There have been quite a few articles and blog posts lately discussing whether men and women can have friendships without sexual desire getting in the way. There’s something in them that I see over and over that annoys me. Quite often, the shorthand for non-sexual friendships is a “platonic relationship.” Of course, that’s generally used […]

There’s a new post up on the Good Men Project, Is Sex Positive Ever Negative?, which highlights many of the ways in which sex-positivity is seriously misunderstood. The writer, Lili Bee, starts with an account of a conversation she had with a friend and the roadblock they hit when he suggested that she do some […]

This post also appeared on the Good Vibrations Magazine. The NY Times has an opinion piece up the other day by Ross Douthat, Why Monogamy Matters, which highlights what happens when people who don’t think all that clearly about sex write about sex. Douthat starts with the recent research from the Centers for Disease Control […]

Margaret Brooks, the noted anti-sex work activist who thinks that arresting sex workers somehow protects them (because hundreds of years of evidence isn’t enough to show that it always makes things much worse for them), is at it again. Citizens Against Trafficking just released a statement from her that’s full of scare quotes, misinformation, and […]

This post also appeared on the Good Vibrations Magazine. Last week, hyperconservative Maggie Gallagher wrote a piece in which she rather unsuccessfully tries to link women’s right to make reproductive choices and anal sex. The first thing that set off alarm bells for me was her citing a research article mentioned in the book “Premarital […]

As a lot of people have heard, Oregon State University dropped Tristan Taormino from the lineup for the Modern Sex conference last week. It’s an unfortunate situation that highlights many of the effects of sexual shame. The irony of my still being on the schedule while Tristan was removed isn’t lost on me. As Toby […]

As you may have heard if you follow her on twitter, Tristan Taormino was invited to speak at Oregon State University’s Modern Sex Conference, at least until the folks in charge at the school found out that she makes and sells porn. Since I’m one of the speakers at the conference as well as being […]