Month: September 2021

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A Beginner’s Guide To Polyamory

— How It Works & How To Know If It’s For You

By Stephanie Barnes

Growing up, most of us weren’t exposed to polyamory or polyamorous relationships. That’s because monogamy is the most common approach to love and relationship, and it’s ingrained into the very fabric of society. Maybe your parents have been married for decades, or maybe all the other relationships you witnessed only involved two people. While monogamy might seem like the only way to go, in reality there are so many other ways to approach love. We all have the right to choose, and more and more people are choosing to pursue polyamorous unions.

What is polyamory?

Polyamory is a form of consensual or ethical non-monogamy wherein people may have romantic relationships with multiple people at the same time, says sex and relationship coach Azaria Menezes. “Everyone involved in the polyamorous relationship has consented to the relationship dynamic,” she adds.

The word polyamory can be broken down into two parts: poly, which has Greek origins and translates to “many or more than one,” and amor, which is Latin and means “love.” Together, the word refers to having many loves. Even though the word itself hasn’t been around for that long, polyamory has been in practice since the beginning of time, according to Menezes.

“Of course, there are many ways people can structure what their relationships look like, and so there can be many types and structures of polyamory,” she tells mbg.

Polyamory vs. polygamy.

While the words sound similar, polyamory and polygamy aren’t the same thing. In fact, they’re very different, according to Kamela Dolinova, a counselor who works with the polyamorous community.

Like monogamy, Dolinova explains, polygamy has to do with marriage: being married to many people rather than one (mono). But historically, most polygamous cultures have only allowed for one man marrying many women. Women have rarely had the freedom to marry several men or to have relationships with anyone other than their husband.

“Polygamy tends to operate as an oppressive double-standard, often for the purpose of producing many children,” she says. “Polyamory, on the other hand, may involve any number of people and a mix of genders, each of whom may or may not be married to anyone.

How does polyamory work?

There’s no one-size-fits-all approach to any relationship, and that also applies to polyamorous ones. Everyone does polyamory a little differently. There are no rules set in stone, but the people involved in any given relationship create their own boundaries and agreements. The key is to make sure you are honoring whatever boundaries and agreements were made and openly communicating your desires if they’ve evolved beyond the original terms.

Here are a few ways polyamory might look:

1. “Opening” an existing relationship

Sometimes a couple will “open up” their relationship, Dolinova says, which might mean one or both of them begin to date other people (with each other’s mutual consent). It could also sometimes mean a third person dates both of the partners, forming a three-person relationship (also known as a throuple). Alternatively, two couples might choose to become romantically or sexually involved with each other.

2. The hierarchical approach

Within a polyamorous relationship, some may choose to prioritize one partner above others, making that person their “primary” partner. There’s also the option to have multiple primary partners or leave the space for additional relationships that could blossom to primary level, or those who prefer the hierarchical approach might opt to stick with one primary relationship. In this setup, the other partners are considered secondary partners, and they often must accept pre-existing rules or limits on time defined by the primary relationship members.

But while the words primary and secondary have been used for a long time to indicate more hierarchical relationships, many people now find these “oppressive,” Dolinova says. Some people instead (or additionally) use the term nesting partners to refer to partners that share a home or living space.

3. The non-hierarchical approach

A polyamorous relationship can also exist without placing one partner or relationship above others, which is sometimes referred to as relationship anarchy. You don’t have to have any primary partners; you could instead choose to have multiple relationships without ranking them. Terms like nesting partners can still be useful to simply indicate partners that you live with without implying a hierarchy.

4. Solo polyamory

“Some people practice ‘solo polyamory,’ where they have several partners but don’t live with any of them. You might say there are as many ways to practice polyamory as there are people in such relationships. The only common thread is that all people involved need to know about one another and be willing to communicate,” Dolinova explains.

Polyamory terms to know:

  • Ethical non-monogamy: This is the umbrella term for consensual relationships where people agree to have more than one romantic or intimate relationship at a time. This means that whoever is involved in this relationship is in the know and agrees to the relationship dynamics.
  • Metamour: This is your partner’s partner. Metamours may or may not interact with each other, depending on the structure of the relationship.
  • Polycule: A polycule is the group of all the people who are somehow connected through the romantic relationships they are in. This doesn’t mean that they all have to be dating each other.
  • Polysatured: A term for when a person is polyamorous but not currently open to new partners or relationships.
  • Compersion: The word compersion describes the feeling of being happy, turned on, or excited about the idea of your partner being happy, romantically or sexually, with another person.
  • Triads and quads: Relationships that involve three people or four people. The triad could also be referred to as a throuple, which means each person is actively dating the other two people in the relationship. A quad could consist of two couples.
  • V or vee: A V relationship occurs when two people are both dating a third person, but they’re not dating each other. The third person is often referred to as the “hinge.”
  • Nesting partner: A partner you live with. They may or may not also be considered a “primary partner,” meaning that you prioritize them above other relationships.

Is polyamory illegal?

No. Polyamory isn’t illegal, but there are limitations for these unions. According to Dolinova, there aren’t any laws preventing consenting adults from having more than one loving relationship at a time, but being married to more than one person is indeed illegal in (most of) the United States.

“Some polyamorous people would like for marriage freedoms to be extended so that groups of three or four or more could share the rights and benefits conferred by the legal institution of marriage. Groups who are raising children together would especially benefit from this,” she explains. “There can certainly be high social consequences for polyamorous people, though, ranging from not being recognized as a family by a workplace to having children taken away. So, while it’s not illegal per se, it does still exist in a kind of social gray area.”

Can polyamory be bad or toxic?

Most things can be wonderful for one person and not great for someone else. There’s a common misconception that polyamory is naturally toxic or bad, but that isn’t the case. Polyamory can be a beautiful way of relating to others, just like any other relationship style. What can make it and/or any other relationship toxic is what happens inside that relationship between the people in it, their actions, and behaviors.

Like any other relationship structure, polyamory can become toxic when there is “dishonesty, unhealthy power dynamics, consistently overstepping boundaries, disregarding others’ feelings and agreements, choosing to be in the relationship for the wrong reasons,” says Menezes.

Toxic polyamory can be avoided by knowing your limits. “A good rule of thumb to remember is that while love is limitless, time and energy are not. It’s important to know what your limits are in terms of how much you can give to each of your partners,” Dolinova says. “It’s also very important to watch out for one person ‘doing polyamory’ while not telling their other partners about it. The word polyamory has often been used as a shield for what monogamous culture calls ‘cheating.’ Remember: If it isn’t open and honest, it isn’t polyamory.”

Can polyamorous people be in monogamous relationships?

Yes, according to Antonia Hall, transpersonal psychologist, sex educator, and author of The Ultimate Guide to a Multi-Orgasmic Life. Human connections are complicated, and our needs and desires can change throughout our lifetime.

“Those people that are truly happy in both polyamorous and monogamous relations are called ‘ambiamorous.’ Ambiamory is not as discussed but might be worth consideration for more people,” she explains. “Polyamorous relationships require the same cultivation of friendship and intimacy as a monogamous relationship, and the desire to become monogamous can happen. But those who have spent years exploring and enjoying polyamory might find monogamy to be a poor fit over time.”

How to know if polyamory is right for you:

  1. You are willing to be completely honest with yourself and others about your desires and actions.
  2. You have a deep desire to spend time exploring different aspects of yourself with different people, each on their own terms.
  3. You think you can handle the practical aspects of dating more than one person and are willing to work those out with your partners.
  4. You often have feelings for many people at the same time.
  5. The thought of connecting multiple people on an intimate level at the same time sparks joy and doesn’t leave you feeling exhausted.
  6. You often daydream about being in a relationship with more than one person at a time.
  7. You feel confined by the idea of being with only one person.
  8. You feel capable of loving and committing to multiple people at the same time.
  9. You are OK with the idea of your partner having intimate relationships with other people.
  10. You feel like you could ultimately be your best self in a relationship with multiple people.
  11. You have done the research and spent time trying to fully understand the dynamics of polyamory.
  12. You feel like you could bring trust, respect, open communication, accountability, love, and honesty to multiple relationships at the same time.

How to know if polyamory is not right for you:

  1. You are choosing polyamory in the hopes of fixing a broken monogamous relationship.
  2. The thought of having to consider, spend time with, and commit to multiple people feels exhausting.
  3. Anything outside of monogamy feels “unnatural” to you.
  4. You haven’t spent time self-reflecting and understanding your triggers, insecurities, and past trauma relating to love and relationships.

Explaining polyamory to partners.

When it comes to sharing your polyamorous lifestyle with new potential partners, it’s important to bring it up early, Hall says. And since polyamory can take quite a few forms, you’ll need to let this person know what polyamory means to you. 

“Being upfront and honest from the beginning is respectful, can prevent misunderstandings and hurt feelings, and ensures no one is wasting their time and energy,” she explains. “Most people in the polyamorous community are adept at communicating their boundaries, limits, and expectations, and that should include a brief, thoughtful way to communicate with potential new partners.”

Explaining your desire for a polyamorous relationship to a current partner you’re in a monogamous relationship with can be a little more difficult. Asking this person to move away from the familiarity they know in order to make room for others can be tough, but it’s not an impossible task. The biggest rule here, according to Dolinova, is being honest without being brutal. She encourages you to find the words to express your wants, fears, and hopes without hurting your partner’s feelings in the process.

“One of the cardinal rules: Don’t try to open your relationship when things aren’t going well. It will definitely not fix it, and, in fact, will undoubtedly make things worse. The time to look at exploring polyamory when you’re in a monogamous relationship is when your relationship is healthy, strong, and exciting, and you both want to know what it would be like to have even more love in your lives,” she adds.

But what happens if your partner isn’t open to accepting your desire for a polyamorous relationship and they are hurt? 

“Anecdotally speaking, it’s really hard to come back from it when one partner expresses a desire to go outside a monogamous relationship and the other person is really hurt by it,” Dolinova tells mbg.

Though not impossible, she says the desire for polyamory doesn’t typically fade if it’s a sincere desire for a relationship style. That’s because the desire for polyamory isn’t necessarily about just wanting more lovers; it’s often about wanting the freedom to explore loving relationships with multiple people.

That said, sometimes people believe they want polyamory when what’s actually happening is that they’re dissatisfied with their current relationship and are looking to have their needs met elsewhere. In such cases, opening up this conversation may open dialogue about how to make satisfying changes within your monogamous union.

The bottom line.

Polyamory occurs between individuals who are in consensual romantic or sexual relationships with multiple people at the same time. At the end of the day, both polyamory (and other forms of ENM) and monogamy can birth beautiful, healthy, and enriching relationships for everyone involved. It all comes down to personal desires and preferences.

Open communication and honesty are absolute cornerstones for any healthy relationship, but even more so when it comes to the vulnerability and sharing that polyamory requires. You don’t want to be the person who ends up breaking multiple hearts because you decided to enter a new relationship with someone before communicating your desire for polyamory to your long-term monogamous partner.

Recommended reading:

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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Consent Is About More Than Sex

Respecting personal boundaries is important in all interactions. The pandemic has made that clearer than ever.

By Kristine Guillaume

For many people over the past year and a half, every social event—hugging a relative, eating with a friend—has become a complex and sometimes-awkward dance. They’ve determined their safety needs and wants, then verbalized them to others. They’ve had to ask permission for more things, after considering other people’s comfort and boundaries. Whether people have realized it or not, everyday pandemic-era interactions have frequently turned into consent conversations.

At its most basic level, consent is at least two people agreeing about what they’re going to do together, Dorian Solot, who co-founded the sex-education organization Sex Discussed Here!, told me. We might most often associate consent with sex, and for good reason: Consent is crucial in all sexual interactions. (In some states, explicit “affirmative consent” is the legal standard for all public colleges and universities.) Still, Julia Feldman, who runs the sex-education consultancy Giving the Talk, told me that when consent is taught in sex education, it is sometimes presented as “a hoop to jump through.”

But consent factors into every aspect of our social lives. It is not a transaction. It’s an honest, deliberate, ongoing dialogue about how everyone can have their needs met—a key element of healthy sexual and nonsexual relationships. It is, essentially, good communication. People have long had these conversations, whether asking if they can use someone’s restroom or requesting that a guest take off their shoes indoors. Violations of consent are unfortunately common too: someone touching a person’s hair or pregnant stomach, say, without permission.

For those abiding by safety guidelines, the coronavirus pandemic has meant even more daily choices about what kind of consent they give and request. People have needed to disclose elements of their personal life, such as vaccination status, having immunocompromised family members, or recent exposures to the virus. They’ve had to ask others whether they’ve gone to clubs or weddings or have traveled recently. And some might have had to withhold agreement to a handshake or attending a birthday party. (The fact that COVID safety measures have become a politicized issue hasn’t made matters any easier.)

Calling these interactions consent conversations could feel unfamiliar. In part, this might be because many Americans are unfamiliar with the concept in any context. In the U.S., according to the Guttmacher Institute, just 39 states and the District of Columbia require sex education, and within those, only nine require lessons about the importance of consent. A Planned Parenthood study published in 2016 showed that among 2,012 adults, only 14 percent reported that they’d learned how to ask for consent, 16 percent had learned how to give consent, and 25 percent had learned how to say no to sex.

Even before the pandemic necessitated mask wearing or six-foot distances, Feldman, Solot, and other sex educators advocated for earlier education about consent in all relationships, beyond the realm of sex. “I think when people hear, like, ‘Oh, you do consent education with kindergartners,’ they assume I’m doing sex education and I’m talking about sex. And I’m not,” Monica Rivera, the director of the Women and Gender Advocacy Center at Colorado State University who also consults on consent education in K–12 schools, told me. “What I’m attempting to do is to get us as a culture to disentangle the topic of consent from sex, so that it becomes a part of the air we breathe.” She noted that adults might create situations that “unintentionally undermine” consent in interactions with children; a common example is when adults expect kids to give hugs to family members or friends.

Rivera said she has observed how the pandemic has brought consent conversations more intentionally into people’s day-to-day interactions. “The pandemic has forced us to talk about consent in a way that’s not about sex and is sometimes about our closest friends,” she said. But talking about consent with close friends can feel trickier. “The second we’re talking about the people in our immediate circles, that’s where we tend to have defensiveness about somebody wanting to set a boundary or social pressure,” Rivera said.

Solot told me that consent conversations have the potential to “drive a wedge” between friends and relatives who take differing levels of COVID precautions, or none at all. “We all make those risk decisions and, in day-to-day pre-pandemic life … we didn’t have to worry about it too much,” she told me. “Now we’re all forced to confront it all the time, which is both wonderful for relationships in terms of more communication but can also be really stressful.”

Asking about your friends’ vaccination status or requesting that they wear a mask in your house, however, can help lay the groundwork for a culture in which people feel more empowered to say what they’re comfortable with, Rivera told me. In a situation where consent is communicated, she explained, “when someone is having an interaction—whether it is having lunch on a patio or having sex with someone—that someone is doing it because they want to be doing it and they’re doing it in the context in which they feel safe.” Marshall Miller, who co-founded Sex Discussed Here! with Solot, told me that ultimately, when all parties agree on what they consent to—say, that they should be vaccinated before hanging out—they build reserves of trust for future interactions.

When the pandemic eventually subsides, experts predict that people who have exercised their “consent muscle”—as Solot calls it—will have a chance to rethink the norms of social behavior, such as “having the expectation be one of personal space and less physical touch unless it’s invited, which is a good thing overall,” Miller told me. Solot said she hopes the norm of defaulting to the boundaries of the most cautious person can be applied in contexts other than COVID safety. “If one person wants to use a condom, then use a condom,” Solot explained. “If one person feels uncomfortable with the situation, it doesn’t matter if you feel okay about it.”

Keeping in mind different levels of power and privilege is also crucial. Consent conversations among friends, for example, are very different from ones that might happen in the workplace. “Part of the skill of infusing consent into our everyday lives is being able to do a power analysis,” Rivera said. She gave the example of a boss and an upset employee. Instead of the supervisor saying “Can I hug you?” they might ask “Would you like a hug?” “It’s such a subtle shift in language, but it allows someone the ability to say no differently,” Rivera said.

In many cases, consent conversations will likely continue to be daunting, clumsy, and difficult. “It’s awkward in a COVID context. I think it will remain awkward in a sexual context,” Solot said. Perhaps, though, the pandemic has created an opportunity to push through that discomfort. An ever-present public-health threat has necessitated a daily process of empathizing with all the ways other people might feel uncomfortable, or even unsafe, and explicitly communicating about them. The pandemic has been a crash course in respecting people’s boundaries. But we should have been doing this all along.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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Guidance and suggestions for caregivers of LGBTQIA+ youth

Despite conversations around gender and sexuality becoming more common and society’s attitudes becoming more accepting, it is still undeniable that LGBTQIA+ youth face a unique set of challenges growing up.

by Cara Williams

As a caregiver, it is important to create a safe, supportive, and understanding environment to allow LGBTQIA+ youth to explore their identity. Caregivers can do so by becoming informed, being respectful, aware of potential risks, and using helpful resources.

This article provides information for caregivers and discusses ways in which they can support the well-being of LGBTQIA+ youth.

Create a supportive environment 

It is important that caregivers create a supportive environment for LGBTQIA+ youth. A 2021 survey conducted by The Trevor Project shows that:

  • LGBTQ youth who report having high levels of support from friends, family or a special person have a lower rate of attempted suicide than those with less support.
  • LGBTQ youth with access to spaces that affirm their gender and sexuality report less attempted suicides.
  • Transgender or nonbinary youth who have their pronouns respected by the people they live with have half the attempted suicide rate compared to those with pronouns not respected by others in the household.

However, the study also shows that only a third of LGBTQ youth report that their homes are an LGBTQ affirming environment.

PFLAG and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)Trusted Source list several ways caregivers can create a supportive environment for LGBTQIA+ youth, such as:

  • Provide opportunities for open communication. By opening up a dialogue, caregivers can create a safe space for their child to discuss their gender and/or sexual orientation.
  • Provide support. Showing support for an LGBTQIA+ youth’s identity can take many forms, such as complementing their clothing when expressing their gender identity or talking positively about LGBTQIA+ characters on television.
  • Stay involved. Caregivers can demonstrate ongoing support to LGBTQIA+ youth by including them in events such as family gatherings and staying informed about their life, friends, and partners.
  • Express unconditional love. It is often difficult for LGBTQIA+ youth to come out to their caregivers and so it is important that caregivers remind them that they love and accept them throughout their journey.
  • Be aware of potential risks
    LGBTQIA+ youth may experience challenges due to how others react to their gender or sexual orientation. Youth can spend as much, if not more, time at school as they do at home so it is important to be aware of potential challenges LGBTQIA+ youth may face when at school. Stonewall’s School Report found:

    • 45% of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender pupils experienced bullying for being LGBT at school.
    • 45% of those who experience bullying for being LGBT never tell anyone.
    • 40% of those who experience bullying for being LGBT have skipped school because of it.
    • Over half of LGBT pupils report there not being an adult at school that they can talk to about being LGBT.
    • Only 1 in 5 LGBT pupils have received education on safe sex in same-sex relationships.
    • 74% of white LGBT youth, 79% of LGBT youth of color, and 87% of LGBT youth with a disability report having thoughts of taking their own life.

    The extra challenges that LGBTQIA+ youth face in schooling can make it harder for them to reach their academic goals, as well as affecting their mental and physical health. Considering these extra risks that LGBTQIA+ youth face, caregivers can look out for signs of bullying such as frequent absences from school, a fall in their grades, or participating in risky activities such as drug use.

    Caregivers and parents can help ensure that schools are creating a safe environment for LGBTQIA+ youth by remaining in close contact with teachers, pushing for supportive measures such as the creation of a Gay-Straight Alliance (GSA) and being vocal about any issues that should be changed.

    A 2017 studyTrusted Source shows that LGBT youth are at higher risk of sexually transmitted infections (STIs) and substance misuse. They are also more likely to struggle with mental health such as depression, anxiety, and eating disorders.

    However, systemic biases may make seeking medical treatment and support more difficult. Surveys from both Stonewall and the Trevor Project found:

    • 48% of LGBTQ youth who wanted to see a professional for their mental health could not receive it.
    • 1 in 8 people have gone through unequal treatment from healthcare staff due to being LGBT.
    • 1 in 5 LGBT people do not disclose their sexual orientation when seeking healthcare.
    • 1 in 7 LGBT people, due to fear of discrimination, have avoided seeking treatment.

    To minimize these challenges, caregivers can attempt:

    • searching for medical practices that prioritize making their services accessible for LGBTQIA+ people
    • being present in medical appointments and speaking out against the use of any noninclusive or harmful language
    • ensuring medical professionals are correctly using the LGBTQIA+ youth’s pronouns
    • when possible, encouraging the use of support from mental health professionals

    Ultimately, it is crucial for caregivers to challenge harmful behavior and language whenever possible, whether that comes from schools, medical professionals, or family members.

    Respect confidentiality

    Coming to terms with identity is a journey that may not be linear. Additional factors such as race, religion, and disability may impact an LGBTQIA+ youth’s decision as to when to come out.
    It is important for caregivers to respect LGBTQIA+ youth’s wishes in regard to the disclosure of their identity. Communication with caregivers is vital for LGBTQIA+ youths’ development, but it is important that caregivers do not force their child to come out, or out them to others before they are ready.

    A caregiver’s journey

    When LGBTQIA+ youth come out, it is a journey for caregivers as well as for the LGBTQIA+ youth themselves. PFLAG list some important factors for caregivers to keep in mind:

    • Caregivers are not alone. 80% of people in the United States personally know someone who is LGB and 1 in 3 know someone who is transgender. There are many organizations that exist to support and connect caregivers of LGBTQIA+ youth.
    • A caregiver’s reaction is valid. There is no one way to react to an LGBTQIA+ youth coming out. Caregivers’ reactions may range from being happy that their child has opened up to them, to denial that their child is LGBTQIA+. It is important that caregivers take time to address their reactions.
    • Self-care is important. Self-care is crucial to being able to provide the best support for loved ones. Caregivers can utilize resources such as PFLAG to find safe spaces to discuss their feelings during their journey with others going through similar experiences.

    List of resources

    Caregivers and LGBTQIA+ youth may also be able to seek help online via several organizations that provide support and advice. These may include:

    Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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Do You Think You’re Exclusively Straight?

Influencing People’s Perceptions of Their Sexual Orientation

By University of Sydney

Scientific research has shown that sexuality exists on a spectrum. But how certain are people about where they fit on it? A new University of Sydney study suggests that people’s reported sexual orientation can change after reading about the nature of sexual orientation.

Published in peer-reviewed journal, Nature’s Scientific Reports, the study found that a significant number of heterosexual people report being less exclusive in their sexual orientation as well as more willing to have same-sex experiences after reading one of two 1-page informational articles.

Lead author, Dr. James Morandini, said: “Did we change people’s sexual orientation via our interventions? Surely not. I think our study may have changed how people interpreted their underlying sexual feelings. This means two people with identical sexual orientations could describe their sexual orientation quite differently, depending on whether they have been exposed to fluid or continuous ways of understanding sexuality.”

One informational article read by participants suggested that scientific research has found that there are many gradations of sexual attraction towards men and women, and people can fall anywhere along the continuum, from exclusive attraction to men to exclusive attraction to women. Another informational article showed that sexual orientation can change over time, and thus can be fluid.

All participants self-identified as ‘straight’ before the study began. Compared to a control group, after reading the first article, participants were 28 percent more likely to identify as non-exclusively heterosexual, and 19 percent indicated they would be more likely to be willing to engage in same-sex sexual activities. Overall, the rate of ‘non-exclusive heterosexuality’ more than quadrupled after this activity. Similar, albeit weaker, effects were found when people read that sexual orientation is better characterized as fluid rather than stable throughout life.

The study‘s senior author, Associate Professor Ilan Dar-Nimrod from the School of Psychology, said: “This is not that surprising given that ‘non-exclusive heterosexuals’ (as opposed to bisexual, gay or lesbian individuals), although being the biggest same-sex attracted group, are not well captured in our society’s representations and even vernacular.”

He added: “Given the social value that our society attach to these labels, however, such a shift may have far-reaching implications. It also suggests that certain level of same-sex sexual attraction may be much more common than previously estimated.”

Methodology

A national Australian sample of 460 individuals (232 women, 228 men) who identified as ‘straight’ prior the study took part in an online panel study.

They were instructed to read an article that suggested that scientific research found one of the following:

  • There are many gradations of sexual attraction towards men and women and people can fall anywhere along the continuum from exclusive attraction to men to exclusive attraction to women.
  • Sexual orientation exists in three discrete, non-overlapping categories: gay, bisexual, and straight.
  • Sexual orientation can change throughout one’s lifetime.
  • Sexual orientation is stable once a person identifies which gender they are attracted to.
  • Control (no discussion of sexual orientation but instead discussing global warming). 

They were then asked to rate their sexual orientation on a 9-point scale from exclusively heterosexual (1) to exclusively homosexual (9) and provide information on how certain they are about their sexual orientation and how willing they are to engage in same-sex sexual encounters.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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As menopause hit, my libido waned, my brain felt dull.

So I gave testosterone a try.

By Tara Ellison

As menopause hit, I found I wasn’t as interested in intimacy as I used to be. Sex started to feel like a box that needed to be checked a couple of times a week, and that was causing problems in my marriage.

But it wasn’t just sex. I felt was slowing down in many areas. After hot flashes in my 40s had sent me running to the gynecologist for help, I’d been using bioidentical creams to balance my declining hormones.

When, at 51, I confided to a friend that I’d had limited success with what my doctor prescribed, she said that she was thriving on something called hormonal “pellets.” I grilled her about them and then made an appointment with her practitioner, an internal medicine doctor.

He ordered extensive lab work, which showed that my testosterone levels were very low, which can happen with aging. The doctor said I had two options: do nothing, which he said would eventually likely lead to loss of muscle, decreased bone density and a host of other health complications. Or up my testosterone.

Testosterone therapy for women is a hotly debated subject. Studies suggest that testosterone can heighten libido in women with hypoactive sexual desire disorder (HSDD), at least in the short term. A recent statement by a group of international medical societies involved with women’s health endorsed the use of testosterone therapy in women for HSDD, and specifically excluded pellets and injectables as “not recommended.” It also cautioned there was not enough data to support the use of testosterone therapy for cognitive performance.

Women make between four to 10 times as much testosterone as estrogen, which the body can convert to estrogen. Despite its significance, no testosterone products designed for women are on the market and approved by the Food and Drug Administration. (Two non-testosterone, libido-focused drugs are available for premenopausal women.)

For men, the benefits of testosterone are well-documented — improved mood, sexual function and stronger bones — and more than 30 FDA-approved products are available, according to the agency. But long-term studies in women are lacking, including the effects on those who have a history of breast or uterine cancers and liver or cardiovascular disease. Although studies say testosterone is widely used in women, its use is considered off-label.

The pellets my doctor proposed are unregulated, and not recommended by the North American Menopause Society (NAMS) because of their high doses of testosterone and unpredictable absorption.

“There are a lot of misconceptions for the potential benefits of testosterone,” said Cynthia A. Stuenkel, clinical professor of medicine at the University of California at San Diego’s School of Medicine and past president of NAMS. “You’re going to lose fat mass. You’re going to gain muscle mass. You’re going to think more clearly. You’re going to reduce your risk of breast cancer. You’re going to improve your mood, and I think the global consensus pretty much dispels those proposed benefits.”

But I was desperate to feel better and at the time wasn’t deterred by some possible side effects, which included acne, facial hair growth and a lowered voice. And my friend was clearly convinced testosterone had helped her. The tiny dissolvable pellets, containing estrogen and testosterone, were inserted beneath the skin on my mid-buttock and would last between three to five months. If I developed any side effect, on the next re-up date we could adjust the dose or discontinue, my doctor said.

The insertion process took less than 10 minutes and about five days to kick in. I didn’t have to wait long to see improvement.

Within weeks, I was feeling good — my brain felt clearer — and my libido was in full swing again. It was hard to pass my husband in the kitchen without reaching over to touch him.

I can’t rule out a placebo effect of course, but having a jolt of testosterone seemed to make me more focused — I got things done. One morning in the magnifying mirror, however, I noticed a definite uptick in facial hair.< My husband liked the increased sexual activity and joked that he didn’t have to endure discussions about my feelings anymore since I had gotten more direct in my conversations with him. I also found I was more driven to work. Just generally, I felt more confident and it seemed like people responded to me differently because of that. And rather than being finely attuned to my spouse’s desires, I was pursuing my own. Was all this biochemical or, again, could it have been a placebo effect? “There are strong placebo effects for sexuality in research on aids for sexuality and research on testosterone,” she said. “Our culture has long painted women’s sexuality as a problem; when women have lower desire than men, the women’s desire is seen as too low or ‘hypoactive’ and, when their desire is higher than male partners, the women’s desire is seen as too high or ‘out of control.’ As a result, medical and other interventions for women’s sexuality, especially desire, are best viewed with a healthy skepticism: Are these interventions addressing a problem within the women or a problem created by gendered norms? Should the solution address women and their bodies or gendered prescriptions?” Women and the waxing and waning of sexual desire is a complex and tricky subject. But I was starting to wonder why there seemed to be fewer options available for women and less research about those options. Was the gender disparity slowing down progress for women’s sexual health? There seems to be an attitude of, “You’re past menopause, you’re not making babies anymore, what does it matter?” said Sharon J. Parish, a professor of medicine in clinical psychiatry and of clinical medicine at Weill Cornell Medical College. James Simon, clinical professor at George Washington University and a past-president of both the International Society for the Study of Women’s Sexual Health and NAMS, said “a lot more money” is available for research into men’s sexual health and “where there’s money, you have direct-to-consumer advertising. You have additional research and development. You have glitzy ads and promotions, et cetera., this is not a new subject for men or men’s sexual health.” Viagra, he said, which men can take for their sexual performance issues, just had its 23rd birthday. He added, “I think women’s sexual health has been largely neglected or put aside or denigrated or minimized because it took more time, was harder to measure, had less money and cachet involved, and it was easy for many in the medical community to do that, and women did not, and still to some degree, do not demand more, and that allows this to perpetuate.” Six months later, when I saw my gynecologist and said that I was using pellets, she looked alarmed and advised me to get off them as soon as possible. “They’re scary,” she told me and referred me to a recent article and study about worrisome side effects, among them mood swings, abnormal uterine bleeding and also greater likelihood of having to undergo hysterectomy when on the hormonal therapy.

Where you get into trouble is when women are given super high doses of testosterone.

“Keeping the total testosterone in the physiologic range, closer to where women were pre-menopause, without exceeding that level and giving excess testosterone, is the goal,” Parish said. “Pellets are extremely problematic; we don’t support those, because they result in what’s called super-physiologic ranges and can result in toxicity, and we don’t have safety data supporting that.”

Susan R. Davis, an endocrinologist and director of the Women’s Health Research Program in the School of Public Health and Preventive Medicine at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, said instead of pellets women seeking help “would be better off using a testosterone gel or equivalent that’s approved for men and using a micro dose or a fraction of the dose. . . .

“You can do a blood test to make sure [a woman] is not going over the female limit,” she added. “You can vary the dose, and you can cut back the dose if she starts getting side effects” — unlike pellets, which stop working only after they’ve slowly disintegrated. Once a pellet has been inserted, it’s very hard to get it out if an issue develops.

“I think testosterone is important for women,” Davis said, “but we’ve got to be very cautious how we administer it and we need products approved for women. That’s what we need. It’s a bit like Goldilocks: there’s too much, too little, and just right, and if you use too much it’s bad. Higher doses are actually worse for sexual function. Women start to feel agitated, irritable, negative mood, so too much is bad. So, there is a ‘just right’ dose.”

Stuenkel, past president of NAMS, added: “If you’re going to do it, I think the transdermal preparations [patches that stick on the skin] make sense [since they] are FDA approved” — although for men’s dosing. “And so that’s not great, but I think in many ways it’s safer.”

Yet, for many women, dissatisfied with gels and the like, pellets can seem worth the risk — at least for a trial run.

In my case, I had gone from having no interest in sex to wanting lots of sex. But it hadn’t been the salve that I had imagined.

My relationship with my husband was undergoing a systems update. While I was feeling much better and my behavior reflected that, there were some things about the old operating system that my husband missed. Our relationship had always been a bit “old school” — my world revolved around keeping my man happy. I could take his emotional temperature at a glance. I tried to match his hectic pace, even when I knew I needed rest, and I had always been willing to put his needs before my own. But that wasn’t sustainable over the course of a marriage.

I wondered what if my lack of sexual interest before pellets wasn’t just physiological but reflected the result of needing something different from my relationship to fuel and sustain our intimacy?

Low testosterone didn’t create the problems in my relationship but it made us more aware of them. We had long standing dynamics that needed to shift and change. We needed to have some difficult conversations to help us develop a deeper connection. A more satisfying emotional intimacy that could then naturally lead to increased sexual desire.

Testosterone may make you feel like having sex again but I discovered it’s not a magic bullet to solve everything.

It has been two years and given the long-term safety concerns about the pellets, I’ve decided to give them up when the current batch melts away — but I’m not giving up testosterone entirely. I’m considering using a patch or gel next.

The absorption might not be as effective, but at least I’d have more control over the dosage.

It may not fix everything, but finding the right balance between estrogen and testosterone — one that feels right in both my body and my marriage — seems worth it.

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Medical Myths: Sexual health

Sexual health is associated with a wide range of myths and misunderstandings. In this episode of Medical Myths, we will address nine common misconceptions. Among others, we cover double condoms, toilet seats, and the “pull-out” method.

by Tim Newman

Sexually transmitted infections (STIs) have been on the rise in the United States. In April 2021, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)Trusted Source announced that, in 2019, STIs had reached an all-time high for the sixth consecutive year.

In 2019, the CDC received reports of over 2.5 million cases of chlamydia, gonorrhea, and syphilis.

The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that 1 millionTrusted Source STIs are acquired worldwide each day.

Despite rising rates, there is still significant stigma attached to STIs. For some, this might mean individuals are less willing to speak about sexual health concerns or raise questions with a doctor.

This unwillingness to speak openly about sexual health can breed misinformation.

Of course, the internet is a convenient first port of call when someone has a question they would like to ask anonymously. Sadly, not all information that appears on the web can be trusted.

Here, Medical News Today approached some common myths associated with sexual health and asked for input from an expert:

Dr. Sue Mann, a consultant in sexual and reproductive health and a medical expert in reproductive health at Public Health England.

Increasing understanding of sexual health helps people make informed, safe decisions. Although one article cannot brush away deeply ingrained falsehoods, the more trustworthy information that is available, the better.

1. When someone is taking ‘the pill,’ they cannot contract an STI

This is a myth. Oral contraception cannot protect against contracting an STI.

As Dr. Mann explained to MNT, “oral contraception […] only works to prevent pregnancy. The only way to protect yourself from getting an STI when using oral contraception is by wearing a condom.”

Mirroring this, the CDC statesTrusted Source: “Birth control methods like the pill, patch, ring, and intrauterine device (IUD) are very effective at preventing pregnancy, but they do not protect against [STIs] and HIV.”

2. The ‘withdrawal method’ prevents pregnancy

The so-called withdrawal method, also called coitus interruptus or the pull-out method, is when the penis is pulled out of the vagina before ejaculation. Although it may reduce the chance of pregnancy, “the withdrawal method is not a reliable way to prevent pregnancy,” said Dr. Mann.

When used accurately, it can reduce the risk of pregnancy, but accuracy can be difficult in the heat of the moment.

Additionally, the penis releases pre-ejaculate, or pre-cum, before ejaculation. In some cases, sperm can be present in this fluid.

In one studyTrusted Source, for instance, scientists examined samples of pre-ejaculate from 27 participants. The scientists identified viable sperm in 10 of the participant’s pre-ejaculate.

Each volunteer provided a maximum of five samples. Interestingly, the researchers found sperm in either all or none of their samples. In other words, some people tend to have sperm in their pre-ejaculate, while others do not. The authors concluded:

“[C]ondoms should continue to be used from the first moment of genital contact, although it may be that some men, less likely to leak spermatozoa in their pre-ejaculatory fluid, are able to practice coitus interruptus more successfully than others.”

3. The ‘withdrawal method’ prevents STIs

Using the withdrawal method, “you can still get an STI, such as HIV, herpes, syphilis, gonorrhea, or chlamydia,” explained Dr. Mann.

4. Using two condoms doubles the protection

It is understandable why people might assume two condoms would provide twice the protection, but this is a myth.

“It is actually more risky to use two or more condoms when having sex,” said Dr. Mann. “The likelihood of the condom breaking is higher due to the amount of friction the condom is enduring. A single condom is the best option.”

5. You can contract STIs from a toilet seat

This is perhaps one of the most persistent myths associated with STIs. Yet, despite being repeatedly debunked, it remains a myth. Dr. Mann told MNT:

“STIs are spread through unprotected vaginal, anal, or oral sex, and by genital contact and sharing sex toys.”

She also explained that the viruses that cause “STIs cannot survive for long outside the human body, so they generally die quickly on surfaces like toilet seats.”

Similarly, the bacteria responsible for STIs, such as chlamydia, gonorrhea, and syphilis, cannot survive outside the body’s mucous membranes for a significant amount of time. For that reason, they would not survive on a toilet seat.

6. There are no treatments for STIs

This is not true. However, although they can be treated, not all can be cured. The WHOTrusted Source explains that eight pathogens make up the vast majority of STIs.

Four of the eight are curable: the bacterial infections syphilis, gonorrhea, and chlamydia, and the parasitic infection trichomoniasis.

The remaining four are viral: hepatitis B, herpes simplex virus (HSV), HIV, and human papillomavirus (HPV). These cannot yet be cured. However, it is worth noting that HPV infections are often clearedTrusted Source by the body naturally.

“Penetrative sex isn’t the only way someone can contract an STI. Oral sex, genital contact, and sharing sex toys are other ways that STIs can be spread,” Dr. Mann told MNT.

Beyond sexual contact, it is also possible to contract an STI from exposure to blood that contains the infectious pathogen, including through sharing needles.

This is another longstanding and entirely incorrect assumption. According to Dr. Mann:

“Anyone, regardless of sexual orientation, race, ethnicity, age, or gender, can contract HIV. If you have HIV and don’t know it, you’re more likely to pass it on. But if you know your status, you can make sure you and your partner(s) are taking steps to stay healthy.”

Dr. Mann underscores the importance of testingTrusted Source, explaining that in many countries, “testing is free, easy, and confidential. You can even do a test in the comfort of your own home.”

“A lot of people pass on STIs to others without even knowing,” said Dr. Mann. “STIs can be spread with symptoms or without.”

Indeed, the WHO explainsTrusted Source that “[t]he majority of STIs have no symptoms or only mild symptoms that may not be recognized as an STI.”

“That is why,” Dr. Mann explained, “it is important to be tested regularly and to use a condom to prevent STIs as much as possible.”

To summarize, STIs are common but preventable. Regular testing and understanding how to keep yourself safe are key to remaining STI-free.

After completing a bachelor’s degree in neuroscience at the U.K.’s University of Manchester, Tim changed course entirely to work in sales, marketing, and analysis. Realizing that his heart truly lies with science and writing, he changed course once more and joined the Medical News Today team as a News Writer. Now Senior Editor for news, Tim leads a team of top notch writers and editors, who report on the latest medical research from peer reviewed journals; he also pens a few articles himself. When he gets the chance, he enjoys listening to the heaviest metal, watching the birds in his garden, thinking about dinosaurs, and wrestling with his children.

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How to Spot a Love Addict

Experts question whether we can describe a toxic relationship the way we talk about gambling or alcohol. But some have found that framework to be a helpful step in the road to freedom.

By Kaila Yu

Tara Blair Ball, a relationship coach in Memphis, met her ex on Match.com. They instantly clicked.

“He felt like my soulmate. It was the little things; we both talked about the differences in the old Spider-Man movie with Tobey Maguire and the comic book. A lot of people didn’t know about these details, and it just felt like this bonding experience.”

On their first phone call, they talked for eight hours — so long that Ms. Ball came late to work and was fired from her job at Target. “I took that as a sign that I was supposed to be connected to him,” she said, laughing.

When the red flags started to appear, Ms. Ball brushed them aside. “He started acting jealous and wanted to know where I was, what I was doing, who I was talking to, how long I was going to be there and when I was going to be back.” Instead of seeing warning signs, Ms. Ball interpreted his actions as affection.

“We were quickly talking about marriage and moving in together. I felt like I couldn’t be away from him for very long — I’d be in withdrawal.”

If the situation seems to contain some of the track marks of an addiction, it’s because it does. And like many addicts, Ms. Ball took a long time to recognize and admit she was experiencing what some call “love addiction.”

The definition of love addiction is hard to pin down. Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous calls it an extreme dependency on one person whereby “relationships or sexual activities have become increasingly destructive to career, family and sense of self-respect.” Helen Fisher, a senior research fellow at the Kinsey Institute at Indiana University and a leading expert in romantic love, said it’s any relationship that leads to “obsessive craving and intrusive thinking,” meaning impulsive or unwanted thoughts.

One meta-analysis looked at 83 studies and estimated that about 3 percent of the population has had a serious problem with love addiction over a given year. That number may be higher than 10 percent among young adults.

Looking at TikTok, where Ms. Ball began to share her experiences with love addiction, you might think the number of love addicts is even higher. The hashtag #ToxicRelationship on TikTok clocks in at 1.7 billion views, plus another 320 million more for related terms such as “love addiction,” “love addict,” and “codependency.” Whether telling their tales or reacting to others, people are finding healing and community on the short-form video sharing app by posting the signs of love addiction, with memes and tips.

Wherever you decide to share about your experiences, it’s helpful to be able to recognize when a dream romance strays into love addiction.

Is Love Addiction Even Real?

“Anybody who says it’s not an addiction, all I can tell you is that we’ve looked in the brain,” said Dr. Fisher.

Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, Dr. Fisher and her colleagues have studied romantic love and found increased activity in a brain region called the nucleus accumbens, “that becomes active when anything becomes an addiction — alcohol or nicotine or cocaine or heroin or amphetamines or any one of those things,” Dr. Fisher said.

But some in the scientific community don’t even accept love addiction as a diagnosis. “Love addiction is a contested concept,” said Brian D. Earp, a Ph.D. candidate and the associate director of the Yale-Hastings Program in Ethics and Health Policy at Yale University who has studied love addiction. He noted that some of the disagreement comes down to the definition of love itself.

“Some feminist philosophers argue that if a relationship is toxic or abusive it shouldn’t even be labeled as love,” Mr. Earp said, adding that some prefer the label “addiction to toxic relationship behaviors.”

To make matters even more complicated, experts also can’t agree on the definition of addiction. Mr. Earp said some neuroscientists believe that something labeled an addiction must be bad for you. Therefore, “if you rely on an activity that might be classified as unhealthy but it’s totally compatible with living a flourishing life, some experts would say there’s no reason to call this an addiction,” he said.

Healthy Love Versus Addictive Love

Whether or not you believe love addiction is real, thinking of a toxic relationship as an addiction can be useful to someone dealing with the repercussions of an unhealthy partnership. “The bottom line is this: an unhealthy relationship tends to involve a search for a dopamine rush” and involves power and control, said Steven Sussman, a professor of preventive medicine, psychology and social work at the University of Southern California.

Those experiencing love addiction “have the behavioral pattern of addiction,” said Dr. Fisher. She explained that this may manifest in mood swings from despair to euphoria and a willingness to put up with abuse. Additionally their personalities may shift when they’re addicted, leading to lifestyle changes or a tendency to distort reality.

Houston-based literacy specialist, Synthia Smith, said she succumbed to those feelings with her now ex-boyfriend. “The prospect of living my life without him was unbearable — I would be emotionally dead,” she remembered.

So great was this fear that she stayed in the relationship for two and a half years, despite a fast-growing litany of warning signs, such as the time she discovered his profile on the dating website Plenty of Fish. After confronting him, he claimed that he was there to network for his business and shamed her for bringing it up before exploding in rage.

Working Through a Toxic Relationship

Becoming involved with someone who compromises your mental health can be a scary and isolating experience. Whether you believe yourself to be a love addict, or just need help getting out of a bad situation, there are resources to consult and healthy actions you can take.

Find community

Katlynn Rowland, who owns a housecleaning business in Ocala, Florida, was involved with an emotionally abusive man when she first came across Ms. Smith’s TikToks about gaslighting. “It almost felt good when I first watched the videos because it felt like I was being validated,” Ms. Rowland said, “and that I wasn’t crazy.”

Ms. Smith’s videos gave Ms. Rowland the courage to leave her ex-boyfriend — and to post about it on TikTok. “I was scared to post at first because I knew he would go insane,” Ms. Rowland said. “But since Synthia said that she didn’t care what her ex thought anymore, I was able to let go of that fear.”

Mr. Earp said this is a common experience. “It can be comforting for people to make public sense of their experience, rather than just having it be a private phenomenon.”

Educate yourself

“It’s important to educate yourself about how love addiction works for you, to understand the layers and nuances of how it plays out in your life,” said Kerry Cohen, a therapist and the author of “Crazy for You: Breaking the Spell of Sex and Love Addiction.” This may include finding a support group, like Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous or Love Addicts Anonymous, and speaking to a therapist or psychiatrist specializing in love addiction. It’s important to see a licensed professional and not to self-diagnose.

Practice healthy texting

Texting can be a potential minefield for love addicts, as there is often room for miscommunication, leading to anxiety and fear. Ms. Cohen said love addicts should refrain from talking about feelings via text with their partner, particularly negative emotions. “This will be good practice for you to regulate your feelings until you can talk in person,” she wrote, “and it may give you the pause you need to get a handle on how to respond without reacting.”

Many love addicts keep parts of themselves and their lives secret from their partner to provide what Ms. Cohen called an “artificial sense of autonomy” and a means to avoid conflict. Although having privacy is appropriate in a relationship, keeping secrets is not. Love addicts often “lie about their pasts, and try to be someone they think their lover wants them to be,” Ms. Cohen wrote in “Crazy for You.” She advised partners to share honestly with each other, especially about their struggles with sex or love addiction.

Consider no contact

After you have built a support team, you can decide if, when and how you should end a toxic relationship. With your therapist, consider what the “Cambridge Handbook of Substance and Behavioral Addictions” calls “a strict no-contact policy, avoiding any form of communication with the ex-partner that may trigger renewed feelings of craving and retard the healing process.”

Twelve-step programs often advise addicts to remove all reminders of the addiction, including all social media contact, photos, songs or memorabilia. “Somebody is camping in your head, you’ve got to get them out,” said Dr. Fisher.

Try a dating plan

It may be helpful to develop a dating plan with your sponsor or therapist, which can be a useful guide to finding a new, healthy relationship. Start by identifying one action that has brought about negative consequences in your past. Some love addicts may have sex too quickly with a partner and get too attached. In that case, it might be helpful to establish a rule to only have sex after entering a committed relationship.

“Nobody gets out of love alive,” said Dr. Fisher. “People live for love, pine for love, kill for love and they’ll die for a loved one. It’s one of the most powerful brain systems we’ve evolved.””

Whether you harness this energy for a positive or negative romantic experience is up to you.

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Simple ways to look after your sexual health

Barrier protection is the only contraceptive that also reduces the risk of STI transmission.

By

There are not many things more important than our health.

Living through a pandemic has taught us that much. Our experiences over the last two years have given all of us a new appreciation for being healthy and looking after our wellbeing.

However, one area is still frequently neglected and rarely talked about – sexual health. The reason for this is, largely, due to stigma.

Talking about sexual health is still a taboo, and there is still work to be done to normalise the conversation about testing, symptoms, and encouraging partners to discuss these things with each other.

Bianca Dunne is co-founder of sexual wellness brand, iPlaySafe App. She has shared her key tips to help you look after your sexual health – and encourage openness around this awkward topic.

Prevent infection

‘Your sexual health has an enormous impact on your mental and physical health,’ says Bianca.

‘All three need to be aligned to make you feel good and keep you productive. Keeping you healthy relies on prevention, testing, and treatment.’

Prevention means making sure you are vaccinated against viral illnesses such as hepatitis B and strains of Human Papilloma Virus (HPV) that are linked to cervical cancer in women.

‘You should discuss both with your GP if you are in doubt as to whether you have had or are eligible for these,’ says Bianca.

‘It also means stratifying your risk and mitigating risk where you can: condoms and dental dams are an effective way of doing this, as barrier protection is the only contraceptive that also reduces the risk of STI transmission (apart from abstinence, which we do not recommend!).’

Get tested regularly

Bianca says testing and contact tracing are of paramount importance in the fight against STIs – language that we have become all too familiar with over the course of the pandemic.

‘You should be regularly tested if you are having sex with different partners, ideally at a suitable interval after each interaction,’ she says.

‘Asking a partner when they were last tested is something many people don’t like doing, because society has made us feel ashamed when it comes to sexual health.

‘While more needs to be done to help combat and normalise this, by providing people with the tools, like with our “play badge”, this makes it a lot more fun and easier.’

But Bianca adds that you should be aware that some infections – such as HIV – won’t show up on tests until up to three months following exposure, and so regular testing is key.

‘Depending on the sexual history of your partners, different infections should be tested for,’ she adds. ‘Sexual health testing kits are available and will test routinely for the big six: HIV, Hep B, Hep C, chlamydia, gonorrhea and syphilis, but it’s important to be mindful of other infections – such as genital herpes and genital warts – which are diagnosed clinically, so you should consult your GP or your local GUM clinic, for treatment and management of these conditions.’

Source the right treatment

The good news is that treatment for sexual health is getting better and better.

‘Infections such as chlamydia can lead to devastating consequences such as infertility for women but are readily treated with antibiotics,’ says Bianca.

‘Due to advances in anti-retrovirals HIV infected individuals with an undetectable viral load are now considered to carry zero risk of transmitting the virus.

‘With continued awareness and important education around sexual health, we’re hoping the conversation around STIs and testing is normalised.

‘These conversations don’t have to be awkward, but instead can be a positive and healthy start a new sexual relationship. Regular testing and being up front about your sexual health, and the need to know your partners will help reduce unwanted transmissions to keep you healthy in bed, and ultimately encourage us all to live healthier lives.’

Do your research

‘Thankfully, a lot has been done in the space of sexual wellness in recent years,’ says Bianca, adding that this conversation has been accelerated by the pandemic.

‘There are many brands that share similar missions to help normalise the topic,’ she says. ‘Brands, like HANX, Smile Makers, Mojo are providing products and solutions to help all sexes, and experts like Dr Kate Moyle and sexual education author Ruby Rare, also helping provide answers to questions people may have due to not having a proper education previously.

‘Arming yourselves with the tools to help you look after, and enjoy your sexual wellbeing, will be so important.’

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How to Talk to Your Partner About What You Want in Bed

— Because Communication Is Sexy

by Olivia Luppino

If you want to have great sex, you’re going to have to speak up. Every person and every sexual relationship is different, so it’s important to be open with your partner about what works best for you. With all the historical stigma surrounding sex, prevailing slut-shaming, and a severe lack of practical education in high school sex-ed, the idea of talking to your partner about sex might feel a bit overwhelming. The good news is, the more you talk about sex with your partner, the easier it will become — and the better the sex will be. Remember that your partner isn’t a mind reader, so being vocal about what feels good is the surest way to improve things in the bedroom. Here’s exactly what you need to know to start conversations about what you want in bed, according to sex experts.

Be Vocal About What You Want

It’s safe to say you probably weren’t taught how to talk about sex, but it’s never too late to learn. If you’ve been avoiding talking about what you want in bed, know that it’s probably your best chance at having more satisfying sex.

“Our partners are not mind readers, as much as we’d like them to be,” said Emily Morse, host of the longest-running sex and relationship podcast, Sex With Emily. “[They] have no way of knowing what we want in bed until we let them know, until we guide them and tell them what we want,” she told POPSUGAR.

By avoiding the conversation, we’re failing to help our partners understand, and we’re failing to advocate for our own pleasure. “Speaking from someone who had plenty of hookups without ever using my words, I thought, ‘Well, it’s one night and I don’t want to seem needy,’ or, ‘I don’t want to seem like I’m too much, so I’m just going to go along with it and feign pleasure, or just be more performative rather than communicative,'” Morse said. “I think a lot of women choose to be performative rather than communicative.”

Though keeping quiet or faking pleasure might seem easier, it’s stopping you from having better sex. The only way to get what you want from your partners, short of some lucky guessing on their behalf, is to talk to them about what you like.

Leave Shame and Guilt at the Door

Growing up, we receive all kinds of cultural messages about sex, often discouraging us from talking about it. Especially if you are a woman, queer, or a person of color, talking about sex and celebrating your sexuality can be looked at as shameful or even dangerous. But the truth is, it is OK to talk about sex, especially to the person you’re having it with. Though your upbringing might make it difficult to talk to your partner about what you want in bed, you can work through these hangups over time.

“There’s so much guilt and shame wrapped up in the silence and in what we don’t say, and that can be debilitating for a lifetime,” Morse said. “The sooner you get comfortable having these conversations [about what you like in bed], it’ll impact your sex life and will impact your quality of life overall, because it’s not just the conversations in the bedroom, it’s conversations everywhere we avoid having.”

In fact, Morse explained that talking about what we like in bed is important “because our sexual health is an important part of our overall health and wellness.” She went on to say that “once we decide that this is something that is a crucial part of our development, then we realize that it’s not just some frivolous ask or [something that] makes us superficial or makes us greedy, and we just realize that it’s actually part of our mental health and well-being.” By prioritizing your sexual well-being and learning to communicate what you do and don’t like, you’ll get better at advocating for yourself both in and outside the bedroom.

Figure Out What You Enjoy

If you’re avoiding talking about sex with your partner because you haven’t had the chance to really discover what you like yet, take the opportunity to get to know yourself better. The solution to this is in your hands — literally.

“I think the reason why we don’t ask for what we want and we don’t talk about it is because we don’t know what we want,” Morse said. “And so that’s why it’s important to really figure out what we want on our own through masturbation and exploration and to really figure out your erogenous zones and what feels good.”

Activist and sex educator Ericka Hart, M.Ed., suggests using a yes/no/maybe list if you’re looking for ways to start exploring yourself sexually. “It gives you copious amounts of examples of different actions — you don’t have to come up with them on your own, nor do you have to be an expert on all things sex-related,” Hart told POPSUGAR.

There are plenty of resources available online that provide the sex education you didn’t receive in school. “Find other resources and tools that sexuality educators, sex therapists, and others in the sexuality field create and make available to support people in feeling affirmed in having conversations about what you want sexually,” Hart said. “There are classes, online webinars, worksheets, local events, you name it, all to fill significant gaps in our often pleasure-averse societal and educational institutions. For example, Afrosexology is a great resource started by two Black femme sexuality educators.”

Practice, Practice, Practice

Especially if you’re anxious to talk to your partner, practice will help. “I think you could practice, you could write it out, you could say it in the shower, practice looking in the mirror,” Morse said. “It helps me before I have any big call or any big meeting. I take 10 really deep breaths. You can hold it for five seconds, exhale for five seconds. I mean, that completely changes your nervous system and helps so much with anxiety.”

Think through what you want to say, and picture how you want the conversation to go. “What’s your goal in this conversation? What do you hope the outcome looks like?” Morse asked. “It’s like visualization, like athletes in the Olympics thinking about their meet ahead of time. So you just visualize it going well, you say, ‘I’m doing this for my sexual health and wellness, I’m doing this to be a better lover to myself and others.'”

Change Your Outlook on 1-Night Stands

Whether it’s a one-night stand or long-term relationship, it’s worth giving your partner guidance so you can fully participate in the pleasure of the experience. Even if you don’t have a long-standing sexual relationship with someone, you can still work on communicating what you like to your partners.

Morse recommends completely rethinking how you look at a one-time sexual encounter. “I think that if you are having a one-night stand, I’d love to reframe this and have it be like, ‘Oh, I don’t know if I’ll see [them] again. I might as well practice,’ because it is a practice of asking for what you want,” Morse said. Instead of thinking that you shouldn’t be overly open since you won’t be seeing them again, flip that narrative on its head and use the fact that you won’t see them again as a way to completely take off the pressure and practice being more vocal than you might be otherwise.

Pick the Right Partner

It takes two to tango, and it also takes two (or more) to talk. A major component of a good conversation is the person you’re having it with. “Far too often, folks might not feel comfortable enough to share without fear of retribution, a negative response on the other end, or others’ judgments or assumptions about what they themselves are willing to do or not do sexually,” Hart said. “One of the most important aspects in any sexual relationship is that you are able to openly share what feels good for you.”

Consider what your dynamic is like with your partner. “Make sure trust is established and that there are clear understandings of consent,” Hart told POPSUGAR. “I would also suggest not having conversations about sexual desires in an aroused state.” Instead, initiate these conversations in a relaxed and comfortable atmosphere outside the bedroom.

Remember that even if you brought up the subject, it’s just as important to listen as it is to speak. “Be present, listen, don’t add your stuff, your judgments,” Hart said. “Share what you’re willing to do or not from their desires.” Additionally, Hart emphasized that “these conversations should not contain pressure, coercion, or manipulation of any sort.”

Remember that a good partner is going to be excited to meet you where you are. “I can’t emphasize enough that the lovers that you want to be with are going to be hopefully heavily invested in and enthusiastic about being there for you,” Morse said.

Talking to your partner about what you want in bed is a great way to improve your sex life, show up for yourself, and show up for your partner. Even if you don’t have a lot of experience doing it, you’ll get better in time, and ultimately so will your sex life. And remember, Hart reminded, “Have fun, and be open to [your] desires changing over time. Nothing is set in stone. Have this conversation often.”

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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Talking to Your Partner When You Struggle with Hypogonadism

Communication is key for taking on this difficult condition

By Mark Gurarie

Generally unrecognized and often undiagnosed, hypogonadism can significantly impact relationships. Characterized by low levels of sex hormones, especially testosterone, it can arise due to physical injury, congenital defects, cancer or cancer treatmenst, benign tumors, or as a result of other conditions, such as older age, obesity, and metabolic syndrome (a group of conditions that can lead to heart disease, diabetes, and stroke), among others.1

What makes this condition particularly challenging for relationships is the way that hypogonadism impacts intimacy. Among its most prominent symptoms is low libido (sex drive), as well as mood and emotional changes. Men can also experience erectile dysfunction (ED).1 This can lead to severe relationship problems, making it essential that you and your partner are proactive and ready to support each other.

These may not be easy conversations to have, but they’re critical. If you or your partner suffers from hypogonadism, establishing a supportive dialogue is where the road to coping and living well with the condition starts.

The Impact of Hypogonadism

Given the nature of hypogonadism—and the wide range of causes and associated conditions—talking about it means understanding the impact it can have on you or your loved one. In many cases it’s a chronic condition, and ongoing therapy—often taking hormone replacement therapy—is necessary, making management a constant and evolving challenge.

How does hypogonadism affect relationships? Here’s a quick breakdown:2

  • Mental health: Studies have found a distinct association between hypogonadism and depression in both men and women of all ages. Rates of anxiety and bipolar disorder are also higher among this population, which can affect relationship quality, sexual satisfaction, and overall quality of life.
  • Sexual satisfaction: Given its effects on sexual function and libido, this condition significantly impacts assessments of sexual satisfaction. According to a 2021 study, up to 26% of males and 20%–50% of females with hypogonadism were sexually inactive. Problems with sex are often at the root of relationship issues and they can affect other aspects of mental health, as well.  
  • Erectile dysfunction (ED): Males with hypogonadism experience a much higher rate of ED, an inability to obtain or maintain an erection. A study of hypogonadotropic hypogonadism, a chronic congenital form of the condition, found that up to 53.2% of males reported this issue. This can further affect relationship health and is associated with higher levels of depression and anxiety and lower quality of life.

Managing and living with hypogonadism is a multifaceted affair. It means recognizing symptoms, it means getting medical help and keeping up with medications and appointments, and it means tending to mental health and relationships. Communication is crucial in all of these areas. Though it isn’t easy, you and your partner will have to have open discussions about this condition and what it’s like to live with it.

Loss of sexual desire is a hallmark of hypogonadism, as is erectile dysfunction, and it can be a chief source of relationship problems. Though it may not be easy to talk about your sex life, it is very important to do so. For both partners, imbalances in sexual desire are associated with less satisfaction in the relationship and higher levels of tension and frustration.3

What are some approaches to broaching this subject? What are strategies you can use to boost communication? Here are some tips:

  • Educate yourself: Whether you’re the one with hypogonadism or your partner is, it’s important to learn as much as you can about the condition. Your doctor or healthcare provider can direct you to educational resources, and there are many available online.4
  • Kitchen-table conversation: It’s a good idea to broach the topic of sex in a neutral setting. Bringing up sexual problems or dissatisfaction while in bed can cause negative associations with intimacy.5
  • Direct communication: In order to promote effective dialogue, use “I” statements, rather than “you” statements when having the discussion. Explaining how you feel—rather than what your partner is or is not doing—and what your aims are is a good starting point.4
  • Be open: For both partners, managing low libido means being open-minded, both to each other’s needs and to ways of restoring intimacy. It’s also worth discussing other health factors that may be affecting your relationship and whether to consider therapy or other ways to work on the relationship.5

While talking about how you’re being affected by hypogonadism and airing your feelings may seem intimidating, it’s necessary work. When it comes to issues of intimacy and sex, being open is the best policy. What you don’t want to do is hide your condition from your spouse or partner, as this can only make matters worse.

Ultimately, hypogonadism can be medically managed, and most who get treatment are able to live well with it. Good communication with your partner will prove essential as you take it on, and it can lay the groundwork for an even stronger relationship. The most important thing is to not stay silent.

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The female orgasm

— How exactly does it work?

BY EVANGELINE POLYMENEAS

Let’s get that O.

Many have looked far and wide in search of the elusive female orgasm. Those who have experienced one from penetrative sex have the power to congregate vulva owners everywhere to tell the tale of how they reached climax. The journey is filled with awkward moments, queefs and repetitive movement but they’ve lived to tell the tale and the rest of us want answers.

There is a myriad of myths surrounding the female orgasm and an oversaturation of misinformation. When I Googled it, millions of results appeared all promising 11 different types of female orgasms. If there are so many options, why is it so hard to get just one?

Too many of my friends answer a resounding ‘no’ to the question of whether they orgasmed during their latest sexual escapade, so I spoke to sex and pleasure coach, Clarke Rose, in an attempt to understand why.

“There is a huge orgasm gap. A lot of people with vulvas aren’t cumming,” Clarke tells me. So it’s a national pleasure emergency. Maybe we just don’t know what we’re searching for, so what is an orgasm exactly?

“An orgasm is such an expansive thing to define,” Clarke says. “I like to think of orgasms in a non-clinical sense as a high index of pleasure for anybody who’s feeling it. Technically speaking, it’s a peak of intense pleasure that sometimes creates altered states of consciousness and is usually accompanied by involuntary rhythmic contractions of the pelvic floor.”

Essentially, euphoria. That sounds all well and good, but what about the other 10 orgasms Google promised? I ask Clarke whether there are different sorts of female orgasms and the answer was not what I was expecting.

“Yes and no. Orgasm can be stimulated from different parts of your body, [for example], some people can have an orgasm from their nipples being stimulated, some from anal sex, others from penetration, but they all achieve the same orgasm. It’s not like you have a vaginal orgasm or a clitoral orgasms. They are all the same thing, they are just being stimulated from a different area.”

Clarke notes that only 30 per cent of women can trigger orgasm from internal stimulation and that percentage doesn’t differentiate between whether the penetration was accompanied by clitoral stimulation or not. She attributes this low percentage to differences in anatomy. “It’s a matter of how much your urethral sponge, which sits right about the G-spot, is sensitive and full of erectile tissue.”

Clarke says we tend to hierarchise female orgasms in ways that we don’t with male orgasms. “For a woman, people ask whether they can cum from their clit, or vagina, or whether they can have a nipple orgasm, whereas with men, no one is asking if they had a blowjob orgasm, or a penetrative orgasm – their orgasms just get to be orgasms.”

Penis owners seem to orgasm so easily, so I wondered if there was a difference between male orgasms and female orgasms. “Anatomically speaking it’s super interesting because a person who has a penis, orgasms for biological reasons,” Clarke explains. “They need to orgasm to ejaculate for the sperm to come out and make a baby.”

She goes on to explain that there is no biological need for females to orgasm. At first, this idea might seem anti-feminist, but Clarke explains that it’s actually quite interesting. “When we were foetuses, we were made up of all the same parts [as males], we [females] just develop differently. People with vulvas got this ability to orgasm because men can, which is a fantastic bonus to our sexuality without the pressure of needing to [orgasm] every time or we fail.”

Despite the lack of biological pressure to orgasm, a lot of vulva owners can’t seem to reach climax with partners but have less of a problem on their own. So what’s the barrier that’s stopping many of us from achieving the big O?

“When we are with somebody, other things come up – maybe we are a little bit self-conscious, or afraid to ask for what we want, or are too focused on our partners,” Clarke explains. “Whereas when we are on our own, we can make whatever weird face we want. A lot of women also use toys to masturbate which makes it really easy. However, when you’re with a partner and they are just using their hand or tongue, it doesn’t compare to whatever eight-speed vibrator you have at home. It can be a bit more difficult for your body and mind to recognise that as a trigger for orgasm.”

Although there are definitely micro reasons that could prevent partner orgasms, women’s orgasms have been repressed at a cultural level as well. “Our culture prioritises male anatomy and male pleasure. We all understand the anatomy of a penis, it’s so drilled into our heads, but we don’t understand the anatomy of a vulva. Historically we have repressed women’s sexuality. We want women to be receptive, polite and pleasing and not cause a big fuss,” explains Clarke.

Men have seen themselves in porn and in sex scenes in film and television ask for what they need sexually and receive it. They have heard the language required to ask, but women haven’t. It seems unnatural to ask for what we want, and Clarke says a lot of men probably don’t know how to listen without their ego getting involved.

“If you can’t orgasm and it’s really stressing you out, you’re not alone. There are a lot of women who can’t. Definitely look into seeing a sexologist or a sex coach if it’s something you want to work on,” says Clarke. The female orgasm is complex and it’s complicated, but we all deserve to reach it if we want to.

“Women put a lot of pressure on themselves to orgasm a certain way,” Clarke says. “Whether you cum with a vibrator, or by your hand, or whether you can cum on your own or with a partner – however you orgasm is valid. Period. Don’t put extra stress on yourself to cum upside down with mind stimulation – however you cum is beautiful.”

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A Beginner’s Guide To Watching Feminist Porn

Everything you need to know to access foreplay fodder that is female-led, queer-inclusive, and beyond simply glorifying the male orgasm.

By Shamani Joshi

As an industry, porn – or at least the male-gaze kind most of us are familiar with – is pretty fucked up.

Whether it’s X-rated platforms suggesting sexually violent videos to first-time users or allowing unverified uploads of non-consensual deepfakes, the mainstream porn industry we’ve come to know clearly doesn’t pass the vibe check.

This space, dominated by cisgender heteronormative men, has led to a chain of sexual abuse and harassment for countless adult entertainers. It’s also one that’s actively consumed by more men than women. This results in deeper real-life consequences, especially given that porn often serves as a substitute for sex education for teenagers.

“This is worrying because mainstream porn doesn’t make for good sex ed,” Ms Naughty, an award-winning feminist porn filmmaker who preferred we use her screen name since she keeps her personal life separate from her job, told VICE. “In [mainstream] porn, sex is done primarily for an audience, the positions benefit the camera, there is a focus on penetration, and it typically doesn’t show the best way for women to orgasm.”

Porn could then potentially damage men’s perception of women’s sexual desires, impact how women react to their own bodies and desires, or even lead to sexual dysfunction. A 2017 study in The Journal of Sex Research found that in the 50 most viewed videos on Pornhub, only 18.3 percent of women are explicitly shown climaxing on-screen, as compared to 78 percent of men – reinforcing the patriarchal stereotype that the male orgasm is the ultimate aim of heterosexual sex.

Fortunately, even the porn industry has experienced a feminist upheaval over the last decade, thanks to feminist filmmakers like Ms Naughty, who are leading the charge for porn that aligns with feminist ideals, captures diversity, and ensures its creators are paid fair wages.

Feminist porn, like feminist everything, comes with its share of stereotypical misconceptions. Many like to believe it is merely a male-bashing space, while others feel it is filled with vanilla sex that is simply soft and sensual.

“Feminist porn tries to decentralise the male orgasm by moving beyond penetration and the cum ‘money’ shot and create a diverse representation of bodies, sexualities and relationship models,” Paulita Pappel, a feminist porn producer and intimacy coordinator, told VICE.

According to Pappel, a filmmaker who grew up watching sex-negative mainstream media and presumed all sex work was exploitative, feminist porn is an all-encompassing space that has something for every kink and fantasy.

“[Things like] gang bangs are not inherently sexist, but the way it is shown [in mainstream porn] can be,” she said. “In feminist porn, for example, we shoot gang bangs as men serving the women [instead of the other way around], and always ask performers what they’re comfortable with before shooting.” The intimacy coordinator also pointed out that feminist porn gives its creators a space to explore their own pleasure, and capture it authentically for the audience’s pleasure.

“If you think about the language common to mainstream porn, it’s really very negative: ‘sluts deserve to get fucked,’ ‘anal destruction,’ ‘stupid Latinas taught a lesson’ – that kind of thing,” said Ms Naughty. “Feminist porn wants to respect and honour the performers because they’re putting a very personal part of themselves out there. And we want to show that sex can be fun and meaningful and vital to our identities as well as dirty and hot.”

The filmmakers added that in this space, it’s important to pay for your porn to enhance the chances of a producer paying fair wages to adult entertainers, taking informed consent from them, and not exploiting them. Most websites and services that offer feminist porn have subscription options that could range anywhere between $4 to $20 for a month to $50 for a whole year.

Now that we’ve explained the why, let’s get into the how.

So you want to get into… ethical pornos that focus on female fantasies?

Male gaze porn is notorious for turning women into mere objects of orgasmic pleasure instead of exploring the myriad of emotions they experience along the way. “Feminist porn is less focused on traditionally male fantasies, or will create it with a sense of irony,” said Ms Naughty.

According to the filmmaker, feminist porn expresses female pleasure by visibly promoting safe sex –explicitly mentioning consent, showing the performers as real people rather than sex objects, and making sure the camera moves beyond just focusing on the woman while excluding the man’s head from the frame.

“Feminist porn is eager to show that sex doesn’t have to be formulaic; it’s not white-picket-fence heteronormative,” she said. “You can have guys getting pegged, fisting, women on top, lots of cunnilingus, and, of course, heaps of vibrator use since that’s what is guaranteed to get a woman off.”

Websites to visit:

BrightDesire.com: A website founded by Ms Naughty with the aim of creating erotic content that showcased intimacy and joy. The focus of this website is connection and chemistry, regardless of the kind of sex people are having. These videos tend to show real-life couples who are familiar with each other sharing pleasure, and incorporate the laughter and tender moments that mainstream porn leaves out.

Frolic Me: Not all feminist porn is the soft, slow and romantic kinds, but if that’s the content you’re looking for, then this is the place for you to indulge in your demisexual desires. Ms Naughty recommends it for women or couples looking to find tasteful porn.

Sssh.com: A site that started as a dedicated spot for straight women, Sssh.com crowdsources female fantasies, then executes them through in-house performers, videos, and even editorial-style magazine content.

ElseCinema: This pay-per-view platform can help you find feminist and ethical porn filmmakers from around the world.

So you want to get into… inclusive queer porn?

Unlike its male-dominated counterpart, feminist porn is an incredibly inclusive space that embraces people of all identities, genders, sexual preferences, race and colour.

“Feminist queer porn represents a wide spectrum of sexuality, from gay to genderqueer,” said Pappel. “It has been a space for [LGBTQ+ communities] to find that representation of their identity at a time when mainstream media wasn’t covering it.”

Websites to visit:

PinkLabel.tv: A platform founded by Shine Louise Houston, an American filmmaker who has been making queer porn since the mid 2000s, Pink Label is a video-on-demand platform that is Pappel’s go-to for queer feminist porn – especially to find people of colour. It’s also a platform that offers filmmakers and performers who don’t have their own sites a shared income to pay them equally and fairly.

Crash Pad Series: Based on a film called The Crash Pad, which centres around a secret apartment only open for the queer community, this series is recommended by Ms Naughty for a no-holds-barred and honest sex experience that celebrates all bodies, genders and ethnicities.

Aorta Films: A site recommended by Pappel for its seamless ability to subvert gender identity and explore queer porn with kinks and BDSM, this site is a classic example of how feminist porn does not have to be “pastel or soft,” but can also be hardcore. Films on this platform also explicitly show consensual negotiations and safe words through before-and-after scenes, to make for safe experiences that won’t trigger the viewer.

Indie Porn Revolution: The oldest running queer porn site stands for “subversive smut made by ladies, artists, and queers,” and aims to offer a wide array of content that explores distinctive perspectives, all of which are far from the male gaze.

So you want to… get into arthouse porn

Feminist porn filmmakers pride themselves in their ability to create content that is as aesthetic as it is erotic. While this porn can be quite similar to sex scenes in mainstream movies, filmmakers say they like to curate a vibe that makes the entire porn-viewing experience more about the way the film is shot rather than just leading up to the cum shot.

“Feminist porn isn’t just about arousal,” said Ms Naughty. “It can be about emotion, about protest, about art.”

Websites to visit:

BlueArtichokeFilms.com: A platform founded by Jennifer Lyon Bell, an American filmmaker based in the Netherlands, Ms Naughty describes this site as “cinematic, intelligent and extremely well-made.” According to her, these explicit films are arousing, but equally interested in the reasons why people have sex and the dynamic behind that, making it as much about the ideas as about hot sex.

Four Chambers: Run by British artist and performer Vex Ashley, this site is recommended by Ms Naughty for films that are distinctively moody, sensual, intense, and kinky. The scenes all follow a theme and are shot mostly with natural light, featuring diverse performers as well as sex styles.

So you want to… get into documentary porn?

As most feminist porn filmmakers will point out, ethical consumption of porn means moving beyond the professionals. Feminist porn is as much about exploring amateur online spaces, including social media, as it is about providing female-friendly smut.

“I prefer to use the term documentary porn over amateur porn, which sounds more like the performer is doing it as a hobby,” said Pappel. She explained that documentary porn is made by building the script around what the couple or performers derive their pleasure from. “From kissing to kink, they tell us what they want and we create the scenario around that.”

Websites to visit:

OnlyFans: An internet content subscription service where creators can charge people to subscribe to their content, OnlyFans allows sex workers and up-and-coming pornstars to cut out the middleman and deal with their customers directly. This not only minimises the chances of exploitation but also offers you the chance to get exactly what you want from an adult entertainer who is then compensated fairly.

Lustery: Founded by Paulita Pappel, this platform has real-life couples, who are also exhibitionists, filming themselves having sex. “They have a pre-existing relationship with each other, which gives it a different level of intimacy,” Pappel said. “You’re always performing when you’re having sex with a partner, and this website uses real couples and cameos from all over the world to show those personal, private moments with consent.”

r/chickflixxx: Reddit isn’t always the safest space for women but this subreddit aims to be one. Here, you can find women posting their favourite female-friendly X-rated videos, and even interact with sexperts – including sex therapists and other adult entertainers.

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Yes, You Can Contract an STD Without Having Penetrative Sex

by Gabrielle Kassel

Anilingus. Cunnilingus. Mutual masturbation. Many nonpenetrative sex acts are *veryyy* much worth exploring from a pleasure perspective.

But many sex-havers engage in these sex acts under the assumption that sexually transmitted infections (STIs) can only be transmitted through penetration.

This myth results in many explorers thinking they’re being Safe™, when in fact they’ve put themselves in a position where STI transmission is, indeed, possible.

Confused? Concerned? Don’t be.

Below, experts explain exactly how an STI can be transmitted when a hole isn’t being penetrated. Plus, exactly what you need to know about STI testing.

STDs vs. STIs

Both acronyms refer to conditions that are primarily transmitted through sexual activity. STI stands for sexually transmitted infection, while STD stands for sexually transmitted disease.

Technically, a condition only qualifies as a disease if you have advanced symptoms, while the term infection applies if you don’t have any symptoms at all.

In everyday conversation and medical resources, the two terms are used interchangeably.

Sexually transmitted infectious particles don’t “hide” in the way back of your holes (e.g., mouth, anus, vagina).

Instead, these infectious particles can live on any internal or external skin or in bodily fluids, explains Dr. Felice Gersh, author of “PCOS SOS: A Gynecologist’s Lifeline To Naturally Restore Your Rhythms, Hormones, and Happiness.”

For this reason, “certain STIs can be spread anytime there’s skin-to-skin contact or when body fluids are spread,” she says.

Important: Not every STI can be passed on through contact with every single section of skin or every single bodily fluid.

What segments of skin or which bodily fluids can transmit the STI depends on the particular STI. It also depends on where the STI is located, or if it’s considered a full-body STI.

To be very clear, STIs aren’t weeds: They don’t simply sprout up out of nowhere.

For an STI to be transmitted, someone must be doing the transmitting. And for someone to do the transmitting, they must be STI-positive.

(And the only way to know if you’re STI-positive is to get tested, but more on that below).

According to Gersh, depending on what the STI is and where it’s located, an STI could be transmitted during any sexual activity that involves the following:

  • the mouth, lips, throat, or saliva
  • blood or breast milk
  • vaginal fluid, pre-ejaculation (pre-cum), semen, or anal secretions
  • the internal anal canal, anal entrance, or perineum
  • the vaginal canal, vulva, penis, or testicles

That means that, in theory, an STI can be transmitted during any of the following sex acts:

Anything that involves the ingestion of, exposure to, or swapping of bodily fluids could result in the transmission of infection.

For example:

  • platonic mouth kissing
  • getting a tattoo or piercing
  • sharing sex toys that haven’t been cleaned
  • getting a blood transfusion
  • sharing needles
  • breastfeeding or chestfeeding
  • giving birth
  • self-inoculation

However, most of the fearmongering around nonsexual STI transmissions — for instance, that you can get an STI from a toilet seat, hot tub, or public pool — is *not* based in science under most conditions.

STIs generally cannot exist outside the homeyness of the body’s mucosal membranes for very long. And all the chemicals in pools and hot tubs kill off any infectious agents.

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Before we answer this question, let’s talk about the word ‘dormant’ real quick. Most doctors don’t use it anymore, according to Gersh.

“The concept of a dormant STI isn’t helpful,” she says. “It’s predicated on the idea that you can have an STI that just isn’t doing anything in your body.”

The words doctors like to use instead are “asymptomatic” or “latent.”

An asymptomatic STI occurs when someone isn’t currently experiencing symptoms that they can feel, see, or smell. According to the World Health OrganizationTrusted Source, the majority of STIs are asymptomatic.

“It’s possible to have an STI, not be experiencing symptoms, and still transmit it to someone else,” Gersh explains.

“It’s also possible to have an STI, not be experiencing symptoms that you can feel or see, and still have it be doing something to your body,” she says.

For example, someone can have human papillomavirus (HPV), not be experiencing any symptoms, but still have the cellular makeup of their cervix altered by the virus.

You can also have an STI, not be experiencing symptoms now, but begin experiencing symptoms later.

An STI cannot be detected by an STI test immediately after exposure.

The STI can’t be detected because it hasn’t been in the body long enough for the body to develop antibodies in response to it, which is what most STI tests are looking for.

The incubation period is the amount of time between when someone contracts an STI and when they test positive for that STI on a test.

If you get tested for an STI during its incubation period the test will come back negative. “The incubation period is different for every single STI,” Gersh says. “It ranges from anywhere between 2 days and 3 months.”

This means that, if you have unprotected sex with someone, the move actually isn’t to get tested the next day, she says.

“That test will tell you if you were exposed to any STIs prior to having sex with that person,” Gersh explains. “But the test will not tell you if that person exposed you to any STIs.”

If you had unprotected sex, Gersh recommends getting tested after 2 weeks and then again 2 weeks later.

Some may use the phrase “unprotected sex” to refer to bareback penis-in-vagina intercourse. But here, we’re using it to refer to any sex that took place without a barrier method.

That includes any sex that happened with a broken condom, expired condom, or other condom mishaps.

If you’ve never been screened before and want to, congratulations on deciding to take your sexual health into your own hands. Seriously, the importance of this step can’t be overstated!

Start by finding a testing center near you by checking out this STI testing center guide. Before you head to the testing spot, make sure they test for all the STIs you’re interested in getting tested for. Some clinics only test for HIV, for example.

When you get there, be sure to ask explicitly for all the STIs you want to get tested for, especially if you want to be tested for oral or anal STIs.

Most testing centers only test for genital gonorrhea, genital chlamydia, HIV, and syphilis unless asked otherwise, Gersh notes.

It *is* possible to contract or transmit an STI without having penetrative sex. The best way to protect yourself and your partner(s) from transmission is for everyone to know their current STI status.

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Can Marijuana Ease Your Hot Flashes?

Advice from a Menopause Expert

If you’re considering trying pot to escape hot flash hell, here’s guidance on the best way to do that, and the science of why it might help.

By Lauren Streicher, MD

If you’ve heard a friend mention that she’s easing hot flashes and other annoying side effects of menopause with marijuana, she’s not alone: In a 2020 study, 27% of menopausal women reported that they used some form of cannabis—the scientific name of the marijuana plant—to alleviate hot flashes, insomnia, vaginal dryness, mood swings, and brain fog. That’s more than 1 in 4 women—compare that to the mere 7% of women who take systemic estrogen to alleviate symptoms. Women are smoking pot, drinking cannabis-laced beverages, and infusing marijuana in oil and putting it not only on their avocado toast but also on their vulva and in their vagina.

Join Dr. Streicher and other experts for a conversation about menopause on October 18. Sign up for free today!

Turning to cannabis to ease menopausal symptoms isn’t new either: According to historian Ethan Russ, cannabis was used as far back as the 7th century for myriad women’s ailments. It even pops up as a treatment of meno­pause in the 1899 edition of the Merck Manual, a popu­lar medical textbook. At the turn of that century, all the major pharmaceutical companies—Eli Lilly, Parke-Davis (now Pfizer), and Squibb—sold cannabis as a powder, tablet, and tincture.

So what’s the story—can smoking a joint or imbibing cannabis in some other way really cool the heat and soothe other menopause symptoms? (Before you jump in, remember: Marijuana isn’t legal everywhere. Check out this map to find out the status of legalization in your state.)

Are there studies on marijuana and hot flashes?

Though there are some wildly enthusiastic anecdotal reports about the effectiveness of pot to ease hot flashes, there have been inadequate scientific studies—meaning studies done on large groups of women over an extended period of time, with a control group using fake pot as a comparison. In other words, when it comes to cannabinoids (the compounds found in cannabis), there aren’t the kinds of studies that are required for pharmaceutical agents to become FDA-approved. In addition, most studies on the effect of cannabinoids include only men—and women are not little men.

Aside from being expensive, studies on the impact of cannabis on menopause symptoms would be difficult to conduct. The pharmacology is complex: There are well over 100 cannabinoids, and all have different physical and psychological effects. The dosage and type of cannabis are difficult to standardize and are also dramatically altered by variables, such as the other medications someone might be taking.

Don’t get me wrong: I think the use of cannabinoids to relieve menopause symptoms is very promising, and based on the known properties of cannabinoids, there is good reason that they would be beneficial in alleviating many symptoms of menopause. It just would be nice to have more research as to what kind of cannabis and what dosage works best, so that I and other physicians can make informed recommendations to our patients. But having said that, here is what is known based on the science of cannabinoids as well as observational, anecdotal data.

The impact of cannabis on our bodies

First, an interesting fact: The human body makes its own cannabi­noids. The human endocannabinoid system is a complex, nerve-signaling system composed of neurotransmitters that bind to cannabinoid receptors. It’s responsible for regulating multiple body functions, including appetite, metabolism, pain, mood, learning, memory, sleep, stress, bone health, and cardiovascular health—pretty much ev­erything that keeps humans functional and balanced.

And it turns out that hormones, specifically estrogen, play a critical role in the endocannabinoid system, and some experts propose that the disruption in that system when estrogen is low is responsible for menopause symptoms—and they say it’s also why using cannabis can decrease hot flashes.

The marijuana plant and hot flashes

There are two cannabinoids extracted from the flow­er of the marijuana plant that have potential roles in managing menopause symp­toms: tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) and cannabidiol (CBD). And, no surprise, only the female flower contains these elements.

THC is the psychoactive component of cannabis (that’s the component that brings on the high). It mimics some aspects of the natural endocannabinoid in our bodies that helps regulate body temperature, which is theoretically why THC is the key to reducing hot flashes.

CBD is extracted from hemp flowers. It contains trace amounts of THC but doesn’t have psy­choactive properties, so it will not get you high. Although it may not reduce hot flashes specifically, it does decrease pain and inflam­mation, in addition to helping you get a good night’s sleep. (The anti-inflammatory properties of both cannabinoids also may help with bone loss and cardiovascular disease.)

So, does pot relieve hot flashes?

Since this hasn’t been scientifically studied, what I’m going to say is based on the known pharmacolo­gy of cannabinoids and anecdotal information from folks in this world. But yes, it does appear that cannabis can be effec­tive in decreasing the frequency and severity of hot flashes.

Again, the THC in cannabis mimics the endocannabinoid that helps regulate body temperature. This effect when using cannabis is dose dependent. Large amounts of THC cause your internal temperature to drop, while small amounts can cause your internal temperature to rise. In other words, THC can regulate your internal thermostat, but it is important to use the right amount.

How to use cannabis for hot flashes

Eat it? Smoke it? Rub it on? How you take cannabis is important—not only in terms of what it will do for you, but also when it comes to onset of action (meaning, how quickly it hits you) and potential side effects. The onset of action, peak levels, and total duration of ef­fect listed here are very approximate, but I’ve included them to give you an idea.

Smoking or vaping

Inhaling cannabis has the advantage of an immediate effect, but the disadvantage is potentially harming your re­spiratory tract. It’s also not an activity you can do discreetly.

Onset of action: Within minutes
Peak levels: About 15 to 30 minutes
Total duration: About two or more hours

Edibles

Edibles include foods infused with cannabis, such as gummies, chocolate, ice cream, smoothies, and cookies—the possibilities are endless. The effect is delayed, which sometimes leads to overdos­ing (more on that at the end). Edibles are not psychoactive unless they contain more than trace amounts of THC.

Onset of action: 30 to 90 minutes
Peak levels: Two to six hours
Total duration: At least four to eight hours

Sublinguals

Sublinguals are tinctures, sprays, or strips placed under the tongue that are quickly absorbed into the bloodstream through a plexus of blood vessels, rather than making the trip through the digestive system like edibles do. The advantage is a relatively quick onset of action, along with bypassing the gut and the lungs. Also, it appears that THC is absorbed better as a sublingual than as an edible.

Onset of action: Within minutes
Peak levels: About 10 minutes
Total duration: Hours or even days (highly variable)

What’s the right dose for cannabis?

I’ll give you some general dosing guidelines, but they are not based on scientific studies. I’m just telling you what’s being said by the experts I’ve talked to. The dosage is a free-for-all, and even the phar­macists who work in the industry and appear very knowl­edgeable are basing their recommendations on anecdotal reports and individual experience as opposed to scientific studies. Remember, most of the folks who work in dispen­saries are not medical practitioners, and they may not be aware of a potential drug interaction or other medical variables. Also, it’s a known fact that young women metabolize cannabis more slowly than men, and women who are post-menopause metabolize it more slowly than those who are pre-menopause. This makes sense, given that cannabis metabolism is fa­cilitated by estrogen, and women who are post-menopause don’t have any.

There is no one-size-fits-all dosing, and because cannabis is a botanical, you cannot count on the same level of con­sistency as you would with a commercial pharmaceutical. Keeping a journal is a good idea until you figure out what works best for you. Small, spaced-out doses (micro-dosing) is smart.

Here are guidelines for hot flash relief sup­plied by Luba Andrus, a registered pharmacist and cannabis pharma­cologist with whom I consulted; she routinely works with menopausal women.

Guidelines for THC

  • Sublingual is preferred
  • Start at 1.25 mg once or twice daily
  • Titrate up (increase the dose) every five to seven days
  • 2 mg to 4 mg works for most women

Guidelines for CBD

  • Sublingual is preferred
  • Use an indica-dominant product (a dispensary can guide you)
  • Start at 2.5 mg twice daily
  • Titrate up (increase the dose) every four to seven days
  • Continue until 20 mg is reached
  • Keep in mind that it can take upwards of 30 days to feel the full effect, so be patient.

Guidelines for THC/CBD-combined products

  • Sublingual is preferred
  • CBD/THC ratio should be 20:1 or higher (22% to 26% THC and 0.76% CBD is a common combo)
  • Products with a high THC:CBD ratio are best taken in the evening or at bedtime.

Heed these warnings

Cannabinoids have the potential to interact with cer­tain medicines, such as blood thinners and antiseizure drugs. In some cases, they can potentially make other medications less effective. Talk to your doctor!

Cannabis is generally felt to be safe, but the side effects may include brain fog, dry mouth, unsteady gait, diar­rhea, and drowsiness. A glass of water at the bedside is a good idea since you may wake up thirsty in the middle of the night. Some other important advice:

• Don’t drive while under the influence!

• Cannabis users need up to twice the sedation for med­ical procedures. If you partake, be sure to tell the an­esthesiologist.

• The effects of cannabinoids are dose related. Low to moderate doses appear to have positive effects on sex­ual function and responsiveness (loss of inhibition, in­creased sensitivity). High doses can be a problem and are associated with an increase in paranoia and anxiety. There is such a thing as too much of a good thing.

• Again, menopausal women are more vulnerable than men to an overdose. So especially when it comes to edibles, start at a low dose and make sure you wait 90 minutes before taking any more, because it can take that long for it to kick in. And keep in mind that many edibles are sold in individual servings of 10 mg of THC, which is way more than most menopausal women should be ingesting.

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Let’s Talk about Sex Education and Human Rights

“Human rights-based sex education is a key component in preventing gender-based violence and transforming patriarchal, hetero-normative gender relations.”

by Dr Meghan Campbell

Sex education is increasingly become a focal point in the so-called culture wars. Missing from political debates on the curriculum of sex education is its role in fulfilling the human rights. Comprehensive, human rights-based relationship and sex education is vital to fulfil a cluster of human rights, particularly rights to equality for women, sexual minorities, transgender and disabled people. This post explores the legal framework for sex education in the England and unearths the linkages between sex education and women and girls’ right to equality.

Under s34 of the Children and Social Work Act 2017, sex education is compulsory for primary and secondary school children in England. On the surface this is a positive development as students will be able to access vital education on healthy relationships and safe, accurate and comprehensive sex education. However, there are two aspects of the regulation of sex education that hollow out this development. First, the curriculum can have regard to ‘the age and religious background of the pupils.’ This means that faith-based schools are allowed to teach sex education ‘within the tenants of their faith.’ Second, the regulations retain the rights of parents to withdraw their children from sex education up to and until three terms before the child turn sixteen. Both of these provisions undermine the transformative potential of sex education.

Human Rights-Based Sex Education Curriculum

The UN Special Rapporteur on the right to education calls for a human rights-based approach (HRBA) to sex education. An HRBA opens up a new language and framework in which the right-holder can claim against the state that there is a positive obligation to provide sex education. It also provides insights into the structure and content of sex education to ensure it upholds women and girls’ equality.

Cultural norms praise male promiscuity while female sexuality is restrictive, passive, shameful and degrading. Girls feel stigmatised in expressing their sexuality and in using sexual and reproductive health services. They often feel they do not have the power to insist on using contraception, leaving girls at risk for unintended pregnancies and sexually transmitted infections. Girls are often held responsible for any unintended consequences of sexual activity and for the caring of children. Sex education can be a powerful tool to dismantle these negative cultural norms, valorise women’s sexuality and transform gender relations.

Sex education should also form part of a holistic and transformative strategy on gender-based violence (GBV), one of the most pernicious forms of discrimination against women. There has been recent reports on the rise of sexual violence in schools and amongst students and a rise in young girls sharing sexually explicitly images and videos of themselves. Young girls report feeling pressure to produce and send sexually explicitly images of themselves to other people. These images can quickly be shared among a large number of people. This has pronounced implications for the mental and emotional health, and even lives of young girls and women. Sex education can emphasis girls and women’s rights to bodily integrity and autonomy, teach laws on sexual consent, cyber-safety and encourage young people to critically reflect on gender relations. Sex education that adopts a rights-based approach is an important preventive, empowering and transformative measure in a larger strategy to end gender-based violence.

Challenging Religious Exemptions to Human-Rights Based Sex Education

A rights-based approach also raises challenging issues on balancing the parent and child’s rights to religious freedom and belief against gender equality and the other human rights fulfilled by sex education. The UK legal framework allows parents to exempt children from sex education and permits schools to tailor sex education to religious beliefs. There is case law from the European Court of Human Rights that holds that it is within the state’s margin of appreciation to deny faith-based exemptions and to make sex education compulsory so as to ensure the autonomous decision making skills and safety of the child. There is also analogous case law denying faith-based schools exemptions to the ban of corporal punishment from the UK and South Africa. In these cases, the respective courts held that the dignity, security and equality of the child were paramount to religious freedom and belief. Similar arguments can be made to address moral or faith-based exemption to sex education.

Human rights-based sex education is a key component in preventing gender-based violence and transforming patriarchal, hetero-normative gender relations. The language and power of human rights can strengthen and legitimatise claims that sex education is a necessary positive measure to fulfil fundamental human rights. It is unfortunate that the legal framework on sex education in the UK takes one-step forward and two steps back in upholding the rights of boys, girls, women and children A push to conceptualizing sex education as a positive obligation necessary to fulfil human rights can hopefully strengthen the arguments for compulsory sex education throughout all schools in the UK.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!