What is spanking therapy

— And how can it help?

Spanking therapy uses spanking as a form of release. People may choose to take part in spanking therapy to release stress and responsibility, explore power roles, or work through negative emotions or trauma. However, there is limited scientific research on spanking therapy and its effectiveness.

People may speak with a practitioner for spanking therapy or learn how to do it safely with a partner.

This article looks at what spanking therapy is, what it involves, and why individuals may do it.

Spanking therapy has no exact definition, but people may class it as any form of consensual spanking under BDSM, which stands for bondage and discipline, dominance and submission, and sadism and masochism (SM).

Individuals may also class it as any consensual BDSM spanking to release certain emotions or work through issues, such as trauma.

People may use it for relaxation or the release of power, responsibility, negative emotions, or trauma.

Spanking therapy may be an option for anyone of an appropriate age to take part in consensual BDSM practices.

People may wish to find a spanking therapist or learn how to safely carry out spanking therapy with a partner.

According to an article in The Journal of Sex Research, people may engage in spanking therapy for a range of reasons, such as :

Power play: People may find it sexually arousing to play with power roles, such as becoming dominant or submissive. Others may also find it freeing to release responsibility and power in a controlled environment.
Spiritual experience: Some people report that SM practices alter their state of consciousness, providing them with a sense of connection, wholeness, and mind expansion.
Stress release: Individuals may find similar benefits from spanking therapy as those from mindful activities, such as meditation.
Escapism or sense of adventure: People may find spanking therapy a way to change their routine and elevate their experience from mundane or everyday matters.

The authors also note that some scientific theories suggest that SM practices, such as spanking, may help some people heal from trauma.

Reclaiming or relinquishing power through the act of spanking may help some people regain psychological control over past traumatic events.

However, a person may wish to consult a mental health professional before engaging in spanking therapy to help heal from trauma.

According to a 2020 article, BDSM, particularly SM practices, may offer therapeutic and soothing effects for some people.

The research also suggests that SM practices may also provide similar psychological benefits as meditation. These benefits may include increased concentration levels, reduced mental activity, and relaxation.

Anecdotal sources also report that spanking therapy may help:

relieve stress
provide pleasure
allow people to gain or relinquish power in a controlled situation
process or release trauma

There is little scientific research on spanking therapy and its effectiveness.

Research on BDSM practices has shown that those submissive in BDSM had biological changes indicating increased pleasure.

According to spanking therapy practitioners, they may use their hands to spank the lower, inner quadrant of the bottom.

A practitioner may also use a silicone or wooden paddle to create different sensations.

Clear communication is important, so the practitioner understands what people are hoping to get out of the session and the acts with which they can remain comfortable.

A spanking therapy session may involve the following:

a warmup session to get the body prepared
discussing any injuries or physical concerns
what the person hopes to get out of the session, and at what point it will end
agreeing on safe words or actions to stop the session at any time
whether people will keep their bottom clothed or not

During the spanking therapy, a practitioner may use a hand or paddle to offer different sensations.

After the session, the practitioner will check in with how people are feeling and allow time for them to process the emotions that may have come up.

Spanking therapy requires skill, and people without training may not be able to carry it out safely. However, if individuals wish to try spanking therapy with a partner, they may want to speak with a trained spanking therapist first for advice or training.

People could also learn from sex parties, classes at sex shops, online tutorials, or books.

Discussing consent

Before engaging in spanking therapy or any sexual activity, it is important that individuals discuss consent, boundaries, and expectations with their partner.

Consent is an ongoing process, and a person can change their mind and withdraw their consent at any time.

To ensure those involved are comfortable, people should:

talk about the activity
check in with each other often
ensure that everyone consents beforehand

The following are answers to common questions about spanking therapy.

Is spanking therapy always sexual?

Spanking therapy is not necessarily sexual, and some people may see it in a similar way to other forms of physical therapy. Others may see it as a more ritualistic experience.

According to a 2015 article, people may take part in BDSM activities such as spanking for nonsexual reasons.

Individuals may find it provides a new experience and a release from their everyday selves and responsibilities.

Why might people like being spanked?

People may enjoy spanking for several reasons, such as:

the release of power and responsibility
relaxation
stress relief
the release of trauma or negative emotions
altering their state of mind

A 2019 study looked at how Canadian university students thought about BDSM practices, with 60% of male participants and 31% of female participants having positive thoughts about whipping or spanking.

Where can a person learn more about spanking therapy?

If people want to learn more about spanking therapy, they may wish to:

read articles or books on the subject
talk with a sex worker trained in spanking therapy
connect with a local or online BDSM community

Spanking therapy uses spanking as a therapeutic method to release stress, explore power play, or let go of trauma.

People can consult a trained spanking therapist for a session or learn how to safely carry out spanking therapy themselves with a partner.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

April 11, 2022April 11, 2022

Straight Guys Ask Gay Guys Sex Questions

— Things Get Really Awkward

“How many butt holes have you seen?”

By Lane Moore

If you’ve ever wanted to watch a bunch of well-intentioned straight men ask gay men questions about sex, relationships, and coming out, this BuzzFeed video has you covered.

Watching straight men stare at their feet and fumble through asking questions like, “What if you’re both bottoms or both tops?” and, “Would you rather a just-a-little-bit-smaller-than-an-average dick or a way-too-big-to-do-anything-with dick?” (spoiler: it’s the too-big dick) is the most awkward thing I’ve watched in a while. Mostly because I’m now convinced that more straight men need to be friends with gay men stat so they’re not as painfully nervous and weird around them.

Plus, how cool would it be to see your straight guy friends and gay guy friends chilling and talking about “when the butt hole falls out”? Pretty cool.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

April 10, 2022

When Sex and Gender Collide

Studies of transgender kids are revealing fascinating insights about gender in the brain

By Kristina R. Olson

The TransYouth Project is an ongoing research study following more than 300 transgender and gender-nonconforming kids for 20 years to learn how their gender identity develops.
Results so far show that trans children have just as firm a sense of their own gender as nontrans kids at very early ages, both when asked directly and when tested. Furthermore, trans kids follow different trajectories than children who simply prefer toys and clothes associated with the opposite gender.
In addition to helping uncover the roots of gender, early results of these studies suggest that trans kids who are supported through early social transitions have strong mental health and self-esteem.

On arrival at a friend’s house for dinner one night in the fall of 2008, I joined the evening’s youngest guest, five-year-old Noah, who was playing on the couch. Little did I know he would single-handedly change the course of my career.

As a professor of developmental psychology, hanging out at the kids’ table is not unusual for me. I study how children think about themselves and the people around them, and some of my keenest insights have come from conversations like this one. After some small talk, I saw Noah glance around the room, appear to notice that no one was looking and retrieve something from inside his pocket. The reveal was slow but the result unmistakable: a beloved set of Polly Pocket dolls.

Over the next few years I got to know Noah well and learned more about his past (all names of children here are pseudonyms to protect their privacy). Noah’s parents had first noticed that he was different from his brother in the preschool years. He preferred female playmates and toys more commonly associated with girls, but his parents were unfazed. As he got older, Noah grew out his previously short hair and replaced his fairly gender-neutral wardrobe with one that prominently featured Twinkle Toes—shoes that lit up in pink as he stepped. Unlike many similar kids, Noah’s family, friends and school fully accepted him. They even encouraged him to meet other kids like himself, boys who flouted gender norms. Along with the other adults in Noah’s life, I couldn’t help but wonder: What did Noah’s behavior mean? Was he gay? Could he just be a kid who paid less attention to gender norms than most? At the time I had no idea that these questions would soon guide my scientific research.

Life for Noah started to change when he hit third and fourth grade. Noah recently explained how at this time, it became increasingly apparent that although people accepted his preferences and befriended him nonetheless, the way he saw himself—as a girl—was at odds with the way others saw him. When people used his name and male pronouns, he realized that they thought of him as a boy. Noah remembers that this awareness made him increasingly unhappy—a feeling that had been rare just a few years earlier. According to his mom, previously cheerful and high-spirited Noah became sad and melancholy. This is when his family, after consulting with local therapists, reached a big decision that had been in the making for years. Noah came out as transgender, and accordingly Noah’s friends, family and school community were asked to use a new name, Sarah, and to refer to Sarah as a girl.

Fourteen-year-old Sarah, photographed at home, knew from a young age that she was a girl rather than the boy she seemed to be at birth.

At this point I had been studying developmental psychology for a decade, mostly looking into how young children think about the social categories—race, gender, social class—around them. In my free time, I looked for research about kids such as Sarah. Not a single quantitative study had investigated young children who had “switched” gender. (“Sex” refers to the biological categories male and female, whereas “gender” references one’s identification with the social and cultural attributes and categories traditionally attached to each sex.) At that time nearly all adults who were transgender had transitioned much later in life, and almost no one had supported their early gender nonconformity (their desire to express preferences or behaviors that defy societal expectations for their sex). I wondered what we could learn about gender from such young pioneers as Sarah. What was the impact of transitioning on children’s mental health and identity? What would this decision mean for their future?

How We Learn Gender

When most people hear about trans children, they are surprised. How could a three-year-old have such a clear sense of gender identity? People frequently compare early-identifying trans children with those who go through phases of believing they are cats or dinosaurs or who have imaginary friends. They use this comparison as evidence that no young child knows his or her identity or what is real or not real. Yet decades of work on gender development suggests these are precisely the ages at which nearly all kids are coming to understand their own and others’ gender identities.

In Western cultures (where most of this research has been done), within the first year of life infants begin to distinguish people by sex, seeing individuals as either male or female. By about 18 months toddlers begin to understand gendered words such as “girl” or “man” and associate those words with sex-matched faces. By 24 months children know of sex stereotypes (such as associating women with lipstick), and before their third birthday nearly all kids label themselves and others with gender labels that match their sex.

During the preschool years, large numbers of young people go through what gender researchers May Ling Halim of California State University, Long Beach, and Diane Ruble of New York University call the “pink frilly dress stage”: most girls become obsessed with frilly princess dresses or similarly “gendered” clothing, whereas many boys prefer superhero gear or formal wear and actively avoid pink. Around this time children also often exhibit strong preferences for the company of same-sex friends, engage in activities stereotypically associated with their sex and show a developing understanding that their sex is an enduring quality—believing that girls develop into women and boys into men.

Through the elementary school years, most children continue to associate themselves strongly with their sex group when asked both directly and indirectly. One experiment involves asking young participants to sort photographs of children on a computer screen into “boys” and “girls” while categorizing a set of words as either “me” words (like “me” and “myself”) or “not me” words (like “they” and “them”). Researchers measure how quickly kids can make these categorizations when “boys” and “me” share one response key and “girls” and “not me” share another, compared with how quickly they can make the opposite pairings (“girls” with “me” and “boys” with “not me”). Past studies have found that an overwhelming majority of girls are faster at pairing “girls” with “me” and boys are faster at pairing “boys” with “me.” Although scientists debate which aspects of development are innate or culturally constructed, or a combination of both, and not every child goes through the same gender pathway, most—including those children raised in families who vary in their parenting style, political beliefs, and racial and ethnic group membership—show the pattern we have described. And most parents, teachers and other adults never give it a second thought—except when kids start asserting that their gender is not what others expect it to be.

Early Differences

When I began the TransYouth Project in 2013, I wanted to understand whether, when and why young people such as Sarah do and do not behave like their peers in terms of their early gender development. The TransYouth Project is an ongoing study of hundreds of transgender and gender-nonconforming children. We focus on kids in the U.S. and Canada who are three to 12 years old when they begin the study, and we plan to follow them for 20 years.

What has been most surprising to me about our findings so far are the myriad ways in which trans kids’ early gender development is remarkably similar to that of their peers. That is, children like Sarah look like other girls at every age but nothing like boys on measures of gender identity and preferences. Similarly, transgender boys (children who identify as boys but at birth were considered to be girls) perform like other boys on our tests. For example, one common observation in the preschool years is a strong hypergendered appearance—girls who love princess dresses; boys who avoid pink like it’s the plague. We find the same thing in our youngest transgender children. The degree of their preferences for stereotypical clothes, as well as their tendency to prefer to befriend those of their self-identified gender and the degree to which they see themselves as members of their gender group, is statistically indistinguishable from their peers’ responses on the same measures throughout the childhood years.

Charlie prefers clothes and toys associated with girls but identifies as a boy. He is pictured here at age 10.

Furthermore, when predicting their identities into the future, trans girls see themselves becoming women and trans boys feel that they will be men, just as other girls and boys do. Even when we present children with more indirect or implicit measures of gender identity—the measures that assess reaction times rather than children’s more explicit words and actions—we have found that trans girls see themselves as girls and trans boys see themselves as boys, suggesting that these identities are held at lower levels of conscious awareness. All this research combines to show that transgender identities in even very young children are surprisingly solid and consistent across measures, contradicting popular beliefs that such feelings are fleeting or that children are simply pretending to be the opposite gender.

The Roots of Gender

But where does the feeling of gender come from in the first place? The science is still far from conclusive. Because of how early this sense of identity can emerge, researchers have been looking for genetic and neuroanatomical signs in transgender people. One approach scientists often use in studying genetics is to look at twins. A major difference between identical and fraternal twins is that the former share more of their genetic material than the latter. If researchers find more agreement in transgender identity among identical twins than in fraternal twins, they infer that genetics play some role. And in fact, this is exactly what early studies are finding (although identical twins may also share more aspects of their socialization and environment). For example, in one 2012 review of the literature, Gunter Heylens of Ghent University in Belgium and his colleagues looked at 44 sets of same-sex twins in which at least one twin identified as transgender. They found that in nine of the 23 identical twin pairs, both siblings were transgender, whereas in no case among the 21 same-sex fraternal twin pairs were both twins transgender, suggesting transgender identity has some genetic underpinning. Despite these results, however, which particular genetic variations are involved is an open question.

Similarly, although some neuroscience studies have shown that brain structures of trans people resemble those of individuals with the same gender identity, rather than people with the same sex at birth, these findings have often involved small samples and have not yet been replicated. Further complicating interpretation of neuroscience results is the fact that brains change in response to experience, so even when differences appear, scientists do not know whether structural or functional brain differences cause the experience of a particular gender identity or reflect the experience of gender identity. Muddying the already murky waters, neuroscientists continue to debate whether even among people who are not transgender, there are reliable sex (or gender) differences in brains [see “Is There a ‘Female’ Brain?”]. Thus, whereas the topic is an active line of work in many research laboratories around the world, definitive conclusions about genetic and neural correlates of gender identity remain elusive.

Perhaps the most critical questions about transgender children, however, are about their well-being. Transgender adults and teens who did not go through the early social transition of kids such as Sarah and who were often rejected by peers and even their own families tend to have highly elevated rates of anxiety and depression. Estimates suggest that more than 40 percent of these largely unsupported trans teens and adults will attempt suicide. Many families like Sarah’s report that these heartbreaking statistics are why they supported their children’s early transitions.

My colleagues and I are finding—both in reports from parents and from kids themselves—that trans youth who make the social transition at a young age are doing remarkably well. They have depression rates comparable to their peers and only slightly elevated rates of anxiety. They also show very strong self-esteem. Whether these indicators of mental health stay strong as our cohort of trans children moves into the teen years remains to be seen, and certainly our all-volunteer sample is unlikely to be fully representative of all trans children alive today. Yet paired with work suggesting that interventions in adolescence (that involve not only social transitions but also hormonal therapy) are associated with improved mental health, these findings suggest that the high rates of depression, anxiety and suicide seen in earlier studies are not inevitable. Instead, as the world becomes more educated about transgender people, as rejection and bullying decrease, and as these youth receive support and intervention at earlier ages, we are optimistic that mental health risks will decrease.

“Pink Boys” and Tomboys

The first question I typically get when talking about transgender kids is something like, “Are you saying tomboys are actually transgender?” or “I used to be a boy who loved princess dresses. Are you suggesting I was transgender?” Of course, not all children who defy sex stereotypes as Sarah did are transgender. In fact, I would venture to say that most of them are not.

Sarah’s decision to transition genders was made in elementary school. Sarah is shown with her parents here.

One such kid is Charlie. On the surface Charlie seemed a lot like Sarah early in life. Both were assumed to be boys at birth, and both showed signs by the preschool years that they were different. As with Sarah, Charlie loved all things feminine. His mom recalls that by age two, Charlie loved pink sparkly clothing and would put a towel over his head pretending it was hair. Much like Sarah’s family, Charlie’s family introduced him to other boys who loved feminine stuff. And over the years some of these children, like Sarah, socially transitioned. But Charlie did not. I recently asked Charlie about his decision not to transition. He explained that his family (sometimes with the help of a therapist) spent a lot of time talking about social transitions and made it clear that they were onboard if that was what he wanted. Charlie said he considered this possibility in the back of his mind for several years but ultimately decided that although he unabashedly liked stereotypically “girl” things (in fact the very day I interviewed him, Charlie was wearing pink shorts, a purple T-shirt and a pink scarf to school) and even if he occasionally uses a girl’s name at camp, at the end of the day Charlie feels that he is a boy. As his mom explained, Charlie said that what he really wanted was for the world to accept him as he is—to let him wear what he wanted to wear and do what he wanted to do. But he did not truly feel he was a girl.

My work with children such as Charlie is ongoing, but preliminary data from others suggest that distinctive developmental trajectories may differentiate Sarah and Charlie. For instance, the degree to which a child gravitates to toys and clothes associated with the opposite gender may distinguish kids who ultimately identify as transgender from those who do not—on average, children like Sarah show even more gender nonconformity than children like Charlie. Other studies have suggested that the way kids talk about their gender identity—feeling you are a girl versus feeling that you wish the world was okay with your being a feminine boy (what Charlie’s mom calls a “pink boy”)—predicts the different paths of children like Sarah versus Charlie.

Researchers are also increasingly recognizing and studying people with nonbinary identities. Put simply, these are individuals who do not feel as if they are boys or girls, men or women, nor do they feel fully masculine or feminine. Instead many nonbinary people fall somewhere in the middle of a spectrum from masculine to feminine. To date, our research team has worked with several children who see themselves this way, but this group is not yet large enough from which to draw any strong conclusions.

What is undoubtedly true is that scientists have much to learn about children such as Sarah and Charlie. What does it mean to have a sense of yourself as a boy or a girl or something else? What makes a child more or less likely to identify that way? And how can we help all kids to be comfortable with themselves? Finding answers is especially difficult because gender is defined by culture, which constantly changes. In 1948, for instance, only 32 percent of adults believed women should wear slacks in public. Certainly feminine boys and masculine girls are not new; they are widely recognized in many indigenous cultures.

Today 14-year-old Sarah and 13-year-old Charlie are self-confident, smart and hardworking teens. Sarah plays piano, varsity field hockey and recently took up track. Charlie plays in a band and performs in theater. Both kids are popular and spend more of their time worrying about doing well in school and the complexities of adolescent social networks than about their gender. Both look to the future, excited about the possibilities that await them in college and beyond. Sarah says she wants to raise children with her future husband and aspires to make the world better for trans young people like herself. Charlie has dreams of moving to New York City to perform on Broadway. Both teens hope one day kids like them will be accepted for who they are regardless of the gender labels they use. In that hope, surely all of us can agree.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

April 9, 2022

If You’re Only Having One Sex Talk, You’re Doing It Wrong

Talking about sex is going to be awkward, but it doesn’t have to be weird.

By Christian Dashiell

If having the sex talk with your kid feels overwhelming, chances are that the idea of having multiple sex talks will induce a full-on panic. But one of the biggest mistakes parents can make when it comes to talking to kids about sex is thinking that after one conversation, they’re prepared to face the world. Kids are constantly becoming more aware of sex and sexuality, so the type of guidance they need will change accordingly. And because parents have been down that road already, they have a lot of wisdom to offer their kids from their own experiences.

But how can parents take what they’ve learned, enjoyed, and regretted about sex and share that wisdom in a way that their kids will eventually find helpful — without it being totally awkward? “I think there are three kinds of parents. There are the parents who totally have ostrich syndrome, which means they bury their heads in the sand. Then there are the oversharing parents, the parents who think that their kids are their best friends,” says Lea Lis, M.D., a psychiatrist and author of No Shame: Real Talk With Your Kids About Sex, Self-Confidence, and Healthy Relationships. Don’t be either of those parents.

“Then there’s the best kind of parent which is the authoritative parent, who is able to be open and honest and explain things clearly, and is also not afraid to set appropriate boundaries.” That’s the sweet spot you want to hit. Here’s how to do it.

Think About Your Own Sex Life

Before parents share sexual wisdom with their kids, they must first process their sexual history. That can be a scary prospect for many people who have regretted some of their sexual decisions in the past. But past experiences — even past experiences we try to ignore — can inform how parents approach talking about sex with their kids.

“It doesn’t matter if you’ve made mistakes,” Lis says. “It’s about how you manage your mistakes and how you deal with them. Because it’s great for your kids to see you make mistakes and then learn to overcome them.” Did you have sex before you were ready and regret it? Have unprotected sex and pick up an STI? Teenagers can learn from your regrets, but only if you share them.

Although parents need to process their sexual stories, it’s not necessary to recount that story in its entirety to their kids. There will be details they aren’t mature enough to take in or that would violate the confidence of your past sexual partners.

In fact, sometimes parents can leave out sex altogether and still get the message across to young kids. Lis gives the example of a parent whose children know about a divorce or previous extramarital affair. “You have to learn how to speak to the pearls of what you learned from past experiences,” she says. “For example, you might say, ‘monogamy is hard because marriage is hard at times.’ But you can also share that if the focus in relationships is on integrity, honesty, and owning your mistakes, then it’s still possible to have a happy and intimate relationship even if things don’t go well.”

Pass Down Wisdom Instead of Trauma

Negative sexual experiences aren’t always the result of bad decision-making. The anti-sexual violence organization RAAIN estimates that an average of more than 450,000 people each year are victims of sexual violence. And people who have been victimized shouldn’t be made to feel as though they were at fault for someone else’s behavior. But it is essential to acknowledge that sexual violence can have long-term effects on victims, which may affect how they talk about sex with their kids.

Of course, sexual trauma isn’t limited to assault. People can be traumatized by the words and attitudes of loved ones who reject specific sexual orientations, who pass down unhealthy sexual paradigms, or who are still struggling with their own unresolved sexual trauma.

Lis encourages parents to reflect on what they know about their family’s sexual history, as well as how they communicated about sexuality and sexual experiences. That process may raise awareness of generational sexual trauma passed down or that parents are at risk of passing to their own children.

“Look at how your family expresses affection and sexuality,” she says. “What did they tell you about sex, and what do you wish they had told you? What are your early memories of awakening sexuality? What about your experience with puberty? Was it a positive sexual experience, and what wasn’t positive? Hopefully, this deepens self-understanding and helps you start to understand what you might want to reframe as you pass wisdom down to your kids.”

For example, you may have been teased by family members as your body changed and developed, which was likely to make you feel self-conscious and as though family members weren’t safe people to talk to when it comes to sex. Reflecting on that experience may help you better understand any shame triggers you might have when you think about talking to your own kids about sex. Consider how you wish your family would have handled those situations so that you can facilitate more open lines of communication with your kids.

Have More Than One Sex Talk

There will be times when talking about sex as a family feels awkward, but it doesn’t have to be weird. Starting the conversation young with age-appropriate books sets the expectation that conversations about sex are welcome. Parents with kids in grade school will want to check out Sex Is a Funny Word by Corey Silverberg, and Heather Corrina’s S.E.X. is a book that is perfect for providing teenagers reliable answers so that they don’t have to make the Google gamble when questions arise that they don’t feel comfortable asking.

Lis also recommends parents use everyday occurrences as opportunities to listen to kids about what they’re thinking and processing to make conversations about sex more dialogue than lecture.

“When your kids start watching different kinds and movies that address issues surrounding sex and relationships, then talk about them. Start asking, ‘What did you think of that?’ You can even use social media by scrolling through accounts your kids are following and asking their opinions on what posts are saying about sexuality and relationships,” she says.

As kids grow older, those conversations will help them own their sexual history and experiences. They’ll still have to navigate messy breakups, hurt feelings, and overall confusion. But if they start building healthy sexual paradigms early, hopefully they will have a framework to ask the right questions of safe and knowledgeable people as they grow up — even if those people aren’t always their parents.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

April 8, 2022April 8, 2022

Men Have Low Sexual Desire, Too

By Gigi Engle

There is a common belief that cisgender female people enjoy sex less than men. Our social scripts dictate that a low desire for sex is entirely a cis-female problem. Cisgender male people, on the other hand, are expected to be insatiable sex machines, always down to get it on.

Here’s the tea, my curious folx: It’s not just a female problem.

We believe it’s important to note that our social conventions don’t take gender-fluid, non-binary, or transgender people into account because these conventions are driven by backward, heteronormative ideas. We’re not, in any way, trying to leave people out. Low desire can happen in literally anyone with any body parts.

This is an everyone-problem. Men and people with penises suffer from this bullshit script, too. If you’re expected to be this sex-crazed monster, you’re bound to feel messed up about it. “It can lead [cisgender men] to [feel] incredible shame, to questioning their masculinity and whether they are enough for their partner/s,” Lucy Rowett, a certified sex coach and clinical sexologist, tells TheBody.

Assigned male at birth (AMAB) people aren’t encouraged to be open about this because it isn’t acceptable for a cis-male person to have low desire.

Let’s separate the facts from the myths because we all deserve the amazing, vibrant sex lives we want. There’s no shame in the game.

Understanding the Complexity of Desire

Understanding low desire means understanding how desire actually works. Desire is born out of complex and interconnected bio-psycho-social factors. This refers to the subjective and universal experiences each person faces. They are different for everyone because everyone has different experiences, relationships, and biological factors that influence their lives.

Let’s strip down bio-psycho-social to its bones: Our desire, or lack thereof, is influenced by our biology: health, age, sexual anatomy, abilities, etc; our psychology (psycho): individual psychology, beliefs, values, and emotions; and social factors: cultural context, social context, and our relationships with other people.

Desire is rarely something that just “happens.” It is something that develops out of a complex, psychologically driven context. “Often your libido can be like the ‘canary in the coal mine’ of what is happening in your overall health and well-being and could be a sign that you are under severe stress or burnout,” Rowett says. “It can also happen for emotional reasons, like problems in the relationship, feeling frustrated and turned off by their partner, or past trauma that has not been resolved.” (For more information on how desire can be impacted by our minds, check out these articles here and here).

The idea that “male sexuality is seen as biologically driven, autonomous, spontaneous, [that] those with penises don’t have to do anything to get a hard-on” really does a massive disservice to AMAB people, Jordan Dixon, a clinical sex and relationships psychotherapist, tells TheBody. We need to do away with these harmful myths and be willing to openly embrace our vulnerabilities to find common ground.

Misinformation About Low Libido Can Be Harmful

The falsities around AMAB desire are seriously detrimental to everyone. We talk a lot about how society’s messaging messes with cisgender women, but this leaves cis-men confused and in the dark.

What’s more, cis-men are encouraged to hide their emotions and never talk about their struggles—which only further compounds this issue. If you can’t talk about how you’re being impacted by low desire because you’re not supposed to have it and not supposed to talk about it or seek help, you’re pretty screwed (and not in a good way).

Trying to simplify AMAB desire into the tiny box that sees male desire as “always on, raw, natural, and including rock-hard penises” is detrimental to everyone. It is “disempowering [to cisgender women] and pressur[es] men to act as unemotional machines, focused purely on their ‘performance,’” rather than the pleasure, Dixon tells us.

The shame cycle that this ignites will only add further stress to someone who experiences low desire. This will, in turn, lead to further exacerbating their low desire. If you don’t break out of this toxic cycle, you won’t be able to change it.

How to Handle Low Desire in a World That Loves Toxic Masculinity

“If you are a male and struggling with low desire, remember that you are not the only one, and it is far more common than you think,” Rowett says. Cisgender men feel alone, broken, and isolated because there are essentially zero cultural representations of low male desire in our toxic masculine world.

It’s not about solving low desire by focusing on how to “fix the penis.” It’s about understanding the whole human person in front of us, Dixon explains. “Difficult feelings or sensations may have valuable messages,” she says. We need to invite AMAB people to explore “the messages their penises are giving them.” Some realize that, in contrast to their own desire to be accommodating, their penises are angry at being expected to perform and want prior attention. By voicing their own needs and wants, AMAB people have an opportunity to heal their wounds and, in doing so, cultivate more desire.

Through clinically approved exercises such as self-focus, meditation, and mindfulness, clients can explore past sexual shame, damaging cultural messages, and personal roadblocks to their libido. If low libido negatively impacts your life, seeing a qualified sexologist, sex coach, or sex therapist can be hugely impactful. These are professionals whose job is to work with sexual blockages and help you have the sex life you want.

At the end of the day, the only way we can rid ourselves of the harmful lies that shackle us is through education and communication. We need to be willing to be radically vulnerable to be free from toxic masculine double standards. Talking about it, joining together, and finding our community can truly set us free.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

April 7, 2022April 7, 2022

What to do when body image is affecting your sex life

Actionable steps to help you get in the mood.

By Rachel Thompson

Rifling through a chest of drawers, I found an old photograph that I’d hidden in the hope I’d never again have to set eyes on it. It was taken 15 years ago on a beach in France, and I was wearing a bikini.

Back then, the photos had arrived on my doormat after I’d sent off the film to be developed. As I shuffled through them, the image of my semi-naked self immediately set off a spiral of self-loathing. I couldn’t bear to look at my body. Even with the photo stowed out of sight, those negative thoughts about my body followed me around like a shadow for another decade and a half.

These thoughts convinced me I did not deserve to be loved or even looked at. With those feelings came a distinct lack of interest in showing my body to another human — someone who could possibly see me in a state of undress and confirm everything negative emotion I’d ever felt about myself.

My body image is my sex life’s worst enemy. It is the voice in my head telling me that I need to lose weight before I go on dates. It is the seed of doubt when I notice someone looking at me in a bar. It is the thought that whirrs in my mind when I’m in bed with someone, drowning out any thoughts of pleasure.

During a recent sexual dry spell — brought on by an episode of extremely low self-esteem — I realised the one thing standing in the way of a fun and fulfilling sex life was my own brain. I had a choice: Did I want to live my life hiding out of sight because glossy magazines, billboards, and my unkind classmates in high school made me feel unloveable? Then came the question: How do I go about dismantling the destructive feelings I’ve had about myself for most my life?

Research suggests that women with poor body image derive less satisfaction from sex due to distracting thoughts about their bodies. Furthermore, women with body image issues are less likely to initiate sex. Short of spending your whole life having unsatisfying sex and never initiating sex, there are tangible, actionable things you can do to try to have better sex more often. According to sex educators, counsellors, fat acceptance activists, and authors, here are some techniques that might help…

Try positive affirmations during sex

For much of my adult life, there have been certain sexual positions I was reluctant to try because I was worried how my body might look from a certain angle. Lisa Williams and Anniki Sommerville from the Hotbed Collective wrote about this very issue in their aptly titled book More Orgasms Please: Why Female Pleasure Matters. “If body confidence is an issue for you, we would like you to try this exercise,” they wrote. “When you are next having sex, for every negative thought you have about your looks, we’d like you to come up with a positive affirmation instead.”

“This could be a nice thing about your appearance (if you really struggle with this, ask a friend to help you: we can be so much nicer to each other than we are to ourselves), or something about how the sex makes your body feel rather than what you look like,” they continued.

Williams and Sommerville recommend replacing a negative thought like “my bum is too big” with a positive affirmation like “I love it when I’m kissed along the knicker line.” They suggest switching “I need to lose weight” with “I love how my hips and waist look when I lie on my side.” “My scars are ugly” can be countered with “this person is in bed with me because of who I am.”

Identify where your body image issues come from

If you think long and hard about where that very first twinge of self-loathing came from, it’s likely those thoughts didn’t just magically appear out of nowhere. Stephanie Healey — psychotherapist and sex educator — told Mashable to “start by unpicking the kind of body image/self esteem issues that people are having and figure out when that started and whose voice that is (the inner critic, is that a parent or a teacher or an ex partner etc).”

In her book Happy Fat, comedian and fat activist Sofie Hagen wrote that “we received negative messages about bodies on a — dare I say — hourly basis.” “From the adverts on television, public transport, social media, all telling women to buy a certain product to become ‘better,’ to have smoother skin, shinier hair, a smaller waistline, redder lips, […],” she wrote.

On Elizabeth Day’s How To Fail podcast, author Marian Keyes spoke about how sexism and capitalism intersect to “teach women to hate themselves.” “When I am overweight, which is a lot of the time, I feel ashamed asking for what I want,” she said. “I have been taught that if I’m not skinny then I am greedy, I am out of control, that I am to be mocked, that I’m a figure of fun. This is all in my head, but I didn’t get those messages from no place,” she continued. “I have learnt to despise myself,” Keyes added.

Remind yourself that all bodies are hot

Flo Perry, author of How To Have Feminist Sex, told Mashable that mainstream media presents us with “such a narrow definition of what is an ‘attractive’ body.” “It can be useful to remember that in reality people find all kinds of bodies hot,” Perry added.

“Click off the front page of Pornhub even and you’re bound to find videos amateurs have uploaded with bodies just like yours with millions of views. There are people all around the country right now jacking off to your typical mum-bod.”

Follow people who look like you

Is your Instagram feed full of photos that don’t look like you? Does it make you feel shit every time you scroll? Consider curating your social feeds with people who look like you and who are actively embracing their bodies. Perry suggests following “people on social media that look like you that are further along their body positivity journey.””Whatever you look like there will be someone who looks like you on instagram posting beautifully shot hot pictures of themselves,” she said. “If you fill your feed with these pictures you’re bound to feel more sexy.”

Hagen recommended following the Adipositivity Project, which is a collection of beautiful nude portraits of fat people that aims to change “commonly accepted notions of a narrow and specific beauty ideal.”

If you watch porn, think about the types of bodies you’re seeing on a regular basis. Healey said “mainstream free access porn content has a certain look and body type, and I’d encourage other images such as MakeLoveNotPorn to see a wider range of bodies being sexual.”

Cull social media accounts that make you feel bad

In curating your feed with glorious, gorgeous bodies that look just like yours, try to pinpoint which accounts are making you feel bad about yourself and unfollow all of them. Do not feel bad. If it’s a friend who posts constant #thinspo posts or weight loss before-and-after pics, put your own wellbeing first: Hit mute, unfollow, block.

Hugo Minchin — counsellor and co-founder of Talk to the Rainbow, the centre for LGBTQ+ therapy in Bristol — told Mashable social media is “full of idealised portraits of picture-perfect human beings.” “Comparing oneself to a fitness model, a porn star, or an influencer is unrealistic. We are all unique and ultimately self-esteem starts with yourself,” Minchin added.

Relationship expert at eharmony Rachael Lloyd recommended reminding yourself that social media isn’t real. “It’s important to take a step back and realise your friend’s social media posts are the airbrushed life she wants you to see – rather than the full picture,” said Lloyd. “Always bear in mind that this filtered lifestyle isn’t an achievable goal and aiming for those dizzying, like-induced highs is unrealistic.”

Don’t posture and perform during sex

Watching porn or any on-screen depictions of sex can leave us with deep-set notions about what sex should look like and specifically how our bodies should look when we’re in the throes of passion. Williams and Sommerville hit the nail on the head in More Orgasms Please: “[S]creen sex will make you believe that you have to fling yourself around the room naked, or dress up as Catwoman. While both these things are great if you have the whim, great sex can still happen under a duvet in the dark.”

If it feels difficult to unlearn the sex poses that mainstream pop culture and porn have ingrained in our minds, start out with self-sex (aka masturbation). Not every position you use to masturbate needs to be like the ones you see in porn.

Have a go at mindful sex

Thoughts about your body can be extremely distracting during sex.

Sex expert Kate Moyle at sex toy company LELO advocates trying mindful sex or ‘mindsex’ techniques. This can involve “taking your attention back to the pleasurable physical sensations that you are experiencing.”

“You only have a certain amount of attention available at any one time, so if you are anxious this will interrupt your physical experience,” Moyle added.

Williams and Sommerville gave some practical tips for this: “Focus on the orgasm and not on what you look like. Think about your breathing, squeeze and release your pelvic floor, tweak your own nipples, concentrate on each sensation, notice how your partner’s skin feels, think about every move the two of you are making and how they feel,” they wrote.

Share a sexual fantasy

Almaz Ohene — sexual health education facilitator at Sexplain — advised writing “a sexy story” with your sexual partner. Tapping into your creativity and creating a story about the two of you “can be a way of sharing some steamy moments together without having to get physical,” said Ohene.

“Think about the sexy experiences you’ve had together and take things from there. In a few sentences, describe the characters and whose perspective we’re hearing it from,” Ohene said. “Describe where the story will take place and any plot-driving details. You can take the story in whatever direction you like – which means it’s also a low risk way of revealing some of your desires,” she said. “You just might find yourselves trying out some of thing things on the page, once you’re back in the swing of physical sex acts again.”

One thing I wish I’d known when I first hid that photo of myself: You do not need to lose weight in order to be desirable. We are all worthy of sex, pleasure, and attention.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

April 6, 2022April 6, 2022

What is Sexual Aftercare?

By Natasha Weiss

We talk a lot about foreplay and what happens during sex, but what we don’t talk about enough is what happens after.

Aftercare is a broad term for how you and your partner support each other and check-in after you’ve had sex.

Sex can ramp us up and leave us with all sorts of emotions. We may feel energized, or drained – or both. Some people feel exposed and vulnerable, or like their nervous system is ramped up.

This practice gives you and your partner a chance to regulate, and deepen your relationship.

Sexual aftercare should be thought of as part of your sexual experience, much like foreplay, versus a separate thing after, that may feel like a chore. It’s essential for a healthy dynamic.

The goal of aftercare is for all parties involved to feel safe and seen, while leaving space to discuss anything that came up during sex.

A Gift from Kink

What is sexual aftercare? The term aftercare comes from the kink community.

Depending on what your flavor of kink is, some minor injuries can occur, which need to be attended to.

The other reason people in the kink world advocate for aftercare is to help support people in any hormonal drops that can occur after such an intimate or intense experience. When adrenaline, cortisol, or oxytocin levels surge, they will also drop. Some people may experience anxiety, shame, or mixed emotions afterward.

Aftercare helps to ease the hormonal crash and helps people to integrate their experiences.

Aftercare for Everyone

Kink can encompass so many things, and even if you don’t incorporate it into your sex life, aftercare is just as important for you.

Aftercare tends to your physical, emotional, and mental needs. Some people may want to add spiritual needs to that list.

While these tips aren’t necessarily exclusive to physical or mental and emotional, here’s a breakdown of some helpful tools to incorporate into your aftercare routine.

Physical Aftercare

First, you’ll most likely want to tend to the physical.

This means rehydrating, and peeing of course to prevent a UTI. For people with vaginas, especially if you are prone to yeast infections, you may want to take whatever measures are needed to avoid irritation. Cleaning up yourself, and any toys used helps to lessen your risk of infection.

What other ways can you nourish your bodies?

You can try a nice calming tea, having a snack, or ordering a hearty meal. One of my favorites is to place an order for delivery and take a steamy shower together while we wait for our feast.

Some people may need space and time apart, while others will want to continue their physical connection by massaging each other, cuddling, and kissing. Both are beautiful, but it’s important to try to manage both partner’s needs. Note that taking space does not mean someone who intentionally avoids connection by rushing out the door, and reaching for a distraction in order to avoid aftercare.

If you know there’s something you or your partner will need afterward, like say chocolate, then try to plan ahead of time.

Mental and Emotional

Physical aftercare feeds into mental and emotional, but they are all equally important.

Some partners benefit from talking about their experience and giving each other positive reinforcement. This can even be a form of sexy pillow talk, where you boost each other up for the fine work you just did.

Hanging out and being mellow is also aftercare! Putting on an uplifting movie, dancing around to romantic tunes, and just basking in each other’s company are all ways to support each other after having sex.

Some people assume that sexual aftercare starts after one or both parties orgasm. Orgasms do not have to be the focus of your sexual encounters, and they are not necessary before engaging in aftercare.

Understanding the importance of aftercare makes sex less goal-oriented, and more about honoring everyone’s needs, and the dynamic of the relationship.

To Each Their Own

You may have a set aftercare routine with your partner that works for you, that’s awesome. Some people want more fluidity and gauge their needs in the moment.

Sexual aftercare is especially important for people who have sexual trauma PTSD – who experienced sexual trauma or abuse in the past. Sex after trauma can be triggering, and survivors may tend to withdraw or dissociate during or after sex. Aftercare gives them sexual trauma therapy which allows them to ground down and be held in a safe, supportive space.

Aftercare can look different for everyone, there’s no one right way to do it. What’s most important is that everyone’s needs are being met, especially if someone is feeling especially vulnerable or exposed.

Solo people or long-distance partners can also benefit from aftercare. Try it yourself next time you have a solo sex session!

Aftercare is important for so many different reasons, but it’s vital to creating a holistic sexual experience, and for deepening intimacy. You and your partner, or partners, deserve to be showered with kindness, affection, and understanding after a sexual experience. Aftercare makes space for all that and more.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

April 5, 2022April 4, 2022

Senior sex

— Tips for older men

What you can do to maintain a healthy and enjoyable sex life as you grow older.

By Mayo Clinic Staff

As you age, sex isn’t the same as it was in your 20s — but it can still be satisfying. Contrary to common myths, sex isn’t just for the young. Many seniors continue to enjoy their sexuality into their 80s and beyond.

A healthy sex life not only is fulfilling, but also is good for other aspects of your life, including your physical health and self-esteem.

Senior sex: What changes as men get older?

As men age, testosterone levels decline and changes in sexual function are common. These physiological changes can include:

A need for more stimulation to achieve and maintain erection and orgasm
Shorter orgasms
Less forceful ejaculation and less semen ejaculated
Longer time needed to achieve another erection after ejaculation

You may feel some anxiety about these changes, but remember they don’t have to end your enjoyment of sex. Adapting to your changing body can help you maintain a healthy and satisfying sex life. For example, you may need to adjust your sexual routine to include more stimulation to become aroused.

Senior sex and health problems

Your health can have a big impact on your sex life and sexual performance. Poor health or chronic health conditions, such as heart disease or arthritis, make sex and intimacy more challenging.

Certain surgeries and many medications, such as blood pressure medications, antihistamines, antidepressants and acid-blocking drugs, can affect sexual function.

But don’t give up. You and your partner can experiment with ways to adapt to your limitations.

For example, if you’re worried about having sex after a heart attack, talk with your doctor about your concerns. If arthritis pain is a problem, try different sexual positions or try using heat to alleviate joint pain before or after sexual activity.

Stay positive and focus on ways of being sexual and intimate that work for you and your partner.

Senior sex and emotional issues

At any age, emotional issues can affect your sexuality. Many older couples report greater satisfaction with their sex life because they have fewer distractions, more time and privacy, and no worries about pregnancy.

On the other hand, some older adults feel stressed by health problems, financial concerns and other lifestyle changes. Depression can decrease your desire for and interest in sex. If you feel you might be depressed, talk to your doctor or a counselor.

Senior sex tips

Sex may not be the same for you or your partner as it was when you were younger. But sex and intimacy can continue to be a rewarding part of your life. Here are some tips for maintaining a healthy and enjoyable sex life:

Talk with your partner. Even if it’s difficult to talk about sex, openly sharing your needs, desires and concerns can help you both enjoy sex and intimacy more.
Visit your doctor. Your doctor can help you manage chronic conditions and medications that affect your sex life. If you have trouble maintaining an erection, ask your doctor about treatments.
See a sex therapist. A therapist may be able to help you and your partner with specific concerns. Ask your doctor for a referral.
Expand your definition of sex. Intercourse is only one way to have a fulfilling sex life. Touching, kissing and other intimate contact can be rewarding for you and your partner.
As you age, it’s normal for you and your partner to have different sexual abilities and needs. Be open to finding new ways to enjoy sexual contact and intimacy.
Adapt your routine. Simple changes can improve your sex life. Change the time of day you have sex to a time when you have the most energy. Try the morning — when you’re refreshed from a good night’s sleep — rather than at the end of a long day.
Because it might take longer for you or your partner to become aroused, take more time to set the stage for romance. Try a new sexual position or explore other ways of connecting romantically and sexually.
Don’t give up on romance. If you’ve lost your partner, it can be difficult to imagine starting another relationship — but socializing is well worth the effort for many single seniors. No one outgrows the need for emotional closeness and intimacy.
If you start an intimate relationship with a new partner, use a condom. Many older adults are unaware that they are still at risk of sexually transmitted infections, such as herpes and gonorrhea.

One final piece of advice for maintaining a healthy sex life: Take care of yourself and stay as healthy as you can:

Eat a healthy diet.
Exercise regularly.
Don’t drink too much alcohol.
Don’t smoke.

See your doctor regularly, especially if you have chronic health conditions or take prescription medications.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

April 4, 2022April 4, 2022

How to define the rules of an open relationship

Set some ground rules about sex, what you can talk about, and what you want your families to know

By Natalie Morris

Open relationships are all about freedom – but that doesn’t mean you don’t also have to set some ground rules.

Entering into an open relationship, or opening up an existing relationship, is not a decision that should be made lightly. It takes some serious consideration, and part of that should probably include establishing some ground rules.

This isn’t about stifling anyone’s freedom, or closing off possibilities, but instead it’s about maintaining trust and respect with your partner as you both explore the option of entering into physical and emotional interactions with other people.

‘Going into an open relationship and a sudden change in relationship dynamic can lead to discrepancies when rules and boundaries haven’t been made clear,’ Ness Cooper, a clinical sexologist who works as a sex and relationship coach, tells Metro.co.uk.

‘It can be easy to overstep without realising, which in turn can jeopardise the safety of the relationship.’

Jealousy, insecurity and a feeling of lack of control can all rear their ugly heads when you step away from monogamy and try something different. But it doesn’t have to be difficult, toxic or doomed to fail.

Ness says that, as with so many things in relationships, good communication is key.

‘Setting time aside to have a conversation around setting relationships ground rules is important,’ says Ness. ‘Avoiding discussions like these after conflicts is key, as when in a heightened emotional state it can become easy to set unrealistic or unfair rules and boundaries.’

Ness says it’s also crucially important to remember to check-in with each other regularly, because even open relationship dynamics can change based on your experiences.

‘Sometimes, certain rules will need altering to make sure you both continue to feel safe within your primary relationship,’ says Ness.

‘Discuss not just the emotional concerns that open relationships can have, but also the physical.’

Why are rules and boundaries important in an open relationship?

While complete freedom may be appealing, without any kind of principles to guide you, it could descend into chaos quite quickly.

Ness agrees that rules are important because they give you the structure to explore things safely.

‘As soon as safety leaves a relationship dynamic it can be very difficult to grow further within that relationship due to the possibility of negative emotions arising and conflicts,’ she says.

‘Rules can help navigate emotions such as jealously and envy in a healthy way.

‘Jealously and envy can happen even when rules have been set within an open relationship, and it’s how couples navigate these in a healthy way that makes a big difference to their relationship.’

What ground rules should you set?

Every couple will have their own way of approaching this, and their own limits and boundaries about what is and isn’t acceptable in their relationship.

So, you need to find what works for you. But don’t be afraid to get into the details.

‘Rules around the type of sex you can and cannot have with people outside of your main relationship can be very important, and how you both can stay safe when it comes to using barriers and contraception,’ says Ness.

‘Physical safety of meeting-up with others is important too and you may decide that you shouldn’t meet up with others in certain locations to avoid conflicts from peers.’

Ness also suggests looking on open relationship dating apps to see what other couples have put as basic ground rules on their profiles.

‘Talk about these with your partner and whether or not they fit with your relationships goals, wants, and needs,’ says Ness.

‘Listen to your partner and how they interpret and express rules. This is important as it can be easy to see how you interpret rules, rather than listen to your partner’s interpretations.

‘We all have different outlooks on rules and boundaries. Listening to your partners interpretations will not only help you understand how to follow rules and boundaries you both make; it will also show that you are present within your main relationship and there for each other.’

Additionally, Ness says you should think about creating rules around what you’re both allowed to talk about.

‘Some open relationships don’t want to hear the details of dates that happen with others, and other open relationships will want to talk about everything,’ Ness says. ‘It can vary greatly, and learning what both you and your partner are comfortable with discussing is important.

‘Rules on how to deal with what you share with peers and family members are important too. Everyone has different relationships with their friends and family and some may want to keep their open relationship status private.’

What if you have different ideas about what the rules should be?

It’s completely normal to have different understandings of rules and boundaries, as a result, Ness says discussion about these differences is very important for couples.

‘The end result of setting rules isn’t always about having the same understanding of them completely, it’s more about maintaining and sharing the end goal and beliefs that the rules are supporting,’ Ness explains.

‘If your relationship’s internal goals and beliefs are extremely mismatched, then it could be a sign that you both want completely different styles of open relationship dynamics, which can lead to conflict.’

So, working out how you both can bring your end goals into alignment when it comes to opening up a relationship can really help – this may involve a lot of talking it out.

‘Discussing and sharing why some differences may be there, can help you both get to know each other on a deeper level and will help you form any compromises needed when setting rules for an open relationship,’ says Ness.

‘If you’re unable to accept your partner’s perspective on open relationships then no amount of rules will help to change that.

‘If you still want to workout how to add an open relationship into your relationship dynamic then seeking advice from a sex and relationship coach or therapist can help.’

How to make sure those rules are followed by both parties

Ness says it’s important to have an understanding that in an open relationship, following rules to the letter in every situation may not be possible. So you have to have a degree of flexibility and understanding.

‘Understand that rules, whilst important, can be influenced greatly by situations at the time,’ she says. ‘Not only have you both agreed on set rules, there will be other people entering into the relationship (even if that’s in a casual manner), who will have their own understanding of your rules and may interpret them differently.

‘Individuals who enter your relationship too will also bring their own rules and expectations.’

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

April 3, 2022April 3, 2022

A guide to the words we use in our gender coverage

By Anne Branigin

Over the last few years, the rights of transgender people — and those within the LGBTQ community more broadly — have increasingly become the subject of legal and political debate. School districts across the country have proposed book bans that strike the work of LGBTQ writers from reading lists. Florida has moved to forbid instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity in kindergarten through third grade. As of April 1, more than a dozen states in the last two years have passed bills that limit the ability of trans youths to participate in sports or access gender-affirming health care.

Depending on one’s life experiences, it can be challenging to navigate some of the terms of the debate. Informed by the guidance of a number of organizations, including GLAAD, the Trans Journalists Association, InterAct, the American Medical Association and the Association of LGBTQ Journalists, The Washington Post has compiled a glossary of the terms and concepts that show up in our coverage.

The glossary below is not comprehensive, and there is ongoing conversation about which language is most appropriate and accurate. This guide is intended to be a clear and accurate starting point to help readers better understand gender issues.

Some of these terms may seem new — due in large part to increased visibility of LGBTQ communities — but the existence of different gender identities and sexual orientations is not. As with all language, these terms are reflected by our time and culture. This list is specific to the United States; other cultures have different labels and understandings of gender.

“Language is always evolving,” Blazucki said. “We’re always coming up with new words and new ways to talk about things as our lives change, as society changes.”

1 The basics

Sex is usually assigned at birth and based on the appearance of external anatomy. Sex is typically categorized as male, female or intersex.

Intersex applies to people born with the reproductive or sexual anatomy and/or chromosomes that don’t fit into traditional conceptions of male or female bodies. As InterAct notes, there are a number of naturally occurring intersex variations, some that are identified at birth and others that may be discovered at puberty or later in life.

Intersex is not a gender identity. Intersex people are assigned a sex at birth, one that may or may not match their gender identity as they grow up. Intersex people may have any gender identity or sexual orientation.

Gender covers the behavioral, cultural or psychological traits associated with one’s sex, which can vary widely depending on the time period and place. It is widely held now among medical professionals and gender experts that the terms sex and gender are not interchangeable, though this has not always been the case.

Gender is frequently categorized as male, female or nonbinary.

Gender identity is your internal knowledge of your own gender. For many people, their gender identity will align with the sex they were assigned at birth, but this is not true for everyone — some people’s gender identity may line up with their assigned sex, and others may identify with neither or multiple genders (see cisgender, transgender and nonbinary).

What’s important to remember is that gender identity is not always outwardly visible to others, experts say.

Gender expression is how you present your gender outwardly, including through your behavior, mannerisms, clothing, name, pronouns and other characteristics.

Gender expression in the United States tends to fall on a spectrum from “masculine” to “feminine.”

While gender expression is very specific to the individual, it is heavily influenced by culture, peers and upbringing, said Gillian Branstetter, press secretary with the National Women’s Law Center.

“If you’re a cisgender man and you grow a beard, you’re communicating something about your gender to the world,” Branstetter said. “You’re doing the same thing with your name and pronouns, even if you don’t necessarily realize it.”

No matter what their gender identity is, most people express their gender in a way that aligns with their identity to better communicate to the world how they see themselves.

2 Gender identity

Cisgender describes someone whose gender identity lines up with the sex they were assigned at birth (this can also be shortened to “cis”). “Cis” comes from Latin, meaning “the same side as.”

Transgender describes someone whose gender identity is different from the sex they were assigned at birth (this can also be shortened to “trans”). For example, a transgender woman is someone who was listed as male at birth but whose gender identity is female.

“Trans” also comes from Latin, meaning “across” or “beyond.”

In its media guidance, GLAAD notes that being transgender is not dependent on physical appearance or medical procedures: “A person can call themself transgender the moment they realize that their gender identity is different than the sex they were assigned at birth.”

As Branstetter said: “Transgender people are not a monolith in how we express or navigate our identities.”

Nonbinary is a term used by people whose experience of gender identity and gender expression do not align neatly as either “man” or “woman,” the two categories Western countries have generally used to classify gender. Both cis and trans people can identify as nonbinary.

In the United States, nonbinary (or non-binary) is a newer term for a concept with a long history. People have also used the term “genderqueer” to describe nonbinary identity. And terms like “agender,” which describes a person who does not identify as any gender, and “pangender,” which describes someone whose identity may encompass all genders at once, may help further describe how someone is nonbinary.

Genderfluid refers to someone whose gender identity is not fixed, but may appear to others as flowing through different gender categories. Imara Jones, founder and chief executive of TransLash Media, describes it as a “weaving together” of different gender identities: “This is just how they experience gender.”

Gender nonconforming, frequently abbreviated to GNC, is a broad term that describes a person who defies gender norms and expectations in their gender expression. This can apply to all gender identities: trans, cis, nonbinary and beyond.

Transphobia refers to prejudice or hatred shown, in speech or actions, toward transgender or gender-nonconforming people. This bias is centered on gender identity.

3 Sexual orientation

Sexual orientation describes an enduring physical, romantic and/or emotional attraction to a person of the same and/or other genders. It is separate from gender identity, but like gender identity, it is innate.

A cisgender or transgender person can be straight, lesbian, gay, bisexual, asexual, etc. (For example, “lesbian” could apply to both cisgender women and transgender women who are exclusively attracted to other women.)

Pansexual describes someone who is capable of forming enduring physical, romantic and emotional attraction to people of any gender identity.

Asexual, which is sometimes shortened to “ace,” is an umbrella term for people who do not experience sexual attraction. This can also include people who are demisexual — experiencing some sexual attraction, but only in certain situations; for example, only after establishing a strong emotional connection.

Out describes a person who self-identifies as gay, lesbian, bisexual, queer, transgender or nonbinary in their personal, public and professional lives.

Queer is an overarching term describing anyone whose sexual orientation isn’t exclusively heterosexual. It’s not unusual for older generations of LGBTQ members to reject the term, which was once considered a pejorative, said Branstetter. But in recent years, younger members have sought to reclaim the word.

“The word ‘queer,’ I think, is increasingly embraced in terms of expressing your own sexuality because it speaks to an openness. It speaks to growing comfortable with ambiguity,” Branstetter said.

For some people, “queer” carries with it an additional meaning as a political identity, Jones said — one that challenges the ways LGBTQ marginalization and inequality are upheld by legal, political and social systems. In recent years, some heterosexual people have also embraced this identity.

Homophobia refers to prejudice or hate expressed, in speech or actions, toward gay, lesbian, bisexual or queer people. The intolerance is based on sexual orientation.

4 Terms in the news

Gender transition refers to the multilayered process of aligning one’s life with one’s gender identity. While much of the news focuses on the medical process of transitioning (in large part because of the states that have proposed or enacted bills that restrict these treatments), transition can and does happen on many other levels.

“There’s a wide range of things that involve transition, and they’re not the same for everyone,” said Jones

Social transition includes actions like coming out to family and friends, and changing how one dresses or talks, the name they go by and the pronouns they use. Legal transition involves updating documents like birth certificates and identification cards to reflect one’s name and gender marker. Medical transition includes hormone replacement therapy and could include additional surgical procedures as well.

Transition is a highly individualized, personal process. A person who is transitioning could employ all — or none — of these methods.

Gender dysphoria is the medical term for the psychological and physical distress that happens when one’s sex assigned at birth does not align with their gender. How people experience gender dysphoria — and its severity — varies from person to person, noted Jones.

In a clinical context, a psychiatric diagnosis of gender dysphoria is often necessary to access medical treatment. This practice is controversial on a couple of fronts: Some say that it inappropriately pathologizes gender incongruence, and some also critique it as a form of medical gatekeeping.

According to the Trans Journalists Association, gender dysphoria can also happen in a social context and can refer to the discomfort many trans people feel when their correct gender is not recognized by others.

Gender euphoria refers to the satisfaction and happiness people feel when their gender is affirmed. A trans person may experience this kind of euphoria when their correct names and pronouns are recognized or when their physical appearance aligns with their gender identity.

Branstetter adds that this kind of feeling is something cis people experience, too: “Cis women oftentimes will enjoy feeling feminine, whatever that may mean to them, in the same way cis men will oftentimes enjoy feeling masculine in whatever way that may mean to them.”

Gender-affirming care describes medical care that affirms or recognizes the gender identity of the person receiving medical care. Also known as “gender-affirmative” or “gender-confirming” care, such medical care for minors can include puberty or hormone blockers and is closely monitored by their doctors. For adults, this could mean hormone therapy and various surgical procedures, such as breast reconstruction (also known as “top surgery”), speech therapy, genital reconstruction and facial plastic surgery.

These treatments have been linked to better health outcomes for the transgender, nonbinary and gender-nonconforming people who seek them, and can help protect them against discrimination and violence.

But gender-affirming care goes beyond medical treatments that assist people in transitioning, said Jones. She views gender-affirming care as care that recognizes and values the gender identity of the patient, no matter what they’re seeking treatment for.

Jason Rafferty, a child psychiatrist and pediatrician at Hasbro Children’s Hospital in Providence, R.I., described it similarly to the American Medical Association: It is “a model of care and an approach to the patients and families that we work with,” he said.

“It’s not necessarily a protocol. It’s not guided steps,” Rafferty added.

Misgender refers to an action in which someone addresses or refers to another person by the wrong gender — either accidentally or intentionally. This can include referring to someone by the wrong pronouns or honorifics or using a trans person’s deadname (the name they used before transitioning).

To understand and avoid misgendering, it’s important to recognize how often we gender the world around us, said Branstetter: We project gender onto animals, objects and even weather events.

“It’s something that people do and they don’t realize that they do it. It happens very swiftly,” Branstetter said.

For many transgender people, misgendering can feel like a form of violence, Jones added: “It’s violent because it’s a form of erasure.”

Marginalized gender is an umbrella term, most frequently used in academic and activist circles, describing anyone who is not a cis man. The term points toward the ways cisgender women and LGBTQ individuals, historically and currently, have experienced systemic inequities and greater regulation over their rights.

“It’s not just that their bodies are regulated,” Branstetter said, “but their bodies are regulated as a means of regulating their life path.”

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

April 2, 2022April 2, 2022

The G-Spot Doesn’t Exist

By ELIZABETH KIEFER

Once upon a time, that time being 1982, there was sex. And then, suddenly, there was sex.

The difference? A teensy half-inch ribbed nub on the upper front wall of your vagina. Scientists—and magazines (hi) and books and sex-toy companies and movies and TV shows and your roommates and your sex-ed teacher—reported that it was a universal key to The Mysterious Female Orgasm. And thus began the era when you were supposed to be able to say “it blew my mind” to your girlfriends at brunch.

Or was it three inches wide? Farther down, near your vulva? Slick instead of ribbed? Kinda springy to the touch?

Whatever, it was it. And fuck if we all didn’t work hard to find our own. Back in 1982, Cosmo told women to get there by “squatting” so it would be easier “to stick one or two fingers inside the vagina” and make the necessary “come-hither motion.” A 2020 Google search turns up thousands of road maps (“where is the G-spot?” has been searched more times than Michaels Jordan and Jackson). That cute-adjacent guy you slept with in college tried the classic pile-drive maneuver, to middling success.

But it must not matter, because the G-spot economy is booming: G-spot vibrators, G-spot condoms, G-spot lube, G-spot workshops, and, for the particularly daring and/or Goop-inspired, $1,800 G-spot shots meant to plump yours for extra pleasure.

Hell, even Merriam-Webster is in on it: The G-spot is a “highly erogenous mass of tissue” in every dictionary it prints.

So then why, when we talked to the woman who helped “discover” it, did she tell us we’ve all been obsessed with the wrong thing?

That woman is Beverly Whipple, PhD. She and a team of researchers officially coined the term “G-spot” in the early ’80s. They named the thing, which they described as a “sensitive” “small bean,” for German researcher Ernst Gräfenberg (yeah, a dude). And just like that, your most frustrating fake body part was born.

ACCORDING TO OUR SURVEY, 11%

of women have avoided sex because they can’t find their G-spot.

Honestly, it all got out of hand from there, says Whipple. Her team wasn’t saying that each and every woman has a G-spot. (“Women are capable of experiencing sexual pleasure many different ways,” she insists to Cosmo now. “Everyone is unique.”) And despite that bean analogy, they didn’t mean it was a spot spot. They were talking about an “area” that could simply make some women feel good. But the media (hi again!) preferred the neat and tidy version and ran with it like a sexual cure-all.

Researchers did too. In 2012, a study published in The Journal of Sexual Medicine proclaimed that of course the G-spot was real. It just wasn’t a bean. It was actually an 8.1- by 3.6-millimeter “rope-like” piece of anatomy, a “blue” and “grape-like” sac. This revelation came from gynecologic surgeon Adam Ostrzenski, MD, PhD, after his study of an 83-year-old woman’s cadaver. (He went on to sell “G-spotplasty” treatments to women.) Over the years, lots of other researchers found the G-spot to be lots of other things: “a thick patch of nerves,” “the urethral sponge,” “a gland,” “a bunch of nerves.”

For the most part, though, the thing that women were supposed to find has remained a mystery to the experts telling them to find it. Dozens of trials used surveys, pathologic specimens, imaging, and biochemical markers to try to pinpoint the elusive G-spot once and for all.

In 2006, a biopsy of women’s vaginas turned up nothing.

In 2012, a group of doctors reviewed every single piece of known data on record and found no proof that the G-spot exists.

In 2017, in the most recent and largest postmortem study to date done on 13 cadavers, researchers looked again: still nothing.

“It’s not like pushing an elevator button or a light switch,” asserts Barry Komisaruk, PhD, a neuroscientist at Rutgers University. “It’s not a single thing.”

44%

of women have felt frustration, confusion, or anxiety while trying to locate their G-spot.

“I don’t think we have any evidence that the G-spot is a spot or a structure,” says Nicole Prause, PhD, a neuroscientist who studies orgasms and sexual arousal. “I’ve never understood why it was interpreted as some new sexual organ. You can’t standardize a vagina—there is no consistency across women as to where exactly we experience pleasure.”

Sure, she says, some women might have an area inside their vaginas that contains a bunch of smaller, super-sensitive areas. But some women say that when they follow Cosmo’s old two-finger come-hither advice, they feel discomfort or like they have to pee. Others feel nothing at all. Because for them, there’s nothing there.

Now for the trickiest part of this story—and, TBH, the reason this is even a story at all. Despite the lack of scientific evidence, there are still lots of G-spot believers, many of them super-smart, well-meaning sex educators. They’re a pretty heated group (one hung up on us when we called for an interview) and not…entirely…wrong. Their point is: If a woman believes she’s found her G-spot, that should outweigh any lack of science. And specifically, if someone claims to have experienced G-spot pleasure, it seems “bizarre” to shut her down, says Kristen Mark, PhD, a sex educator at the University of Kentucky. “That feels like going backward.”

Fair. It’s just that, as Prause points out, “women deserve accurate information about their bodies.” Can’t we have our pleasure—and the truth too?

As Prause said (and this bears repeating), for some women, there is sexual sensitivity where the G-spot is supposed to be. But for others, there’s none. Or it’s to the left. Or it’s in a few places. And that’s kind of the whole point. It’s all okay. It can all feel good.

What everyone can agree on is that we need more research. Women’s sexual health is vastly understudied, and the scientific hurdles are borderline absurd. In 2015, Prause tried to get a trial going at UCLA that would study orgasms in women who were, you know, actually alive. The board heard her out but wanted a promise that her test subjects “wouldn’t climax” because they didn’t like the optics of women orgasming in their labs. (As you’ve already guessed, the study wasn’t approved.)

So yeah, a new kind of thinking about female pleasure is going to take a minute for certain people to get on board with. Like those brunch friends who go on and on about G-spot rapture. And like men, who might love the idea of the G-spot best of all. A G-spot orgasm requires penetration, which just so happens to be the way most guys prefer to get off. “If you’ve got a penis, it would be super convenient if the way the person with a vagina has pleasure is for you to put your penis in their vagina,” says Emily Nagoski, PhD, author of Come as You Are, a book that explores the science of female sexuality. Related: 80 percent of the men in Cosmo’s survey said they believe every woman has a G-spot; nearly 60 percent called it the “best way” for a female partner to achieve pleasure. (“Once you rally enough experience like myself, you can find it on every girl,” one supremely confident guy told us.)

31%

of women say their partner has gotten frustrated while searching for it.

Just like it did for women, the G-spot gave men a universal performance metric and the “cultural message that pleasure for women happens by pounding on their vaginas with your penis,” says Nagoski.

Things were thisclose to going in a much better direction. “In the early ’80s, there was research that was really putting the clitoris front and center,” explains Nagoski. “Then along came the G-spot research, creating this pressure for women to be orgasmic from vaginal stimulation even though most women’s bodies just aren’t wired that way. And if you really think about why vaginal stimulation matters so much, it’s because it puts the focus on male pleasure.”

Go ahead and let that sink in while we gear up to talk about the fallout. Not only the sexual frustration (although that, definitely that) but also the giant emotional burden the G-spot unwittingly dropped on all of us. Turns out, the thing that was supposed to awaken and equalize our sex lives came with a really shitty side effect: shame.

More than half of the women in Cosmo’s survey reported feeling inadequate or frustrated knowing that others are able to orgasm in a way they can’t. Eleven percent said this made them avoid sex entirely. “I have friends who say they always climax from intercourse alone and they’re like, ‘You just haven’t found it yet,’” says Alyssa, a Cosmo reader. “It’s like they’re the lucky ones.”

That’s why on one recent Tuesday, another Cosmo reader, Beth, found herself sitting in a room that looked oddly like a vagina—low, pink light, a candle burning softly nearby—getting her first round of G-spot homework. She and her husband had hired a sex therapist to help them feel more in sync sexually. Basically, he wanted it a lot more than she did, probably because she was still waiting for something…bigger. “I can have a clitoral orgasm,” she says. “But knowing that there’s something better, I wanted to experience that.”

82%

of men believe every woman has the magic button.

The couple’s take-home tasks were a checklist of “sexy” moves, designed to help them find Beth’s G-spot so she could have The Orgasm. “The night we did doggy-style, it felt…god, there was the sound of skin smacking and my husband asking me if it was working. It was terrible.” (We fact-checked this with Beth’s husband. Oh yeah, “it sucked.”) After that, they gave up.

Other couples are still searching: 22 percent of guys say that finding a woman’s G-spot is the number one goal of sex, which helps explain the 31 percent of women who say they’re dealing with exasperated partners. Prause worries about that. She says: “You’ll hear guys say things like, ‘My last girlfriend wasn’t this much work,’ or ‘You take a long time to orgasm,’ or ‘This worked for the last person I slept with.’ That makes women question if they’re normal. And that, we hate.”

Which is why we’re calling off the search. We’re done with the damn “spot” and we’re sorry, again, that we ever brought it up. And actually: Unless sex researchers make a surprisingly major breakthrough, Cosmo won’t be publishing any more G-spot sex positions or “how to find it” guides.

“What would truly be revolutionary for women’s sex lives is to engage with what research has found all along: the best predictors of sexual satisfaction are intimacy and connection,” adds Debby Herbenick, PhD, a professor at Indiana University School of Public Health and a research fellow at the Kinsey Institute.

The science world is revolutionizing, too, trying to figure out how to rebrand the G-spot into something more (and by “more,” we mean actually) accurate. Whipple stands by her “area.” Italian researchers have suggested renaming it the somewhat less sexy “clitoral vaginal urethral complex.” Herbenick has her own ideas: “First of all, it should not be named after a man. It’s a female body we’re talking about, and just because a man wrote about it doesn’t mean he was the first to understand or experience it.” But anyway, she’d go with “zone.”

As for us, we’re going to kick off this new era with a 100 percent G-spot-free piece of smarter, wiser sex advice, courtesy of Nagoski: “If it feels good, you’re doing it right.” Call that whatever you want.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

April 1, 2022March 31, 2022

Understanding Gender Identity

Gender exists on a spectrum, with several gender identities to choose from

There’s so much diversity in how we identify ourselves and the way we express love for one another. Just as there are different kinds of love, we can become sexually and romantically attracted to our partners in different ways (if we experience sexual or romantic attraction at all).

The relationship we have with our own bodies as it relates to gender and sexual orientation can also be a complicated one. Everyone is built differently, and many of us come to realize aspects of our own gender in ways that can be challenging, exciting and complex.

Over time, as language has evolved and we’ve learned more about gender identity, gender expression and sexual orientation, healthcare providers and organizations like the American Counseling Association have determined multiple ways someone can identify in terms of how they feel about themselves and how they feel about others. One example of gender inclusivity might be, rather than refer to someone of Latin American descent as Latina or Latino, a more gender-inclusive term we use now is Latinx.

Sometimes, this search for understanding how we identify can happen later in life, but often, this journey begins when we’re young.

“Most teens struggle with figuring out who they are as a person. That’s part of what teenage years are meant to be, exploring your identity as a person,” says pediatric psychologist Vanessa K. Jensen, PsyD, ABPP.

There’s no right answer for determining how you identify related to gender and sexuality, but discovery usually begins with internal awareness and may include exploring how you can express your gender identity and sexual orientation with others. However you arrive at your identity, it’s important that you do so safely and you check in with yourself often along the way.

“It’s so much easier when you have a path in almost anything,” says Dr. Jensen. “Having a group you can identify with can be very comforting. Having a label can give us a place to be in our own head, and at times, in our social lives and what we do day-to-day. That’s true for many people, but it’s especially true in our teen and young adult journeys.”

Here, Dr. Jensen helps us walk through several common terms used to describe gender identity and gender expression.

Gender identity and how we talk about who we are

Gender identity is typically expressed in the way you label yourself, how you physically present yourself to others and how you feel about your own body.

Discovering your gender identity is a journey we all take. Some of us arrive at and understand our gender identity quickly — some of us know on Day One where we’re going, and some of us take the most direct path to get there. Some of us might take a more scenic route with a few stops along the way until we arrive at our final destination. And that’s OK. You are valid, no matter how you arrive at understanding your gender identity.

“For a lot of people, these things happen very organically and naturally,” says Dr. Jensen. “This is about more than just our bodies. This is about who we are. And that includes external and internal aspects of ourselves.”

As language continues to evolve, we’re coming up with new ways to explain how we feel about who we are every day. This list, though not all-inclusive, is a good first step in understanding the various ways we and those around us identify gender, keeping in mind that not everyone agrees on the definition of each label and that they’re continually changing.

Agender

This term describes someone who feels like they don’t fit any gender. They may not ascribe to (identify with) the gender binary of males and females (someone who doesn’t identify with the polar opposites of male or female). They also don’t feel comfortable with other gender-variant terms.

Androgynous

This term describes someone who feels comfortable expressing themselves in a more gender-neutral way. They may express varying aspects of masculinity and femininity. How they express themselves may vary day to day, but they don’t generally appear dramatically male or female.

Bigender

People who are bigender experience characteristics of two genders at the same time. Though this typically means the male/female gender binary, you could experience aspects of other genders, too.

“If you’re bigender, you don’t want to label yourself as just one or the other, but you don’t want to reject either one, so you identify with both,” explains Dr. Jensen.

Butch

Some may see this as a derogatory label, while others may claim this term to define how they identify in an affirming way. This term is often reserved for those who identify strongly with masculine cultural traits physically, sexually, mentally and/or emotionally. Historically, this term has been used by lesbian women who express more masculine characteristics. Similar to a few other labels listed here, this should be a self-identification, not a label you ascribe to other people.

Cisgender

This term describes someone whose gender identity matches their assigned sex at birth. If you were born female and identify as female, you’re cisgender. If you were born male and identify as male, you’re also cisgender.

Femme

Femme has often been reserved for those who identify strongly with feminine cultural traits physically, sexually, mentally and/or emotionally. Historically, this term has been used within the lesbian community; however, it also commonly applies to people who are male-identifying in gender and express more feminine characteristics. This can also be used by anyone of any gender who identifies with feminine traits.

FTM (female-to-male)

This is typically a medical abbreviation to describe a transition for a transgender person. The first letter indicates someone’s assigned sex at birth and the last letter indicates someone’s gender identity and expression. FTM indicates a female transition to male.

“This is one of those medical abbreviations that can be perceived as pejorative [has negative connotations],” notes Dr. Jensen. “But people may see that in a medical document or journal.”

Intersex

This is an umbrella term that technically means “between the sexes.” People who are intersex carry variations in their reproductive and sexual anatomy that differ from what’s fully male or female. For example, a baby might be born with genitalia that is not completely male or completely female, or they might have variations of XX and XY chromosomes. Medically, these rare conditions are referred to as disorders of sex differentiation (or differences of sex development). Language is evolving. Some people may find the term DSD controversial, as it implies intersex is a disorder in need of treatment rather than a biological variation. However, the term intersex continues to be recognized by the LGBTQIA+ community and has gained more traction as an identity within the last decade.

MTF (male-to-female)

Nonbinary

If you’re nonbinary, you don’t ascribe to the male/female binary. Instead of identifying as male or female, you identify as being somewhere else on the gender spectrum.

“If you identify as nonbinary, you see gender as a spectrum,” says Dr. Jensen. “You’re basically saying, ‘I don’t buy into the two ends of the poles, people can be anywhere on that spectrum.’”

Pangender

A synonym of omnigender and polygender, this umbrella term describes anyone whose gender identity carries varying aspects of multiple identities and expressions.

Pronouns

Historically, we’ve been pretty binary (male/female) in the way we approach using pronouns to talk about those around us. Luckily, as our language evolves, we’ve created new ways of identifying how we feel about who we are. Our use of pronouns has expanded to include interchangeable gender-neutral pronouns like they/them/their, xe/xem/xyr, zie/zim/zir and others.

“Names and pronouns have meaning, and people take them seriously,” says Dr. Jensen. “It’s very personal.”

Transgender

This term describes someone whose gender identity does not match their assigned sex at birth, and it’s inclusive of both binary (male/female) and nonbinary gender identities. Some individuals are very open about being transgender; however, some may prefer to avoid that term entirely and simply exist as the gender they are (what’s sometimes referred to as “passing”). And that’s OK. How you choose to present yourself is entirely up to you.

“There are a lot of transgender individuals whose goal is to just be and be seen as the gender they identify as,” says Dr. Jensen. “So, they don’t want to be called transgender, a trans man or a trans woman.”

The process of transitioning from your sex assigned at birth to your identified gender looks different for every person based on your individual experiences.

In many cases, the first step to transition is called social transitioning. During this step, you may express your gender identity by changing the way you present yourself at home or in public. This gender expression can be evidenced in the clothing and accessories you wear, your body language, or your interests and activities. You may also ask friends and family to refer to you by a different name or pronoun that better fits your gender identity. You can also legally change your name. This period of social transitioning may last months, years or a lifetime.

You may want to go through a physical transition, too, with the help of hormone replacement therapy and/or gender confirmation/affirming surgery. In many cases, according to WPATH guidelines, centers require some period of social transition prior to receiving these healthcare services. In some cases, puberty blockers are used to put a hold on puberty to allow more time for a young person to understand their gender identity.

For some folks, hormone replacement therapy can be enough for someone to feel like they’ve fully transitioned.

“Some people can’t take hormones with certain medical conditions, and some choose not to for personal reasons,” says Dr. Jensen.

You can use different interventions like chest binders, voice therapy or hair removal to improve your gender expression. But you may still want gender confirmation/affirming surgery to modify your chest (sometimes called “top surgery”), modify your genitalia (sometimes called “bottom surgery”) or other surgical procedures that modify your face, voice, body hair or other physical aspects of your body.

Whatever path you choose to carry out your transition is entirely up to you, but it’s important that you seek out LGBTQIA+-friendly healthcare providers who can walk you through that process and discuss your options.

Two-spirited

This term is typically reserved for Indigenous/Native Americans who embrace a third gender that contains aspects of both masculine and feminine spirits in one person. Two-spirited individuals are historically valued, honored and respected among their tribe for the spiritual and social roles they play in their communities.

The spectrum of gender identity and gender dysphoria

There are multiple ways in which you might define your gender identity. Several gender identities are all-inclusive umbrella terms that reflect gender as much larger than the male/female binary. And while some of these terms stand on their own, others may be interchangeable.

“There are different variations for many of these terms because gender is a spectrum,” says Dr. Jensen.

Here are some other important terms to know:

Gender-fluid: Your gender may shift and change over time and can include multiple genders.
Gender-neutral: For some people, this is similar to agender. If you’re gender-neutral, you don’t identify with one specific gender but may identify with varying aspects of multiple genders. Or you reject the idea of gender labeling altogether.
Gender-nonconforming: This umbrella term describes anyone whose gender identity and gender expression don’t align with cultural expectations of the male/female binary. If you’re gender-nonconforming, you may think of yourself as having no gender, multiple genders or a third gender that’s neither male nor female.
Gender-normative: Your gender identity and gender expression align with cultural expectations of the male/female binary.
Gender-variant: Sometimes known as gender-expansive, this term is similar to gender-nonconforming. It describes anyone who identifies with a gender outside of the male/female binary.
Genderqueer: Similar to gender-nonconforming and gender-variant, you may identify as genderqueer if you think of yourself as having no gender, multiple genders or a third gender that’s neither male nor female. It’s important to note, though, that while some people see this term as affirming, others find it derogatory. This should be a self-identification, not a label you give to or say to another person.

Sometimes, you may experience gender dysphoria if aspects of your physical body don’t align with the gender you identify with. But it’s important to note that not everyone who’s transgender experiences gender dysphoria, and not everyone who experiences gender dysphoria is transgender.

Wherever you are on your gender journey — whether you’re at your destination or still figuring out your path forward — making an effort to understand gender identity is something we can all do to create a more inclusive world.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

— And how can it help?

Discussing consent

Is spanking therapy always sexual?

Why might people like being spanked?

Where can a person learn more about spanking therapy?

(Spoiler: It’s Not Hard)

— Things Get Really Awkward

“How many butt holes have you seen?”

Studies of transgender kids are revealing fascinating insights about gender in the brain

How We Learn Gender

Early Differences

The Roots of Gender

“Pink Boys” and Tomboys

Talking about sex is going to be awkward, but it doesn’t have to be weird.

Think About Your Own Sex Life

Pass Down Wisdom Instead of Trauma

Have More Than One Sex Talk

Understanding the Complexity of Desire

Misinformation About Low Libido Can Be Harmful

How to Handle Low Desire in a World That Loves Toxic Masculinity

Actionable steps to help you get in the mood.

Try positive affirmations during sex

Identify where your body image issues come from

Remind yourself that all bodies are hot

Follow people who look like you

Cull social media accounts that make you feel bad

Don’t posture and perform during sex

Have a go at mindful sex

Share a sexual fantasy

— Tips for older men

What you can do to maintain a healthy and enjoyable sex life as you grow older.

Senior sex: What changes as men get older?

Senior sex and health problems

Senior sex and emotional issues

Senior sex tips

Why are rules and boundaries important in an open relationship?

What ground rules should you set?

What if you have different ideas about what the rules should be?

How to make sure those rules are followed by both parties

1 The basics

2 Gender identity

3 Sexual orientation

4 Terms in the news

Gender exists on a spectrum, with several gender identities to choose from

Gender identity and how we talk about who we are

Agender

Androgynous

Bigender

Butch

Cisgender

Femme

FTM (female-to-male)

Intersex

MTF (male-to-female)

Nonbinary

Pangender

Pronouns

Transgender

Two-spirited

The spectrum of gender identity and gender dysphoria