New study finds girls feel unprepared for puberty

[G]irls from low-income families in the U.S. are unprepared for puberty and have largely negative experiences of this transition, according to researchers at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health and the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Their latest paper on the puberty experiences of African-American, Caucasian, and Hispanic girls living mostly in …

Why Generation Tinder won’t go back to dating ‘the old-fashioned way’

By Jenny Noyes “My most memorable Tinder date?” Kate Iselin gestures as if to say get ready. “It was a gentleman who invited me to lunch, took me to the food court at Martin Place and showed me a photo of his penis. Soft.” It’s not the fondest memory Iselin – a writer and former …

For Veterans, Trauma Of War Can Persist In Struggles With Sexual Intimacy

By Ailsa Chang [M]uch has been said about the physical and psychological injuries of war, like traumatic brain injury or post-traumatic stress disorder. But what we talk about less is how these conditions affect the sexual relationships of service members after they return from combat. Since 2000, service members who were deployed received at least …

Caught in the modesty bind: Why women feel shy to consult doctors for their sexual well-being

By Aditi Mallick “I was 17, when I first got sexually intimate with my boyfriend,” says Kriya (name changed), a 23-year-old IT professional from Hyderabad, while speaking to The News Minute. “Later we were very scared, as it was the first time for both of us,” she recalls. She missed her periods that month. The …

Women with HIV, after years of isolation, coming out of shadows

By Erin Allday Anita Schools wakes at dawn most days, though she usually lazes in bed, watching videos on her phone, until she has to get up to take the HIV meds that keep her alive. The morning solitude ends abruptly when her granddaughter bursts in and they curl up, bonding over graham crackers. Schools, …

Inside the fascinating world of a feeder fetish

By Mamamia Team “I wanna enjoy every single pound,” says Tammy Jung, “and every inch of me that grows.” Tammy Jung is a ‘feedee’ or a ‘gainer’. That is to say, she engages in Feeder Fetishism. Feederism is a sub-category of fat fetishism, where individuals harbour a strong or even exclusive sexual attraction to people who …

Why Straight Rural Men Have Gay ‘Bud-Sex’ With Each Other

  By Jesse Singal [A] lot of men have sex with other men but don’t identify as gay or bisexual. A subset of these men who have sex with men, or MSM, live lives that are, in all respects other than their occasional homosexual encounters, quite straight and traditionally masculine — they have wives and …

Can kinky sex make you more creative?

Researchers claim BDSM can help people achieve ‘altered states of consciousness’ By Cheyenne Macdonald [E]ngaging in kinky sex may send you into an altered state of consciousness and even unlock your inner creativity, according to a new study. Using a small sample of participants from the kink-focused social network Fetlife, researchers investigated the mind-altering effects …