Vibrators had a long history as medical quackery before feminists rebranded them as sex toys

By Kim Adams In the contemporary moment of sex-positive feminism, praises for the orgasmic capacity of the vibrator abound. “They’re all-encompassing, a blanket of electricity, that’ll course through your veins, producing orgasms you didn’t know you were physically capable of having,” wrote Erica Moen in her web comic “Oh Joy Sex Toy.” Vibrators today go …

13 Necessary Queer Literary Classics For Every Bookshelf

From Virginia Woolf’s Orlando and James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room to Alice Walker’s Pulitzer Prize-winning The Color Purple and Ocean Vuong’s 2019 debut — the queer literary landscape is vibrant, expansive and ready to be explored. By Rosalind Jana The history of queer literature is a long one. From Greek poet Sappho to Irish playwright Oscar …

A very, very beginner’s guide to understanding BDSM

By Mary Grace Garis Even as BDSM comes to popular light via media portrayals and increased openness about intimate habits and preferences, much about the sexual practice remains misunderstood and incorrectly presumed to be negative and abusive—especially in those media portrayals. This is perhaps most recently depicted in that degrading scene in Hulu’s Normal People, …

Dating in Captivity

Go ahead and reinstall Tinder in self-isolation. Or, if that doesn’t work, join a virtual sext bunker. By Allison P. Davis Some things about the human spirit persist, even in crisis: namely, our hunger for one another. Lauren, an editor in Austin, started seeing someone a month ago, and by date three, they’d declared their …

Female husbands

Far from being a recent or 21st-century phenomenon, people have chosen, courageously, to trans gender throughout history By Jen Manion One summer night in 1836, police found George Wilson drunk on the street in the Lower East Side in New York City. An officer took Wilson to the station. The officer believed that Wilson was …

“Who designed these uniforms—Tom of Finland?”

The real story behind these viral photos of Spanish soldiers Deployed to cities at high risk of coronavirus, photos of the Spanish Legion provoked lust, loathing and comments about homoeroticism when they went viral on social media. Yet the history of the Legion makes these responses no contradiction at all by Catherine Baker They are …