Working ‘doppelbanger’ into conversation immediately.
By Sophie Goulopoulos
They say the English language is continuously evolving. And much of that has to do with slang and colloquialisms. Behold, here are 12 new sexy words for your vocabulary.
The word of 2020 might be ‘pandemic’ (which is mighty depressing), but we’ve stumbled upon some spicy new slang words, too, which is a considerably more enjoyable topic.
With some insight from our friends at LoveHoney, there’s a whole bunch of new terminology for things you find in the bedroom. You know, adult things.
You’ll want to add these to your vocabulary immediately if not sooner.
Pretty pistachio
A cute name for the lovely clitoris, mother of pleasure. With over 8,000 nerve-endings in the tip of the clitoris alone, this little nut is immeasurably satisfying to crack. Like having to pry open each pistachio individually, the effort is worth it.
Fifth base
We’ve all heard of bases 1-4 right, but what’s fifth base? Fifth base, also known as deep diving, is a more incognito way of saying anal sex.
You’re either thinking of Michelle from American Pie or Ron Burgundy playing the “yazz flute” in Anchorman. Both are pretty sensual, if we’re being honest. In either case, this is a new way to say blowjob.
Doppelbanger
You know when you’ve had a couple of glasses of wine and you realise that person making eyes at you looks like Shawn Mendes? Who could blame you for wanting to fulfill a celebrity fantasy? A dopplebanger is someone you have sex with because they look like someone else.
Finger painting
Paints a picture, huh? A creative, relaxing, joyful and uses your digits. Finger painting is another term for female masturbation.
Eating the peach
In the world of media, fruit is a popular G-rated representation of genitalia, and you can see why because they really, really look like vaginas.
‘Eating the peach’ is a prettier way of saying: oral sex performed on a woman. This is a gentle, sensual motion of licking the vulva and clit.
Five knuckle shuffle
Yet another term for men’s masturbation, like we needed another one. This one is kinda funny though, we encourage you to use it often. File it next to “spanking the monkey” and “shaking hands with the milkman”.
Postboned
You know when you’re running late because of an unexpected sexual encounter? Yeah. This is fun to say. We like this one a lot. Please work it into conversation as much as you can.
Queening
One of our favourites, queening is a fancy way of saying ‘sitting on someone’s face’ (and telling you that you love them. Monty Python reference? No?). Think of ‘queening’ as a queen sitting on her pleasure throne.
Rusty trombone
One to pretty easily visualise, a rusty trombone is the act of performing a hand job and a rim job simultaneously. The giver looks like they’re playing the trombone.
Sissy play
Sissy play is a form of power-play used to enhance BDSM scenes to create a strong power dynamic and relies on gender stereotypes to work.
Generally speaking, a submissive man emasculates himself and takes on personality traits or roles usually associated with women, for example, the role of a maid.
As always, both parties should consent before taking part in any BDSM activities.
Toygasm
Sex toy sales are way up this year, with social distancing meaning everyone’s spending more time on their own. So it’s understandable that intense, jaw-clenching blended orgasm you get from the Rabbit vibrator would have its own word.
Betty Dodson, the pioneering sexologist, educator, and author, died in New York City on Saturday. She was 91 years old.
Dodson built her career around educating women in the art self-pleasure. In the 1970s, she began hosting masturbation workshops in her Manhattan apartment, in which women got naked, examined one another’s vulvas and then practiced pleasuring themselves with a vibrator. (Or, as Dodson put it last year when asked what happens in her workshops: “Everyone gets off.”)
She was inspired to start the workshops, she said, after attending several orgies and realizing that even the most freewheeling, sex-positive women often struggled to orgasm. Effective masturbation, she believed, was a form of liberation for women, a way for them to learn to prioritize their own sexual experience and reduce their dependence on men. As she wrote in her 2010 memoir, Sex by Design: The Betty Dodson Story, “Instinct told me that sexual mobility was the same as social mobility. Men had it and women didn’t.”
Born in Wichita, Kansas, on August 24, 1929, Dodson moved to New York when she was 20 to pursue a career as an artist. She was briefly married to an advertising executive, but the two were sexually incompatible; she was “not orgasmic” with him, she once told Salon. Dodson said her sexual shame and dissatisfaction led her to start drinking heavily. After her divorce in 1965, she got sober, and, according to the New York Times, it was in Alcoholics Anonymous that she met a man who, she said, taught her about self-pleasure and would remain one of her sexual partners until his death in 2008.
Dodson’s own sexuality was fluid. She described herself as “heterosexual, bisexual, lesbian.” Her attitude toward men, the Times noted in a profile of her earlier this year, was occasionally dismissive. “Men are so two-dimensional,” she said. “If there is anything interesting about them, it’s because of the women they’ve been with.” There were exceptions, though. She recalled with fondness, for example, Eric Wilkinson, the man she lived with for over a decade when she was in her 70s and he was in his 20s. “He was so beautiful. He had the perfect body, broad shoulders, good-size genitals, and tight bones.”
Gruff, blunt, and wickedly funny, Dodson’s teachings have been hugely influential in how women’s sexual health and pleasure are discussed today. Her book Sex for One has been translated into over 25 languages; her self-pleasure workshops are taught by “bodysex leaders,” as they are known, around the world; and she even worked as an adviser for New York’s popular Museum of Sex. “Betty had it all,” Annie Sprinkle, the 1970s porn star turned sex educator, who was a student of Dodson’s, told the Times. “She popularized the clitoris and clitoral orgasms, and gave the clitoris celebrity status.”
But even if the conversation around female pleasure has come a long way from where it was when Dodson was first attending orgies, there’s still a long way to go. Consider her appearance last year on The Goop Lab, Netflix’s docuseries about Gwyneth Paltrow’s lifestyle company. In an episode called “The Pleasure Is Ours,” Dodson preaches how important it is that women “run the fuck,” and she makes Paltrow’s cheeks blush the same shade of millennial pink as the couch she’s sitting on. She also corrects Paltrow’s terminology. When the Goop founder boasts that “vaginas” are her favorite subject, Dodson cuts her off. “The vagina’s the birth canal only,” she says firmly. “You wanna talk about the vulva, which is the clitoris and the inner lips and all that good shit around it.”
It’s a telling moment. Paltrow is a woman who advances and profits from the notion of female pleasure by peddling expensive jade yoni eggs and a candle that supposedly smells like her vagina. (Did she mean vagina or vulva? I guess we don’t know.) But she’s iffy on the specifics of female anatomy, and a comment about women “running the fuck” makes her blush. Clearly, Dodson’s message of open and honest communication around female sexual pleasure is as relevant today as it was when she hosted her first masturbation workshop in the 1970s.
As for her own pleasure, Dodson never stopped enjoying it. As she told the Cut back in 2011, when she was 83: “Last month, I had a knockout [orgasm]. I went, ‘Whoa, girl. You still got it.’”
PARIS, FRANCE: US feminist and sexologist, now a naturalized German citizen, Shere Hite poses for the photographer, 12 February 1990, in Paris. Hite made waves in the 1970s and 1980s with her radical feminism, asserting for example that women could easily find sexual fulfillment and raise children properly without men.
“All too many men still seem to believe, in a rather naive and egocentric way, that what feels good to them is automatically what feels good to women.”
Such terse pronouncements made Shere Hite – a sex researcher who died this week at the age of 77 – both a feminist hero and a controversial figure in 1970s America.
Her pioneering work The Hite Report upended prevailing notions about female sexuality.
The book, which came out in 1976, laid out the views of 3,500 women on sexuality and the female orgasm. It challenged many male assumptions, and was derided by some, including Playboy, which dubbed it the “Hate Report
She endured intense and lasting criticism in the US, and eventually renounced her American citizenship in 1995.
Born Shirley Gregory in the conservative heartland US state of Missouri, she once worked as a model in New York.
To pay for her degree at Columbia University she appeared in a typewriter advert that capitalised on her blonde hair and attractive looks with the caption: “The typewriter that’s so smart that she doesn’t have to be.”
Her anger over its sexism inspired her to join protests against it.
At one meeting of the National Organization for Women, Hite said the topic of whether all women had orgasms came up. There was silence until someone suggested she look into the topic.
The Hite Report: A National Study of Female Sexuality became a huge international bestseller, totalling 50 million copies worldwide.
Thousands of contributors set out the pleasures and frustrations of their sexual lives in the work. More than 70% of the women interviewed said they could not reach orgasm through penetrative sex with men alone, and needed clitoral stimulus to reach climax.
“I was the only sex researcher at the time who was feminist,” she told the Guardian in 2011. “I tried to extend the idea of sexual activity to female orgasm and masturbation.”
Feminist writer Julie Bindel said that Shere Hite’s “groundbreaking” work “put women’s sexual pleasure first and foremost for the first time ever”.
“In many ways she began the real sexual revolution for women,” she told the Guardian.
But the work generated a huge backlash. Some accused her of hating men, while others said she was helping break apart families at a time of rising divorce rates
The controversy around the Hite Report and her later works – for which she received death threats – caused her to leave the US and move to Europe, spending time in Germany and the UK. She renounced her US citizenship in 1995.
“After a decade of sustained attacks on myself and my work, particularly my ‘reports’ into female sexuality, I no longer felt free to carry out my research to the best of my ability in the country of my birth,” she wrote in the New Statesman in 2003.
Her husband, Paul Sullivan, told the Washington Post that she had the rare neurological disorder corticobasal degeneration. She died at her home in north London on Wednesday.
It may, paradoxically, be precisely because they believe cuckoldry is so bad
By Justin Lehmiller
In the wake of allegations that he spent years watching his wife have sex with another man, Jerry Falwell Jr. resigned this week from his post as president of Liberty University. Falwell has denied the specifics of those allegations, but if they’re true, he would be neither the first nor the last conservative man to take pleasure in sharing his spouse or partner while he looks on, a sexual practice known more commonly as “cuckolding.” In fact, a disproportionate percentage fantasize about just that happening to them.
They’re not alone, of course. Cuckolding routinely ranks among the top searches on the world’s biggest porn sites, as reported by neuroscientists Ogi Ogas and Sai Gaddam in their book “A Billion Wicked Thoughts,” for which they analyzed the contents of hundreds of millions of Internet searches. But as my own research has shown, reports of that sexual fantasy exhibit a surprising ideological pattern. For my book “Tell Me What You Want,” I studied the sexual fantasies of 4,175 Americans from all 50 states. I asked my participants to report how often they fantasized about hundreds of different people, places and things — including cuckolding.
A majority of heterosexual men (52 percent) said they had fantasized about watching their partner have sex with someone else. Heterosexual men who identified as Republican were the most likely to report having had a cuckolding fantasy at some point — and they fantasized about it more often than Democrats. Fewer than half of Democratic straight men (49 percent) reported having ever fantasized about cuckolding, and 19 percent said they fantasize about it often. By contrast, nearly two-thirds (64 percent) of heterosexual Republican men reported having had this fantasy, and 30 percent said it is a frequent fantasy. Republican men also reported more fantasies about infidelity, swinging and a wide range of sexually taboo activities, including voyeurism.
One way to understand why these desires are so much more common for conservative men is through what sex therapist Jack Morin termed “the erotic equation,” which he spelled out as follows:
Attraction + Obstacles = Excitement
The basic premise here is intuitive: When we are told we cannot do something that we want to do — even if we do not have a particularly strong desire for it — those restrictions make us want to do it even more. Violating taboos creates risk — and taking on a certain amount of risk can heighten arousal and excitement. This is precisely why public sex (or semipublic sex) was another extraordinarily popular fantasy in my survey: The thrill of potentially being caught in the act amps up the intensity of the situation.
Because those on the right tend to have more restrictions placed on their sexuality in general, it stands to reason that they have access to plenty of potentially appealing taboos. And among those many paradoxically pleasurable roadblocks to sexual gratification, cuckolding is one of the most prominent. They are really, really not supposed to let themselves become cuckolds, let alone to long for it.
According to this logic, a man who shares his wife with another man doesn’t just violate social and moral dictates for monogamy, but he also violates traditional notions of masculinity. In the eyes of many men, cuckolding is the ultimate form of emasculation. This sentiment is precisely why many on the right have taken to using the term “cuck” to denigrate men they see as giving up their own power and control, or humiliating themselves. It is also why many of them use the term “cuckservative” to refer to conservative men they see as caving to the left.
It may, paradoxically, be precisely because of all this that cuckoldry fantasies are so appealing. People on the right tend to place a very high value on their freedom. For example, consider conservative views on wearing masks during the covid-19 pandemic: Surveys find that Republicans are more likely to refuse to wear masks than Democrats, citing it as an attack on their liberty. This tendency is an effect of the psychological concept known as reactance, the idea that when one’s individual freedoms are threatened, one tries to reassert autonomy and independence.
Resistance to restrictions, in this mode, becomes a way to reassert personal freedom, and that’s a big deal for those on the right. As the mask resisters show, conservatives may be willing to put themselves at risk to merely assert the fact of their freedom. Likewise, it seems possible that some are open to violating erotic norms — even those that might expose them to mockery or humiliation — to demonstrate to themselves that they’re not bound by the rules. While such behaviors may seem to contradict the expectations and norms espoused by those who practice them, they actually serve to reaffirm a more fundamental conservative value, the emphasis placed on freedom itself.
With all of that said, it is certainly not the case that all Republicans and conservatives are fantasizing about cuckolding or other taboo sexual activities, nor is it the case that they’re alone in expressing such wishes. As I report in “Tell Me What You Want,” one of the kinks that Democrats report more often than Republicans is BDSM: bondage, discipline, dominance, submission, sadism and masochism. In other words, those on the left fantasize about things like power play and rough sex more than those on the right. For Democrats, subverting ideals of equitable and fair power relations is a major taboo. The same could be said for visualizing a scenario in which the lines of sexual consent might not be explicit. After all, people on the left tend to be much stronger supporters of the #MeToo movement and have more vocally advocated for models of enthusiastic sexual consent. Flirting with this taboo may therefore be why BDSM is more tantalizing for them.
In short, while the specific content of our sexual fantasies and the particular activities we pursue in our bedrooms may differ to some degree according to our political affiliations, the factors that feed our erotic desires might not be so different after all.
Jerry Falwell Jr. may well be wishing that a photo with his underwear showing and his arm around the waist of a woman not his wife was the worst of his problems.
That snapshot kick-started a round of speculation into the prominent evangelical leader’s personal life that has cost him his job. On Aug. 25, Falwell confirmed that he has resigned his presidency at Liberty University.
How male public figures react to a sex scandal can be a very complex process. In trying to preserve what is left of their reputations, my research indicates that they will often attempt to prove that they remain a “real man” – both a loving, devoted husband and a strong, virile leader. This behavior makes sense when one understands the conservative Christian gender roles that inspire them.
Under conservative Christian gender norms, men are described not only as naturally sexual, but also as divinely designed to be far more sexual than women. In fact, male sexuality is often depicted as out of control. The point of marriage, many evangelicals claim, is to harness that male sexuality so that it is productive rather than wild and unbounded.
This view of marriage may strike many as archaic, but these ideas nevertheless permeate part of American culture – one can see it in the “boys will be boys” defense of bad male behavior.
Such ideas also strongly influence how large swaths of the public tend to view sex scandals. Generally speaking, while the public holds the offending politician responsible, they are also often eager to condemn other figures who were involved for leading him astray.
More specifically, my research shows that women who are in any way associated with sex scandals are much more likely to be demonized or blamed for the sexual incident in question. Even when they are the innocent party, they can be portrayed as power-hungry strategists who stayed in a bad marriage to elevate themselves or enablers who give all women a bad name by sticking up for another adulterer.
And as scholar Amy DeRogatis has shown, if a woman is sexual outside of marriage, she is often described by evangelicals as compromising the “gift” of her sexuality intended for her husband. Giving her sexuality to someone else sacrifices her future capacity for intimacy, it is argued.
At the same time, some evangelicals claim that a wide number of marital problems stem from the fact that women do not provide their husbands with enough sex.
In this particular subculture, everything from men’s self-esteem to their job performance can be linked to the frequency and quality of their sexual encounters. In this way of thinking, when men have problems, their wives’ sexual attitudes and behaviors are often to blame.
Demonization of women
Negative stereotypes often extend to all women involved in a sex scandal, no matter whether any sexual contact actually happened nor whether the act in question was consensual.
For instance, Paula Jones and Anita Hill both claimed to have been the victims of sexual harassment, at the hands of Bill Clinton and Clarence Thomas, respectively.
In the case of both women, elaborate sexual stories were concocted by critics of all political stripes. These stories were then adopted more broadly by the general public to portray them as immoral women who must have been at least partially responsible for the sexualized encounters they experienced with two prominent figures.
The case of Paula Broadwell is also instructive. Broadwell was the lover of Gen. David Petraeus, one-time director of the CIA. While both Broadwell and Petraeus admitted to a consensual affair while married to other people, Broadwell’s ethics were called into question in a way that Petraeus did not experience.
In short, there is a pattern in American culture of finding fault with the woman in a sex scandal. Falwell’s response falls in line with this pattern.
But there is another aspect of Granda’s allegations that deserves attention when looking at the response to the scandal. In Granda’s telling – again, which has been denied by Jerry Falwell – the evangelical leader watched the sexual encounters between Granda and Becki but did not actively participate.
As scholar Joshua Gamson has shown, men whose sexual violations do not involve actual intercourse – for example sexting, as in the case with disgraced New York politician Anthony Weiner – are often portrayed as less masculine, even silly, for failing to “do the deed.”
Chance of redemption?
What we are watching play out before us with the Falwells is a study of conservative gender norms.
If Falwell can convincingly argue that the fault lies entirely with his wife, then this well-worn story might give him the chance to redeem himself at some point in the future. After all, in this version of events, he can maintain the appearance of a loving husband and father who has some integrity.
On the other hand, being the man who “watched from the corner of the room” fulfills neither the devoted family man role nor that of the virile, powerful husband. If this is the narrative that is ultimately adopted, then the path back to redemption in the eyes of the evangelical public is harder to imagine.
Ina Park has been in a monogamous marriage for more than 15 years, but she feels like she’s been having one safe sex conversation after another these days.
Like, after she and some close friends spent time together without masks on, forcing her to later ask: “Are you seeing other people?”
Then, the mother of her son’s friend suggested letting the boys play basketball together, leading to detailed negotiations about risk tolerance, boundaries and protection.
“Those are conversations that some of us were used to having in the past and have not had for a long time,” said Park. “Now, suddenly, we’re having to have these awkward, safe sex-type conversations with all types of people that you wouldn’t ordinarily have to have these conversations with.”
Park is a doctor who treats people with sexually transmitted infections at the San Francisco City Clinic and author of a book about STIs, “Strange Bedfellows“, so she’s used to explaining to people, when you have sex with someone, you’re essentially having sex with whoever else they’re having sex with.
Now, it’s whoever you’re breathing next to.
As Bay Area residents emerge from strict shelter-in-place rules and consider getting a haircut or hosting a family BBQ, we have a lot to negotiate with each other about what we’re willing to do, with whom and how.
All this requires some nuanced communication skills. Doctors and sex education teachers, as well as polyamory and BDSM practitioners, have years of best practices and guidance to offer, drawing various parallels between negotiating safe sex and negotiating safe socializing.
“If you really want to make sure your partner uses a condom, you have to express why it’s important to you and why it’s aligned with your values and why that’s something that you need from them,” said Julia Feldman, who runs the sex education consultancy, Giving the Talk. “If you want your mom to wear a mask when you see her, you need to explain why it’s important to you and why it’s aligned with your values.”
Feldman helped develop sex education curriculum for the Oakland Unified School District. She says Bay Area schools have shifted away from knowledge-based teaching — sperm fertilizing the egg, etc — to focusing more on communication skills like these; skills many adults have never received formal training on.
“The more people communicate what they want and what they desire and what they’re comfortable with, the more we actually get what we want,” Feldman said. “This is a really good time to practice that.”
Feldman has been practicing her skills over and over during the pandemic, like when she invited a friend over for a socially-distanced cocktail in her backyard. They had an extensive conversation about how they would sit (six feet apart); what they would drink (her friend would accept a can she could wipe down); whether they would wear masks (no); if Feldman would serve snacks (no).
Sex educator Julia Feldman says the same communication skills she teaches teens about sex are helpful for everyone during the pandemic.
“Because if you show up at someone’s house and they have a beautiful spread and they’re expecting that you’re just going to dig into a platter of food with them, and that’s not what you’re comfortable with, there might be disappointment on their part,” Feldman said. “There’s a lot of emotions involved.”
Her friend also asked in advance if she could use Feldman’s bathroom while she was there.
“So I disinfected this one bathroom and created a pathway through my house. But it really was only because she was cognizant of articulating that need and I was able to take time to accommodate it,” she said. “If she had showed up and said, ‘Oh, I really have to pee. Can I use your bathroom?’ I don’t know what I would have done.”
Lessons from Kink
This very detailed thinking and advanced negotiating shares similarities with the world of BDSM; sexual role-play, involving bondage, dominance and submission.
“You start tying people up without consent and it just goes south right away — you just can’t do that,” said Carol Queen, staff sexologist at Good Vibrations, the sex toy and sexual health company with locations throughout the Bay Area.
Good Vibrations sexologist Carol Queen says we have a lot of lessons we can borrow from the BDSM and polyamory communities in negotiating consent during the pandemic.
She suggests considering a common tool from the BDSM world: a detailed spreadsheet of every possible kinky activity — from leather restraints to nipple clamps — with columns to be filled in for yes, no or maybe. It’s a conversation starter for beginners and helps facilitate conversations ahead of kink parties. Queen says we need an equivalent checklist for the coronavirus.
“That helps people do that very first step of understanding what their own situation and needs and desires are,” she said. “Somebody, make this list for us!”
Queen has always emphasized that communication doesn’t stop once you get to the party. In her starring role in the 1998 instructional video/feminist porn film, Bend Over Boyfriend, she stressed the point repeatedly: “It’s deeply important that you are verbal with each other and say, ‘Yes, no, faster, I’m ready, I’m not ready.’ It’s very important because if you’re going on your partner’s wavelength, you’re going to have a greater experience.”
Two decades later, through a pandemic, she said it still holds true.
“The idea that it’s okay to be that talkative in the service of safety and comfort really is what we learned from that,” Queen said. “It’s a very important lesson in sex and, these days, under most other circumstances.”
Negotiating commitment
As some counties start to encourage people to form social pods or “quaranteams” as a way to limit socializing among two or three households, we now essentially have to decide which of our friends or family we ask to go steady with us.
“I wish I had more polyamorous friends to help me navigate that situation,” said Park, the STI doctor. As in, folks with experience brokering different levels of intimacy with multiple partners and establishing ground rules for the group.
As a physician who often talks with patients about infidelity when an infection enters the picture, Park wonders how pods will deal with social infidelities.
“There’s inevitably going to be betrayals, ‘Oh, I cheated on our pod with somebody else,’ and then having to disclose that to the pod,” she said. “Does the relationship recover? Or do you kick that person out of your pod forever?”
In Park’s experience, it’s always better to admit to an affair before an infection enters the picture, whether it’s chlamydia or the coronavirus, so everyone can take precautions. With the coronavirus, the offending pod member can self-quarantine for two weeks away from the rest of the group, so no one gets sick.
But whether you’re being kicked out of a pod or no one’s invited you to be part of a pod in the first place, the experts agree we all need to get better at handling rejection. The pandemic is temporary, but we’re in it with our loved ones for the long term, so we need to respect each other’s anxieties and boundaries.
“Don’t take it personally,” said Queen. “We’re all new here at this party.”
Priscilla McGregor-Kerr is about to have a first date while dressed in pajamas. On a Thursday night, the 25-year-old Londoner dabs a bit of concealer under her eyes, fills in her eyebrows and runs a mascara brush through her lashes. She’ll put on just a bit of makeup, not a full face, she decides, because her date knows she’s “not going or coming from anywhere.”
She strives for a quarantine look that says: I’m trying, but not too hard. She adjusts her bedside lamp so that there’s a nice glow and pours herself a glass of gin-infused rosé.
When her date arrives, he’s drinking the same brand of wine. They spend three hours talking about their personality types (she’s an extrovert, he’s an introvert), playing a drinking game and sharing their love of the U.S. version of “The Office.” It goes so well they decide to meet again the following week, in the same place, where they can’t touch or inadvertently spread the coronavirus: FaceTime.
Before the pandemic, online dating sites and apps were pushing for video meetups, but the medium hadn’t taken off. Now, out of necessity, video apps are becoming the hot spots for first dates, forcing daters to reinvent norms and endure an entirely new form of awkwardness and miscommunication. Is their WiFi really that spotty, or are they just not that into you?
The virtual first date keeps people distant, but it also can enable more intimacy. You can talk until your battery dies or someone falls asleep. You can see if your date keeps their room messy or makes their bed. It’s also a good match for this moment of economic uncertainty: It’s cheap and easy. You don’t need to impress your date by snagging a reservation to the trendiest restaurant in town. You don’t even need to be in the same town. You need only half an outfit.
Dating from a distance also removes the question, “Am I going home with this person?,” notes sexuality and relationship educator Logan Levkoff. “I’m hoping that this really is an opportunity for people to think [beyond] the superficial qualities we think are so important.”
Dating apps are trying to help the FaceTime-reluctant get comfortable with virtual meetups. When Hinge users open the app, a pop-up notes that 70 percent of members are “down for a digital date.” Plenty of Fish lets daters broadcast themselves to a bunch of prospects and then break off into one-on-one video chats. Match has a Dating While Distancing hotline that offers free advice. And since any new relationship would likely be “long-distance” regardless of where people are based, Tinder is making its premium Passport feature free, so users can swipe through singles anywhere in the world.
Dating from home is even being packaged as entertainment. Fans of the Netflix hit reality show “Love Is Blind” have started their own low-budget spinoffs, trying to match more Camerons with Laurens by pairing up singles and broadcasting snippets of their phone dates on social media. “Love Is Quarantine,” created by two Brooklyn roommates, is in its second go-round, which features senior daters. “DC Is Blind,” a Washington version, launched on Wednesday.
A video chat allows two people to pay attention to one another without the usual distractions at a bar or restaurant: a television blaring overhead, or a bartender who’s cuter than your date. But you’ll need some privacy. A 21-year-old man in Florida learned this the embarrassing way when his mom walked in on his R-rated Skype date Tuesday night. His digital dating tip: Put on headphones and make sure you’re in a room with a door that locks.
Even a virtual date requires some planning. Matchmaker Tammy Shaklee suggests cleaning up the corner where you’re going to Zoom or FaceTime and choosing a backdrop that represents your personality. It’s a bit like creating a good dating profile. A writer might sit in front of his bookshelf, or a musician might set up with her record collection right behind her.
Whatever you do, don’t show up in sweats, which makes you look lazy, Shaklee says. And resist the urge to Skype from bed, which feels like a hookup situation. Drink out of a nice glass, not the chipped mug from your university, Shaklee suggests. Add a spritz of perfume or cologne, even though your date can’t smell you. “You’re hosting your future partner in your space,” Shaklee says. “Light a candle, have a fragrance. If you feel it, they will be able to sense it.”
When McGregor-Kerr tweeted about how her date had sent her 15 British pounds (about $18) to buy a bottle of wine for their virtual meetup (socially distant chivalry!), 15,000 people retweeted it. For their next meetup, McGregor-Kerr says they might send each other UberEats.
But for some daters, the idea of hosting a near-stranger in their home is not pleasant — even if it’s virtual.
“I don’t live by myself. I don’t want them to see my roommates or even my room,” says Isis Parada, a 25-year-old woman in the Washington area. “It strips a level of privacy down.”
She might be okay doing a Zoom call with a fake background (you can swap in any image from your camera roll). But for now, Parada is telling her dating-app matches that they can meet up after social distancing is over.
The pandemic and its attending isolation are obvious conversation starters for a video chat, notes Logan Ury, a dating coach in San Francisco, but daters should be careful about falling back on what’s easy. She suggests transitioning from covid-19 talk into more personal topics, such as: “What are you passionate about? What’s your relationship like with your family?” That’ll also help your date feel different from your work Zoom call.
A 26-year-old woman in Washington, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for professional privacy reasons, went on two good video dates recently but wondered: Do we have anything in common, or is it just the quarantine? After a six-feet-apart second-date walk with one of those men, she determined they didn’t share much more than being two young people craving connection while cooped up in their apartments. She texted later to say she didn’t think they were a match.
Ury likens this phenomenon to traveling abroad, meeting someone from your home country — and falling for them immediately. That connection might feel strong, until you realize it was based more on circumstances than a genuine bond.
Even when a spark seems real, it’s hard to know how these budding relationships could possibly grow. Lull Mengesha, a 36-year-old man in Oakland, Calif., says he’s been getting more Tinder matches than usual, perhaps because people are stuck inside with little to do but swipe. He had a FaceTime date, which went well, but the next day she texted to say, “I think we may be in different headspaces.”
The woman was looking for a relationship, but California is a shelter-in-place state, and Mengesha doesn’t know how that would work logistically.
“Maybe before corona, I’d be looking for a relationship, but we have to understand that a lot of things are changing,” he says. “I don’t know what’s happening, and this is the time you want to attach the responsibility of another person?”
So Mengesha is looking for digital companionship only. Still, that text stung a bit. Getting rejected, he says, “hits double when it happens in the apocalypse.”
For some couples, a video screen is not enough. In February, Tracy Smith, a 40-year-old woman in Oklahoma, met a Bumble match she really liked. Once social distancing set in, they watched “Portlandia” and “Modern Love” at the same time from their separate apartments while texting each other. Eventually, Smith invited him over to her place, where she got out her tape measure and jokingly asked that he hold one end as she gave him a tour.
A few nights later, he arrived at her door again. No tape measure.
“I felt like I had to take a risk and let him into my personal space during isolation in order to see if this could work,” Smith says.
What are we looking for when it comes to all things love and lust? Are we a nation in need of sweethearts or brief encounters?
While we’re all very aware that there’s a never-ending list of dating trends – ahem, cushioning, zombieing and sneating – apparently it’s a common theme when it comes to the most Googled sex and relationship questions of 2019.
Many of us were trying to work out what ghosting, breadcrumbing and gaslighting are all about, whereas others were wondering if it’s okay to date a colleague.
Civilised Health has analysed Google trend data to find out exactly what we were asking when it comes to sex and relationships with qualified health and relationship specialist Claudia Brooker, presenting her
professional advice.
Question 1: What is ghosting?
Ah, the most traditional of all modern dating trends – and yet we still don’t quite know how to tell if we’ve been ghosted. According to the data, the question has received a 421% rise in Google searches in the last year alone.
‘In terms of dating, ghosting is the practice of one person ending a relationship by unexpectedly withdrawing from all methods of communication,’ says Brooker.
‘They do not reply to messages or answer calls in order to disappear from a situation. In my opinion, dating apps have contributed to a rise in ghosting as users tend to adopt a ‘churn and burn’ mentality. They assume that the victim of ghosting will not dwell for too long as they will soon be talking to someone else. Even people who consider themselves to be a part of an exclusive relationship can be a victim of ghosting.
‘In my experience, the person who tends to do the ghosting does so because they are fearful of confrontation and have an overriding sense of guilt that leads them to avoid formally terminating a relationship.
‘If you are a victim of ghosting, temptation to ‘fill the gaps’ and let your imagination run away with you can surpass rationality. Victims often blame themselves and replay certain scenarios over and over in order to determine what they should have done differently. Often, the victim strives to find out why the situation has taken this course and a lack of closure can be incredibly confusing.
‘My advice to anyone that has been ghosted is to remember that ghosting is often indicative of a person needing to work on themselves in order to heal old wounds as they are now void of showcasing their vulnerability. Therefore, the situation is rarely a reflection on you, it should effect your personal wellbeing.’
Question two: Sex on a first date?
Outdated ideas about the ‘right time’ to sleep with someone new are still going strong. While it’s completely up to you if you want to sleep with someone on the first, second, fifth, tenth or twentieth date, the term has seen a 313% rise in searches online.
‘The prospect of sex on the first date often sparks a minefield of opinions and overthinking. To put it simply, having sex on the first date does not reflect your entitlement to an exclusive relationship and there should certainly be no sense of shame whatsoever,’ says Brooker.
‘However, the consistent rise in Google searches signals that the debate (however outdated) is set to continue. Like most things, deciding whether sex on the first date is the right thing to do is prescriptive to each situation and should only ever come into fruition if both parties are on the same page and feelings are communicated honestly and effectively.’
Question three: Dating a colleague – yes or no…?
Inevitable or avoidable? While office sex has some very real consequences, it seems that many of us were asking whether or not to date within the workplace in 2019 with searches rising 281%.
‘I have seen some successful romances stem from the workplace. However, I have also witnessed some horror stories,’ reveals Brooker.
‘I am not surprised that the UK’s workforce turns to Google in order to establish whether an office romance is a good idea. For obvious reasons, participants are hesitant to mention it to their other colleagues and friends can be very opinionated.
‘As a relationship expert, questions surrounding office romances is one of the most common queries I receive (along with one-night stands). For every client, no matter what industry they work in, I always present three golden rules:
Check your contract – it always amazes me how many people do not know the details of their contract. Some contracts prohibit relationships with co-workers, superiors and even clients. Before you pursue a relationship, READ YOUR CONTRACT
Think the worst – when the dopamine is flowing and the honeymoon period is in full swing, it can be difficult to think the worst. However, be realistic and analyse what will happen if the romance does not pan out the way you thought it would. Always take feelings into account and decide whether the relationship is worth risking your role within the workplace
If your romantic interest is not single, do not pursue – workplaces can replicate that of ‘holiday mode’ if someone is unhappy in their home life. If your colleague is not single, then steer away from getting romantically involved with them. This rarely ends well and often impacts your work
Question four: What is bread crumbing?
That’s right – another dating trend. Yay. So what is breadcrumbing, the term that has seen a whopping 333% rise in searches?
‘Breadcrumbing is not a new phenomenon and chances are, everyone has done it at some point,’ Brooker says.
‘It is essentially leading someone on by sending them sporadic messages and/or commenting on social media posts in such a way that interest continues. However, it is non-committal and vague.
‘The messages and social media engagement act as the breadcrumbs. There is endless reasons as to why people do it. Some want to divert their attention away from a painful breakup, others want to feed their ego, and some (woefully) just want to kill boredom.
‘If you are romantically engaging with someone that is not an evolution of a friendship, I recommend a 3-message rule.
‘After 3 separate occasions where a dedicated conversation has taken place, if no mention of meeting up has occurred then limit your emotional investment immediately. This can be considered harsh however, it encourages realism and clarity.’
Question five: What is gaslighting?
Finally, we’ve been interested to know more about gaslighting. Over to the expert…
‘The term gaslighting is coined from the film Gaslight where a manipulative husband convinces his wife to constantly question her thoughts, actions and memories in order to control her,’ Brooker says.
‘It has received a 416% rise in Google searches, and I feel that it is important to state that its occurrence is not just confined to romantic relationships and can occur in friendships, families and even workplaces.
– Surprising New Research Shows 3 Main Motivations
ByTexas Tech University
A new analysis from the Texas Tech University Department of Psychological Sciences shows three different, equally prevalent purposes behind sexually based messages.
Let’s talk about sext.
Sexting is extremely common among adults — but maybe not for the reasons you think.
New research from the Sexuality, Sexual Health & Sexual Behavior Lab in the Texas Tech University Department of Psychological Sciences shows that two-thirds of people who sext do so for non-sexual reasons.
In an analysis of the reasons people engage in sexting with their relationship partner, assistant professor Joseph M. Currin and doctoral student Kassidy Cox confirmed three main motivations found in previous research:
Some people use sexting as foreplay for sexual behaviors later on;
Some sext for the relationship reassurance they receive from their partner; and
Some sext their partner as a favor, with the expectation the favor will be returned later in a non-sexual way (such as a dinner date).
When they began the research, Currin and Cox were curious to see if one of these motivations was the most prevalent. Using data gathered online from 160 participants, ranging in age from 18-69, they performed a latent class analysis measuring sexting motivations, relationship attachments and sexual behaviors. To their surprise, they discovered three nearly equal clusters, suggesting no motivation is more common than another.
“It was intriguing that two-thirds of the individuals who engaged in sexting did so for non-sexual purposes,” Cox said. “This may actually be demonstrating some individuals engage in sexting, but would prefer not to, but do so as a means to either gain affirmation about their relationship, relieve anxiety or get something tangible — non-sexual — in return.”
Also surprising to the researchers was there were no significant differences in motivation based on sexual orientation, gender or age.
“This study highlighted the main reasons to date that individuals are motivated to sext, and it actually normalizes all three types of motivations,” said Cox.
“As it is becoming a more accepted method of communicating one’s sexual desires, we wanted to highlight how adults utilize this behavior in their relationships,” Currin added. “This tells us that sexting among adults is an evolution of how we have communicated our sexual desires to our partners in the past. People used to write love poems and steamy letters, then when photography became more commonplace, couples used to take boudoir photos for each other.”
Currin and Cox noted that their research focused on sexting between current partners in consensual relationships only.
“As with any sexual behavior, it is important and necessary to have consent to engage in sexting,” Currin said. “Individuals who send unsolicited sext messages — such as images of their genitalia — are not actually engaging in sexting; they are sexually harassing the recipient.”
The study, published by the European Journal of Neurology and conducted by a British and Italian research team over 24 months, examined the relationship between an active sexual life and the progression of early-stage PD.
Parkinson’s disease is a neurodegenerative disorder that affects dopamine-producing neurons in the brain, causing a range of debilitating physical symptoms over time including tremors, loss of balance and motor skills, and rigidity.
Causes remain a mystery, and PD is expected to affect 1 million Americans by the year 2020, making the results of this study a welcome bit of positive news.
The study involved a subgroup of patients involved in the PRIAMO study, a large Italian multicenter observational study designed to assess the prevalence and evolution of non-motor skills (NMS) in patients affected by PD.
The average age of the participants was 57, and all were considered to be in the “early stages” of PD progression. They were tested for baseline motor skills, underwent a mental-health screening, and completed an extensive health interview during which they were asked a range of questions related to overall health.
Patients were also asked if they had sex and/or sexual dysfunction during the past year. Male respondents were twice as likely to be sexually active as the women in the study, but nearly half of the male respondents also complained of problems with erectile dysfunction.
According to researchers, sexual activity did drop off for many subjects during the following two years of the study, but they concluded that men who engaged in sexual activity displayed less severe motor disability and a better overall quality of life than those who did not.
Women, however, did not share in those results.
No clear reason is certain, although the study skewed heavily male (238 men versus 117 women) and PD symptoms can be different for men and women. Women also may not have felt as comfortable answering questions about their sexual activity and habits.
In addition, certain medications PD patients take to activate dopamine receptors in the brain can increase movement. These may account for the increased quality of life described in the study.
Still, doctors and patients alike should be encouraged by the findings, and hopefully this is a step in the right direction of Parkinson’s knowledge and treatment.
Baby Boomers, Generation X, Millennials, Generation Z.
As human beings, we like to attribute societal trends and cultural shifts to a specific generation.
Sexual trends are no exception.
Generation X, people born in the early to mid-60s to early 80s, were influenced by the sexual revolution and ruled by the blowjob, while Millennials embraced anal sex.
Back in 1992, 16% of 18 to 24-year-old women reported they’d tried anal sex. Now, it’s 40% of people by age 24.
Data suggests 94% of women who had anal sex in their last encounter achieved orgasm. That compares 81% for oral sex and 64% for vaginal orgasm.
It’s not as simple as anal sex equals orgasm but having anal sex as part of people’s sexual experience seems to show more sexual satisfaction.
Generation Z has seen conventional sexual roles removed and have taken anal play one step further with pegging – a woman wearing a strap-on and inserting this into the man’s anus.
LoveHoney reported a 200% increase in sales of strap-ons in 2017 and it has continued to grow since then.
So what’s the next taboo to be broken?
‘Society is moving away from the idea that vaginal penetrative sex is the only accepted form of sexual intercourse,’ said Sienna Halliburton, sex expert at Je Joue.
‘Blowjobs, anal sex and pegging have moved, or are still moving, away from being seen as taboo subjects into the realm of “normal” conversation.
‘Greater interest in sex education and liberalising attitudes towards gender and sexuality are largely responsible for these shifts.
‘So what is still a taboo subject that can be broken? Mutual masturbation.’
Masturbation ‘will overtake penetration’
People now developing their sexual identity have been born into an era concentrated on social media and technology, where interaction can be confined to a computer or smartphone.
Some experts conclude that this will lead to a lack of social skills, which in turn will cause the next generation to become less interested in penetrative sex with a partner and more focused on masturbation.
‘Sexual content is at their fingertips 24/7 as they navigate the world via smartphones, tablets, and laptops,’ Chelsea Reynolds, assistant professor at the Department of Communications at California State University, tells Metro.co.uk.
‘Because they are exposed to porn, sexting, and online dating at a young age, they feel online-mediated sexuality is natural.
‘What they aren’t comfortable with is face-to-face communication.
‘If Gen X’s thing was the blowjob, millennials’ thing was anal, and Gen Z is into pegging, the next generation will likely be the masturbation generation.
‘Teenagers have been consistently losing their virginities at an older age and having fewer sexual partners overall. Although teen sexuality may [be] less taboo than it used to be, teens have a million sexual outlets today that don’t involve genital contact.’
Virtual Reality sex
Another sexual trend influenced by technology is the rise of virtual reality (VR).
Through VR tools, people will be able to act out their wildest fantasies without judgement, as well as find (or create) sexual partners without having to step outside their door.
The opportunity already exists to some degree; the US-based company, Naughty America, allows its users to ‘star’ in porn films, while on adult sites, there are entire sections dedicated to virtual reality-inspired porn.
‘Naturally, the next step from here to take sex to the next level is virtual reality sex,’ Paul Jacques, technical manager at Lovehoney, tells Metro.co.uk.
The best of The Future Of Everything
‘Virtual reality as an industry is booming, and the adult industry is right there taking part in it, with haptic feedback devices (the application of forces, vibrations and motions to help recreate the sense of touch for the user) and full-rendered environments fulfilling consumer fantasies.
‘Companies like Kiiroo and Fleshlight have created toys like the Launch, that combine a really great sex toy with an automatic device that can be linked to online content. CyberSkin’s twerking realistic butt comes with a VR headset that provides a link between the motions you see onscreen and the movements of the toy itself.
‘Particularly of interest is the rise of app-controlled toys, which are shaking up the industry in every way, and ultra-realistic, highly sophisticated sex-cessories, which are starting to make even the most unusual sci-fi fantasies seem like reality.’
Sex will be less important in relationships and introduced later in life
If masturbation becomes the sexual trend that defines the next generation, could people stop having sex altogether?
Sally Baker, a senior therapist, explains that not only will young people have sex later in life – starting in their 30s – but sex will also lose its importance in society as a whole.
‘Abstinence or non-penetrative sex could be the next thing,’ Baker tells Metro.co.uk.
‘Friends of any gender mix and sexual orientation will commit to having a primary sexless relationship with each other. Couples or small cores of people will no longer be defined by a shared sexual orientation but by shared values, drives and their mutual emotional need to be together.
‘Young people will commonly delay sexual experience with anyone well into their 30s even if they are already living in a committed relationship.
‘Sex if and when it does take place might well happen externally of the central relationship. A couple may choose to have sex with other people while maintaining their core sexless relationship as their primary commitment.
‘Sex with other people will not be a cause of jealousy or a disruptor of their primary relationship.
‘Sex with others will not overshadow the primacy of their key relationship because they consider the supremacy of their key relationship transcends all base instincts.’
Couples will focus on ‘non-hierarchical’ sexual experiences
That all sounds like a really progressive way to experience relationships but, for those in the older generations, it could look from the outside to be very confusing.
‘If sex happens within a young couple, it will often be solitary and perfunctory,’ Sally Baker says.
‘If they do have sex together, the emphasis would be on mutual extended foreplay and de-emphasising or excluding penetrative sex. This ensures the sex they experience is non-hierarchical and non-binary.
‘Couples will not value sexual imperatives and sexuality takes second place to their desire to experience deep commitment and loyalty for and with each other.
‘Gen A will be highly motivated to form long-term committed relationships as a survival strategy to cope with the disconnect they experience in their lives and careers.
‘Feeling overwhelmed and anxious while living in increasingly inhospitable economic conditions will make it impossible to be single and to thrive.’
If that’s the case, then the sexual taboo of the next generation could be no sex at all.
In the last several months, lots of research has emerged showing that young people aren’t having as much sex as prior generations. Many people interpret this trend as an indication that people aren’t connecting with one another as much as they did in decades prior.
But one big problem with many of these studies is their definition of the word “sex.” The standard barometer of whether sex is happening is whether there’s a man with a penis inserting it into a woman’s vagina.
That’s not accurate.
Intercourse (i.e., a penis being inserted into a vagina) is not sex. Well, it is—but it’s not the only sex there is. It is one act that is a part of a larger umbrella of “sex.” And there’s a lot of sex that happens that doesn’t involve intercourse at all.
Every sex act is sex.
It’s everything from masturbation to manual stimulation to cunnilingus, breast play, nipple licking, blow jobs—all of it. It is all sex.
Sex is everything we do sexually with one another, involving any acts that make us feel sexual pleasure and that we pursue for that explicit purpose. It doesn’t matter how you “get there”; it matters that you enjoy yourself.
It’s time we stop referring to “intercourse” as sex and start moving into a better, more well-rounded understanding of what constitutes sex. By placing all our eggs in the intercourse basket, we’re not only leaving out people in relationships other than heterosexual cis ones; we’re also robbing ourselves of better, more frequent orgasms.
The false hierarchy of sex.
When we claim that intercourse is sex, we automatically place all other sex acts below it. Intercourse becomes “the big show” and the “main event” of a sexual experience. Every other sex act, such as oral sex, anal sex, and hand sex, are considered “less than” or “not quite sex.” This puts nearly everyone at a sexual disadvantage.
For female-bodied people, it completely ignores the clitoris, a crucial sex organ that is central to the female orgasm. Nearly every woman requires external clitoral stimulation to experience orgasm. This rarely, if ever, happens during intercourse without a hand, toy, or tongue involved in tandem. Yet we call oral sex and hand sex “foreplay,” meaning it is the thing that comes before the “big show.” To add fuel to the fire, it is also widely considered optional, providing yet another damaging effect on female sexually.
The term “foreplay” enforces an unequal gender hierarchy: A female orgasm is secondary to a male orgasm. In sex between men and women, defining sex as “intercourse” makes female orgasms an afterthought.
For male-bodied people, it adds a ton of pressure to “perform.” When “sex” is made to be all about a person with a penis being able to thrust it into a vagina, hard erections that last a long, long time become vital to being a satisfactory partner in bed. What if you tend to orgasm quickly from penetration? What if you have a small penis? Suddenly you’re a lackluster lover. This sets the stage for feelings of inadequacy, performance anxiety, and general discomfort around sex. But these negative narratives are all based around an incomplete picture of what sex really is: After all, a guy with a smaller penis who can use his tongue, hands, or a toy is far better equipped for delivering orgasms than one with zero skills and an enormous penis.
And of course, for same-sex couples, intercourse may not even be on the table. What is sex then if there is no P in the V in the game? It leaves same-sex people out of the equation completely.
Where does this misconception come from?
A lot of the confusion stems from inadequate sex education programs, many of which reinforce tired stereotypes, gender norms, and narratives about sex being inherently “dirty” or “bad.” According to the 2018 SIECUS report, “21 states do not require sex education or HIV/STI instruction to be any of the following: age-appropriate, medically accurate, culturally appropriate, or evidence-based/evidence informed.” Furthermore, 32 states require abstinence-only education if HIV instruction is provided.
Even many more thorough sex ed programs primarily focus on pregnancy prevention and STI prevention through condom use, which reinforces that “sex” means “intercourse.” And you’d be hard-pressed to find many sex ed programs that actually talk about sexual pleasure, which might allow for broader definitions of sex. All of this together means the only sex we ever hear about in an academic setting is heterosexual intercourse.
Additionally, part of our stubborn adherence to making intercourse the definition of sex is in service of the virginity myth. Society wants to maintain a clear-cut definition of what makes someone a “virgin.”
Virginity is simply a social construct we created long ago based on the idea that sex is inherently shameful. It was used to differentiate between the “pure” people who haven’t had sex and the “dirty” people who have, and today many conservative cultures around the world still embrace this harmful and false dichotomy.
Sex is a part of the human experience. All people are born with sexuality. It is as normal and natural as eating and sleeping. By placing emphasis on virginity, it inherently makes us feel ashamed of and uncomfortable with our bodies and feelings. This is objectively not a healthy way to live.
Broadening the definition of “sex.”
Would the results of research on sexual activity trends look different if we specifically asked about sexual acts other than heterosexual intercourse? It’s possible. After all, if our fear is about people connecting, shouldn’t we acknowledge that a couple giving each other pleasure through oral alone regularly is just as connected as a couple that has intercourse regularly?
Everyone benefits from new understandings of what makes sex sex. When we recognize all sex acts as equal—part of a beautiful patchwork of human sexual expression—we open up new avenues for education, exploration, and the ability to secure a less shame-laden future for younger generations.
Tumblr recently announced that it would ban all adult content from its platform and said any user who was hurt by the decision could simply migrate to another site. But creators and readers alike don’t believe there’s another website that fosters the same kind of sex-positive spaces that Tumblr has. It’s as though Tumblr CEO Jeff D’Onofrio has failed to understand his own platform, how unique these communities are to Tumblr, and how unlikely it is for them to survive beyond the shutdown.
“Sex wasn’t this separate, shameful thing. Tumblr allowed it to exist right next to every other facet of our messy, millennial experience,” says Vex Ashley, who runs the blog Vextape that’s inspired by her work as a cam model and making DIY porn. “We shared it, discussed it, debated it, and curated it.” Porn, she says, was as appropriate on Tumblr as song lyrics.
Tumblr is home to a myriad of sex-positive and body-positive blogs, in additional to indie porn blogs and curated archives that provide something not found on Pornhub, YouPorn, or any of the other mainstream adult portals. It’s also been relatively unique among social media sites for allowing nudity and sexually explicit content to be posted. Most sites, like Facebook and Instagram, prohibit nudity and regularly remove posts that are flagged. With Tumblr gone from the equation, creators and readers fear their hubs of sex-positive and body-positive content will vanish.
“There is a lot of value in being able to share images of and information about sexuality. This change will erase years of content from countless Tumblr users,” says the anonymous author behind Bijouworld, which curates photos of vintage gay porn, old magazine covers, and newspaper clippings. They believe that other blogs focused on the history of erotica will also suffer. “This was a good spot for us all to exchange and combine our info and knowledge, so I hope we can find a new way to do that.”
Bijou Classics, the gay adult company behind the blog, also posts regularly to Pornhub and maintains an extensive web presence across multiple platforms that allow adult content. But Tumblr, the blogger says, filled a void when the company wanted to explore the archival and historical aspects of gay porn.
“I do think Tumblr is unique … [it] was one of the few platforms that is broadly open to the public where we could share explicit photos in any sort of organized fashion.” The anonymous person behind the blog says that since 2011, Bijou Classics has “used our Tumblr presence to post images from our archives, written blogs, trivia, and more.” The purpose is to “keep information circulating about the history and evolution of erotica and gay culture.”
Many sexuality blog authors don’t see a way forward without Tumblr. That includes lawyer and journalist Maddie Holden, who runs Critique My Dick Pic, a blog that’s received attention from sites including The Hairpin, Jezebel, and The Daily Dot.
Holden takes a media that’s often considered a nuisance to receive and approaches it satirically as an art form, going in depth about the shadows and positioning of each photo. She ends her reviews with: “thank you for submitting to critique my dick pic” and a grade ranging from A to F. The latest lyrical review of a dick in the shower, posted on November 30th, reads, “your photo is certainly not coy but it avoids being dick-centric, and apart from minor flares of distraction — a green towel in the bottom-left corner and a blue razor in the windowsill — the background is uncluttered and effective.”
Critique My Dick Pic has been described by its followers as “hilarious and useful,” says Holden. She says a trans woman recently told her that the trans-inclusive nature of the blog factored into helping her decide to come out and transition.
The blog has been around since 2013, but Holden says she’s not sure if she’ll move to another platform after Tumblr hides her content from public view on December 17th. Holden tells The Verge, “I mean, it will be the end of the blog as far as I can tell. I receive a portion of my income from CDMP, which will end, and the site has been pretty beloved for years now, so it’s a shame for its followers.”
The operator of another quirky, body-positive blog, called Things My Dick Does, says he plans to keep his Tumblr open after the ban, but only to share safe-for-work posts to keep in touch with his readers.
Started by an anonymous man in 2015, the blog’s creator draws mustaches and smiley faces on his dick, often placing props around it in amusing situations. He tells The Verge, “I know it’s a silly dick blog, but I’ve gotten to know some pretty amazing people through here. (My girlfriend included!)” He says that as he continued to post pics of his dick sipping coffee, dressed as Batman, or just smiling cheerily, he received positive feedback and even had a woman reach out to him because they lived in the same city. She later became his girlfriend. “People say they’ve overcome some serious rough spots in their lives because of the laughs I brought them.”
The man says he can migrate to other platforms, but his presence on YouTube and Instagram is distinctly different. It’s covered up and less NSFW, obscuring the very quality of his blog that disarmed audiences — a charming, dressed-up dick that more resembled a cartoon than graphic porn. “It’s definitely a loss to the adult content creators out there,” the man behind Things My Dick Does says. “Seems like it’s getting more and more difficult to express yourself.”
There just isn’t anywhere else to go. Other than Tumblr, there aren’t many mainstream, well-acknowledged platforms that allow unique adult communities to grow. Facebook and Instagram both prohibit sexual content and nudity; Twitter allows it, but it’s not exactly known for its positive, supportive communities.
Ashley, who runs the curated, often DIY porn blog, explains that Tumblr was a livelihood and a home for people who didn’t necessarily conform to mainstream porn sites’ ideas of what is sexy. “As our lives move increasingly online, spaces that are safe for sex are becoming smaller and smaller,” she says, in words that are now published on Medium. “If we continue to push our depictions of sexuality into the shadows, we allow them to continue to be defined and co-opted by the status quo — whatever is on the first page of a porn tube site.”
In heteronormative porn scripts, enthusiastic consent is about as common as a real female orgasm.
However, there’s a fringe of mainstream society that actually knows how to practise affirmative consent, and one from whom the general community could learn a thing or two: BDSM enthusiasts.
As it turns out, kinksters are the ones who have been doing sex right this whole time.
Too often in sexual encounters, consent is considered implicit: it’s rarely asked for, and sex continues until someone – usually the woman – says no.
However, in BDSM scenarios, only a clear, enthusiastic and ongoing ‘yes’ constitutes consent. There’s a big difference between our mainstream ‘no means no’ mentality and BDSM’s ‘yes means yes’ approach.
Speaking to Metro.co.uk, sex educator, queer porn maker and BDSM provider Pandora Blake explains that the absence of a ‘no’ isn’t enough to constitute consent.
‘We’re conditioned from a young age to not say no,’ Pandora tells us. ‘Women are socialised to be people-pleasing, and when you get into the habit of people-pleasing it can make it hard not only to say no but to even be in touch with what we want.’
Because BDSM is an umbrella term that encapsulates a wide spectrum of different activities, Blake explains that you can never assume what your partner will be keen on.
‘Saying “I’m into BDSM” doesn’t mean you’re going to know what the other person actually likes, and you have to talk through it to find out if you have any kinks in common.
‘In mainstream sex people think they know the script, and actually that script doesn’t work for a lot of people, but there’s this assumption that they know what sex is.’
In the BDSM scene, partners explicitly negotiate specific sex acts beforehand, rather than assuming it’s kosher until somebody says no. Because BDSM can be risky and push people’s comfort limits, those who practise it don’t just assume a partner will be okay with a certain act just because they haven’t said ‘no’.
‘Everybody who plays BDSM games has their own ways of keeping themselves safe, and there are different community standards which different people subscribe to,’ says Blake. ‘One of the mantras that people use is Safe, Sane and Consensual, which is the idea that any riskier activities are done in a way that minimises risk and is as safe as possible.
‘Sane refers to people’s abilities to give informed consent, so: are they in a state of mind where they’re able to look after themselves? Are they sober, for example? Are they going through a crisis in their life right now where they’d be inclined to make bad decisions?
‘Another system people use is Risk-Aware Consensual Kink, which makes slightly more space for risky activity, if they consent.’
BDSM is a subculture where consent and negotiation are normalised and accepted. A 2016 study published in the Journal of Sex Research found that compared to vanilla people, the kink community had significantly lower levels of benevolent sexism, rape myth acceptance, and victim blaming.
Another survey published in 2012 by the National Coalition for Sexual Freedom also found that 85% of BDSM practitioners polled agreed with statements such as ‘a person can revoke consent at any time’, ‘consent should be an ongoing discussion in a relationship’, and ‘clear, overt consent must be given before a scene’. Over 93% of respondents endorsed the statement ‘consent is not valid when coerced’.
‘From pre-negotiations to post-mortems – just talking about things before, after and all the way throughout – it really just comes down to communication and making sure that everybody is on the same page,’ explains Blake.
‘Most consent violations happen because people are selfish and don’t have the communication tools to find out what’s going on with the other person, but most of us want to be having sex with people who genuinely want to be having sex with us.
‘There is nothing sexier than getting that information from your partner.’
Pleasure plays a huge part in consent, and heterosexual women are the ones who get the sh*t end of the stick in bed. While 95% of straight men regularly orgasm during sex, only 65% of straight women do. Society discourages us from talking about sex (ahem, prudes), making it harder for women especially to explore what they like in bed.
If we don’t encourage women to speak up about what they want in bed, how will we ever normalise affirmative consent?
‘This idea that consent is a contract is really pernicious,’ Blake says. ‘Consent is revocable and ongoing, and being encouraged to change your mind is necessary for consent. By saying you’ve changed your mind, you’re helping your partner respect your boundaries.’
‘Consent isn’t about just avoiding negative situations, it’s not about getting permission to do something, it’s an active process and collaboration between two people who respect each other to create the best experience for everyone involved.’
The same rules of engagement the BDSM community respects can easily be applied to vanilla encounters. Talking about what you want before, during and after a sexual encounter isn’t just necessary, but can be incredibly sexy too.
Asking and giving consent doesn’t have to be a formal sit down where you lay out all the things you’re ok and not ok with (although, if you want to do it that way, it’s perfectly cool).
In fact, foreplay and dirty talk are perfect ways to practice explicit consent. Asking things like ‘can I do X?’, ‘do you like it when I X?’, ‘I want to do X to you, do you want that?’ not only make the experience that much hotter, but they make sure you’re respecting your partner’s boundaries.
The only reason some people think of consent as a formal request for a sex, something that ruins the mood, is because in heteronormative, vanilla sex scenes, consent is rarely given as explicitly as it should be.
Explicit consent has a number of advantages over the implicit consent practised (or better yet, not practised) in traditional sexual scripts because everyone is required and encouraged to ask for what they want.
Boundaries and acts that are off-limit are clearly discussed, there’s no intimidation or coercion, and there’s no ambiguous silence that can be exploited. Just because you’re not keen on a flogging session, doesn’t mean you can’t learn a thing or two from BDSM.
Sunday, August 26, marked the 98th anniversary of the 19th Amendment, which officially granted women the right to vote. And as we celebrate Women’s Equality Day, which August 26th is known as now, we think about those incredible women who fought for our right to vote and won. Often, we also think of women who fought (and are continuing to fight) for women’s equality in the workplace. But, there’s another kind of equality that we can thank brave women for: sexual equality.
Without the tireless work of some badass women in history, single women would still be expected to be celibate. We wouldn’t have access to the birth control that makes it safe for us to have sex without fear of pregnancy. And we’d probably still think women can only orgasm when someone sticks a penis inside of them (although, some people really do still think that). So, let’s raise a glass to the women who made it okay for us to have as much (or as little) sex as we want.
Ahead, we celebrate 7 of the women who pioneered conversations about sexuality and sexual health.
Emma Goldman (1869-1940)
Emma Goldman
In 1917 a U.S. Attorney General wrote, “Emma Goldman is a woman of great ability and of personal magnetism, and her persuasive powers make her an exceedingly dangerous woman.” Goldman gained a reputation for being “exceedingly dangerous” partly for spreading the idea that women should have access to birth control. She was also a hardcore anarchist who spoke with such firey passion that the man who assassinated President William McKinley in 1901 credited one of Goldman’s lectures as the inspiration. So, you know, that could also be part of it.
Perhaps because her lectures were so “inspirational,” Goldman was frequently harassed and arrested while speaking about radical reform. So, she worked with the first Free Speech League to insist that all Americans have a right to speech, no matter how radical or controversial.
Although she was active during the time of first-wave feminism, Goldman shunned the suffrage movement and instead called herself an anarchist. She held lectures on politically unpopular ideas like free love, atheism, capitalism, and homosexuality. After Margaret Sanger, who coined the term “birth control,” printed information about contraceptives in a pamphlet called Family Limitation, Goldman took it upon herself to make sure people had access to the information. She distributed the pamphlet and in 1915 went on a nationwide speaking tour to raise awareness about birth control options. In 1916, she was arrested outside of one of her lectures under the Comstock Law, which prohibited the dissemination of “obscene, lewd, or lascivious articles.” She spent two weeks in prison.
Goldman was deported back to her native Russia in 1919.
Margaret Sanger (1879-1966)
Margaret Sanger
In addition to creating the birth control pamphlet that got Emma Goldman arrested, Margaret Sanger founded Planned Parenthood, along with her sister Ethel Byrne and fellow-activist Fania Mindell.
Sanger’s mother died at 50-years-old, partly due to complications from delivering 11 babies and having 7 miscarriages. Inspired by her mother’s pregnancy struggles, Sanger went to Europe to study contraceptive methods, even though educating people about birth control was illegal in the U.S. at the time.
When she came back to the U.S., Sanger was frequently arrested under the Comstock Law for distributing “obscene, lewd, or lascivious articles.” In 1912, she wrote What Every Girl Should Know, in which she argues that both mothers and teachers should clearly explain sexual anatomy in order to rid children of shame about sex. She wrote: “Every girl should first understand herself: she should know her anatomy, including sex anatomy.” (Preach.)
Two years later, Sanger wrote Family Limitations, an instructional pamphlet in which she coined the term “birth control.” And two years after that, Sanger, Byrne, and Mindell opened the country’s first birth control clinic in Brownsville, Brooklyn, which the police shut down only nine days later. Sanger spent 30 days in jail after the Brownsville clinic was raided (where she instructed the inmates about birth control).
In 1923, Sanger opened the Birth Control Clinical Research Bureau to distribute birth control to women and to study the long-term effectiveness and side effects of contraceptives. She also incorporated the American Birth Control League, an organization that studied global impacts of population growth, disarmament, and famine. Eventually, the two groups merged to become what we now know as Planned Parenthood. Sanger continued to fight for contraceptive rights and sexual freedom along with other birth control activists, and in 1936 their efforts led to a court ruling that using and talking about birth control would no longer be considered obscene. Legally, birth control information could be distributed in New York, Connecticut, and Vermont. It took another 30 years for those rights to be extended to the rest of the country (but birth control was still only legal for married couples until the 1970s).
Helen Gurley Brown (1922-2012)
Helen Gurley Brown
In 1962, when birth control was still illegal in most states for anyone who wasn’t married, Helen Gurley Brown wrote Sex And The Single Girl, a book that argued for single women’s right to have as much sex as they wanted. (The book later inspired a 1964 movie.) At the time, many publishers rejected the book for being too provocative, because it did such scandalous things as encouraging women to pursue men, and suggesting that women actually enjoyed sex (gasp!). When the book eventually was picked up, the publishers omitted a chapter dedicated to birth control. So unmarried women at the time could have sex, they just couldn’t know how to protect themselves from unwanted pregnancies.
Three years after her book published, Gurley Brown became Editor-In-Chief of Cosmopolitan. But the magazine many now associate with brazen sex advice wasn’t so risque back then. And although the staff at the time was not thrilled with her message, it was Gurley Brown’s influence that turned Cosmo into the go-to mag for learning how to please your man.
Virginia E. Johnson (1925-2013)
If you’ve watched Masters Of Sex, then you’re already familiar with Virginia Johnson’s story. Johnson was first the research assistant for and later wife to William H. Masters, a gynecologist and sex researcher. Together, the two studied sexual responses in hundreds of men and women and published groundbreaking studies that transformed how people understood sexuality.
Many of their participants credited Johnson’s warm and encouraging nature as the reason they felt comfortable enough to participate in Master’s studies (which often required them to masturbate or have sex while hooked up to machines that registered heart rate and other bodily functions). Although Johnson never finished her degree, she’s considered a sexologist for her help in Master’s work. Often, it was her who collected patients’ sexual histories and recorded data as they became sexually aroused.
Masters and Johnson made several important discoveries in their work, many of which broke negative assumptions about how women experience sex. In their 1966 book Human Sexual Response, they established that the clitoris is essential for women to have orgasms and that women can have multiple orgasms during a single sexual experience. After their book was featured on the cover of Time Magazine, it became a bestseller, making it common for people to say words like “clitoris,” “orgasm,” and “masturbation,” for the first time.
In 1964, Masters and Johnson founded the Reproductive Biology Research Foundation (later the Masters and Johnson Institute), where they treated sexual dysfunction until the institute closed in 1994.
Joani Blank (1937-2016)
Anytime you pass a sex toy shop with large glass windows that proudly displays dildos, vibrators, and butt plugs instead of hiding them under seedy lighting, you can thank Joani Blank. In 1977, she founded the first Good Vibrations store, a feminist-leaning sex toy shop and one of the first to be run by a woman.
Blank had noticed that all of the sex toy shops she’d encountered reeked of men. The windows were covered, as if you should be ashamed of the products inside, and often, there would be men watching porn at quarter-operated booths once you got inside. It was a hostile space for women. “Over and over, women would say they were afraid to go into one of those places,” Carol Queen, the staff sexologist at Good Vibrations, said in Blank’s obituary.
Prior to opening Good Vibrations, Blank was working at UCSF’s medical school with women who struggled to have orgasms. She encouraged them to try vibrators. And her experiences with these women also informed her plans for the sex toy shop. In addition to having a place that felt safe for women, she wanted to train her staff to be able to answer questions about sex and sexual health. She wanted her customers and her staff to be able to have frank conversations about sex. It was all in an effort to take some of the shame and stigma out of having sex, especially for women.
Loretta Ross (1953-present)
Anytime you’ve ever used the term “reproductive justice,” that was because of Loretta Ross. Ross coined the phrase in 1994 following the International Conference on Population and Development.
Ross is co-founder of the SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective, which organizes women of color in the reproductive rights movement. Her work focuses on the intersectionality of social justice and on building a human rights movement that includes everyone. She was co-director of the 2004 March for Women’s Lives, the largest protest march at the time, which saw 1.15 million people gather to advocate for abortion rights, birth control access, and reproductive healthcare.
Ross also started the Women of Color Program for the National Organization for Women (NOW) in the 1980s, where she brought delegations of women of color to international conferences on women’s issues and human rights. In the 1970s, she became one of the first African American women to direct a rape crises center.
includes lawyer and journalist Maddie Holden, who runs 
Started by an anonymous man in 2015, the blog’s creator draws mustaches and smiley faces on his dick, often placing props around it in amusing situations. He tells The Verge, “I know it’s a silly dick blog, but I’ve gotten to know some pretty amazing people through here. (My girlfriend included!)” He says that as he continued to post pics of his dick sipping coffee, dressed as Batman, or just smiling cheerily, he received positive feedback and even had a woman reach out to him because they lived in the same city. She later became his girlfriend. “People say they’ve overcome some serious rough spots in their lives because of the laughs I brought them.”
If you’ve watched Masters Of Sex, then you’re already familiar with 
Anytime you pass a sex toy shop with large glass windows that proudly displays dildos, vibrators, and butt plugs instead of hiding them under seedy lighting, you can thank Joani Blank. In 1977, she founded the first Good Vibrations store, a feminist-leaning sex toy shop and one of the first to be run by a woman.
Anytime you’ve ever used the term “reproductive justice,” that was because of
You must be logged in to post a comment.