The Term ‘Sexual Preference’ Is Outdated, Offensive, and Incorrect

By Erin Bunch During Tuesday’s confirmation hearing at the Senate Judiciary Committee, Judge Amy Coney Barrett, President Trump‘s latest nominee to the Supreme Court, utilized the term “sexual preference” in discussions surrounding LGTBQ+ discrimination. Specifically, she stated that she “would not discriminate on basis of sexual preference” if confirmed. While Barrett, 47, is not alone …

Exactly what happens to your body when you don’t have sex for a long time

– or at all by Paisley Gilmour We often hear terms like ‘blue balls’ and ‘sexual frustration’ – but what are the real physical and mental effects of a dry spell? In our sex-obsessed society, people who don’t have sex ever or for a very long time are often seen as abnormal or unusual. For …

The ‘Keep It Real Online’ campaign wants parents to talk to kids about porn — but where to start?

By Tracy Clelland The hugely successful “Keep It Real Online” video aimed at getting parents to talk to their children about pornography has gone viral and been praised around the world. But my 16-year-old son asked an interesting question when he looked at the campaign website: Why does it say talk “to” your child? Shouldn’t …

Vibrators had a long history as medical quackery before feminists rebranded them as sex toys

By Kim Adams In the contemporary moment of sex-positive feminism, praises for the orgasmic capacity of the vibrator abound. “They’re all-encompassing, a blanket of electricity, that’ll course through your veins, producing orgasms you didn’t know you were physically capable of having,” wrote Erica Moen in her web comic “Oh Joy Sex Toy.” Vibrators today go …

It took us long enough, but we’re finally paying attention to women’s pleasure

By Erin Magner While the history of women and pleasure is fraught with stigma, it appears we’re in the midst of a pleasure revolution. Now, female-identifying founders are creating pornography, sex toys, sex-education platforms, and erotica, all of which normalizes and celebrates a woman’s right to get off. Not only are consumers turned on by …

Female husbands

Far from being a recent or 21st-century phenomenon, people have chosen, courageously, to trans gender throughout history By Jen Manion One summer night in 1836, police found George Wilson drunk on the street in the Lower East Side in New York City. An officer took Wilson to the station. The officer believed that Wilson was …

Why you’re probably having less (or more) sex right now

By Alexandra Ossola & Natasha Frost Most people in lockdown, as 75% of Americans are at the moment, are probably experiencing big changes to their usual routine. There’s no office commute, no school bus shuttle; there are no parties to attend, no group dinners to plan. It’s unsurprising, then, that for a lot of people, …

This Pioneering Sex Researcher Experimented on Herself

Marie Bonaparte’s interest in the clitoris went an inch too far. By Mark Hay In the mid-2000s, Kim Wallen, an Emory University psychobiologist with an interest in the roots of sexual experiences, told his colleague Elisabeth Lloyd, of the University of Indiana, Bloomington, about “a far-fetched idea” that he’d been mulling over for a couple …

Real Orgasms And Transcendent Pleasure:

How Women Are Reigniting Desire By Malaka Gharib How can more women allow themselves to experience sexual pleasure? That’s one of the central questions in The Pleasure Gap: American Women and the Unfinished Sexual Revolution, a book published this month by public health researcher and journalist Katherine Rowland. Rowland explores why American women aren’t happy …