(Almost) Everything You Know About the Invention of the Vibrator Is Wrong

A Victorian doctor created the “vibratode,” but it was our great-great- grandmothers who saw its real potential. By Hallie Lieberman There’s a longstanding myth that still seems to hold about where vibrators first came from. It goes something like this: Cut to Victorian England. A mutton-chopped, bow-tie-clad doctor stands in an operating theater, where the …

What Happens to Relationships When Sex Hurts

Women who suffer from the chronic-pain condition vulvodynia often feel isolated from their partners. But a better medical understanding is helping. By Ashley Fetters In her 18 years as a sex therapist in Orange County, California, Stephanie Buehler has come to recognize a certain tense, fraught dynamic in couples when a female partner has vulvodynia. …

An essential safe sex guide for lesbian, bisexual and queer women

Everything you need to know about vulva-to-vulva sex. By Paisley Gilmour If you’re a lesbian, bisexual, pansexual or queer woman, or someone who has a vagina and sleeps with vagina-having people, it’s likely you haven’t had the sexual health education you need. School sex ed is so heteronormative that many of us never heard so …

Ways of Being

Three new books explore the variety of transgender experiences. By Stephanie Burt Assigned one gender at birth, we’d felt like the other since childhood. That feeling—which had nothing to do with sexual desire—grew until life in the wrong gender seemed not worth living. So we came out as trans women or trans men to loved …

Prostate Play

How To Massage One To Orgasm By Erika W. Smith People born with a penis are also born with a prostate — a walnut-shaped gland wrapped around the urethral canal. It’s often compared to the G-spot, because the prostate’s location is in a similar location inside the body and both can feel amazing when stimulated. People …

Four Ways to Destigmatize Abortion in Everyday Conversations

At a time when we are being inundated with anti-choice bans, we all have a responsibility to challenge the myths, misinformation, and stigma surrounding abortion that contribute to a culture where such laws are seen as valid. By Ellen Friedrichs If you feel like anti-abortion bills are being passed by Republican lawmakers at every turn, …

3 Reasons You Feel Sad After Sex & What To Do About It

By Kelly Gonsalves After having sex, most people usually experience a host of positive physical, mental, and emotional feelings—a sense of euphoric high, satisfaction, relaxation, and perhaps a warm intimacy with their partner. But sometimes, a person may instead feel the opposite. Immediately following sex, they’re hit with a wave of negative emotions: They feel …