stillness is a lie, my dear
One of my favourite sexual education resources for teens and young adults is Scarleteen, and not just because it’s extremely comprehensive and very inclusive (though it is both of those things). It’s also because the site assumes, straight up and without comment, that teens have sex. That might seem like sort of an odd thing […]
I’ve written here before about the very specific brand of sex-positivity I loathe, in which people seem bound and determined to press their sexuality on other people, insisting that sex is fantastic for everyone and everyone enjoys sex, creating a hypersexual, charged environment that refuses to acknowledge the complexities of human sexuality. Sex is awesome, […]
Many people seem very taken with the idea of ‘sex positivity’ these days, which people seem to define in different ways; under a generous definition, I’d say that it translates to being supportive and respectful of the varied manifestations of sexuality, including respect for all consensual sex acts and individual sexual preferences. Essentially, if someone’s […]
One of the ongoing cultural and social clashes in the United States seems to be centered around the idea that people never change, instead reaching adulthood and becoming frozen in a fixed and stable existence. If someone grows up as a girl and into a woman, for example, then she’s always a woman, and if […]
I’ve been thinking a great deal lately about rape culture and masculinity, which is hardly a new topic for me to explore, let alone the rest of the world, but occasionally I get an idea in my mind like a raspberry seed in my teeth, and I have to worry at it until it finally […]
One of the oldest surviving pieces of literature in the Western world is Aristophanes’ Lysistrata, a play about women who go on a sex strike to end a war. The result is a ‘war between the sexes’ which is usually played as a comedy—and it’s a comedy that’s endured through the centuries through numerous performances […]
Political sex scandals puzzle me. I freely admit that they always have. I just don’t have that much interest in anyone else’s sex life, no matter who they are, and having sordid details broadcast across the media doesn’t really do it for me. I don’t really hold politicians to a higher ethical standard than anyone […]
Bisexuality is a frequently invisibilised, in addition to marginalised, sexual orientation. Bisexual men are assumed to be ‘secretly gay,’ while bisexual women are erased depending on the gender of their partners; a bi woman married to a man is straight, suddenly, for example. Or, if she’s single or dating, she’s promiscuous, and using her bisexuality […]
I feel like this should be obvious, but I’ve seen this coming up a few times recently so apparently it needs to be discussed again: racial fetishes are not like other fetishes. In fact, any fetish rooted in someone’s identity (like disability fetishes) is not like other fetishes, and cannot be treated as such. It […]
I’m on a bit of a tear about female sexuality in pop culture these days, although, let’s face it, I’m almost always on a tear about female sexuality in pop culture, because there’s so much going on in that regard, and so much of it is deeply, deeply wrong. While men seem to be allowed […]