A queer user’s guide to the wild and terrifying world of LGBTQ dating apps

By Jon Shadel What’s the best queer dating app today? Many people, tired of swiping through profiles with discriminatory language and frustrated with safety and privacy concerns, say it isn’t a dating app at all. It’s Instagram. This is hardly a queer seal of approval for the social media platform. Instead, it’s a sign that, …

‘Gay gene’ theories belong in the past – now we know sexuality is far more fluid

Gender norms imprison us all, dictating our behaviour for fear of abuse – and that extends to who we sleep or fall in love with By Owen Jones It turns out that genetics is almost as complicated as love and sex. New research has shown that the long fabled “gay gene” does not exist; that …

5 Surprising Facts About Vaginas From The ‘Gynae Geek’

By Esther Newman From advice about popping jade eggs down there to steaming our lady parts, we’re inundated with information about what to do with our vaginas. Unfortunately, much of this – the supposed merits of jade eggs and steam baths included – is false, headline-grabbing nonsense. Someone who knows the importance of women truly …

The case for a new term that describes all sexual minorities

It’s Time to Drop the ‘LGBT’ From ‘LGBTQ’ By Jonathan Rauch Frank Kameny, the last century’s greatest gay-rights activist, filed the first-ever Supreme Court petition challenging discrimination against homosexuals. He led some of the first gay-rights demonstrations. He was the first openly gay congressional candidate. He spearheaded the challenge to the psychiatric establishment’s categorization of …

MysteryVibe And The Surprisingly Difficult Challenge Of Selling Sex Toys To Men

By Mark Hay In 2016, British startup MysteryVibe made waves in the sex toy world, and the wider design and tech spaces, with its debut product, the Crescendo. A reimagining of the traditional vibrator, this flexible silicone rod with six vibrating motors, their intensities controlled via an app, promised customizability that could work for diverse …

Sex, technology and disability – it’s complicated

By Phillippa Carnemolla People living with disability are largely excluded from conversations about sexuality, and face overlapping barriers to sexual expression that are both social and physical. Media portrayals of sexuality often focus on a visual and verbal vocabulary that is young, white, cisgender, heterosexual and … not disabled. My research into inclusive design explores …

Why do we have difficulty accepting the variety of gender expressions?

Isn’t it self-evident that gender would always be uniquely expressed in each person? By Allyson Jule I know we’ve all heard this stuff before: men and women and boys and girls are “different”: they think differently, they think about different things, and they interact with the world in different ways. But those are dangerous ideas. …

6 Things Every Transgender Person Should Know About Going to the Doctor

You deserve sensitive, comprehensive care. By Nathan Levitt, FNP-BC [T]ransgender patients often experience tremendous barriers to health care, including discrimination and an unfortunate lack of providers who are knowledgeable about and sensitive to this population. As a result, many transgender and nonbinary people avoid seeking care for preventive and life-threatening conditions out of fear. According to …

What asexuality can teach us about sexual relationships and boundaries

By Catriona Jones, Julie Jomeen & Mark Hayter [T]here is an expectation that everyone feels sexual attraction and sexual desire and that these feelings begin in adolescence. Assumptions about sex are everywhere – most of time we don’t even notice them. Music videos, films, reality shows, advertising, video games, newspapers and magazines all use sexual …