Sleeping with other people: how gay men are making open relationships work

A new study says non-monogamous couples can actually be closer, even as critics of open relationships argue humans are unable to separate love and sex By Spencer Macnaughton Hugh McIntyre, a 26-year-old music writer, and Toph Allen, a 28-year-old epidemiologist, are in love and have an “amazing” relationship of two and a half years. One …

A handy history

Condemned, celebrated, shunned: masturbation has long been an uncomfortable fact of life. Why? by Barry Reay The anonymous author of the pamphlet Onania (1716) was very worried about masturbation. The ‘shameful vice’, the ‘solitary act of pleasure’, was something too terrible to even be described. The writer agreed with those ‘who are of the opinion, …

Jessica Drake Wants Us All To Have Happier, Healthier Sex Lives

By: Phoenix Tso At her sex ed workshops, Jessica Drake passes around a box with the words “live, laugh, love” printed on it. Inside are index cards of sex questions that people have written to Jessica under the cover of anonymity. During the workshop, she reads them out loud, and then answers them with compassion …

How to Have an Open Relationship Without Annoying the Shit Out of Everyone

By April Adam So you decided to open your relationship. Congratulations! Monogamy certainly seems tough, and since puberty, I have thought it profoundly wasteful to set up a game of chicken between commitment and the id. But I warn you: You may begin to find network television toothless, as so many plots lazily circle around …

The Long, Hard Work of Running the Only Academic Journal on Porn

In 2014, Clarissa Smith and Feona Attwood launched “Porn Studies,” the world’s first academic periodical devoted exclusively to pornography, although many of their colleagues—and anti-porn feminists—advised them against it. by Steven Blum Clarissa Smith, a professor of sexual cultures at the University of Sunderland in the UK, is describing to me the ideal sex robot. …

The Secret To Good Sex In A Long-Term Relationship

Pro-tip: Act like your relationship is a Skinemax movie By Tracy Clark-Flory It turns out candles, lingerie, and jazzy tunes are more than romantic cliches—they might actually kinda work. At least, that’s according to a new study of long-term heterosexual relationships finding that sexually satisfied couples regularly engage in these and other forms of foreplay and …