Month: June 2022

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15 Types Of Relationships & How To Define Yours

But remember, labels don’t work for everyone.


By Madeline Howard

In the age of social media, it feels like there’s a term for legit everything relationship-related nowadays. Because of this, you probably have (many!) questions about all the types of relationships that are out there and how to define yours, exactly.

Lucky for you, while the internet may make things more confusing at times, it also offers up a breadth of information that can help you better understand various types of relationships, identities, and more — straight from expert sources themselves.

And when it comes to defining your relationship, think of it this way: very broadly, “a relationship is an interaction of contact and connection between two or more people,” explains Jenni Skyler, Ph.D., director of The Intimacy Institute. In short, a relationship exists on a spectrum with varying levels of intimacy.

Your goal? To find out what level of intimacy works best for you to define your relationship, which you can do by better understanding all types of relationships and how they function. Here’s what you should know, per dating experts.

Monogamous Relationship

A monogamous relationship is when you are romantically and/or sexually devoted and committed to one person only, explains Janet Brito, Ph.D., a clinical psychologist and sex therapist and founder of the Hawaii Center for Sexual and Relationship Health. “You have chosen to be with one person at a time,” she says, and any detraction from this model would probably be considered cheating.

Ethically Non-Monogamous Relationship

Unlike regular monogamy, an ethically non-monogamous (ENM) relationship exists when two or more parties have consensually agreed to have more than one partner at a time, Brito says. The key word here is consensually, meaning that all involved are privy to and comfortable with the relationship’s boundaries — this is what makes the relationship ethical. It’s also sometimes called an “open relationship.”

Polyamorous Relationship

Yep, a polyamorous relationship falls under the umbrella of consensual non-monogamy. “But with polyamory, you could be having multiple sexual or romantic relationships, specifically,” Brito explains, each of which is dependent on the agreement between those in the relationship.

Some people just have romantic polyamorous agreements, while for others it may just be sexual. (Or both.) But ultimately, since it’s under the umbrella of consensual non-monogamy, the dynamics are executed with intention and consent from all parties.

Romantic Relationship

“A romantic relationship can be different for all people,” Brito explains. For example, some people have romance but they don’t engage in sexual activities — though many do. Whether they engage in sexual activities or not, in a romantic relationship there is shared affection, feelings, and loyalty to each other. And above all, “they’re emotionally close,” Brito notes.

Aromantic Relationship

Some people are more comfortable existing without a romantic aspect to their relationship. “An aromantic person may not have that romantic attraction toward the other person,” Brito says. There’s a spectrum to aromanticism, though, so some people in aromantic relationships may still have sexual attraction or emotional closeness — it’s just not romantic in nature.

Asexual Relationship

“An asexual relationship is usually an emotional relationship that doesn’t have sexual contact, or sexual contact is limited,” Skyler says. Again, this exists on a spectrum, and it’s ultimately up to the asexual individuals to decide how physically intimate they want to be. Asexual relationships can be monogamous, but sometimes they also exist as an “open relationship where the sexual partner has permission to have sex outside through other relationships,” Skyler explains.

Exclusive Relationship

The term “exclusive relationship” can be tricky to define, though it’s often used nevertheless. An exclusive relationship usually means that those in the partnership are not having romantic or sexual relations with anyone besides each other — though it doesn’t necessarily mean they are officially “dating.” Yep, it can be a pretty ambiguous (and frustrating at times) situation.

Codependent Relationship

You might know by now that codependence isn’t the healthiest relationship style. It typically involves one person undermining their own needs for the sake of the other, Brito explains, which can make the dynamic extremely unbalanced. “[Codependent relationships] can also contain toxic patterns and self-destructive tendencies because you’re not really thinking about yourself,” Brito says. This is usually because one person is so reliant on the other for emotional, mental, financial, and psychological support that they will do anything to not lose them.

Friends With Benefits

Another ambiguous relationship that can easily end in hurt feelings: friends with benefits. It typically involves two peers who agree to have casual sex with each other for pleasure purposes but have agreed that the relationship won’t involve any romantic relations or eventual progressions into a full-on relationship, Brito explains.

Rebound Relationship

“A rebound is the person that you date after you’ve ended a relationship with somebody,” Brito says. Usually people get involved in a rebound relationship as a way of coping with the loss of the previous one, in an attempt to try to move on, Brito explains. That said, while it may be tempting, getting in another relationship so quickly may result in you repeating unhealthy patterns from the last one, given the quick transition. Instead, Brito suggests “looking at what happened in the past before jumping into this one.”

Queer Relationship

You’re in a queer relationship when you’re dating someone who doesn’t identify as cisgender or heterosexual, Brito explains. In other terms, this means that any relationship where at least one partner exists on the LGBTQIA+ spectrum is technically queer — even if one of the partners is heterosexual, cisgender, or both.

Serious Relationship

You’ll be able to determine if your relationship is serious by remembering that, in general, relationships are about a “spectrum of commitment and intimacy,” Skyler says. A serious relationship would probably rank around a 10 on the commitment and intimacy scale, meaning both of you are “all in” when it comes to how intentional you are about being together in this moment and beyond.

Casual Relationship

Again, if you’re thinking about relationships on a spectrum, a casual relationship would be far less than a 10. In this kind of a relationship there would be a low level of long-term commitment and intimacy, and there wouldn’t be a lot of responsibility associated with the connection or time required together. For example, you might have a casual relationship with someone you’ve been on a few dates with or slept with once or twice.

Friendship

“A friendship might be emotional but not sexual,” Skyler says. That said, every friendship will have its own boundaries based on the uniqueness of that relationship. It’s not a one-size-fits-all scenario. Those boundaries will be defined by how much emotional, sexual, or physical intimacy you prefer to associate with your friendships, Skyler explains.

Platonic Relationship

A platonic relationship is one that is close and emotionally intimate, but not sexual in nature. Many people often define their friendships as platonic, but friendship isn’t inherently platonic, as some people incorporate sexuality into their friendships, too.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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A Guide to Sexual Dysfunction

Sexual dysfunction is when you have difficulty at any stage of sexual activity that prevents you, your partner, or both of you from enjoying or performing the act.

This article will define sexual dysfunction. It will also discuss the different types of sexual dysfunction, the causes, and treatments.

By Mandy Baker

What is sexual dysfunction?

Sexual dysfunction is when you have difficulty having or enjoying sexual activity, and it concerns you. It is the result of an issue within your response cycle. The sexual response cycle has various stages:

  • excitement, which includes arousal and desire
  • plateau
  • orgasm
  • resolution

Sexual dysfunction affects people of both sexes assigned at birth. It is also fairly common, affecting over 40% of females and 30% of males. While it can occur at any age, sexual dysfunction is more common among those ages 40–65 years.

Many people avoid talking with their doctor about sexual dysfunction out of embarrassment and discomfort. However, treatments are available to help the issue. If you are experiencing sexual dysfunction, contact your doctor and be open with them so they can suggest the most effective treatment for you.

What are the types of sexual dysfunction?

There are four main categories of sexual dysfunction. These categories include:

  • Desire disorders: These involve your desire and interest in sex. They are also known as low libido or libido disorders.
  • Arousal disorders: This type of disorder means it is difficult or impossible for you to become sexually aroused.
  • Orgasm disorders: These disorders involve delayed or absent orgasms.
  • Pain disorders: These disorders involve pain during intercourse.

There are various types of sexual dysfunction disorders within each category. Some are more common than others.

Hypoactive sexual desire disorder

Hypoactive sexual desire disorder (HSDD) is one of the most common sexual dysfunction disorders. HSDD is sometimes a lifelong condition. It can affect anyone.

If you are experiencing HSDD, it means you have little to no sex drive and do not have much interest in sex in general. Someone with HSDD typically shows the following signs:

  • having little to no thoughts or sexual fantasies
  • having no response to sexual suggestions or signals
  • experiencing a loss of desire for sex in the middle of it
  • avoiding sex completely

Erectile dysfunction

Erectile dysfunction (ED) is when you have difficulty getting or maintaining an erection. It is the most common sexual dysfunction males visit their doctor for, affecting more than 30 million people.

It is not uncommon for most males to experience ED from time to time, especially after age 40. However, it becomes an issue when it is progressive or begins to happen more routinely.

ED can be a warning sign of cardiovascular disease. It can also cause:

  • low self-esteem
  • depression
  • distress within the individual and their partner

ED is treatable. Contact your doctor if you are experiencing ED and it is affecting your life or relationships.

Orgasm disorder

It is not uncommon for people, especially females, to have difficulty orgasming from time to time. However, it is more of an issue when:

  • you do not have orgasms
  • it takes a long time for you to orgasm
  • you do not orgasm as often as you would like
  • your orgasms are not as strong as you would like or expect
  • you feel sad, anxious, or concerned

Genital arousal disorder

Genital arousal disorder is when you have difficulty becoming or staying aroused. In females, this often means that the desire to become aroused may be there. However, your body, mind, or both do not react as expected.

These issues with arousal may come from emotional issues, behavioral issues, or an underlying medical condition. Speak with your doctor to help discover the underlying issues and get treatment.

Vulvodynia

Vulvodynia is persistent pain in the vulva that is not due to an infection or other medical condition. The pain typically lasts for at least 3 months. However, it can become a long-term issue as well.

Pain in the vulva area is the main symptom of vulvodynia. This pain may be:

  • burning, stinging, or throbbing
  • sore
  • triggered by touch
  • worse when sitting
  • constantly present in the background
  • widespread

If you are experiencing unexplained pain, contact your doctor.

Premature ejaculation

Premature ejaculation is when you ejaculate sooner than you would like or expect during sexual activity. In the United States, 1 in 3 males between the ages 18–59 experience premature ejaculation.

Premature ejaculation is not always a cause for worry. However, if it is happening routinely, is causing issues in your relationship, or concerns you, contact your doctor.

What are the symptoms of sexual dysfunction?

The symptoms of sexual dysfunction vary depending on the person and the cause of the dysfunction. Some common symptoms do occur, however.

Signs in both males and females

Both males and females may experience:

  • difficulty becoming aroused
  • a lack of sexual desire
  • pain during intercourse

Signs in males

Males with sexual dysfunction may experience:

  • inability to achieve or maintain an erection
  • delayed or absent ejaculation
  • premature ejaculation

Signs in females

Females may experience:

  • vaginal dryness
  • inability to achieve orgasm
  • pain that may be due to vaginal spasm or inflammation of the vulva

  • What causes sexual dysfunction?

    Many possible issues can contribute to the development of sexual dysfunction. These include:

    How do you treat sexual dysfunction?

    Treatment for sexual dysfunction mostly depends on its type and cause. Speak with your doctor to diagnose the underlying cause and find the most effective treatment for you.

    Treatments for sexual dysfunction include:

    • Medication: Medications to treat underlying medical conditions can help sexual dysfunction as well. Certain medications, such as viagra or hormone replacements, may also help. The effectiveness of certain medications depends on the cause.
    • Mechanical aids: Vacuum devices, penis pumps, and penile implants are all possible options if you have trouble achieving or maintaining an erection. For females who experience muscle tightening or spasms, special dilators may help.
    • Therapy: Both psychotherapy and sex therapy can help treat the psychological causes of sexual dysfunction.

    Self-help tips for sexual dysfunction

    Ways you can help yourself with sexual dysfunction include:

    • being open with your partner
    • masturbating
    • limiting your use of alcohol or drugs
    • stopping smoking
    • using lubricants
    • exploring using sex toys
    • limiting your stress
    • exercising regularly
    • practicing kegel exercises

    Summary

    Sexual dysfunction is not uncommon. Both males and females experience it. Many find it embarrassing and uncomfortable to talk about.

    However, many issues that cause sexual dysfunction are treatable. Therefore, speaking with your doctor can help. Being open with your partner about the issues can help your sexual dysfunction and your relationship.

    Sexual dysfunction may be a sign of an underlying medical condition. Contact your doctor if you are experiencing signs of sexual dysfunction and it is causing you concern or affecting your relationships.

    • Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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We often hear that sexuality is on a spectrum.

What exactly does that mean?

Sexuality is fluid and ever-changing — not something stagnant to be “discovered.”

By Kelly Grace Finney

You’ll hear it all the time: Sexuality is on a spectrum. But what exactly does this mean? And how does it differ from checking off “straight, gay, or bisexual” on an intake form?

In modern psychological research, “sexual orientation” is a term used to describe the overarching umbrella of human sexual preferences. This includes, but is not necessarily limited to, sexual attraction, romantic attraction, sexual behavior and sexual identity. For a lot of folks, these factors all align: For example, a straight woman who is sexually and romantically attracted to men, with a history of sexual relationships with only men. However, these differences are not so clearly defined in a lot of folks’ experiences, which can lead to a lot of shame and confusion.

Sexual fluidity is the concept that sexual orientation can be context-dependant and change over time. You may have heard the term “gay for the stay” to describe incarcerated folks having same-sex relationships in prison when they would otherwise engage in opposite-sex relationships in their communities.

But this isn’t just limited to folks who are removed and isolated from greater society. Even “Saturday Night Live’s” comedy music group The Lonely Island wrote the song “The Golden Rule” as a humorous defense of having three-ways with a member of the same gender. It is also common for folks to engage in sexual relationships with one gender, but fantasize about or watch pornography focused on other genders. And we can’t forget about those who identify as straight but have a habit of kissing or engaging in other sexual behaviors with people of the same gender when under the influence of alcohol or other drugs. If sexual identity, sexual attraction and sexual behavior were all the same, how could we account for these differences in alignment?

This is why it is so important to pay attention to the differences between sexual identity and sexual attraction. A lesbian woman could have a satisfying sexual experience with a man, but that does not necessarily mean that she wants to continue engaging in sex with men, nor does it mean she would want to communicate to others that she is looking for a heterosexual partnership. Therefore, she could still identify as lesbian as a way to tell others that she is looking for partnership with another woman.

Our sexual identities are labels that we use to let ourselves and others know what type of relationships we prefer. However, sexual identity is not the end-all, be-all of relational preferences.

By labeling folks’ sexual fluidity as “confusion,” we are invalidating the very meaningful relationships that others engage in. As Carrie Bradshaw put it on “Sex and the City,” “I’m not even sure bisexuality exists. I think it’s just a layover on the way to Gaytown.”

While this was broadcast in the year 2000, many folks today still struggle to understand anything outside of the gay-straight binary. We often receive cultural messages that bisexual men are really homosexuals testing the waters, while bisexual women engage in same-sex relationships to gain attention from men.

What do these misconceptions have in common? They both rely on the idea that fundamentally, if given the choice, men are ultimately the most desired gender. This patriarchal idea serves the function of categorizing folks in neat, clean boxes as a means to oppress. But, as psychological researchers keep telling us, humans are anything but easily categorized.

Our rigid views around sexuality and sexual identity are part of what fuels violence against transgender and non-binary folk. If society didn’t expect us to “find” and settle on our sexual preferences, there wouldn’t be so much pressure on people, especially straight folk, to defend their sexuality. For example, someone can identify as straight or mostly straight, but have a relationship with someone who is non-binary. This is the key difference between how we identify and who we are attracted to. We should be embracing these gray areas, rather than utilizing shame to discourage exploration.

Sexuality is fluid and ever-changing — not something stagnant to be “discovered.” If we let go of the expectation that we must be “sure” of our sexual preferences, we open up doors to more satisfying sexual and relational experiences.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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6 things sex educators want you to know about a post-Roe America

Quality sex education will be more important than ever. But it too faces challenges.

Employees and volunteers dismantle exhibits at the Robert Crown Center for Health Education in Hinsdale, Illinois, in January 2018, as it converted to a mobile model to travel to schools to provide sex education.

By Keren Landman

On Friday, the US Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade, the legal decision that has for decades granted Americans the right to an abortion.

For young people, the prospect of dramatically reduced access to abortion creates enormous uncertainty — not only about their options in the event of an unplanned pregnancy, but because the political movement that brought us the end of Roe is also seeking, in many cases, to limit quality sex education overall.

I reached out to three sex educators to hear what they want all of us — not just young people — to remember as we head into a post-Roe future. Their responses fell into two categories: concerns about the overlap between the political movements to restrict abortion and sexual literacy, and advice for people who think they might one day need an abortion.

Here’s what they said.

Sex education is a target of the same politics that threatens abortion access

First, let’s be clear that what we mean when we talk about comprehensive sex education is sex ed that hinges on a deep understanding of physical and sexual autonomy. This type of sex ed helps prevent teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections, in contrast with the abstinence-focused “sexual risk avoidance” programs that do not. The educators I spoke with are all proponents and teachers of comprehensive sex education.

Many of the educators I spoke with see the assault on abortion access as part of a much broader, long-term strategy geared toward consolidating white male power. That strategy also includes anti-trans legislation, book bans, and efforts to do away with medically accurate sex education, said Michelle Slaybaugh, a former school sex educator who directs social impact and communications at SIECUS, a nonprofit comprehensive sex ed advocacy organization.

All of those movements have something in common, said Slaybaugh: “It’s about controlling women’s bodies,” she said. “When you don’t know about your body, you cannot make decisions that will allow you opportunities to advance.”

Opponents of a proposal to make changes to the sex education guidance for teachers in California rally at the state capitol in Sacramento in May 2019. The California State Board of Education was voting on new, non-mandatory guidance for teaching sex education in public schools, which would give teachers ideas about how to teach a wide range of health topics including speaking to children about gender identity.

In contrast to “sexual risk avoidance” education, which focuses on sexual abstinence as prevention, comprehensive sex education is medically accurate, inclusive of diverse sexual orientations and gender identities, and focused on giving learners a sense of autonomy — that their bodies and behaviors are under their control. While the more comprehensive approach is proven to reduce teen pregnancy, it isn’t a requirement in most states. (According to SIECUS, only 11 states mandate school-based sex education and require that it be medically accurate when taught. That said, there are a lot of ways sex ed can be categorized — see this chart — and overall, the sex education picture in the US is an inconsistent patchwork.)

>Where good sex education does exist, it often faces attacks. In 2021, state legislators across the US proposed 23 bills seeking to restrict sex education, by requiring an emphasis on abstinence-only programming, making the content “opt-in,” or in other ways. The political reality is that political movements that denounce abortion also denounce comprehensive sex ed: States that restrict comprehensive sex ed are more likely to also restrict abortion.

High-quality sex ed is still extremely popular among teachers, students, and parents

Although some conservative lawmakers are working hard to get abstinence-only messaging into school health classes, they may be out of step with even conservative voters in right-leaning states, who have historically favored comprehensive, medically accurate sex education.

In a 2018 survey from the Public Religion Research Institute, more than half of Republicans surveyed agreed that comprehensive sex education is more effective than abstinence-focused education at lowering youth rates of unintended pregnancies and sexually transmitted infections. Two separate polls conducted in 2013 showed that 90 percent of residents in deeply red South Carolina supported comprehensive sex education, and in North Carolina, 72 percent of parents favored teaching students about birth control. The pattern has repeated itself in other broadly conservative states.

More recently, a boom in state legislation has given parents and other community members the power to censor the educational content that schools provide on the basis of ideological objections. Many of these bills have already led schools to avoid teaching age-appropriate content on LGBTQ sexuality, a cornerstone of comprehensive sex ed.

Posters are displayed in the classroom of a high school in North Hills, California, in May 2018.

But on these bills, too, right-leaning elected officials may be more conservative than their own constituents. Nationally, parents — even conservative ones — are split on support for this kind of legislation: In a recent Morning Consult poll of parents, one-quarter of Republicans supported teaching about sexual orientation and gender identity. Meanwhile, 58 percent of Democrats and 38 percent of independents favored teaching on these issues in schools.

If parents want to see their children get medically accurate sex ed in school, “it’s now time for them to move their feet,” said Slaybaugh. “Go to the board meeting, voice your opinion, advocate.”

Sex ed will be more important than ever after Roe

The educators we spoke with agreed that as restrictions on abortion access increase, enabling young people to prevent unwanted pregnancies will become even more important.

In places where public schools provide comprehensive sex education, teen pregnancy rates are significantly lower than in places where they don’t. And while after-school programs may fill some of the gaps in districts where public schools are restricted from providing comprehensive sex education, these programs generally require students and parents to opt in. That raises the possibility that the lowest-income kids — who arguably benefit most from in-school programming — will get left out.

TikTok is also filling in some gaps: Although internet sex ed sources can be rife with misinformation, a growing number of sex educators and health care providers are distributing medically accurate and inclusive sex ed content to large audiences on several social platforms. For example, the account of OB-GYN Jennifer Lincoln, which recently featured a sentient uterus begging to be spared something called “herbal rejuvenation pearls,” has 2.8 million followers.

In the long term, broader access to high-quality sex education is what young people need to make the best decisions for their health and their future. However, the quality and content of sex education isn’t held to a national standard.

As much as sex education has suffered already, Julia Feldman-DeCoudreaux, an Oakland, California-based school sex educator, fears that it will suffer even more now that anti-abortion activists are seeing wins. That would leave a lot of young people with big deficits in pregnancy prevention skills — and without access to resources for dealing with the consequences of those deficits, she said. “If that happens, we’re going to have a catastrophic situation.”

It’s about to be particularly important to avoid unwanted pregnancy — and to act on it quickly

As abortion access becomes more restricted, preventing unwanted pregnancy becomes particularly important, said the educators.

That’s why Hanne Blank Boyd, a women’s and gender studies professor at Denison University in Granville, Ohio, has her students make a list of ways to have sex that can’t get you pregnant. These discussions start out awkward, she said, but it’s worth it to ensure “their definition of what sex is is expansive enough that they know that they have sexual options that are not potentially procreative.”

Feldman-DeCoudreaux said she’ll be encouraging people to use long-acting reversible methods of contraception like IUDs and implantable contraception. “The failure rate is a lot lower than just things like condoms,” she said.

Although it’s impossible for people to predict how they’ll feel in the event of an unplanned pregnancy, it may become particularly helpful to think through the logistics of obtaining an abortion in advance of needing one.

If contraception does fail or isn’t used, Feldman-DeCoudreaux also expects availability for abortion appointments will tighten as the number of providers falls. She therefore plans to advise people to make plans for an abortion faster than they might have previously. “The windows of opportunity for unmedicated abortions or surgical abortions are going to be a little bit pushed up,” she said, “because of a congested system.”

She also tells her students to think about their access to a working car and their networks of friends and family members in places where abortion will remain accessible.

The farther people have to travel to get abortion care, the less likely they are to receive it, Boyd said. “This is the time to start thinking about the practicalities.”

Legal abortions rarely require clinic visits and are safer than pregnancy and giving birth

These days, most abortions happen in the comfort of a person’s home — something many young people don’t realize, said Feldman-DeCoudreaux. “In their minds, it involves going into a clinic, and it involves your legs in the stirrups, and involves something maybe painful or gruesome,” she said.

The concept of abortion as something invasive and expensive is not only scary and alienating but also inaccurate.

Doses of mifepristone, the abortion pill, and misoprostol, which is taken the day after to cause cramping and bleeding to empty the uterus, are pictured at Women’s Reproductive Clinic in Santa Teresa, New Mexico, in May. The clinic has been a provider of abortion pills to mostly women from Texas, where abortion was made largely illegal by Texas Senate Bill 8.

In reality, medication abortions account for more than half of all US abortions, and that number is on the rise. These kinds of abortions involve taking medicines that induce the body to pass the pregnancy similar to the way it would pass a very heavy period. If those pills are provided by mail or at a pharmacy after a telehealth visit, they allow the people using them to make an end run around the travel, cost, and potential for harassment of a visit to an abortion clinic.

It’s important to shift the narrative about what an abortion looks like, said Feldman-DeCoudreaux. “In talking with students, that’s also really comforting information for them,” she said.

Preconceptions involving stirrups and pain make legal abortion seem unsafe, when it is in fact far safer than carrying and delivering a pregnancy, especially for Americans. In the US, 17 birthing parents die for every 100,000 babies born — more than twice as many as in other high-income countries. Meanwhile, legal abortions, including medication abortions, are extremely safe, with only 0.4 deaths for every 100,000 abortions performed between 2013 and 2018.

Don’t think of abortion restrictions as the norm

“Roe might be ending, but abortion in America is not.” That’s the mantra Feldman-DeCoudreaux has been repeating to herself lately.

Thirteen states have trigger laws designed to ban abortions entirely in the event of a decision to overturn Roe. But other states are moving to expand abortion access to accommodate the anticipated rise in demand, and public opinion still broadly supports the right to abortion access.

Boyd says it’s important for her students to understand that rights are not the same things as laws. That is, regulating abortion isn’t what determines whether you have an innate right to decide on your own terms to continue or end a pregnancy.

She also reminds her students that abortion was not always illegal or even controversial in the US, and that other religions and countries regulate abortion very differently than the US does. It’s all part of helping them understand how the fight over abortion fits into our particular place and time, she said: “Don’t ever assume that the way it is in this moment is the way it has to be.”

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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Pride 2022

Happy Gay Pride Month!

gay-pride.jpg

It’s time, once again, to post my annual pride posting.

In my lifetime I’ve witnessed a most remarkable change in societal attitudes toward those of us on the sexual fringe. One only needs to go back 50 years in time. I was 17 years old then and I knew I was queer. When I looked out on the world around me this is what I saw. Homosexuality was deemed a mental disorder by the nation’s psychiatric authorities, and gay sex was a crime in every state but Illinois. Federal workers could be fired merely for being gay.

Today, gays and trans folks serve openly in the military, work as TV news anchors and federal judges, win elections as big-city mayors and members of Congress. Popular TV shows have gay and trans protagonists.

Six years ago this month, a Supreme Court ruling lead to the legalization of same-sex marriage throughout the whole country.

The transition over five decades has been far from smooth — replete with bitter protests, anti-gay violence, backlashes that inflicted many political setbacks, and AIDS. Unlike the civil rights movement and the women’s liberation movement, the campaign for gay rights unfolded without household-name leaders.

And yet some still experience a backlash in the dominant culture. I don’t relish the idea, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention it. And while we endure this be reminded that it won’t smart nearly as much if we know our history. And we should also remember the immortal words of Martin Luther King, Jr. “The moral arc of the universe bends at the elbow of justice.”

In honor of gay pride month, a little sex history lesson — The Stonewall Riots

The confrontations between demonstrators and police at The Stonewall Inn, a mafia owned bar in Greenwich Village NYC over the weekend of June 27-29, 1969 are usually cited as the beginning of the modern Lesbian/Gay liberation Movement. What might have been just another routine police raid onstonewall.jpg a bar patronized by homosexuals became the pivotal event that sparked the entire modern gay rights movement.

The Stonewall riots are now the stuff of myth. Many of the most commonly held beliefs are probably untrue. But here’s what we know for sure.

  • In 1969, it was illegal to operate any business catering to homosexuals in New York City — as it still is today in many places in the world. The standard procedure was for New York City’s finest to raid these establishments on a regular basis. They’d arrest a few of the most obvious ‘types’ harass the others and shake down the owners for money, then they’d let the bar open as usual by the next day.
  • Myth has it that the majority of the patrons at the Stonewall Inn were black and Hispanic drag queens. Actually, most of the patrons were probably young, college-age white guys lookin for a thrill and an evening out of the closet, along with the usual cadre of drag queens and hustlers. It was reasonably safe to socialize at the Stonewall Inn for them, because when it was raided the drag queens and bull-dykes were far more likely to be arrested then they were.
  • After midnight June 27-28, 1969, the New York Tactical Police Force called a raid on The Stonewall Inn at 55 Christopher Street in NYC. Many of the patrons who escaped the raid stood around to witness the police herding the “usual suspects” into the waiting paddywagons. There had recently been several scuffles where similar groups of people resisted arrest in both Los Angeles and New York.
  • Stonewall was unique because it was the first time gay people, as a group, realized that what threatened drag queens and bull-dykes threatened them all.
  • Many of the onlookers who took on the police that night weren’t even homosexual. Greenwich Village was home to many left-leaning young people who had cut their political teeth in the civil rights, anti-war and women’s lib movements.
  • As people tied to stop the arrests, the mêlée erupted. The police barricaded themselves inside the bar. The crowd outside attempted to burn it down. Eventually, police reinforcements arrived to disperse the crowd. But this just shattered the protesters into smaller groups that continued to mill around the streets of the village.
  • A larger crowd assembled outside the Stonewall the following night. This time young gay men and women came to protest the raids that were commonplace in the city. They held hands, kissed and formed a mock chorus line singing; “We are the Stonewall Girls/We wear our hair in curls/We have no underwear/We show our pubic hair.” Don’t ‘cha just love it?
  • Police successfully dispersed this group without incident. But the print media picked up the story. Articles appeared in the NY Post, Daily News and The Village Voice. Theses helped galvanize the community to rally and fight back.
  • Within a few days, representatives of the Mattachine Society and the Daughters of Bilitis (two of the country’s first homophile rights groups) organized the city’s first ever “Gay Power” rally in Washington Square. Some give hundred protesters showed up; many of them gay and lesbians.

stonewall02.jpgThe riots led to calls for homosexual liberation. Fliers appeared with the message: “Do you think homosexuals are revolting? You bet your sweet ass we are!” And the rest, boys and girls, is as they say is history.

During the first year after Stonewall, a whole new generation of organizations emerged, many identifying themselves for the first time as “Gay.” This not only denoted sexual orientation, but a radical way to self-identify with a growing sense of open political activism. Older, more staid homophile groups soon began to make way for the more militant groups like the Gay Liberation Front.

The vast majority of these new activists were under thirty; dr dick’s generation, don’t cha know. We were new to political organizing and didn’t know that this was as ground-breaking as it was. Many groups formed on colleges campuses and in big cities around the world.

By the following summer, 1970, groups in at least eight American cities staged simultaneous events commemorating the Stonewall riots on the last Sunday in June. The events varied from a highly political march of three to five thousand in New York to a parade with floats for 1200 in Los Angeles. Seven thousand showed up in San Francisco.

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‘Parental rights’ lobby puts trans and queer kids at risk

By &

The political right’s current strategy for fighting against LGBTQ+ equality is to frame discussions about sexuality and gender in school as an infringement on parents’ rights.

In 2020, far-right Australian MP Mark Latham introduced a “Parental Rights” bill. The bill would have prohibited teachers from addressing any topic that veered close to “core values” without parental consent — including LGBTQ+ gender and sexuality.

While psychology experts concerned with well-being and the New South Wales Government have now rejected the bill, the focus on parental rights isn’t limited to Australia.

Parents, as a group, represent diverse concerns. The group includes LGBTQ+ parents, parents of queer and trans children and young people, pregnant and parenting teens and politically progressive activist parents — and all of the above have diverse educational, religious, economic, racialized and political experiences. However, the conservative description of parents often neglects this reality.

Two fathers seen with their daughter on a couch.
LGBTQ+ parents are somehow left out of parent rights’ lobbying.

Rise of ‘parental rights’ campaigns

In the United States, the now infamous parental rights law in Florida, widely known as “Don’t say Gay,” restricts conversations about sexuality and gender in primary school.

And in 2015, conservatives framed a controversy about a new, progressive sex education curriculum in Ontario, Canada, as an attack on parents’ rights.

In this conflict over gender, sexuality and schooling, conservatives invoke parental rights, and implicitly position these as superseding young people’s right to access information about their health and well-being.

As American journalist Judith Levine argues, the elevation of parents’ rights can be tied to U.S. Reagan-era policies. These policies sought to salvage the nuclear family, in part by attacking public education and the expansion of rights for sexual and gender minorities.

The 2021 foreword to Lantham’s proposed bill, when it was sent to committee for review and inquiry, articulated the view that a “positive view of family life is under challenge”, due to school-based discussions of gender and sexuality.

A sign at a rally with a rainbow is seen that says some parents are their child's first bully.
For queer and trans teens, positive family life needs to reject homophobia and transphobia.

Problems with ‘health outcomes’ approach

In a broader context of controversies over sexuality and gender in schools, some policymakers focus on the important health outcomes for young people who have comprehensive, medically accurate information about sexuality and gender.

Sociologists Steven Epstein and Laura Mamo call this approach “healthism”. They argue the language of health contains or cancels “the stigma that so often adheres to sexuality and extinguish[es] the flames of political and moral controversy”.

But the work of queer theorists like Eve Sedgwick reveal problems with “healthist” approaches to sex education in schools. Sedgwick’s warning from 1993 remains eerily prescient:

“[…] this society wants its children to know nothing; it wants its queer [and trans] children to conform (and this is not a figure of speech) or die; and wants not to know that it is getting what it wants.”

Sedgwick warns it would be naive to believe that there is broad support for protecting the health and well-being of young people when their needs and questions challenge dominant modern norms and values embedded in our institutions.

Recent conversations about trans youth’s access to health care that would support and affirm their gender expose the ways health-care systems — despite their supposed neutrality — are shaped by transphobia.

Trans historian Jules Gill-Peterson writes about how “the foundation of the transgender healthcare we inherit today was deliberately designed to stop trans people from transitioning in most cases”.

Trans youth framed as threat

Conservative parents and politicians who invoke parental rights are not persuaded by arguments that access to information and support is necessary for young people’s health and well-being.

A sign at a rally seen that says transgender chlidren are not political pawns.
Right-wing advocacy has framed trans youth as as a threat to their straight and cisgender peers.

In their view, young people aren’t being educated, they are being “groomed” and conversations about gender identity and sexuality are themselves abusive.

LGBTQ+ youth, and trans youth in particular, perversely become framed as a threat to their straight and cisgender peers.

Conservatives insist that knowledge about diverse genders and sexualities introduce faddish ideas about gender and sexuality that contaminate the innocence of their children.

This logic reaches its dangerous conclusion in laws that would restrict trans youth from accessing health care that affirms their gender. In Texas, the state has been investigating parents who secure gender-affirming health care for their children as potential child abusers. This legal sanctioning of transphobia denies trans existence and sanctions discrimination and violence that can have lethal consequences for trans people.

Rethinking parental rights

Shouldn’t “parental rights” extend to the parents of trans and non-binary young people and their responsibility to protect their children’s health and well-being? Shouldn’t trans and queer parents also expect schools to provide safe learning environments for their children?

Australian research has shown the vast majority of parents support explicit teaching and learning about gender and sexuality diversity. With a sample of more than 2000 parents across Australian government (public) schools, more than 80% of respondents indicated they supported gender and sexuality diversity inclusion as part of the relationships and sexual health curriculum from kindergarten through to year 12. In Canada as well, there is widespread and well-established support from parents for LGBTQ+ inclusion in schools and sex education.

This isn’t to suggest that there aren’t debates about the nature and scope of LGBTQ+ inclusion in schools. Both these aforementioned Australian and Canadian studies point to differences based on region, topics addressed and grade level.

However, the parents represented in these studies are more diverse and less conservative than right-wing advocates of parental rights. Parents who want to see LGBTQ+ students, teachers and families supported and affirmed in schools need to speak up against right-wing framings of parental rights.

We can start by recognizing and supporting the parental rights of parents who are doing their best to love and support their trans and queer children in a hostile political climate.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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How music fuelled the sexual revolution

The wildly romantic love affair of Serge Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin

By

The sexual revolution of the 1960s was founded upon a simple but radical idea: women had the same sexual appetites as men. Following the publication of Alfred C. Kinsey’s landmark study, Sexual Behaviour In The Human Female, feminist thinkers began arguing that single women should have the same sexual freedoms as men, opening the doors to the possibility that homosexuals and transexuals should be afforded the same sexual rights as everyone else in society.

By the end of the 1960s, the frequency of premarital sex in America had doubled by over 20% since World War I. By the 1970s, less than half of people were virgins by the time they were married. Indeed, conventions like marriage became increasingly unpopular and were looked upon as anachronisms. On both the college campus and in the community, alternatives to marriage like cohabitation were becoming normalised. For feminists, these were the first steps in the fight for sexual empowerment. For the establishment, this increase in promiscuity represented the destruction of long-held values, sparking much moral panic. The Pill, which had been introduced in 1950 and allowed women greater contraceptive control, quickly became a go-to scapegoat. But there was another important influence on the change in sexual attitudes following the Second World War: pop music.

In the 1950s, the dancefloor became one of the few places where sexual desire could be expressed freely. This shouldn’t come as much of a surprise; ‘rock ‘n’ roll’ was originally a slang term for sex, after all. In the early years of the ’50s, dances were still fairly straight-laced affairs. Elvis helped change all that by making his sexual theatricality an essential part of his act. It’s possible that he was building on something he’d learnt from watching Gospel music performances. According to Jon Stratton, Gospel had long been founded on expressions of divine ecstasy. In Coming to the fore, he suggests that artists like Elvis, who grew up listening to gospel, may have picked up on this and simply reinterpreted these vocal and physical representations of religious ecstasy (the groaning, the chaotic dancing) to convey carnal ecstasy instead.

The King’s hip-thrusting caused quite the stir when he appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show in 1956. While the young woman in the audience couldn’t have been more pleased, critics for The New York Herald Tribune saw fit to label his performance “untalented and vulgar”. Indeed, CBS found Elvis’ dancing so controversial that they ordered he be filmed from the waist up should he be invited back. Frank Sinatra, the embodiment of middle American taste at the time, was also worried about the influence rock ‘n’ roll music was having on the young and innocent. “His kind of music is deplorable, a rancid smelling aphrodisiac,” Sinatra said of Elvis’ performance. “It fosters almost totally negative and destructive reactions in young people.”

But the revolution was already underway. By 1964, Beatlemania was in full swing. As Barbara Ehrenreich, Elizabeth Hess, and Gloria Jacobs observe in Beatlemania: Girls Just Want To Have Fun, “Beatlemania was the first mass outburst of the ’60s to feature girls, who would not reach adulthood until the ’70s. In its intensity, as well as its scale, Beatlemania surpassed all previous outbreaks of star-centred hysteria. For those who participated in Beatlemania, sex was an obvious part of the excitement. The Beatles were sexy; the girls were the ones who received them as sexy.” In other words, Beatlemania reversed the traditional gender roles, allowing women to take on the role of the pursuer.

This change is reflected in the music – and especially the lyrics – of the countercultural era. In a study of 13 rock hits released between 1968 and 1972, nine were initiated by men and four were initiated by women. However, in the period 1973-1977, the report finds that “females became more aggressive, 26 times compared to the male 22.” Like The Beatles, whose tracks were often devoid of gender specifications (“Help, I need somebody“), these songs seem to have offered a vision of sexuality as opposed to the idea that women were disinterested in sex. That’s not to say that male musicians always viewed female sexuality in a positive light. Indeed, a paradox of the sexual revolution is that women were simultaneously encouraged and punished for engaging in sexual activity. But they did normalise the idea of women having the same sexual appetites as men.

One of the most controversial celebrations of female sexuality is Serge Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin’s ‘Je t’aime … moi non plus’. Released in 1969, the Gainsbourg-penned track was originally recorded with Brigitte Bardot, who later ordered the masters be destroyed out of fear for her reputation. When the French press managed to get hold of the original tape, they reported that it was an “audio vérité”, a recording of Gainsbourg and his amour on the cusp of orgasm. “The groans, sighs, and Bardot’s little cries of pleasure [give] the impression you’re listening to two people making love,” France Dimanche wrote.

This is where the relationship between music and the sexual revolution becomes a little bit more complicated. In the case of Je t’aime … moi non plus’, it’s hard to tell if it’s music fuelling the sexual revolution or the other way around. The controversy surrounding the track saw it banned in numerous countries throughout Europe, although it still became a hit in the UK. Gainsbourg was a notorious button-pusher, but one wonders if his attempt to set the female orgasm to music was also an attempt to boost his profile. Similarly, there’s nothing to say that Elvis’s sexually-charged moves weren’t simply a response to the prevailing mood of the day. Sex sells, as they say, and Presley may have understood this very well. Either way, one thing remains clear: music provided space for the sexual evolution to play out.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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How To Maintain Desire In A Long-Term Relationship

In her debut story collection, Watching Women & Girls, Riposte founder Danielle Pender examines the pillars of female life – love, duty, ambition, friendship, and sex – from every angle. Ahead of publication on 23 June, she considers what it takes to sustain sexual attraction with a long-term partner.

By Danielle Pender

Desire, what an intoxicating drug. More potent than any class As, more overwhelming than any hallucinogens. It’s a want, a need, a yearning for someone or something that can consume your thoughts, energy, and sometimes your life. At the beginning of any relationship, desire is the fuel that propels two people toward each other, and it can be an explosive experience. So, it’s no wonder that once we’ve experienced it, we want to chase that high again and again. But, as with all things that burn so intensely, that light can sometimes wane or go out entirely.

It’s a familiar tale; a couple meets, and at the beginning they’re permanently naked – unable to keep their hands off each other, their desire simply cannot be satiated, and when they’re not together their thoughts are consumed by one another. Imagination fuels this electric period as you fantasise about the gaps in the other person’s personality. You’re both on your A-game, you bring your best self to every date, you wear the good underwear, the uncomfortable but hot outfits, you wax and preen regularly – but that kind of upkeep and performance isn’t sustainable, so, over time, you both relax. You begin to wear sweatpants in each other’s company more often; perhaps the bathroom door gets left open. The desire for each other still lingers, but it moves into a lower gear. It becomes more manageable as other areas of life such as jobs, kids, family, and friends need attending to. And then, without notice, the desire that burned so bright at the beginning becomes more difficult to ignite. Perhaps it still flares up but less regularly, or it might dissipate completely. At this point, some couples will go their separate ways in search of that alluring high elsewhere, but what about the couples who are in it for the long haul? Who are still in love and want to stay together but also miss the burning desire that has fizzled out?

We can’t talk about desire without delving into the work of Esther Perel, the renowned psychotherapist who has spent years working with couples and looking into the origins and psychology of desire. In her now-famous TED talk, Perel describes the central conflict in any long-term relationship regarding desire. On the one hand, for a long-term relationship to work, there has to be security, trust, predictability and safety, especially when children are involved. These anchoring and grounding needs are essential to developing a lasting bond; however, this all stands in direct conflict with the things that incite desire: adventure, excitement, mystery, and surprise. Further in her talk, Perel says, “Love enjoys knowing everything about you; desire needs mystery. Love likes to shrink the distance between you and me, while desire is energised by it.” Anyone who has felt their desire for their partner bolstered by a few days apart knows this to be true.

Perel goes on to make the point that whereas, in the past, marriage was seen as an economic arrangement to secure social standing and ensure succession with a person’s various needs being met by a wider cast of people from the community, now, we ask our partners to be our co-parent, best friend, lover, financial partner – our everything. It’s a lot to require of one person. As Perel says, we’re demanding that our partners give us both “comfort” and “edge”.

Understanding this eternal conflict around desire in long-term relationships gives it a broader context. It helps us see that the waning desire we may be experiencing isn’t necessarily a deeper symptom of a failing relationship but more a reflection of our changing societal expectations around marriage and long-term partnerships. However, there are many other reasons why desire fades in relatively happy long-term relationships that are also worth exploring.

Sara has been with her husband for 10 years and married for five. She explains that when they first got together, their sex was always intense. After two years, they moved in together, and very slowly, things started to change; as Sara tells me, “When we lived together, we were in our mid-20s, so we were working and going out a lot, and the domestic side of life wasn’t an issue. After a while, I started to do more around the house, and he didn’t. It’s carried on like that until now we’re 10 years in, and it’s a battle to get him to do anything. He says it just doesn’t bother him.” Sara sees her fading desire for her husband in direct correlation to his lack of input into domestic chores. “It’s almost like I don’t want to please him in bed because he can’t be bothered to please me elsewhere.” It’s not that Sara doesn’t feel sexual desire or have the urge for pleasure, though. “I’m really conflicted about it. The desire for sex is still there, but just not as much with him because of this household issue.”

This issue of energy expended on domestic tasks remains a drain on desire even if both parties are equally invested in maintaining a clean and tidy house. So often, our time and attention are stretched in many directions. In short, modern life is exhausting, and sometimes our sexual desires are so dampened or suppressed by the end of the day that the last thing we feel like doing is having sex with our partners. Sometimes, it can feel like another thing to do.

Amma started to feel like the spark in her relationship had faded after the birth of her second child. “My husband was at work all of the time, I was with the kids when I was on maternity and then when I went back to work I just wanted to sleep the minute the kids had gone to bed.” This relentless schedule will be familiar to many parents. It’s the intense side of having children when many aspects of your life are sacrificed to prioritise the things that need attending to immediately – namely your kids and your job. Amma started to feel a distance growing between her and her husband, which made her feel lonely and depressed – on top of feeling stressed at work and stretched at home. “It just got to be too much. I still deeply loved my husband, and I missed him more than anything, but I just didn’t have that desire, so we decided to set time aside to be together. At first, we’d just go to bed together at 9pm on a Tuesday and Thursday, talk, laugh, chill, and reconnect. That really helped with our intimacy, and it was less pressure than a ‘date night’ or even cooking dinner for each other.” This new schedule led to them prioritising each other more, which led to actual date nights (when they had more energy and time), and now Amma says their desire for each other has been reignited, albeit in a more scheduled capacity, “I think we have this idea that desire should just take us in the moment and should be spontaneous, but I don’t buy that. When you both have a lot going on, you have to make time and space for it to arrive.”

This idea of space is something that Perel talks about a lot. She explains that for desire to exist, it needs space to develop. We need space for our imagination to wander, to explore our own erotic privacy. In one of her past studies on desire, Perel asked participants when they were most drawn to their partners, to which the most common answer was, “when they’re away”.

We need to have the opportunity to miss our partner, to not know everything about them and experience a little mystery. Think about it: the familiarity and closeness that comes with living with someone for a long time can also smother sparks of desire. If you’ve seen your partner carry out their less-than-appealing daily ablutions, if you wash their dirty underwear, if you’ve heard and smelt them in the toilet, it can be hard to separate that version of your partner from the person you’re supposed to have hot and passionate sex with. Amma agrees. “Along with dedicating more time for each other, I separated myself from my husband a little bit. I lock the bathroom door now and encourage him to do the same. It’s not that I’m not comfortable around him, but some things he doesn’t need to see, and I definitely don’t need to hear. It’s like a respectful distance.”

We also need to give ourselves space. Sometimes in the mayhem of modern life, we shut ourselves down, or we lose touch with certain aspects of ourselves, our desires and what gives us real pleasure. Prioritising pleasure can feel self-indulgent when there are family matters to attend to, work that needs doing, or a home that needs cleaning and organising, but putting our own pleasure first is never selfish. Maintaining desire in a long-term relationship means maintaining contact with ourselves. It means living fully in our own bodies and showing up for ourselves. This takes honesty and a level of openness that can feel intimidating, but it’s the best place to start when addressing any kind of issue with desire within your relationship. Who are you when you tap into your personal desires? How do you turn yourself on? And I don’t mean this in just a sexual way; I mean in an energetic, vibrant way – what brings you to life and ignites the fire in you? Is it creating, dancing, doing well at work, being in nature, being with certain people, or going to certain places? Tapping into some of these personal desires can help us better understand ourselves and how we relate to our partners.

While advocating for honesty with ourselves, we can’t overlook the need for honesty within our relationships. Communication, as they say, is key. The chances are if you feel like things have dipped off, then your partner is feeling it too, and the only way to get to the root of the issues is to nurture an open conversation. This is something that Rachel found helpful as she tried to deal with a lot of toxicity around her body and attitude toward sex; as she told me, “It’s been tough to reconcile a lot of negative messages I’ve received in the past about being too available, too sexual. I shut down this part of myself a few years ago after a traumatic experience. Now I’m in a relatively long-term relationship (three years), I’ve been trying to reconnect to a more authentic sexual side of myself so that it doesn’t affect my current relationship like it has in the past, but it’s difficult.” Rachel said that at the beginning of other relationships, she would rely on a more performative element of sex, that she’d use stereotypical moves in her sexual repertoire, but this would always feel fake and eventually affect the desire she experienced in her relationships as she never felt fully satisfied. Talking openly with her current partner has been key to addressing this issue, and the honest dialogue has led to a deeper understanding between them. However, it’s also worth noting that when it comes to sex and desire, an open dialogue with others can often be easier said than done. There is a lot of shame, inhibition and hesitation around admitting our deepest desires to another person, even if that person is your life partner who knows everything about you.

In life, everything is connected, and the wider issues we deal with in our day-to-day existence, such as work, family, physical and mental health or housing, can have a knock-on effect on how we experience desire and how we connect to our partners. The bigger issue that affected desire in Annie’s long-term relationship was money, “My partner had quite a lot of debt when we first got together that I didn’t find out about until we’d been together for 18 months. I helped her work out a plan to deal with it, but she’d end up spending the money she was supposed to be using to pay off the debt. I found it deeply unattractive.” Finally, with some outside help and plenty of patience, Annie’s partner got on top of her financial issues and seeing her thrive again brought the desire back into their relationship. This is something that Perel also talks about: seeing your partner in their element, doing something that they thrive in, can often help revive feelings of desire where they might have been lost.

So, yes, maintaining desire in long-term relationships is hard, but maybe it’s how we frame it. Rather than mourning or lamenting the loss of the nail-biting, gut-churning, mind-blowing desire you used to feel for one another 24/7, it’s about looking for the spaces where desire and yearning can be cultivated. Where you can explore your own desires and pleasure alongside your partners. After all, indulging in every passion we have is a reckless approach to life. Living life at a high-octane level isn’t sustainable; it’s the Hollywood version of what we think a relationship should be, but it isn’t genuine or healthy. Think about your most intense lustful relationship; I’d hazard a guess that at its height you couldn’t focus at work, and that your friendships and other relationships suffered because you were diving headlong into a pit of desire and lust. You simply can’t function like that on the regular.

That’s not to say we need to accept a life of no excitement, adventure and lust; it’s just that with a long-term relationship, these things are pulled into smaller pockets, and that’s OK. The thing to focus on is how you and your partner can nurture and honour your desire for each other in a way that makes sense for you both. Just as we’re all individuals with our own needs and wants, our relationships are unique to each of us, and what works for you might not work for another couple. So go forth, be gentle with yourself and your partner, find your own pleasure, love your body, talk to each other – and, most importantly, have fun.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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The Best Fetish Websites

— Whether You’re Just Looking or In Deep

To find sexual community online is to embrace the true spirit of the internet! Here are the best options.

By Jenny Singer

In the beginning there was nothing. The internet was without form and void, and darkness was upon the screen. Then the spirit of sex, porn, kink, dating, and fetish websites moved over the face of the web.

To find sexual community online is to join a proud history that stretches back almost as early as the internet itself. When you’re looking for a fetish site, know this: Sex drove some of the internet’s earliest colonizers. “In the 1980s, the internet was frequented by three types of people: government officials, university scholars, and porn seekers,” an article in The Guardian explained in 1990. Now we all live online, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy to find the high quality fetish sites amidst pop up ads for HOT MILFS NEAR YOU.

Plenty of sweet, wholesome sweater wearers in your life could easily teach a course on navigating sex sites. They practiced in their teen years, trawling chat rooms and video sites, and then perfected the art as adults, making inconspicuous desktop files marked “taxes” and a library of various bookmarked smut. But some of us spent our youths looking at fully dressed pictures of pop stars and flexing our new knowledge of abbreviations on AOL Instant Messenger. So let’s start with the basics.

“A kink is defined as a sexual activity that falls outside of sex that society traditionally considers ‘acceptable.’ That can include everything from role playing to bondage to whips,” Angie Jones wrote in Glamour in 2018. “A fetish technically refers to an attraction to an inanimate object, although this includes body parts, such as feet (like a foot fetish). So a fetish is a type of kink.” Kink is the umbrella term, fetish is a subset. But when people talk about “fetish websites” they often mean something more general—sex sites that offer something outside of the middle-of-the-road, vanilla, traditionally accepted sexuality.

If you have a kink or a fetish, you are not, contrary to cultural messaging, a member of a filthy little minority; you’re fairly normal. A study published in The Journal of Sexual Research in 2016 asked a representative sample of people from Quebec about their sexual interests and found that more than 40% experienced “desire” around fetishism, and more than a quarter had acted on it. The next year, a study of a representative group of Belgian adults found that “46.8% of the total sample had ever performed at least one BDSM-related activity and an additional 22% indicated having (had) fantasies about it.”

Fetishes are not shameful secrets (unless that’s your fetish), and they are not sicknesses (unless that’s hot to you!). They’re a fun quirk of your sexuality, one of many ways to orgasm, and the thing that will allow you to have a decades-long relationship with sex that goes beyond dead-eyed, three-minute intercourse. No need to Google “porn but the kind that I would like.” Let’s take a look at the best fetish sites and sex apps.

FetLife

Fetlife is the internet’s town square for kinks and fetishes, a super-popular social network that’s often compared to Facebook, though with a fairly obvious twist. It’s not a dating site—it’s designed more broadly to form communities in a culture that maintains stigma around kinky sex, including facilitating meeting up for sexual purposes. FetLife also has a porn component—some free, some that you’ll have to pay for.

Fetish.com

“Strap yourself in,” the cheeky copy on Fetish.com greets new readers. The website bills itself as a “kink-positive BDSM community for fetish dating.” There is a dating-app component, but the site also stands out as educational and community driven, featuring bloggy explainers, as well as Reddit-style discussion forums on popular fetishes. A recent search of the latter showed an ongoing conversation about how to successfully incorporate hair-pulling in sex, another about how to use a strap-on. Several conversations involved kink-themed meetups in various cities, and one, which garnered 100 replies, was titled simply, “So be honest what am I doing wrong?”

r/Fetish

The old-ish dictum “there’s a Reddit for that” rings especially true when it comes to sexual fetishes. Start with this masterlist of sub (ha) Reddits, which gets as specific as “r/womenincapes,” “r/scatporn,” and “r/smalldicks.” At press time, there were exactly 69 comments on the first pinned conversation in the “Ageplay and Diaper Fetish” subreddit. Sometimes life is beautiful!

Feeld

Feeld is a dating app that bills itself as “a positive space for humans looking to explore dating beyond the norm.” To that end, Feeld allows daters to create profiles and chat as individuals, couples, or more complex poly-assortments, and encourages cheerful sexual specificity, including around kinks. Sexual orientations and gender are also not limited to just a few options the way they are on most apps. While platforms like Fetlife tend to a pornier, classic sex-shop vibe, Feeld is courting millennials hard with a clean, friendly aesthetic. The ethos of the app emphasizes communication, openness, and consent, as all dating and hookup apps should.

Human Sex Map

Be not afraid, curious adventurers, of the sinister-sounding phrase HumanSexMap.com. The interactive sex map, created by sex writer Franklin Veaux, is a friendly thing, the kind you might hang on the wall in a sex-positive home. The site is a simply drawn but intricately labeled map of kinks and fetishes. Navigate from “Islands of the Imaginary” (vampire erotica, tentacle sex, ghosts) to the mountains that have group sex to their south and graveyards to their north. Using different-colored digital pins you can mark fetishes by “Tried and liked,” “Tried, didn’t like,” “Want to try,” and “Strictly fantasy only,” and save your map for the future.

#Open

Like Feeld, #Open is a dating app attempting to stake a claim for poly and kinky people in a world of “hahahaha I love tacos!”–style vanilla dating apps. “Polyamorous, ethically nonmonogamous, or open? Check. Kinky? Check. LGBTQIA+? Check! You’ll find others who accept and respect your identities and desires,” #Open promises. If you’ve never heard of the app, that might be because last year Google scrubbed it from the App Store, particularly because it contained the keywords kinky dates, as well as words like threesomes. It’s a sad example of kink being needlessly stigmatized in the mainstream.

OnlyFans

Think of OnlyFans as Etsy, but for porn. If you somehow missed multiple newscycles about OnlyFans, which launched in 2016 but blew up during the most social-distancing-heavy periods of the pandemic, it’s a digital sexual marketplace. Sex workers market and sell various subscriptions—to erotic photos, videos, and cam sessions, sometimes customizable.

The huge number of sex-content creators gathering in one place and competing for viewers leads to diversity of content. “Some favorite fetishes are: ass, twerking, butt crush, facesitting, cosplay, yoga leggings, feet, soles, keyholing, dick rating, latex, leather, femdom…,” writes creator Peyton Kinsly, whose subscriber count exceeds 4 million. Foot fetish content is especially popular. “Crossing and uncrossing my ankles as I wrinkle and relax my soles,” Brandy Elliott captioned one photo of her popular feet.

The Cage

In a recent discussion thread on The Cage, one poster asks for advice on how to do a series of exhibitionist activities including “eating fruit salad out of my panties.” A commenter quickly responded, “​​I think one thing to consider with this, and apologies if you already have, is consent. Not just between yourself and your partner but those that may stumble across you.” The original poster responded with thanks, and a discussion ensued. So goes a good interaction on a fetish site! In addition to being a discussion forum, The Cage is a venue for sharing one’s own kink and fetish writing, personal ads, kink event posts, and recommendations for fetish- and BDSM-themed podcasts.

Fetster

The review site Mr. Porn Geek summed up the appeal of the BDSM site Fetster: “There is shit loads of stuff all about every category of BDSM sex that you have ever heard of! As a novice in BDSM, this really helped me understand what the fuck I was signing up for!” Fetster looks like it was created by a web designer on day two of a coding boot camp, but what it lacks in visual appeal, it makes up for as a totally free one-stop fetish shop, with sections for photos, videos, classified postings, groups, discussion pages, and a big, juicy glossary.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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What is bondage sex?

By

By now, it’s likely you have heard the term ‘bondage sex.’

Maybe it was in general conversation, on the radio, in an article or quite possibly in an episode of Love Island.

However, you may be unfamiliar with what bondage sex entails. There are are many questions that surround the act and, very often, people can be wary and hesitant about even broaching the topic.

So how do you engage in it and what exactly do you do?

Well, bondage sex refers to a form of sex play that involves consensually tying or restraining a partner in a sex position to give or receive sexual pleasure.

It represents the ‘B’ in BDSM which comprises three separate yet combinable elements: bondage and discipline, dominance and submission, and sadism and masochism.

Sometimes, it is referred to as a sexual ‘kink’ as many believe it to be an activity outside of social norms.

However, as seen by the popularity of the Fifty Shades of Grey franchise which portrays sadomasochistic relationships, it is a desired practice.

Different forms

According to sex expert Ness Cooper, it comes in many different forms.

‘Bondage sex is where one individual has control over their partner, often in the form of tying them up or restraining them,’ she explains.

‘There are some individuals who enjoy restraining their partner in consensual psychological ways, but for many it is a physical erotic act involving methods of restraint such as rope, cuffs, or even pallet/shrink wrap.

‘One example of bondage includes shibari, which is a form where a partner is restrained with rope. It’s not always erotic as some consider it as an art form due to how complicated rope work can be.

‘When performing rope bondage in an erotic setting some enjoy the ritualistic feeling it offers to their play as they carefully twine rope around the body.’

She continues: ‘Another form is using cuffs. This is a fun way to explore bondage and allows for a quick way of restraining a partner. Some also like to add in role play to their cuff session and play out certain roles to add extra excitement, like pretending to be a police officer.

‘Meanwhile, mummification is an erotic form of play where an individual is tightly confined in shrink wrap. The individual being wrapped likes the idea that they can’t escape and that that they are helpless when presented to the other individual involved.’

Sensations

Ness notes that individuals enjoy both the physical and psychological side of bondage, with many choosing it for the added sensations it can create.

‘Some individuals who are neurodivergent particularly enjoy bondage due to the sensory stimulation it can provide,’ she adds.

Understandably, bondage comes with some preconceived notions as it can be difficult to understand at first. Yet, Ness says it’s time for the stigma to go.

‘Bondage can be stigmatised by society as it’s not seen as “vanilla,”‘ she explains. ‘But there are many reasons why a person may want to explore bondage, and as long as it’s consensual, it’s perfectly normal.

‘We can often judge those who enjoy sexual acts that go against our social norm.’

If you wish to try bondage but don’t know how to broach it with a partner, Ness has some valuable advice.

How to try it

Communicate with a partner

‘There are many sex board games that offer you the opportunity to talk about and explore different forms of bondage,’ she advises.

‘These can be a great way to try things out with a partner when you’re struggling to find the words to ask them to explore it.

‘Shop online together looking at sex toys and talk about the reasons why something appeals to you. This gives you both a chance to reveal intimate curiosities.

‘Discuss what porn you’ve watched, and if you feel comfortable, even ask them to watch a piece of bondage porn with you. Afterwards make sure you talk about it together and allow your partner time to reflect on their feelings about it.’

Set boundaries

Finally, if you and your partner do make the decision to try bondage sex, Ness says talking about personal thresholds is crucial.

‘When exploring bondage, it’s important to make sure you and your partner discuss boundaries and give each other an idea on how far you’d be like to take things,’ she says.

‘Adding in safe words is a brilliant way to let each other know when either of you have reached your limit.’

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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Can You Buy Your Way To A Better Sex Life?

We investigate whether expensive sex toys are *really* worth it.

The sexual wellness industry is worth billions. But can you put a price (or a guarantee) on an orgasm? Sex and relationships writer, Paisley Gilmour, reports from the frontline of Pleasure Inc.

By Paisley Gilmour

As a sex and relationships journalist, I often think I’ve heard it all… until something new comes along that’s either completely genius or so eye-rollingly outlandish that I find myself yelling into my laptop. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for people doing what they want to improve their sex lives (as long as they’re safe).

But with the sex toy market valued at around $38 billion in 2019 (even before multiple lockdowns saw sex-toy sales rocket), our sex lives are being commodified. And the more that happens, the more likely it is that you’re marketed stuff you don’t really need.

Sexual wellness is no longer confined to a dark corner of the internet; sites like Cult Beauty and Priceline now have their own sex sections, so you can browse vibes while stocking up on toothpaste. Goop – purveyor of the controversial jade vagina egg – now sells everything from a ‘date-night box’ (around $360 for a vibrator, sex gel, massage oil, chocolate and the infamous ‘This Smells Like My Vagina’ candle) to a 14-carat gold-plated collar-and-lead bondage set (around $740).

There are sexual wellness apps, too. Emjoy is an ‘audio guide for intimate wellbeing’ with a $16 monthly subscription fee, while Ferly promises to ‘radically transform your relationship with sex’ for around $25 a month. And let’s not forget the wealth of workshops and treatments you can try in a bid to improve your sex life. Tantric sex retreats for couples starting at $1000 and a $580 three-hour massage for ‘performance and orgasm issues’ spring to mind.

So, with the thriving industry going nowhere, does spending more on your sexual wellness actually guarantee success?

Is it worth splashing out on expensive sex toys? A case study

Jess Hooper* spent nearly $5,300 on her sex life over 12 months that straddled 2020 and early 2021; a sum that includes a Sybian – a sex machine with customisable vibrating dildos you can ride – that costs around $1700, as well as a rechargeable Doxy Wand vibrator for $299.95.

Among her other investments are new lingerie (“for regaining self-confidence”) and a butt plug with crystals inside (because she “needed some sparkle in 2020”). Jess also attends a pelvic-floor Pilates class for better sexual enjoyment and is a committed OnlyFans subscriber, changing the model she pays every month to support sex workers through the pandemic.

It was after experiencing pelvic-floor issues and difficulty orgasming that Jess, now 31, decided to invest more in her personal sexual wellbeing. “Years ago, I realised how important it is when looking at wellbeing overall,” she explains. “Sexual pleasure and satisfaction are an integral part of life for many. I’m willing to spend money on it, but I’ve had to really think about what can help me sexually.”

So, does every cent spent equate to mind-blowing orgasms? Seems it’s not quite as simple as that.

“I’ve found that items that look pretty aren’t always great. Often, sex toys made from expensive materials break really easily, so they’re just decorative. There was one I wanted… and it was meant to feel like oral sex. But there was so much wrong with it, and it even damaged my skin.”

Among Jess’s other regrets is a gold-plated dildo, since the vagina’s natural lubricant stripped the plating off over time. While Jess generally likes the sex-position pillows she’s invested in, she’s since found a cheaper alternative in mobility pillows, as well as those designed to help with back pain, which can be found in supermarkets.

Overall, Jess has seen the biggest payback on her investment when she’s bought things for herself – something she’s been doing a lot more of over the past year, now that she’s no longer in a polyamorous relationship.

“What I buy now is less couples-focused and more about me – something I probably neglected for years,” reflects Jess.

Budget VS high-end sex toys: My personal experience

While I’ll groan when I see my bursting inbox, full of bizarre NSFW emails, I’m aware my job comes with a great deal of sexual privilege. I’ve been able to test and review sex toys that are way beyond my budget, visit sex resorts that would have cost me thousands and even attend a $180 workshop that taught me how to use a strap-on.

I’ve been granted unrivalled access to the luxury sexual wellness world that would otherwise have been unavailable to me. And along the way, I’ve learnt a thing or two about what’s worth the hefty price tag.

I’ve had orgasms courtesy of a $25 vibrator and a $360 model and, with the exception of the millennial-pink marketing material, I’m not sure the experiences were actually all that different.

Of the hundreds of toys I’ve tried, only 10 remain in my under-the-bed sex box. And of those, I only really use five on regular rotation. I only have one vagina, after all.

My old faithful is a $50 glass dildo from Lovehoney, and on the pricier end of the spectrum is my other favourite, the Kip vibrator from female-owned brand, Dame Products. At around $130, it isn’t cheap, but its materials are high quality – and having spent hours chatting to the brand’s founder about her activism within the industry, I feel it’s a toy worth splashing out on. As for the dildo, the glass is sustainable, will last a lifetime and – most importantly – is body-safe.

Safety of materials used

The truth behind this ever-expanding industry is that it’s unregulated. That said, last year the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) – an independent body that develops voluntary expert-backed standards for different products and processes – released its first set of standards for sex toy design and materials. It warned manufacturers against the use of certain materials, like phthalates – a group of chemicals that are used to make plastics more flexible and have been linked with decreased fertility, asthma and breast cancer. I only use toys that are made from body-safe materials, like medical-grade silicone, ceramic, metal and glass.

Behind-the-scenes production ethics

While free porn has never been more accessible, it’s undoubtedly problematic. Pornhub had to remove millions of videos in 2020 after they were found to feature victims of child exploitation and sex trafficking, and 40 women are now suing the site’s owners, MindGeek, for about $100 million. I rely heavily on my subscription to ethical porn site XConfessions instead. Starting at about $16 a month, this gives you unlimited access to independent adult films by director Erika Lust, in which the actors are paid fairly and have creative input. After all, nothing can put you off your stride more quickly than wondering whether or not the actor you’re watching was treated with respect on set.

Supporting female-founded sex toy brands

Then there’s the question of who you want your money to go to. “A lot of sex tech for women is still being designed by men,” says Alice Stewart, a creative technologist and founder of Touchy-Feely Tech, a company that makes DIY vibrator kits and holds workshops to teach people how to build their own sex toys.

But the tide is turning, with more female-founded companies that have women and non-binary people in design roles popping up. See: Dame Products, MysteryVibe and Lora DiCarlo.

“It’s like there are two sides to this industry. There are sex-positive, female-founded companies advocating for marginalised folks out there, and while they’re expensive, they’re using very new tech that’s patented and for which they’ve won awards at science and engineering trade fairs. But then there’s the side serving the mainstream, with cheap products, copying ideas and selling a hundred options. The world I prefer to be in is the one that often comes at a premium,” says Stewart.

This decision, Stewart is keen to emphasise, is a personal one, and not because the smaller companies will guarantee a better experience. “An orgasm can also be achieved with a very simple, cheap vibrator,” she adds. “Essentially, all the sex toys out there have the same components.”

Sex toys won’t fix your personal life

When you face a problem in your life, it’s tempting to open up Google, grab your credit card and throw money at it. But just as owning the world’s best hand weights won’t automatically build muscle, shelling out on your sex life doesn’t come with an orgasms-or-your-money-back guarantee.

“In reality, most of the challenges people have that prevent them from enjoying a good and flourishing sex life are psychological. They’re not necessarily issues that can be fixed with lube, a sex toy or a new workshop. Although those things can absolutely help,” says sex educator Portia Brown.

Instead, Brown suggests looking inwards and working through any relevant issues at play such as body image, boundary setting or communication troubles.

“If you’re not experienced using toys or can’t be honest with yourself about what you want from a sexual experience, chances are you won’t have the exhilarating time you hope for. You can buy great sex toys or even the services of an accomplished sex practitioner, but only you can decide whether or not you can let yourself enjoy the sex you crave in the way you want,” says psychosexual therapist Lohani Noor.

“Ultimately, communication is at the foundation of every good relationship, and investment in it will enable you to reap the rewards of mutually satisfying sex,” continues Noor.

Whether to splurge or save on sex toys: The TL;DR summary

From my own experience, and through my conversations with the sex-positive people who are trying to change this industry, I’ve learned there’s no simple answer as to whether you really can buy your way to a better sex life. Some people do rely on sex toys to orgasm and experience sexual pleasure, and if dropping a month’s salary on golden anal beads makes them happier, who are we to judge? But cheap toys are, for many people, a gateway into the sex-toy world and as such, they have an important role to play, too.

Above all, I’ve learnt that true sexual fulfilment comes from investing more than just money; it comes from investing time and emotional energy in yourself. As with just about every other thing you spend your money on, a quick fix rarely equates to long-term happiness; just as a new designer dress won’t immediately solve your body-confidence woes, a diamanté spanking paddle can’t guarantee a rich and wild sex life, either. In short, sexual wellness, ultimately, comes from within.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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All About Arousal

By Eleanor Hadley

Do you ever feel like you and your partner are on totally different wavelengths when it comes to sex? Hands up who can relate to this? You get home, see your girlfriend curled up on the couch. You feel horny, so you go over and start laying on the moves. But she’s not up for it and shuts you down. Again. You feel rejected and sexually frustrated. Why doesn’t she want sex?

What if I told you that the issue isn’t necessarily that she doesn’t want sex at all, or that she isn’t into you anymore. But instead, it’s all about context. A fundamental mismatch in libido is really common in relationships where one partner seems to always be horny at the drop of a hat, but the other doesn’t feel that same pull. There are a lot of factors that can impact our level of arousal and our desire for sex, and most of them fall into whether we are actively turned on or turned off.

In my work with women, some of the biggest concerns they come to me with is a lack of desire, connection to their pleasure, struggles with sex drive and mismatched libido with their partners. This all gets exacerbated of course if their male partner is pressuring them in any way, or making them feel like there’s something inherently wrong with them. They tell me they feel like they’re “broken”, that they need fixing or that there’s something wrong with them if they no longer feel like sex as much as they once did.

Understanding Arousal: The Car Analogy

Let’s think of our libido, our ‘sex drive’ like a car. We need a good balance between using the brakes and the accelerator, and it all depends on the situation as to which we need. Now, if we have our foot slammed on the brakes, no matter how much you rev the engine, the car won’t move, right? Similarly, the car won’t move by simply taking our foot off the brake without pressing down the accelerator. The same goes for arousal. In order for us to feel ready and excited for sex, we need to first take our foot off the brake, and then accelerate. Essentially, we need to turn off the things that turn us off and turn on the turn-ons.

Sounds simple right? Well, everyone’s brakes (what turns them off) and accelerators (what turns them on) are different. Not only do we all have unique and individual turn-ons and turn-offs, but the sensitivity of our brakes and accelerators will vary widely between people too. To have the best, most nourishing and pleasurable sex we can have, what we want to do is activate our accelerator AND deactivate our brakes. Let’s explore the difference between the two sexual arousal systems.

The Accelerator

The Sexual Excitation System (SES) is your sexual accelerator or your turn-ons. It’s in constant pursuit of pleasure, working below the level of consciousness and scanning the environment for sexually relevant stimuli. It looks for things in your sensory world – what you can see, smell, taste, touch, hear – and sends a message to your brain (and sometimes your genitals) to turn on.

Possible turn-ons could be things like:

  • Mood lighting
  • Seeing a partner’s naked body
  • Feeling desired by their partner (without pressure)
  • The smell of your lover’s fragrance
  • Sexy music
  • Seeing your lover in their element
  • Certain types of touch (sexual and non-sexual)
  • Eye contact
  • Deep conversation
  • Sex Toys
  • Imagined scenarios

The Brakes

The Sexual Inhibition System (SIS) is your sexual brake, or your turn-offs. This system is perpetually scanning your environment for possible threats and reasons not to be aroused because nobody wants a random boner at a family dinner, right? This system is incredibly important in our everyday life, but if our brakes are highly sensitive then they can hinder our sexual experience. This is why we want to do what we can to take our foot off the brakes when it comes time to get down. Our SIS can be split into two categories, internal and external.

Internal:

  • Body image insecurities
  • Performance anxiety
  • ‘Meaning’ (eg: are we dating?)
  • Being up in your head
  • Feeling distracted or rushed
  • Feelings toward the person
  • Not feeling seen or appreciated
  • Social consequences

External:

  • Harsh lighting
  • Fear of being caught
  • Concern around lack of protection/catching an STI
  • Fear of unwanted pregnancy
  • Temperature in the room
  • Messy environment
  • Safety in general (physical AND emotional)
  • Inappropriate context (eg a family dinner)

So, to be in a state of arousal is essentially to be able to turn on the ONs, and turn off the OFFs. But of course, whether you’re turned on or off will depend largely on the context. Everyone’s accelerators and brakes are different and have different levels of sensitivity, but these lists might give you more of an understanding of what your own turn-ons and turn-offs are so that you can share them with your partner. And similarly, discover what theirs may be.

So, the next time you’re wanting to get it on with your lover – pause and consider what you each might need in order to release the brakes and rev the engine. Enjoy!

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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What Does an Orgasm Feel Like?

By Gigi Engle

You might be thinking: “Um. Anyone who’s had an orgasm knows what they feel like.” But, to be honest, that isn’t the case for everyone.

What an orgasm feels like is pretty subjective. “The question of how to define orgasm is something even scientists debate,” Sarah Melancon, Ph.D., a sociologist, clinical sexologist, and resident expert at the Sex Toy Collective, tells TheBody.

It’s not a super-definable thing—and no two are the same. Well, that might be a bit of an overstatement, but that is to say that orgasms are as varied as the stars in the universe. And this can be both very cool and very confusing.

It all begins with the nuts (LOL) and bolts of how we respond to sexual stimuli. The sexual-response model was originally thought to happen in four phases, thanks to sex researchers Masters and Johnson: excitement, plateau, orgasm, and resolution.

While this model has been updated to become more non-linear and to include desire as a stage of sexual response, orgasm has remained pretty consistent: the culmination of sexual tension that is released at the peak of sexual arousal. Sexual response, and the orgasms that often come with it, are part of a complex system. There is a ton of variance in human sexuality.

If you’re wondering what exactly happens when we have one off the wrist, look no further. The science of orgasm is something we could all do well to learn more about.

What Happens When You Orgasm

To understand orgasms, we need to understand their foundation: arousal. “Both people with penises and people with vaginas have erectile tissue. Erectile tissue contains capillaries with a unique feature. When you’re not aroused, the blood flows freely in and out, but when you are aroused, the blood goes in but not out. Erectile tissue filling with blood is called ‘engorgement,’ and it makes the tissue feel fuller and firmer,” Laurie Mintz, Ph.D., licensed psychologist, certified sex therapist, and author of Becoming Cliterate, explains to TheBody.

All this blood creates the tension we mentioned above. And, when the tension is released, that’s an orgasm.

For people with vaginas, orgasm often is associated with rhythmic contractions of the vagina and pelvic floor, along with a sensitive clitoris, but this interesting factoid is not one-size-fits-all. It’s very important for our collective sexual well-being to de-pathologize sexual function and allow people to experience what they experience, without trying to shut them away into little boxes.

And for penis-havers, orgasm follows these same principles: Orgasm consists of rhythmic contractions of the pelvic floor and a sensitive penis. Ejaculation and orgasm are, however, much more likely to occur at the same time for people with penises.

Other bodily things that occur during orgasm: increased breathing and heart rate, along with a rush of feel-good reward chemicals from the brain. Humans are nothing if not really cool.

What About Ejaculation?

Orgasm and ejaculation are not the same thing. They are related, almost inextricably so, but they aren’t the same thing. “Pelvic muscles contract, which in males, helps to eject semen,” Melancon says. Orgasm is a physiological (brain and body) response, whereas ejaculation is a physical reflex.

For vulva-owners, orgasm can sometimes accompany ejaculation (squirting fluid from the Skene’s glands and/or urethral sponge), but certainly not always. Only about 10% to 13% of women and other vulva-owners ejaculate during sexual arousal or orgasm.

Orgasm Intensity Is Varied

The old adage that orgasms are explosive, volcanic eruptions is bred out of a lack of good sex education and pornified depictions of sex. Yes, some orgasms are absolutely mind-blowing, but they fall on a massive spectrum.

Pleasure is, in fact, not an absolute when it comes to orgasms. “[Orgasmic] contractions are often experienced as highly pleasurable, though some feel pleasure without noticing the contractions specifically,” Melancon explains.

Melancon tells us that the intensity of an orgasm has a lot to do with how we want to experience them. “Orgasms vary depending on the physical areas stimulated, the emotions involved, the quality of the relationship (for partnered sex), whether we engage in our preferred sexual activities, hormones (particularly shifting across the menstrual cycle), and an individual’s physical and mental health,” she says.

Whether you have micro orgasms or orgasms that could melt your face off, you’re completely normal. Orgasms can be super fun, but at the end of the day: They’re a psychophysiological manifestation of sexual stimulation. “No one way is better than the other—however you experience orgasm is the right way for you,” Mintz adds.

The Pathway to More Orgasms Is Not Thinking About Them

Removing penetration and focusing on sensation and touch can allow people to begin to reframe their relationship to and understanding of pleasure. It allows them to move away from social scripts and start to write their own, cultivating a new path for desire to form with mindful action and a willingness to be flexible. When orgasm isn’t the focus, orgasms have a place to happen. Anxiety and intense focus are the anti-orgasm recipes.

Here’s some piping hot tea: Orgasms are not “given.” Everyone is responsible for their own orgasm. This means your pleasure, advocating for what you need and want, and understanding how your body works is actually your job. Your partner is not a mindreader, and expecting that is going to lead to a lot fewer orgasms and a lot more discontent.

Lastly, Mintz tells us that there is one thing every single human absolutely must purchase if they want to have better orgasms (both alone and with partners): lube. “Vulvas [and penises] are not meant to be touched dry, so use lubricant.”

Not Everyone Has Orgasms (and They Can Still Have Great Sex)

People may have trouble orgasming. This is known as pre-orgasmia (also known as anorgasmia). These issues with orgasming usually occur even if the person is fully sexually aroused and receiving enough and the right kind of sexual stimulation. Pre-orgasmic people who were assigned female at birth often report a lack of adequate stimulation or arousal—and this is all surely related.

Orgasms themselves vary in intensity, but the absence of them entirely is considered a “problem,” as it can cause great distress. Studies suggest orgasmic dysfunction affects 11% to 41% of women.

Pre-orgasmia is a relatively common thing I see in my sex therapy practice. I’ve found taking orgasm off the table right away can be quite helpful. A lot of orgasmic functions can be rooted in feelings of shame or an inability to let go (the fear of a loss of control).

But, at the end of the day, orgasms are not everything. It’s absolutely possible to have incredible sex without orgasms. Let’s stop pressuring ourselves to be Perfect Sexual Beings and instead enjoy the wonderful and rewarding experience that sex can be. Get after it, mate. It’s about the journey, not the destination.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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Orgasms Are Great, But Masturbation Also Comes With These 5 Health Benefits

By Devon Barrow

Masturbation used to be a hush-hush topic saved for private conversations. But these days, as we’re rinsing shame out of sexuality, the holistic importance of sexual pleasure has come into full view. Backed by tons of positive science and research, we’re finally starting to see masturbation for what it really is: a wellness practice.

We tend to think of wellness as green smoothies and cycling classes, so where does masturbation fit in? To get clear on the subject, we connected with Dr. Holly Richmond, Ph.D., LMFT, CST. “I believe we should consider masturbation as a wellness practice because sex and self are not dualistic,” she describes. “There’s not my general health over here, and my sexual health over here.”

As Dr. Holly confirms, sexual health is a holistic part of our being. And that doesn”t necessitate a partner. Masturbation is just as effective at promoting sexual health…especially with the help of brands that stand for pleasure and its role in our daily lives, like Dame. Their products, designed to nourish sexual wellness and deepen connections, make it easier for us to enjoy masturbation more and claim the many health benefits behind it. And BTW, there are many.

The health benefits of masturbation.

In order to fully reap the health benefits of masturbation, we need to understand what it’s about on a deeper level. “I prescribe [self-pleasure] all the time,” Dr. Holly shares. “I don’t call it masturbation because people tend to think of that as goal-oriented, and the goal is usually to have an orgasm. Sexual pleasure is also good for us, and that doesn’t have to include an orgasm.” The bottom line is: Sexual pleasure comes with all sorts of health benefits, orgasm or not. So let’s dive in:

1. Masturbation strengthens your pelvic floor.

According to Dr. Holly, self-pleasure helps make our pelvic floor stronger. And while orgasms aren’t necessary, they certainly help. “Orgasms are like a mini-workout for the pelvic floor,” she describes. “When we orgasm, there are these micro-contractions that help enhance our pelvic floor… This prevents incontinence and makes our orgasms stronger.” So the question on everyone’s mind: How do we make orgasms easier and frequent? Dame’s AerTM is a powerful arousal tool that uses thrilling pulses of air to simulate oral stimulation. Designed to take us all the way, right away, consider this one workout you’ll never skip.

2. Self-pleasure boosts your mood.

Most of the benefits that come from sexual pleasure happen as a result of the oxytocin and dopamine released by the body. As Dr. Holly describes, these natural chemicals wash our prefrontal cortex and our brainstem, leaving us with an overall sense of wellness. Along with boosting our mood, the PomTM can help us get in the mood too. Fitting snugly in the palm of your hand, the Pom offers broad or targeted stimulation for more pleasure, with more ease. With five different intensity and vibration settings, it’ll get the dopamine flowing.

3. Orgasms help us sleep better.

“For some of my clients, having an orgasm is something they do at the end of the day that helps them sleep,” says Dr. Holly. For many of us, sexual pleasure is something that deescalates the nervous system, leaving us in a state of peace and calm. Studies show that sexual activity can lead to a release of oxytocin (the cuddle hormone) and prolactin (a hormone that makes us sleepy) while inhibiting cortisol (the stress hormone)—like a neurotransmitter nightcap for better sleep.

4. Self-touch can help promote the health of our skin.

Exfoliate, moisturize, and self-pleasure…your new skin care routine. The hormonal release that happens with sexual pleasure decreases stress, improves our sleep, and promotes relaxation. Add all these benefits up, and you get glowing skin. On top of that, sexual pleasure has been proven to raise estrogen levels, which can help maintain the youthfulness of our skin. So for the sake of your skin, enjoy extra pleasure with a partner by trying out Dame’s famous and bestselling EvaTM. This wearable clitoral vibrator stays in place during sex to enhance partner play without getting in the way.

5. Masturbation helps us stay present.

We all have the meditation apps and mindfulness books, but we may be forgetting that sexual pleasure is a simple practice to bring us here and now. “To have great sex with ourselves, we do have to be in the present moment, so there is another benefit,” Dr. Holly confirms. “When we’re taking care of ourselves with our self-pleasure practice…it’s going to help us feel more present instead of being in the shame or depression of the past or in the anxiety of the future.”

Make pleasure a practice.

The conversation surrounding masturbation is quickly changing. It’s no longer something to blush about or keep secret. (And if 76% of women and 92% of men masturbate, was it ever really a secret?) It’s important to remember that talking about masturbation means talking about pleasure. As Dr. Holly puts it, “I’m very much an advocate of any time that we’re defining or looking at sexual health—we’re talking about pleasure.” Dame offers sexual wellness products that put pleasure at our fingertips. But they also offer other products, like their Arousal Serum and Massage Oil, which help us turn pleasure into a practice.

“Dame’s sexual wellness products help us receive more benefits from masturbation because there’s literally something for everyone,” Dr. Holly says. “There’s lube to get you started and so many different kinds of vibrators based on your own sexual template. Dame does such a good job of checking all of those boxes.”

The more pleasure we experience, the better we feel—there’s no question about that. But the science shows that more pleasure also means more health and well-being. From better moods to deeper sleep to brighter skin…we officially have every reason to masturbate more.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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How to Get Through a Dry Spell in Your Relationship

It’s completely normal, but it’s also important that you address it with your partner.

By Brianne Hogan

Everything seems better at the beginning of a relationship, but especially the sex. Impromptu romps in the sack are the norm as you and your partner are excited to explore each other’s bodies. You’re never too tired or bored either—you’re almost always in the mood.

But now you’ve hit a drought. Maybe you’re stressed and busy or maybe you’ve hit a rough patch with your partner and your timing is off. Whatever the reason, the sex is infrequent or has stopped altogether. It could be a few weeks or a few months or even a few years. Yep, you’re in the middle of the dry spell. Now what?

“Dry spells are completely normal whether you’re in a relationship or single, whether intentional or not. There will always be times in your life and relationships where you want to take a break from sex and that’s completely OK,” Aliyah Moore, a certified sex therapist, tells Lifehacker. “It all boils down to how you choose to respond to it as an individual and as a couple.”

A lot of the shame attached to having a dry season comes from the social construct on how much sex we should be having rather than focusing on what is right for our current situation.

And although dry spells happen within all relationships, according to Moore, many couples ignore the signs and don’t take the time to understand why it’s happening and how to remedy the situation. “If you avoid the problem and distance yourself from your partner, you’re just making it harder for the both of you to figure out how you can get back into the game,” she says.

While dry spells are completely normal and are nothing to be ashamed about, if your dry spell is bothering you, Moore provides insight on how to break out of it.

What causes a dry spell in a relationship?

“Dry spells often happen after the ‘honeymoon’ phase in relationships. This phase varies from couple to couple, but usually, this ‘euphoric’ stage in the relationship lasts a couple of months to two years,” Moore explains.

Once this phase ends, Moore says, couples start to see their partners for who they truly are—their imperfections, quirks, etc. “Some get annoyed by them and leave their partners, while some choose to stay and accept their partners despite their flaws.”

But then, for some, a long-term partner can also turn into a constant presence that often doesn’t make them very sexy.

“They become a part of your routine to the point that sex gets boring,” she says. “Plus, it no longer becomes a priority with everything else happening in life, like a new job or kids.”

Factor in partners being taken for granted and couples dealing with many major issues in their lives including everything from demanding jobs to family problems to health issues, and sex taking a back seat is very common for many couples.

Why sex is important in relationships

Maybe you’re thinking that a dry spell isn’t a big deal; that you can do without sex so long as you and your partner are still committed and sharing a life together. So why is sex necessary in our relationships?

“Sex is a vital part of life. Any sexual activity (solo or with a partner) offers many benefits to the person’s overall health and well-being,” Moore says. “In relationships, having sex increases the levels of intimacy, trust, and love between partners.”

Aside from increasing each other’s confidence levels in bed, according to Moore, sex between partners also empower couples to open up and be vulnerable to each other.

“Having regular sex improves a couple’s ability to perceive and identify their partners’ emotions. As a result, couples become better at expressing their feelings toward not only each other but also other people.”

Additionally, when a person orgasms from sex, the process triggers the release of the feel-good hormone oxytocin, which plays a vital role in creating a bond between partners.

Moreover, says Moore, most if not all couples feel more satisfied in their relationships when they can fulfill each other’s sexual desires. “Relationships tend to grow when partners can freely express themselves, as well as their sexual needs, desires, and even their fantasies.”

Figure out what’s causing the dry spell—and address it

First, you need to figure out why you’re not having sex as often or not having sex at all anymore. Dry spells happen for many reasons, ranging from minor problems (like being apart from your partner due to travel or job restrictions) to more serious ones (like trauma, health issues, or problems within the relationship).

“Taking a step back to assess the situation and identify the root cause makes it easier for all parties to understand the dry spell and remedy it,” Moore says, who suggests identifying and address these issues alone or with your partner. But either way, you must communicate to your partner next.

“I can’t stress the importance of being open with your partner enough. If you still haven’t learned the cause of your dry spell, you could discuss it and figure it out.”

If you have identified the potential cause, Moore says don’t wait for it to blow out of proportion without doing anything about it or talking about it. “Sharing your concerns and hearing what your partner has to say about them (and vice versa) may surprisingly resolve your dry spell issues. Moreover, communicating with your partner regularly helps you feel closer. Also, it relieves couples from talking to each other about anything—the good and the bad.”

So how do you broach such a subject? Moore cautions against starting the conversation with your partner if your emotions are high. “You’ll only end up saying hurtful things to them that you can’t take back and end up regretting.”

Also, try to avoid opening up this conversation when your partner just got home from work or is stressed because the conversation isn’t likely to be productive, and both of you will end up being more frustrated.

Once you find the best moment to talk to your partner, Moore recommends simply talking about how you feel without blaming or pointing fingers. “Don’t be afraid to say something in the present. Something like, ‘This has been a struggle for me.’ or ‘The past few weeks/months have really been hard for me because of…” And then express to your partner what you need right now. This approach allows couples to really express how they feel about the situation and with each other.”

It’s OK to take things slow

After having the dry spell conversation with your partner, Moore recommends taking things slow in the bedroom. “Don’t rush things, and don’t expect that you’ll immediately go from zero sex to five times a day.”

Instead, she suggests focusing on quality time and quality sex with your partner. “Make sure you have the right mindset, especially if lack of sleep, stress, or a demanding job is the root cause of the dry spell.”

What might also help reignite the spark is remembering how your courtship first started. “I’m talking about all the flirting and lovey-dovey things you did when you were still starting out as a couple (aka, the honeymoon phase),” Moore says. “Don’t be afraid to go back to basics. Go on a date, and make conversations. The touching part can always follow, as well as kisses, hugs, and cuddles. Savor the moment. Remember, each act shouldn’t always end up with sex. Do whatever makes you feel comfortable at the moment.”

If having sex feels right, Moore suggests initiating sex with words like, “Do you want to do something tonight?” or “do you want to play?”

Once things return to how they used to, Moore says don’t be afraid to experiment and explore different ways you can pleasure each other from time to time. “If you’ve reached this point in your relationship, you have to cultivate intimacy on a much deeper level. And by trying something new together, you’ll be surprising yourselves each time.”

Moore emphasizes it’s key to not expect that sex will be the same as it used to be when you started as a couple, because that can lead to disappointment for both of you.

“You have to remember that many things that have happened to you (or your partner) in the past contributed to the dry spell. Stress, lifestyle changes, and physical, emotional, and psychological factors are things you don’t easily resolve overnight. So again, take it slow and be patient with your partner.”

Moore says it’s important to focus on cultivating intimacy and a deeper connection with your partner without the pressure of making it all about sex all the time. “Do what’s comfortable for you at the moment. If you only feel like hugging or kissing one day, then feel free to do so. If you feel like doing it roughly the next day, so be it. And if you just feel like cuddling and talking about random things, do those, too. At the end of the day, it’s the bond you share with your partner that matters most.”

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