There’s been a flurry of articles recently about the shift on college campuses and within feminism about casual sex, hooking up, and abstinence. According to these stories on Salon.com, the Atlantic.com,  the New York Post, and others around the internet, women are discovering that casual sex doesn’t work for them and are embracing celibacy and […]

I’ve always said that if you can’t say no, then you can’t really say yes. The ability to consent requires the ability to freely choose either option. Unfortunately, a lot of people give in to their partner’s requests/demands as a way to minimize friction, avoid fights, or because it feels easier than speaking up. Giving […]

Greta Christina has a great piece on the Blowfish blog (note: the original link is broken) about asking for what you want from a lover. And I think that, for the most part, she’s right when she says: “Oh, I don’t know. What do you want to do?” It took me way too many years […]

via Franklin Veaux I’m not convinced that this accurately describes all of the ways that people are non-monogamous, but it definitely captures many of the complexities and the relationships between different structures. I especially like his explanation for making this chart: I’ve been told, many times, that the word “polyamory” is not really necessary, as […]

CNN posted an article today called “The Downside of  ‘Friends with Benefits,’” which is another example of someone writing about sex without taking a look at their own assumptions about sex, relationships, and how people work. The focus of the article is the increase of STIs and the claim that having more than one partner […]

There’s yet another report showing that lots of people don’t consider oral sex to be sex. According to Sex Redefined: The Reclassification of Oral-Genital Contact, 98% of respondents said that penis/vagina intercourse counted as sex and 78% said that penis/anus intercourse counted. But only 20% said that oral-genital contact was sex. And predictably enough, some […]

On one of the sex education email lists that I follow, someone posted a question about “porn use.” And while I’ve seen this phrase used more times than I can count, it suddenly seemed to me that the term implies a bias that runs so deeply that it’s effectively invisible. I think it’s rather interesting […]