.

The speculation was prompted by the findings of an Ipsos Mori survey of 1,127 British adults that suggests when it comes to gender and the subject of relationships, the points of differentiation are increasingly now blurred. The Sunday Times poll (accompanied by another poll in the US in which the findings were quite similar) found just over half of 18- to 24-year-old respondents saying they were “only” attracted to people of the opposite sex: 35 per cent of Generation Z respondents checked categories that said they were mostly, or equally likely, to swing either way. Older respondents were far more rigid in their sexual preferences: 81 per cent of Baby Boomers claimed they were committed heterosexuals and 76 per cent of Generation Xers said they were “only” attracted to the opposite sex.

While only a tiny sample of the population, the survey represents a huge shift away from the binary expectations that have traditionally straitened our relationships. The biologist Alfred Kinsey first alighted on his sexual spectrum in 1948. But it has taken three further generations for his enlightened thinking to really percolate through the mainstream, with same-sex relationships now being seen as no big deal.

When I asked my own resident Gen Z representative (aged 15) how she felt about relationships she was similarly fluid. While she would probably tick the “only” attracted to the opposite sex at this point in her life, she could well imagine having a same-sex relationship sometime in the future, but she did still imagine herself getting married to a man. She attributed the spike in bi-curiosity to the growing visibility of same-sex relationships on television and in the media, before adding that she thought some women engage in same-sex liaisons to appease the male gaze. Using a same-sex relationship to titillate the bounds of heteronormativity seems a bit retrograde and twisted (very stag-do circa 1995) but I guess the patriarchy wasn’t built on men and woman indulging in the missionary position.

Mainly, the findings illustrate how comfortable young people are with almost any kind of sexuality. Neither do they share the obsession of older folk in naming things. It reminds me of the first season of Schitt’s Creek, in which David Rose explains his pansexual preferences: “Um, I do drink red wine. But I also drink white wine. And I’ve been known to sample the occasional rosé. And a couple summers back I tried a merlot that used to be a chardonnay, which got a bit complicated . . . I like the wine and not the label. Does that make sense?”

One explanation for the current vogue in bi-curiosity falls back on the traditional and, for many, maddening assertion that young people have always been open to “a phase” of experimentation before they “settle down”. But whatever the possible reason, it’s heartening to see the stigmas and insecurities around our sexual preferences eroding with such velocity. While straight people may assume that same-sex relationships have been legalised for decades, gay sex only ceased to be a crime in the UK in 2013, with the repeal of Scotland’s anti-sodomy laws, and sodomy is still technically outlawed in several US states.

Culturally also, it’s only comparatively recently that same-sex relationships have been normalised: Schitt’s Creek, which won another clutch of awards at the Golden Globes last Sunday, has been instrumental in projecting what would once have been a “gay best friend” into a fully rounded leading character. Russell T Davies’s It’s a Sin dared to suggest that gay sex is really fun. And I’ve lost count of how many same-sex relationships I’ve seen dramatised among the Bafta longlist. Most of those relationships were incidental to the drama: it just so happened that the character was gay. Having said that, lesbians have not been treated quite so kindly: currently there’s Kate Winslet, grunting over fossils in the lumpy Ammonite, and Rosamund Pike, platinum haired and evil as a lesbian con-artist in the solipsistic I Care a Lot.

Would I have preferred the wine and not the label had I been 20 years younger and less conditioned to be straight? At school, I was voted the classmate most likely to become a lesbian, and while I have yet to fulfil that early promise, I feel that in the current climate I shouldn’t rule it out. Mostly, when I look back on my relationships with homosexuality, I recall most clearly mooning over flop-haired individuals such as Hugh Grant in Maurice, Rupert Everett in Another Country, and Daniel Day-Lewis as the street punk in My Beautiful Laundrette. Each fixed on love affairs that were clandestine, illicit and always tortuously romantic, and each captured perfectly what I thought true love should be about.

It is the teenage girl’s prerogative, I think, to overly identify with heartbreakingly beautiful Merchant Ivory movies (see also Call Me By Your Name for a more contemporary example) in which the main protagonists will give not one single thought to girls. Some might read that as a sign of unconscionable repression: I would argue it sets in motion a habit of falling helplessly in love with unavailable gay men. Where was that box in the poll?

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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How to Be Supportive When a Friend Comes Out to You

Don’t try to set them up with the only other queer person you know, who they have absolutely nothing in common with.

by Rachel Miller

At the end of a Pride month in which a lot of people are newly thinking about how to be a good ally, it’s a great occasion to think about how to be an ally to the queer folks in your life year-round—starting with the moment they tell you they are queer.

First, it’s important to know that there’s no singular “coming out” with regard to sexuality—it’s something that those of us who choose to come out have to do over and over again. As Tom Vellner wrote in a BuzzFeed essay, “It isn’t a one-step process. I don’t have to sit down at my kitchen table with every new person I meet, like I did with my parents—knees weak, palms sweaty, mom’s spaghetti (wait…)—and explain to them that, yes, I’m queer and, no, it won’t change anything between us. But as long as I exist in a heteronormative world, where the presumption is that I must have a girlfriend because I’m a man, I’ll never stop coming out. It happens whenever I meet a new coworker, whenever I see a new doctor, whenever I talk to a friend of a friend at a party.”

Because coming out happens in so many small, often mundane ways, there’s no single response that’ll work for every situation. Tearfully replying, “I just want you to know how much I love you!!!” isn’t going to be appropriate if you’re, say, working the cash register at Bath & Body Works and a customer mentions the candle she’s buying is for her wife. And a peppy “Cool, got it!” probably isn’t the move when your best friend since childhood sits you down to tell you they are queer. Ultimately, you should try to mirror and respond to the specific individual’s emotional intensity, and to let your established relationship guide you.

When it comes to the more emotional, capital-C–capital-O Coming Out situations, aim to affirm and honor your friend.

Here are some tips to consider:

  • Recognize the importance of this moment, and how vulnerable they are being with you by saying something like, “Thank you so much for trusting me with this” or “I feel honored that you chose to share this with me.”
  • Say “I think this is really great!” or something else really affirming that communicates that what they are telling you is fundamentally good. And remember to smile.
  • If you’re close, it’s OK to ask gentle, non-probing questions—e.g., “I have to admit that I actually don’t know what pansexual means; I can look it up, of course, but I’d love to know what it means to you, if you’re up for sharing.” (Just avoid nosy questions about their body and/or sex.)
  • Maybe say, “Is there anything you’d like to do to celebrate?” Recognizing this milestone—whether that’s via drinks, going shopping for a new outfit, getting a tattoo or piercing or haircut, or having a party—lets them know that you are aware of what a big moment this is, and is a way to honor what they’ve just shared.
  • It’s really important to let people share their stories on their own terms, and to not accidentally out a friend, even if it’s an attempt to normalize what they’ve told you. On the other hand, they might actually prefer if you share the information with other people in your circle so they don’t have to have really intense coming out conversations with everyone they’ve ever met. The best way to know what they want is to have a conversation about it. So if they haven’t told you how public this information is, you could say something like, “Just to make sure we’re on the same page, can I ask you if other folks in your life know?”
  • If you’re not sure what to do next, go with “How can I best support you right now?” It’s really OK to not know exactly what to do or say for a friend, and to simply ask them what they need from you in this moment.

In any coming out conversation—whether it’s intense or fairly casual—what you don’t say is just as important as what you do say.

Here are some things to avoid:

  • “I’m not surprised” or “I always knew.” It’s not about you right now!!! Also, it doesn’t feel good to know that other people knew something about you that you didn’t know about yourself, or to learn that the thing you were working so hard to hide was actually obvious to everyone around you. (If the person asks if you knew, you can say something honest but gentle like, “I thought that could maybe be the case, but I wasn’t really sure!”)
  • “It’s no big deal!” This kind of response is often well-meaning, but can trivialize a person’s lived experience, or gloss over the fact that they just shared something that is a big deal to them. (In the newest installment of ¡Hola Papi!, JP Brammer gave advice to a reader who was hurt by their loved ones’ neutral reaction to coming out; it’s a good reminder that your friend might be expecting a little more fanfare, or at least something beyond just tolerance.)
  • “I love you anyway!” Again, well-intentioned, but it inadvertently communicates that you are doing them a favor, and care about them despite their sexuality.
  • “I can’t believe you didn’t tell me!!!” Trust that they had their reasons for telling you when they did. And, again, this isn’t about you.

Be sure to keep showing up for them after that initial conversation, too.

Talking to you is likely just one step in a bigger process; here are some things to keep in mind going forward:

  • Follow their lead. If they call themselves a lesbian, use the term lesbian; if they say gay, go with gay. (And don’t whisper it like it’s something shameful; say it.) If they refer to the person they are dating as their partner instead of their boyfriend, say partner instead of boyfriend. (And don’t call their partner “your buddy” or “your roommate.”)
  • Support their efforts to make more queer friends. Yes, that might mean sometimes you won’t be invited to join a group activity, but try not to take it personally—it’s really, really not.
  • If you’ve said or done anti-LGBTQ things in front of your friend in the past, seriously consider apologizing. Don’t make your guilt a Huge Thing for them to manage—they shouldn’t end up comforting you here—or pressure them to accept your apology, but it’s worth owning up to your shortcomings as a friend in this moment. You might say something like, “I also wanted to say I’m sorry for the comments I made about [_So-and-So bringing a same-sex date to prom/gay marriage/homosexuality being a sin_]. I’m sure that really hurt for you to hear, and made you feel less safe around me. I know it was wrong of me, and I’m so sorry.” If you said things or held beliefs that were particularly harmful, you might also say, “Here’s what I’m doing to educate myself on this topic, so I can be a better [_f__riend/sibling/ally_] going forward.”
  • Continue to be supportive and affirming. A friend of mine just sent her newly-out niece a Pride care package, which I thought was really thoughtful and cute. This could also look like trying to get to know the person they are dating, or joining your school’s PFLAG group… or simply not pretending this conversation never happened (which happens more than you might think).
  • Look out for them. Systemic, pervasive oppression means that LGBTQ people are at higher risk of mental health conditions, suicidality, intimate partner violence, and police violence. Just because you accept your friend doesn’t mean that their family or employer or the world at large does, so keep an eye out for signs that they aren’t doing well.
  • Avoid referring to them as your “gay best friend.” You can just say “best friend.” And know that having a queer friend doesn’t give you license to start making jokes about LGBTQ people, or about your friend.
  • Don’t try to set them up with the only other queer person you know, who they have absolutely nothing in common with.
  • Remember to see your friend’s whole self. Being queer is one facet of a person’s identity, but it’s not their entire personality.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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How Quarantine Helped Me Overcome Stigmas Surrounding Queer Dating

By Meggie Gates

I’ve been out since I was 19, and insecure since the day I was born. I’ve shied away from intimacy my entire life, something psychologists label “avoidant attachment” and my mother calls “frustrating.” I am 26, I do not like to be touched, and incidences of sexual assault have only heightened that feeling, narrowing an already limited number of partners I’ve had in the past. I’m sex positive, I support whatever anyone else does sexually, but I can’t go about the act without some wine notched under my belt, something I consider leveling my anxiety and something my therapist describes as “bad.” I rarely know how to approach casual sex. How the heck do I fit in to In a community where sex is constantly, seemingly, on the table?

I live in Chicago, and in Boystown, there is a sign—an advertisement for a dating app with two shirtless, hunky gay men rubbing bodies in boxer briefs. In Wrigleyville, there is a friend—a person regaling hookups on Grindr every time I see them, years of casual lovers. In the queer community, there is commercialization—the kind we celebrate with plenty of skin showing at Pride festivals come June. Condoms are handed out and dental dams are distributed. It is good, safe, serves to destigmatize, and celebrates what years of hate has told us not to embrace. It is beautiful and poetic and deserved of that celebration, but it is not me.

The perceived stereotype of casual sex in the queer community can make some hesitant to date. The questions of casual sex looms overhead in the queer community and that stereotype can affect many people’s approaches to exploring their sexual identity. The pressure sex puts on the queer community can be isolating for some. Worse, it can feel invalidating. In their article “Mr. Right Now: Temporality of Relationship Formation on Gay Mobile Apps,” professors Tien Yeo and Tsz Fung write about the pressure queer people can feel to compromise sex for love.

“For those seeking more durable relationships, tensions arising from the specific temporality of app use that privileges casual sex but which also maximizes the pool of potential partners versus the temporal norms prescribing friendship and long-term romantic relationships become a major source of frustration,” write Yeo and Fung. “Ultimately, these tensions resulted in users conform to routine patterns of interactions, developing alternative modes of interactions on apps that decelerate relationship development, or (temporarily) deleting the apps.”

For people who buy into hypersexualized LGBTQ+ media representation, the anxiety and doubt surrounding conversations on sexuality can feel like another reason not to pursue meaningful connections. In a society focused on hook-up culture, it’s hard trusting someone will have the patience to get to know me. The conversation of how good you are at sex circles the internet; the question of how queer you are hinging on past relationships focused on binary. Sitting across from women on a first date, anxiety constantly creeps up, making me wonder how the night will end.

Quarantine has changed the game for dating across the board. People must decide whether someone is worth putting their life (and the lives of others) at risk. Zoom dates can be awkward, uncomfortable, and the lack of intimacy can be hard. Building a relationship over FaceTime is seemingly impossible. But, strangely, this is the first time I’ve felt truly comfortable approaching dating in years. Why? Because without the expectation of kissing or sex following a date, I’m confident having conversations I’d usually never have regarding my sexuality and gender. It finally feels like dating in a way that’s truer to myself.

Without the expectation of kissing or sex following a date, I’m confident having conversations I’d usually never have regarding my sexuality and gender. It finally feels like dating in a way that’s truer to myself.

I met Ana through Hinge two months ago, another app in a sea of apps geared toward dating. From our first date, I let her know of the anxieties I foster when it comes to queer dating. I ask if my slowness warming up to intimacy makes a difference to her, if my lack of history with people of the same sex erases me in her mind as legitimately queer. She responds surprised, shocked I’d even ask. “Your past doesn’t matter and if someone makes you feel bad for that, you’re better off without them,” she says. “The queer community isn’t a contest.”

It’s no secret gay love has, and still is, stigmatized in many parts of the world. Religion, race, gender, and class all play a part in the need for people to hide their sexuality for different reasons. Being ostracized, ridiculed, or neglected creates a desire for many queer people to feel loved and attractive, resulting in fast connections of momentary fulfillment. Casual sex has many benefits for those who enjoy it. You can share a strong connection with someone for a passing period and go your own way, no strings attached at the end of the night. For me, the anxiety of waking up to someone I barely know overshadows all pleasure. I feel I’m missing out on my 20s as I watch friends stumble out of bars with others. This is what TV said adulthood would be like, but it’s never been that way for me. I miss all the nuance of feeling fun and alive in a city because I’m too focused on my shoes whenever someone asks for my number.

I walk through an obsolete Boystown recounting memories of all the love Saturday nights once held. The avenue is painted with the past of people who carried themselves over the rainbow boulevard looking for a home in someone else, a late-night rendezvous heading out of Berlin hand-in-hand. I’d be lying if I said I don’t miss Red Bull vodka shots at midnight and making out with strangers whose names I don’t remember; how a photo strip of a girl in passing isn’t poetry that spans the lengths of years.

Relationships take a toll and farther into heartbreak we get, the easier it is to run at the sight of something new. Flings that are fleeting outweigh tangling yourself in something messy and complicated. Dating hardly takes off for me because I’m too stressed about the motions, if I’ll be critiqued for the physical instead of the emotional. Now, there’s nothing but time to explore one another as the world around us stops shifting. After two months talking, Ana and I finally met. My family encourages me because they “like her” and think she’s “a good match for me.” We’re slow and have found a rhythm that suits us, one grown from patience and time.

For once, I’m trying to walk rather than run.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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Sex, Social Distancing and the Fall Semester

In this global pandemic, adults must get over their squeamishness about young people’s sexuality and talk about how sex figures into campus life, Jennifer S. Hirsch and Shamus Khan contend.

By Jennifer S. Hirsch and Shamus Khan

A recent behind-the-scenes look at the University of Kentucky’s deliberations about the fall semester revealed detailed plans for housing, dining and classes but contained only an oblique reference to students’ social and sexual lives: “Even if administrators could enforce the rules on campus … what about after hours?” The American College Health Association’s recent “Considerations for Reopening” were similarly silent on sex. And discussions of “how to approach occupancy and personal spacing in student housing” miss the point that in college, as elsewhere, beds are not just for sleeping.

In this moment of global pandemic, it’s urgent for adults to get over their squeamishness about young people’s sexuality and talk about how sex figures into campus life.

Colleges and universities are social institutions. Students see this social life — friendships, extracurriculars and networking, and also sex — as fundamental to the college experience. Our book, Sexual Citizens, draws on three semesters of research spending time with and interviewing undergraduates on the Columbia University and Barnard College campuses. In it, we found that students want many things out of their university experience, what we call their “college projects.” These include being introduced to challenging ideas, mastering a discipline, developing new interests and skills, meeting people from a range of backgrounds, and cultivating critical life skills. But one of the most important college projects for students is their “sexual project”: having the kinds of sexual experiences they want and discovering what sex means to them.

The students we interviewed described wide-ranging sexual projects. Sometimes, sex is about pleasure. Other times, intimacy. For many students, especially early on in college, the goals are accruing experience, impressing their friends or figuring out who they are. Sometimes sexual projects entail a lot of sex, but the sexual project can be no sex: one young man, a devout born-again Christian, saw his commitment to abstinence as a fundamental expression of his new self.

One of the reasons students arrive on campus so intent on their sexual projects is that few adults had ever asked the students with whom we spoke what sex meant to them. For many young people, home is an environment of sexual silence and shame, and college offers the promise of a space where they can express themselves. Many American parents convey to their children, “Not under my roof.” The message is clear: sex itself is immoral.

Sex education, even when it’s not abstinence-only, frequently amplifies those familial messages of shame and fear. Many students we spoke with described K-12 sex ed as “the sexual diseases class” — a barrage of messaging about the risks of sex. While STDs are an important health concern, a focus on sex’s adverse consequences absent any discussion of sex in relation to pleasure or connection conveys the message that young people’s sexual desires are unacceptable. This is even more pronounced for queer students, whose very identities are erased by most sex ed curricula, by the unquestioned heteronormativity of high school’s prom kings and queens, and by the all-too-frequent experience of returning home every day to families where they cannot be themselves.

College and sex aren’t just tied together because they provide an escape from the silences of home. There are also developmental reasons: the average age at first intercourse in America is about 17. That means that many 18- or 19-year-olds starting college have not yet had sex, and even those who have often haven’t had much experience. Most students, imagining their own deficit, are eager to “catch up” with their peers.

If, as in Jennifer’s family, these months of social distancing have included some nostalgic parental choices for family movie night, the high school Class of 2020 may have been subjected to oldies like Grease or Risky Business. But whether it is those or other cringey classics like Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Porky’s and American Pie or sleepers like Blockers or films with a more modern sensibility like Ladybird, Booksmart or Love, Simon, American movies about the end of high school have one consistent message: it is an essential time to figure out sex in order to launch into the world, finally, as an adult. Shut indoors for months, without prom, senior trip or even the mild flirting that comes with yearbook signing, the Class of 2020 is likely to feel more acutely what young people long have felt: that they are behind when it comes to sex. While they may not say it to their parents, the disappointment about an online start to the school year is at least as much about the social and sexual as it is about the educational.

Before parents roll their eyes at today’s youth, or imagine that 17 is “way too early,” they need to be honest with themselves. Young Americans today are on average older than their parents were the first time they had sex. It’s not just that they’re having sex later; it also seems likely that they’re having less of it. Even grandparents may want to check their judgement: as far back as 1959, two deans at the University of California, Los Angeles, wrote, “Think of college and you think of flaming youth; think of flaming youth and you think of liquor and sex.”

A Student-Centered Approach

It’s been decades since most institutions of higher education rescinded parietals: rules about when opposite sex visitors could be in a dorm and under what kind of supervision. Those policy changes were an important recognition of students’ “sexual citizenship” — an official, if tacit, acknowledgment of young people’s right to sexual self-determination. Now is not the time to bring those rules back under the guise of protection. Instead, we need a student-centered approach that unflinchingly faces the realities of what young people are going to be doing, and how their recent experiences are motivating those actions.

In Sexual Citizens, we use sexual projects and sexual citizenship to reveal the social roots of campus sexual assault. But the ideas have a broader application, as a framework for understanding sex on campus and as a way of thinking about what it would look like to organize sexual and social lives in relation to the common good. Sexual projects and sexual citizenship are the logical starting point for respectful dialogue between administrators and students, and among students themselves, about sex during a pandemic. We have been here before: in the early years of HIV, gay activists, advised by a virologist, published a pamphlet that “provided some of the earliest guidance on safer sex for gay men.” That approach — acknowledging that people have compelling social reasons for behaviors that entail some health risk and engaging in candid and nonjudgmental conversation about how to make those activities safer — is called harm reduction.

Recently, experts from Planned Parenthood, the American Sexual Health Association and Fenway Health joined the New York City and San Francisco health departments in promoting a harm reduction approach to sex during this pandemic. That entails recognizing sex as a normal part of a healthy life, reminding people that “you are your safest sexual partner” and providing guidance on how to minimize the risk of transmission for those who seek out new partners.

The take-home for institutions of higher education is clear: instead of saying, “Don’t have sex,” acknowledge young people’s sexual projects and encourage them to channel those projects in socially responsible ways. The safest sex is solo or remote. Those who chose in-person sex should use condoms and other barriers and remember to wash up before and after sex. And “if you do have sex with others, have as few partners as possible.”

Higher ed leaders should remember that this is generation that has led, rather than followed, in the name of collective responsibility, with one study showing that 20 percent of millennials had changed their diet because of concerns about climate change, compared to only 8 percent of baby boomers. Conversations that explicitly connect incoming students’ sexual projects to the greater good will resonate with lessons all around them. Whether wearing masks or doing Mother’s Day, birthdays and even funerals online to protect our beloved elders, huge numbers of us, including many members of the Class of 2020, have foregone myriad small pleasures for the collective good.

This is a critical moment for rethinking and reorganizing campus sex. At least some of the students whose stories appear in Sexual Citizens, as well as some whom Lisa Wade interviewed in American Hookup, articulated substantial ambivalence about hookup culture. We think in particular about the young woman who compared getting drunk before hooking up to Novocain at the dentist — the numbing required to get through the discomfort. This is a moment to reimagine welcoming students to college as a long process that offers an appealing range of activities through which students can get to know each other more slowly — before or even perhaps without ever getting naked. Those activities, in combination with the moral cover provided by the need to socially distance, may offer those who want it an opportunity to step back from the notion that “doing college” necessarily means getting drunk and having sex.

Institutions have been slowly building toward a greater recognition of college students’ sexual citizenship: officially sanctioned BDSM clubs, vending-machine availability of emergency contraception, widespread campus condom availability programs and, of course, sexual assault prevention programs themselves are all acknowledgments that for many students, sex is part of campus life. In normal times, institutions need to think about how they can create environments — reimagining everything from furniture to culture — where those who chose to have sex can do so without harm to themselves or others. COVID-19 just amplifies this obligation.

Like professors across the country, we long to see young people back on campuses — queuing up for office hours, lolling in the sun on the lawns, throwing down their book bags before seminar or even meticulously setting up a whole breakfast as class starts. But having spent semesters immersed in their daily lives, we know not to fool ourselves that they are only here to see us. They come for each other, and they can’t do that until and unless higher ed leaders have an honest and respectful conversation with them about how to do that safely.

That means thinking about young people as sexual citizens, talking to them about what sexual projects are valuable and creating geographies of experience that help them have sex in the ways that they want and that respect the choices of those around them. Whether the goal is promoting social distancing or preventing sexual assault, work with young people needs to begin with a recognition of their right to sexual self-determination.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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What LGBTQ-Positive Sex Ed Should Look Like

Sex education should give students the tools to take ownership of their lives and bodies so that they can feel empowered. And that includes LGBTQ students.

In many states, sex ed curricula isn’t required to be comprehensive or medically accurate; abstinence-only is the norm; consent doesn’t need to be mentioned; and instructors emphasize the benefits of monogamous, heterosexual marriage.

By Cassandra Corrado

I’m a sex educator, but my own experience with sex education wasn’t great.

I went to high school in Florida, which is one of many states that doesn’t require sex education—the decision is left up to individual school districts. For schools that opt to teach sex ed, the curriculum isn’t required to be comprehensive or medically accurate; abstinence-only is the norm; consent doesn’t need to be mentioned; and instructors emphasize the benefits of monogamous, heterosexual marriage. Imagine the turmoil this messaging could cause young LGBTQ students.

It was clear to me early on that talking about sexual health wasn’t a priority for the people who made decisions about our education, even though almost everyone I knew was having some type of sex.

That all changed my first year of college, when I went to a sex ed workshop hosted by the Center for Sexual Pleasure & Health. In three hours, I learned more than I did in all of my middle and high school sex education classes combined. I can point to that workshop as a true point of transformation in my life—it helped me take ownership of my sexuality and boundaries, and changed my career path. (I later interned and then worked at the center in an education role.)

It was also the first time I had ever seen queerness centered, normalized, and celebrated in an educational setting. It was the first time I ever felt like sex ed really applied to me. That workshop changed my life for the better, and that’s what sex education should do: give students the tools to take ownership of their lives and bodies so they can feel empowered. And that includes LGBTQ students.

But here’s the thing: You shouldn’t be 18 the first time you feel included in the conversation, or learn about consent, or have your sexuality affirmed. All of those things should happen much earlier.

So, I had a conversation with two other LGBTQ sex educators to figure out what we really want for our students when it comes to LGBTQ-positive sex education. Here’s what we wish all students learned in school.

Fluidity is the norm

When I say that queer-centric sex education benefits everyone, I mean it. Everyone can benefit from an education that celebrates different identities, represents the many ways that people can love, and talks about health inclusively.

According to Cindy Lee Alves, a queer, nonbinary femme sexologist, the main difference between curricula that simply references LGBTQ folks and curricula that centers LGBTQ folks is shame. “Many curricula think about sex ed solely as disease prevention, and that doesn’t do much for us,” they said. “What would it look like if we taught folks from a young age that things in all parts of your life can be expansive and that you don’t have to pick a lane right away? How much shame would that remove? When you couple inaccurate information with shame, it makes people small.”

Any education that says “this is how things always are and always will be” teaches shame, Alves said. Sexuality and gender identity are fluid, so rather than be prescriptive in what we teach young people, we should teach that it’s okay and expected to explore who you are a little bit. It’s also normal for those things to shift, which doesn’t invalidate any part of your past, present, or future identity.

Sex is all-encompassing

When many people think of sex, they’re thinking of one thing in particular: penis-in-vagina intercourse. But sex is much more than that. Sex includes oral, anal, and vaginal sex, as you might have expected. But it also includes acts typically categorized as “foreplay,” like handjobs, fingering, using toys together, and more.

Everyone’s definition is different, but the way that you define sex matters, because that definition will likely influence your sexual boundaries, the contraceptives you use, and who you choose to do it with.

LGBTQ-positive sex ed doesn’t just teach heteronormative sex; it recognizes that sexual behavior is expansive and affirms that no type of sex is less important or relevant than others.

Sex and gender are not binary

Sex and gender are different things, and both are more expansive than we’re currently taught. You may have grown up thinking the terms were were interchangeable (I know I did), but they’re not, and learning this distinction can make a huge difference in how you approach sex education at home and in the classroom.

Sex is a label you’re given based on your genitals, chromosomes, or hormones—or a combination of these factors. What’s on your birth certificate is the sex you were assigned at birth, which is usually based on what your genitalia looked like. But chromosomal pairings and genitalia don’t always match up, and there is an entire spectrum of biological sex.

Some people are intersex, meaning they have sex characteristics (genitals, hormone levels, and chromosomes) that don’t fit the typical definitions of male or female. So the argument that “there are only two sexes” is wrong. Intersex people are proof of biological variation and that nature hates binaries.

Truly LGBTQ-positive sex ed would celebrate gender diversity, accept all bodies, and positively represent all genders.

On the other hand, gender isn’t determined by anything bodily—it’s the way that you situate yourself in society. While your body parts might affirm that placement, they don’t define it. If someone’s gender identity aligns with the sex they were assigned at birth, they’re cisgender. If someone’s gender identity doesn’t align with the sex they were assigned at birth, they’re gender nonconforming or transgender.

Many people who are teaching sex ed aren’t trans and may not even be familiar with what it means to be gender nonconforming. Because “folks who actually identify [these ways] aren’t creating the content, there are going to be blind spots,” said Jimanekia Eborn, a queer sexuality educator and trauma specialist. Those blind spots aren’t small, either, and they can be really harmful.

While some curricula might try to take on gender, they often fall short because they talk about gender as a binary when it simply isn’t—nonbinary, genderqueer, two-spirit, and agender people exist, along with so many more identities. You might not have the words for them, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t real.

Truly LGBTQ-positive sex ed would celebrate gender diversity, accept all bodies, and positively represent all genders.

You can’t separate the issues

When you try to teach sex ed as if sex happens in a vacuum that isn’t affected by other parts of one’s life, you’re doing a disservice to your students. Queer and inclusive sex ed “centers folks who are system-impacted,” Alves said. “I think about intersectionality. If we’re bringing up queerness, we have to bring it up with other identities, too.”

Race, class, and neurodivergence are three areas that must be woven into sex education curricula. There are many ways to do this, but it starts with talking honestly about the history of sexuality in the United States, from the forced sterilization of people with disabilities to reproductive control over women of color.

“All of the roots are connected, and some people want to just focus on their one tree. But it’s our responsibility to show up for our young people and get their needs met,” Alves said.

From the photos and anatomy tools you use to the cultural examples and historical figures you turn to, representation in sex ed matters. Students need to be able to see themselves in what we teach.

Queer people deserve healthy relationships

Violence prevention and healthy relationships workshops can too often leave students thinking that victims of violence are always cisgender women and that perpetrators are cisgender men.

That just isn’t true. Interpersonal violence, including sexual assault and dating violence, can be committed and experienced by people of any gender or sexual orientation. In fact, queer and trans women experience higher rates of violence than cisgender, heterosexual women.

“Often, evidence-based curricula will use nongendered names or not give a lot of context clues about people’s identities,” Alves said. “That doesn’t do much for queer youth. Outright including and centering someone’s identity in a lesson plan offers the opportunity to discuss how their identity might affect their other experiences.”

When the lessons we learn about consent, boundaries, and healthy relationships only show one type of relationship dynamic, we’re passively telling our LGBTQ students that this information isn’t relevant to them.

And while we’re here, remember that there’s no one right way for a relationship to be structured. Monogamy isn’t right for everyone, so when you’re talking about healthy relationships, make sure to include ethical non-monogamy, too.

“Often, evidence-based curricula will use nongendered names or not give a lot of context clues about people’s identities. That doesn’t do much for queer youth.”
– Cindy Lee Alves

Asexuality isn’t a problem to be solved

Some sexualities are completely ignored in sex ed, like asexuality—an umbrella term that encapsulates many different identities that are defined more by a lack of sexual attraction or desire than who the person is attracted to.

At its core, asexuality means the absence of sexual attraction, but it’s a bit more layered than that. Demisexuality, for example, means only experiencing sexual attraction after forming a deep emotional bond (not necessarily romantic) with someone. Gray asexuality means experiencing sexual attraction rarely or occasionally.

While some asexual people might also be aromantic (not experiencing romantic attraction), plenty of sexual people have romantic relationships. Sex isn’t a requirement for being in a relationship. Asexuality can also be combined with other sexual orientations, so someone might identify as both bisexual and asexual. I’m queer and demisexual (and happily married).

Just like any other sexuality, asexuality isn’t a problem to be solved, so sex educators should never treat it that way. Asexual people still need education about consent, healthy relationships, and sexual wellness, even if they never have partnered sex.

Condoms aren’t the only option

When it comes to barrier method contraceptives for STI and pregnancy prevention, people often think of external condoms (the type that goes over a penis or sex toy), but there are so many more options. As a sex educator, you should educate students equally about all types of barrier methods, because queer students might not have a need for external condoms.

When you teach about condoms, also educate students about internal condoms, dental dams, finger cots, and gloves. They can all be used as safer sex tools, and you can save your exploratory students a lot of confusion if you just go ahead and teach about them now.

We deserve to be empowered, not ashamed

Those of us who teach pleasure-positive sex education know how deeply shame and fear root themselves. Shame does weird stuff to you. It only takes one comment to make someone feel bad about who they are, and that one comment can have ripple effects throughout your lifetime.

Things have changed for young queer people in recent years. But for all the empowering messages, there are still parents, teachers, peers, and media that will pass on that shame. When I was in high school, my internalized homophobia ran so deep that I refused to acknowledge that I might not be straight. I was afraid to not be straight, and that fear led me to have sex with people I shouldn’t have and not set any boundaries for myself.

Queer people deserve to grow up feeling empowered to set boundaries, make their own decisions, advocate for themselves, and explore their sexuality in a way that makes them feel good. Straight people deserve that, too. We all do. We all want “love, pleasure, and to be seen, heard, and respected,” as Eborn said.

Sex education can change and even save lives, but empowerment must be at the heart of our work. Otherwise, we’re missing the point.

“The people who have the access and the power have to make these changes to center our young people and their experiences—we can’t rely on our old expertise; we have to make these shifts,” Alves said.

We all deserve better sex ed.

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13 Necessary Queer Literary Classics For Every Bookshelf

From Virginia Woolf’s Orlando and James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room to Alice Walker’s Pulitzer Prize-winning The Color Purple and Ocean Vuong’s 2019 debut — the queer literary landscape is vibrant, expansive and ready to be explored.

By Rosalind Jana

The history of queer literature is a long one. From Greek poet Sappho to Irish playwright Oscar Wilde, many writers have approached the challenges and pleasures of the LGBTQ+ experience with great depth and imagination. This hasn’t always been an easy endeavour; often, it’s been a history read in gaps and implied meaning, with obstructions for those depicting the nuances of sexuality and gender identity without censure. Thankfully, this has slowly changed, and the queer literary landscape is now both vibrant and expansive.

In fact, this list of 13 queer classics offers just a handful of the books that could have been chosen. For every inclusion, there is another notable absence. E.M. Forster, Ali Smith, Audre Lorde, Christopher Isherwood and numerous other novelists aren’t listed here, but have all written fantastic fiction that has helped both shape and pluralise the stories that now make up a queer canon. Think of these suggestions as a starting point — a handful of bold and brilliant books perfect for picking up at any time, with lots more to discover when all is read and done.

‘Giovanni’s Room’ by James Baldwin (1956)

Giovanni’s Room condenses an incredible sweep of emotion into its scant length. Detailing the fraught relationship between American David and Italian bartender Giovanni, the former narrates the tale of their time together over a night leading “to the most terrible morning of my life”. This terrible morning, we soon discover, marks the day of Giovanni’s execution. With this looming, David recounts the trials and tumult of their love affair, and, in doing so, sketches a complex portrait of masculinity at war with itself. It is an astonishingly vivid novel, grappling not only with the heady contours of desire, but also the disturbing consequences of shame and self-loathing.

‘The Line of Beauty’ by Alan Hollinghurst (2004)

Nick Guest has left university and summer is in full swing. Living in the Notting Hill house of an affluent school friend whose father is a Conservative politician, the book opens with Margaret Thatcher’s second election victory in 1983 and skilfully interlaces questions of politics, class, and sex. At first, Nick’s sexuality is largely hidden from the upper-class world he drifts into — with trysts in gated gardens and behind closed doors. But as time passes and the AIDS crisis develops, this no longer becomes possible. Taking aim at the hollow allure of wealth and the moral vacuum of Thatcher’s rule, Hollinghurst’s novel is sumptuous and increasingly sombre.

‘Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit’ by Jeanette Winterson (1985)

“People like to separate storytelling which is not fact from history which is fact. They do this so they know what to believe and what not to believe.” Jeanette Winterson’s debut, rooted in her own experiences of growing up as a lesbian in a Pentecostal adopted family, is structured around the religious texts that permeate protagonist Jeanette’s upbringing. Delving into what happens when the expected narratives — both theological and personal — are rejected, Winterson’s voice is fresh, startling, and funny. It’s a brilliant novel, illuminating the consequences of a devout and claustrophobic mother, and an institution that punishes nascent love with cruelty. For a follow-up, try Winterson’s 2011 memoir, Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?.

‘Orlando’ by Virginia Woolf (1928)

Some novels are dialogues with difficult questions. Others aim to capture a particular history: cultural, collective, individual. A few are love letters. Orlando is all of the above. Inspired by and written for the magnetic, imposing Vita Sackville-West, with whom Virginia Woolf had a long affair, it follows the titular protagonist through three centuries of history, several romantic liaisons, one gender switch, and a very lengthy poetic project. It is a giddy read, full of humour and warmth as well as searching examinations of gender, sexuality, power and artistic process.

‘Paul Takes The Form of a Mortal Girl’ by Andrea Lawlor (2017)

What would happen if you transplanted Orlando to 1993 and added dozens more explicit sex scenes? The result would possibly look something like Andrea Lawlor’s Paul Takes The Form of a Mortal Girl. This raucous novel follows the adventures of Paul — also known as Polly — whose body is malleable, metamorphic, and endlessly hungry for pleasure. Able to physically transform at will, Paul revels in the sexual and romantic possibilities offered by numerous adjustments in face, height, torso, genitals, and more. Slipping between guises and identities, the polymorphous Paul offers a lucid look at trans identity — as playful as it is serious.

‘Dancer From The Dance’ by Andrew Holleran (1978)

Holleran’s book — dubbed ‘The Gay Great Gatsby’ — takes its title from a Yeats poem. It reads: “O body swayed to music, O brightening glance / How can we know the dancer from the dance?” It’s an apt reference, given the book’s preoccupation with observation, as well as the physical intimacies and distances found in a social whirl. Set in New York in a pre-AIDS era, Holleran brilliantly captures a generation of men for whom hedonism is never-ending, while desire, loneliness, and a restless wish for love continually jostle.

‘The Color Purple’ by Alice Walker (1982)

A devastating, but ultimately hopeful narrative told in a series of letters from protagonist Celie to God and her sister Nettie, Alice Walker won the Pulitzer Prize for The Color Purple in 1983. Detailing the stark realities of abuse, misogyny, and racism in rural Georgia, Walker’s novel offers both a damning indictment of institutionalised and culturally encoded oppression, and the tremendous potential found in reclaiming one’s life for oneself. With the introduction of blues singer Shug Avery, it also becomes a love story — one in which pleasure and passion is reciprocated, and female solidarity provides great solace.

‘Carol’ by Patricia Highsmith (1952)

Published under the pseudonym “Claire Morgan”, the formerly titled The Price of Salt swiftly became a runaway hit. Inspired by a “blondish” woman in a mink coat who had made her feel “odd and swimmy in the head” while working at Macy’s (and influenced too by her relationship with heiress Virginia Kent Catherwood), Highsmith conjured a love story full of erotic charge. Documenting the unfolding relationship between 19-year-old Therese and thirtysomething Carol, it is a crisply observed story in which desire simmers and the constrictions of nuclear family life are stifling. At the time, it was praised for its open-ended suggestion of a happy future. In recent years, it’s enjoyed a renaissance thanks to Todd Haynes’ stylish film.

‘On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous’ by Ocean Vuong (2019)

Language, lust, addiction and inherited trauma coalesce in Ocean Vuong’s debut. Written in the form of a letter from a son to a mother who can’t read it, Vuong combines the precision and lyricism of his poetry with the varied forms of intimacy that exist between lovers, between parent and child, and between the ill and well. Growing up with a Vietnamese mother and grandmother for whom war and violence have left deep imprints, the novel’s speaker Little Dog approaches the question of survival with searching intensity. Combining fragmented memories of childhood with an account of his first troubled love — Trevor, the 16-year-old son of a tobacco farmer — Vuong’s narrative of growing up gay and escaping is tender and heartbreaking.

‘America is Not the Heart’ by Elaine Castillo (2018)

Hero goes by several names. Named Geronima De Vera, in the Philippines she is known as Nimang. But on arrival in Milpitas, near San Francisco, her seven-year-old niece dubs her Hero. It’s a nickname both uneasy and fitting for a woman whose life has taken several distinct turns, from a wealthy upbringing, to a decade as a doctor in the New People’s Army, to two years of torture, to a new beginning in the US. Arriving with broken thumbs and a brittle exterior, Hero’s affections unravel slowly. Castillo’s book is sprawling and energetic: sharp in its interrogations of language, immigration, and class, and bold-hearted in its depiction of Hero’s frank, unsentimental approach to sex and love — with things complicated and transformed by local beautician Rosalyn.

‘Stone Butch Blues’ by Leslie Feinberg (1993)

“The law said we needed to be wearing three pieces of women’s clothing. We never switched clothing. Neither did our drag queen sisters. We knew, and so did you, what was coming. We needed our sleeves rolled up, our hair slicked back, in order to live through it.” Leslie Feinberg’s novel is a blistering and incisive depiction of lesbian and trans experience. Exploring the life of Jess Goldberg, a working-class gender-queer butch lesbian growing up in 1950s Buffalo before moving to New York, Feinberg sheds light on horrific police brutality and queer networks of community and care, and asks what it means (and what it takes) to resist.

‘Under the Udala Trees’ by Chinelo Okparanta (2015)

In 2014, Nigeria’s then-President Goodluck Jonathan signed the Same-Sex Marriage Prohibition Act with incredibly serious sanctions ranging from imprisonment to death. This sobering fact forms the author’s endnote in Chinelo Okparanta’s moving, sparingly written novel. A coming-of-age tale taking place against the backdrop of the Nigerian civil war, it focuses on a young Igbo woman named Ijeoma who struggles to reconcile faith, family, and her sexuality. Coming to terms with being a lesbian in a culture hostile to homosexuality, Okparanta skilfully weaves between resignation and revelation — unstinting in her focus on the horrors of both war and deep prejudice, while offering a fragile note of hope.

‘After The Parade’ by Lori Ostlund (2015)

As Aaron Englund leaves his older partner after 20 years, his life packed up in the back of a truck, the past constantly infiltrates his chosen future. Relocating to San Francisco, disturbing recollections from childhood mingle with examinations of his time with Walter — a quiet, ordered man who wished “to serve as benefactor to Aaron’s wishes and ambitions, and so bind Aaron to him.” In breaking free of all that has tethered him, Aaron finds room to unravel a complex web of trauma and loss. After The Parade is a stunningly written book, deft in its understanding of love and alienation.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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There’s a new sexual orientation category called heteroflexible.

And it brings health issues that need to be addressed.

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Labels, categorization, boxes. There are some, if not many, who don’t want any part of identifying themselves by others’ characterizations.

But, according to Nicole Legate, an assistant professor of psychology at the Illinois Institute of Technology, some categorization is vital when it comes to addressing health disparities in sexual minority groups (groups other than heterosexuals), including higher levels of distress, lower levels of self-esteem, and unprotected sex.

It was while looking for those health disparities between heterosexuals and sexual minorities that Legate, with co-author Ronald Rogge of the University of Rochester, found a new sexual orientation category that they believe should be considered alongside heterosexuals, bisexuals and homosexuals. That category is heteroflexibles — men and women who identify as heterosexual but who are strongly attracted to or engage in sex with people of the same sex. Legate said this group does not identify as bisexual, which is why these individuals should be in their own unique category.

Heteroflexibles are much less out about their orientation, according to Legate, so they don’t talk about it to other people nearly as much as bisexuals or gay and lesbian individuals. And not offering that bit of information to a health provider could prevent a physician, for instance, from recommending getting tested or talking about PrEP, pre-exposure prophylaxis, to prevent against HIV since same-sex partners (regardless of how one identifies) tend to have greater risk for sexually transmitted infections.

Legate and Rogge discussed heteroflexibles in a 2016 study where they created an algorithm that looks at survey participants’ identity, behavior and attraction to produce a more data-driven look at sexual orientation. The study included over 3,000 people in the U.S. and took about two years to complete. In the study, 56% of bisexuals said they had had a same sex partner in the previous year, and for heteroflexibles, it was 42%, Legate said. She estimates that up to 15% of the general population may identify as heteroflexible but that a larger representative sample is needed for more research.

“Against heterosexuals, they (heteroflexibles) showed higher rates of different kinds of risks and worse psychological functioning,” Legate said. “The risk behaviors they showed in our study were things like problematic drinking, condom-less sex — so greater levels of sexually transmitted infections. There are so few studies out there about this group, and we have not yet uncovered the reasons why they might show this higher level of risk.”

Next steps, Legate said, include nailing down why heteroflexibles might engage in same-sex activity versus opposite sex activity, how many heteroflexibles there are and why this group shows certain health disparities.

The more accurate estimates are of sexual minorities in the population, the better prepared researchers and health care providers interested in studying health, epidemiological and psychology issues related to sexual orientation can be when addressing their needs.

“When you go to the doctor’s office, they don’t ask you for your sexual orientation,” Legate said. “I think educating providers about the fact that it’s OK to ask and that it is relevant in many cases just like knowing race and age — these are standard demographic questions that can give us a little extra health information or help us understand what groups may be at elevated risks for different things.”

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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Survey sheds light on fluid teen sexual orientation

At least one in five teenagers reports some change in sexual orientation during adolescence, according to new research.

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“This work highlights the fluidity that many adolescents experience in terms of how they label their sexuality and who they feel sexually attracted to,” says lead author J. Stewart, a PhD student at North Carolina State University.

For this study, researchers looked at data from 744 students from rural high schools in the southeastern United States; 54% of the students were girls, 46% were boys. Students filled out surveys each year for three years, spanning either their freshman through junior years or their sophomore through senior years. Researchers collected the data between 2014 and 2016.

The researchers found that at some point during the three-year period, 19% of students reported at least one change in their self-labeled sexual identity—for example, classifying themselves as heterosexual in year one and as bisexual in year two. Some students reported multiple changes, such as switching from heterosexual to bisexual between years one and two, and then back to heterosexual in year three.

There were also notable differences between male and female students, with 26% of girls reporting some change in sexual identity over the three-year study period, compared to 11% of boys.

In addition to how teens labeled their sexualities, researchers looked at the extent to which teens reported being romantically attracted to boys and/or girls. The study found that 21% of students reported changes in who they were attracted to over the course of the study. As with sexual identity, some students reported changes in romantic attraction between years one and two, and again between years two and three.

Again, there were notable differences between boys and girls, with 31% of girls reporting changes in romantic attraction, compared to 10% of boys.

“Some adolescents shifted between sexual minority identities and/or attractions—gay or lesbian, bisexual, etc. as well as varying degrees of same-sex attractions—across all three years,” Stewart says. “Others fluctuated between heterosexual and sexual minority groups. And when we looked at the extent to which sexual identity, attraction, and sexual behavior aligned, we saw some interesting trends.”

The researchers found that the majority of people who identified as sexual minorities also reported some degree of same-sex attraction—and most had engaged in some form of sexual behavior with a person of the same sex.

However, there was more variability among students who identified themselves as heterosexual—particularly for girls.

For example, 9% of all female students labeled themselves as both heterosexual and having at least some attraction to girls. And 12% of girls who reported being both heterosexual and having no sexual attraction toward girls also reported engaging in same-sex sexual behavior.

“The results for boys mirrored those for girls, albeit to a lesser degree,” Stewart says.

“Adolescence is a time of identity exploration, and sexual orientation is one aspect of that. One takeaway here is that the process of sexual identity development is quite nuanced for a lot of teens. And based on research with young adults, we expect these patterns will continue for many people into their late 20s and even beyond.

“To be clear, we’re talking about internally driven changes in sexual orientation,” Stewart says. “This research does not suggest these changes can be imposed on an individual and does not support the idea of conversion therapy. There’s ample evidence that conversion therapy is harmful and does not influence anyone’s sexual orientation.”

The researchers are already considering future directions for the work.

“The data in this study comes from kids growing up in the rural South,” Stewart says. “It would be interesting to see if these numbers vary across different sociopolitical environments. Additionally, we weren’t able to identify how these patterns looked among trans and other gender minority adolescents. That would be an important direction for future work.”

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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How right-wing purity culture leaves women with lasting psychological damage and self-hate

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The so-called “purity” culture in the Christian evangelical community has made millions for churches and Christian swag manufacturers. However, it’s been harming millions of teens across the country who made a vow of chastity before marriage.

Statistics reveal that 85 percent of men and 81 percent of women have sex prior to marriage, so the numbers aren’t looking good for the church. For those who made the pledge but fell short of the goal, damaging implications have followed, The Christian Post reported.

“Amid the rise of the #MeToo movement paired with reports of sex abuse within the Church, individuals whose lives were shaped by purity culture began to push back,” the report said. “They shared stories of how some of the more problematic aspects of the movement, though well-intentioned, caused them to have an unhealthy relationship with religion, relationships, and sex.”

Cait West revealed her upbringing in Christian patriarchy where women were to be submissive to male house-heads. Female children were not allowed to date unless it was a courtship seeking marriage. She recalled being “shamed for normal adolescent curiosity.” Any sexual thoughts meant she was basically fornicating.

“Dating was never an option,” she told The Christian Post in an interview. “I was never taught about sex or sexuality at all. I remember asking my parents, testing the waters, ‘What’s this about?’ And they brushed it aside. I was never allowed to explore or ask questions, so I never thought of myself as a sexual being because of that.”

She learned that women being sexual beings were bad. They weren’t allowed to be sexual. Everything was tied to shame. Even clothing had to be approved by her father, who would gauge the “modesty” of the outfit.

 

“My father would come to the store with me and judge everything I had on,” she said. “That overt male gaze judging my clothing throughout my adolescence and into my 20’s really shaped how I thought of myself because I never thought who I was from my perspective.”

That shame then turned to anxiety. It wasn’t until she left the faith at 25 that she began to explore the emotional damage that had been done. She called it “emotional, physical and spiritual trauma.”

“I felt very disconnected from my own body because I was never taught about the sexual part of me,” she said. “I didn’t want to think about my own body or explore my own sexuality because it was a dirty part of me I wasn’t allowed to explore. It made me feel weird about living in my own body, and I didn’t realize just how much I hated my own body until I left the movement.”

As a spouse, she now struggles to think of sex as something intimate for partners and not purely for procreation.

“I’ve had a lot of trouble with disassociation in sexually intimate moments because it’s too much for me to be present in my own body because it feels bad,” she explained. “For years, you’re told something is bad — and then suddenly you get married and you’re supposed to be OK with it. It was like I was trained not to have that part of me turned on or be aware of things.”

“I’ve been working through that process of figuring out what those toxic messages were and re-train myself to have agency,” she added.

Pure: Inside the Evangelical Movement That Shamed a Generation of Women and How I Broke Free by Linda Kay Klein walks through the struggle with gender-based shame, fear and the emotional distress that can leave lasting damage to women. She began compiling stories from dozens of friends in the purity movement. All of the women experienced psychological problems related to sex and sexuality.

“My interviewees made different life choices, yet among their stories, I heard many of the same themes,” she shared. “I heard about sexual and gender-based shame, fear, anxiety, and experiences stemming from their shame that mimicked Post-Traumatic-Stress-Disorder, such as nightmares, panic attacks, and paranoia. Several of my interviewees told me their shame was also creating deep problems in their marriages, particularly in their marriage beds.”

She explained that as girls grow into women they’re still taught never to “inspire” sexual thoughts from men. It makes an easy transition to rape culture, which maintains that women are responsible for the actions of men raping or abusing them. In no other crime is the victim the responsible party. However, conservatives blame clothing or behavior of a victim for the actions of someone else.

“In other words, girls grew up with the message that not only did we need to be pure, but it was our responsibility to ensure that the whole community was pure. That’s a lot of pressure for a young girl!” exclaimed Klein.

But it’s the shame that leaves lasting damage to women who self-impose guilt. She noted the shame is a huge part of the purity movement.

“Shame isn’t bashfulness,” she said. “It is a feeling of our being unworthy, or being seen as unworthy in other people’s eyes, that causes us to disconnect from ourselves, from others, and—from what I’ve seen in my interviews—from God at times. It can lead to emotional isolation which can develop into dangerous levels of hopelessness, desperation, subsequent self-harm, and much more.”

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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New study shows that sexual identity continues to evolve well into adulthood

By Kells McPhillips

As a new generation calls back to the sexual revolution with fresh attitudes about sex and relationships, an extensive study of 12,000 students emerges, providing greater understanding of sexual fluidity in young adults.

Research published in the Journal of Sex Research found that people ranging in age from adolescence to their late 20s reported variation in who they were attracted to and partnered up with, as well as how they identified sexually. The studies authors mined statistics from surveys including the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health.

“Sexual orientation involves many aspects of life, such as who we feel attracted to, who we have sex with, and how we self-identify,”  Christine Kaestle, PhD, a professor of developmental health at Virginia Tech said in a press release. “Until recently, researchers have tended to focus on just one of these aspects, or dimensions, to measure and categorize people. However, that may oversimplify the situation.” She gives the example of someone who might consider themselves heterosexual, but also have a history with partners of their same sex.

Of course, how people interact sexually is far too complex to fit into the labels “gay,” “straight,” or “bisexual,” argue the study authors. “We will always struggle with imposing categories onto sexual orientation,” said Dr. Kaestle. “Because sexual orientation involves a set of various life experiences over time, categories will always feel artificial and static.”

While the study’s findings on sexual fluidity highlight insufficiency of the labels gay, straight, and bisexual, researchers divided people into nine distinct categories based on their findings, including “mostly straight or bi,” “minimal sexual expression,” and “emerging lesbian.” The groupings leave much more room for nuance than the run-of-the mill labeling so often used to herd people into sexually simple boxes, and it also allowed them to discover for some truly thought-provoking findings.

For example, more men identify as straight than women, who, on the other hand, had a greater sexual fluidity over the course of their young adulthood. And less than one in 25 men fell somewhere in the middle of being either gay or straight. “At the same time—as more people pair up in longer term committed relationships as young adulthood progresses—this could lead to fewer identities and attractions being expressed that do not match the sex of the long-term partner, leading to a kind of bi-invisibility,” explains the researcher.

No matter your age, it’s 100 percent okay if you don’t feel like you fit into one of nine categories. As Dr. Kaestle and her colleagues are quick to point out, when it comes to sexuality, we’re really just looking at the tip of the iceberg (for now).

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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Five things I wish I’d known about sex and relationships in university

By Simone Paget

Fun fact: During my first year at the University of Toronto, I was in a student film appropriately titled, Sex and the University. Before your mind travels too far down the gutter, it was a sweet romantic comedy that parodied the famous HBO show of a similar name. The irony being that the film didn’t contain a single sex scene. However, the title of the film couldn’t have been more on-point for that era of my life.

Like many people, my late teens and early twenties were a time when I was exploring my sexuality, all the while trying to get a grip on relationships and other adult responsibilities, often with confusing, painful results. The university years are an emotional minefield. Whether you’re wrapping up first year or your collegiate days are long behind you, there are probably a few things you wish you’d done differently.

Here’s what I wish I’d known about sex and relationships when I was a university student.

1. Prioritize people who prioritize you.

One of my favourite quotes by Maya Angelou is, “never make someone a priority when all you are to them is an option.” I had this taped to my mirror in university, but I often failed to take heed. I spent a lot of time chasing after partners who (in retrospect) didn’t prioritize my feelings or time. People who really want you in their life, will make it happen. Letting go of lopsided relationships will give you more time to hang out with your friends and allow for better, more deserving people to walk into your life.

2. The only person keeping track of how many people you’ve slept with is you.

I used to spend a lot of time worrying about my “number.” I was always worried that I was having too much sex, while my male friends were concerned they weren’t hooking up with enough girls. Hello, sexist double standards. Long story short: none of us were truly living our best sex lives.

When it comes to the number of people you’ve hooked up with, there’s no right or wrong answer. As long as you’re protecting your health, engaging in consensual encounters and treating the people you hook up with respect, the number doesn’t matter.

3. If you have a bad experience, help is available. Take it.

Within the first two months of university I was sexually assaulted. Six months later, I had another bad experience with someone I was dating. I honestly can’t explain why I didn’t get help at the time (it took me until I was in my thirties to finally see a therapist). I think part of me thought I could handle all of the feelings on my own. As a result, the aftershock of these experiences seeped into nearly every area of my life over the next decade. Even if you don’t think what’s happened to you is that serious, go talk to someone. It’s worth it.

4. You can have a safe, healthy, satisfying sex life.

The underlying theme of the sex education I received in high school echoed what the gym teacher says in the movie Mean Girls: “Don’t have sex because you will get pregnant and die.” The fear associated with sex held me back and caused a lot of undue anxiety. However, if you use safer sex methods and get tested regularly (which is essential for your health and peace of mind), you can protect yourself and still have a healthy, fun sex life.

5. It’s okay to experiment.

In my early 20s, I had several opportunities to date and experiment with other women (gorgeous, smart, cool women), but I never followed through. Now I wish I had. I think at the time I was scared, but of what I’m not really sure. Once again, it took me until my thirties to explore this part of my sexuality. Stop worrying about what other people think. Whether you’re gay, straight or somewhere happily in between, you’re not required to define your sexuality for other people. You deserve pleasure. Give yourself permission to explore.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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Age Doesn’t Determine Whether A Person Is Ready For Sex.

Here’s What Does!

By Nichole Fratangelo

First-time sex has a lot of logistics attached to it—like where it happened, when it happened, and who it happened with. For most of us, it’s the “when” that holds a ton of weight. As a society, we tend to place so much importance on how old we were when we first shared that intimate moment with someone else. We rarely even consider if we were mentally, emotionally, and physically ready to do it. Now, new research shows your age really isn’t the only thing that matters when it comes to sexual readiness; there’s much more in-depth criteria that includes physical, emotional, and psychosocial well-being.

A study published in the journal BMJ Sexual and Reproductive Health questioned 2,825 people between ages 17 and 24 about their first sexual experience, including the nature of their relationship with the person they had their first sex with, both of their ages, and how much sexual experience their partner had. The researchers also asked about their socioeconomic status, their education level, family structure, ethnicity, and how and when they’d been taught about sex.

What does it mean to be “ready” for sex?

Rather than focusing on age as a key factor, the researchers used four distinct points to gauge how ready each person was based on the World Health Organization’s standards for sexual health. WHO defines sexual health as “a state of physical, emotional, mental and social well-being in relation to sexuality,” which includes a “positive and respectful approach to sexuality and sexual relationships, as well as the possibility of having pleasurable and safe sexual experiences, free of coercion, discrimination, and violence.”

Only those who met all four criteria were considered “sexually competent”—that is, ready to have sex—at the time they first did it.

“The concept of ‘sexual competence’ represents an alternative approach to timing of first sexual intercourse, considering the contextual attributes of the event, rather than simply age at occurrence,” the researchers wrote in the paper. “This departs from the traditional framing of all sexual activity among teenagers as problematic, and recognises that young age alone does not threaten sexual health, any more than older age safeguards it.”

Here are the four main criteria:

1. Contraceptive use

Are you using birth control of some sort? A person who isn’t willing and prepared to use contraception during sex is not mature enough to be having sex. That’s why researchers included it as such a major point, especially for those doing it for the first time. Of those surveyed, most people did use reliable contraception, but around one in 10 did not.

2. Autonomy

Are you having sex because you truly want to do it, or does it have to do with peer pressure or drunkenness? Sex should always be on your own accord and not because it’s something everyone else around you is doing.

3. Consent

Here’s a crucial one: Did both parties verbally and physically agree to have sex? If not, neither party was ready to do the deed—one person was forced into it and experienced sexual assault, and the other person assaulted someone, which is the furthest thing from sexual competence. The researchers excluded instances of forced sex from their study, but they noted that almost one in five women had reported not being in charge of the decision to have sex for the first time.

4. The “right” timing

Do you feel like this is the “right time”? Participants reported whether they personally felt like they’d picked the appropriate time in their lives to start having sex. Though the study didn’t specify, there are many personal reasons why it is or isn’t a good time to start having sex; they weren’t ready to have sex—you might be struggling with stress or insecurity and don’t want to complicate it by introducing intimacy in your life, or you might be very erotically charged and have a lot of free time, so why not? Other factors like finding a partner they feel attracted to and comfortable with could factor into this question.

More women than men felt their first sexual experience did not happen at the right time—40 percent versus 27 percent, respectively. This was the most commonly reported negative feature of first-time sex.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!