The Nuanced Push for American Sex Education

By Rachel Janfaza According to the Sexuality and Information Council of the United States, only 38 percent of high schools and 14 percent of middle schools across the country teach all 19 topics identified as critical for sex education by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Despite research demonstrating the health benefits of comprehensive …

Real Orgasms And Transcendent Pleasure:

How Women Are Reigniting Desire By Malaka Gharib How can more women allow themselves to experience sexual pleasure? That’s one of the central questions in The Pleasure Gap: American Women and the Unfinished Sexual Revolution, a book published this month by public health researcher and journalist Katherine Rowland. Rowland explores why American women aren’t happy …

Number Of Teens Coming Out Doubles, But Suicide Attempts Still Troublingly High

by John Anderer As recently as 10 years ago, the idea of coming out and being accepted as homosexual or bisexual felt unthinkable for countless LGBQ teens. Society has seen significant progression in recent years, though, and a new study finds that the number of U.S. teens openly identifying themselves as lesbian, gay, bisexual, or …

What I learned talking to 120 women about their sex lives and desires

By Katherine Rowland Male desire is a familiar story. We scarcely bat an eyelash at its power or insistence. But women’s desires – the way they can morph, grow or even disappear – elicit fascination, doubt and panic. In 2014, as experts weighed the moral and medical implications of the first female libido drug, I …

To stop sexual and domestic violence, start in the classroom

By Ben Santos and David Martin As two prosecutors with decades of experience helping survivors of domestic and sexual violence in King County, we spend all day, every day responding to cases involving abuse. Over the last year, almost 5,000 survivors of sexual violence and their families sought help from the King County Sexual Assault …

Homosexuality may have evolved for social, not sexual reasons

By Andrew Barron How did homosexuality in humans evolve? Typically, this question is posed as a paradox. The argument is this: gay sex alone can’t produce children, and for traits to evolve, they have to be passed onto children, who get some form of competitive advantage from them. From this perspective, some argue homosexuality should …

There’s a new sexual orientation category called heteroflexible.

And it brings health issues that need to be addressed. By Darcel Rockett Labels, categorization, boxes. There are some, if not many, who don’t want any part of identifying themselves by others’ characterizations. But, according to Nicole Legate, an assistant professor of psychology at the Illinois Institute of Technology, some categorization is vital when it …

That’s a shame –

Live and let kink by Race Bannon Within the radical sex and relationships communities in which I navigate, there are few things that spark my anger more than shaming. Whether it’s coming from within the leather, kink, polyamory or gay men’s sex cultures, or from external sources, shaming is far too prevalent. I’m sure shaming …

The Answer to Your 15 Most Embarrassing Sex Questions

You’re welcome. By Seventeen.com Editors Sex is confusing. There are SO MANY aspects to it and so many things to consider before, during, and after engaging in it. Chances are, whether you’re about to embark on your first experience with sex, or you’ve done it multiple times, you probably still have a ton of questions. …

In ‘Sexual Citizens,’ Students Open Up About Sex, Power And Assault On Campus

By Ailsa Chang Sex, power and assault are at the heart of a new study that looks at what it is that makes college the perfect storm for misunderstandings around sexual encounters. Beginning in 2015, Professors Jennifer Hirsch and Shamus Khan interviewed more than 150 Columbia and Barnard College undergrads to learn about their sex …

(Almost) Everything You Know About the Invention of the Vibrator Is Wrong

A Victorian doctor created the “vibratode,” but it was our great-great- grandmothers who saw its real potential. By Hallie Lieberman There’s a longstanding myth that still seems to hold about where vibrators first came from. It goes something like this: Cut to Victorian England. A mutton-chopped, bow-tie-clad doctor stands in an operating theater, where the …