People like to claim that sexual interest in conventionally attractive people is ‘just a preference’ and purely coincidental, but it’s a highly socially loaded act.
Interest in conventionally attractive people isn’t ‘just a preference’
Category: Sexuality
Where’s the sex ed for disabled kids?
One group is routinely left out of the push for comprehensive age-appropriate sexual education: Disabled kids. They’re also among those most in need of it.
Love in the time of pop culture
Pop culture is reframing our understanding of love, and not always in good ways.
The spread of the Swedish Model in Europe is deeply worrying
Proponents of the ‘Swedish model’ of sex work, which criminalises the purchase of sexual services but not their sale, are excited to see France picking it up. Proponents of women’s rights should be concerned.
Disabled people actually have sex!
It’s a concept that nondisabled people has extreme difficulty grasping: Disabled people have sex. All kinds of sex in all kinds of positions with all kinds of people. Wheelchair users have sex and so do blind people and people with chronic pain and D/deaf people. Disabled people fall in love and get married and have […]
Reclaiming female sexuality in pop culture
One of the more striking moments in How to Get Away with Murder — a show already filled with striking moments – has to be in the pilot, when we see Annalise behind her desk getting oral sex from her lover, Nate Lahey. It’s a powerful and compelling scene that sets the stage for the coming season, the […]
We need nationwide sex ed reform
An estimated five percent of US students receive comprehensive, evidence-based sexual education that includes medically accurate information, thoroughly accurate overviews of human sexuality and health, and, in some cases, discussions of gender identity and non-normative sexuality. That is a dismally low amount of people, making it perhaps not entirely unsurprising that a growing number of […]
Sexuality and Disgust
This is a society where we are often reminded and assured that public displays of affection and sexuality are discouraged; they’re offensive to others, they make people uncomfortable, they’re not appropriate. Won’t someone think of the children? We even have a shorthand for it, PDA, said usually in the most scathing and nasty of ways, […]
What’s So Funny/Gross About Elder Sexuality?
Do you ever feel not just like bad things come in threes, but that references come in clumps? For the last few weeks, I feel like I’ve been inundated in references to older adults having sex, usually in the framework of a conversation suggesting that it’s gross or funny that old people have sex. As […]
#Aftersex and Prudery
This spring, the thing all the kids were doing that everyone had something to say about was the #aftersex hashtag, which apparently originated on Instagram. Oh, those wild kids, taking pictures of themselves in bed! The hashtag is a mixture of images, including people who are sweet, sultry, sleepy, and more, sometimes with pets along […]