ethics

Sexuality in Color: The Foundations of Gynecology

We explore the dark history of the foundations of surgical gynecology and its "father", J. Marion Sims, inventor of the vaginal speculum, who performed experiments on enslaved women without anaesthesia in the mid-1800's, and learn about the ways in which the legacy of racism and sexualization towards black folks has persisted and developed to have a measurable effect on health outcomes.

His Religious Beliefs Are No Condoms, But I Need Them. What Do I Do?

sapphire12758
asks:
The guy I'm sleeping with really wants to have PIV sex with me, but he won't wear a condom because he's Roman Catholic. Everything else we've done has been amazing and I really want to do it, but I'm terrified of getting pregnant and I've already had a scare that I haven't told him about. I'm on the pill now, but I know that it isn't 100% effective....

Your Right to Be Lousy in Bed (After All, No One Has to Have Sex with You)

You tried to do something sexual you thought was super-sexy but the other person thought was weird, silly or downright gross. Something one partner of yours thought was the hottest thing ever turned out to be something that, when you tried it with another person, bored the pants not even off of them, but right back onto them. Your biggest turn-on is someone else's buzzkill.

In any of these situations or many others like them, you might feel like you were bad in bed or someone else might think that about you. Here's the biggest thing to know about that, before I say anything else at all: When sex is consensual, we all have the right to be our own idea or someone else's idea of who or what is "bad" in bed. Sometimes; anytime. That's because we're human.

I grew up told sex like I just had was absolutely off-limits: what now?

smf
asks:
Hey! I'm 19, and from a very conservative background-Republic, Christian, the whole shebang. I'm a freshman at a pretty liberal college now, and I admit that I've gone the tiniest bit nuts with my newfound freedom. Before coming to college, I'd only made out with three guys - all of whom were Christian, all of whom I was dating at the time....

Am I right to feel like a slag?

BellBrand
asks:
Heya: so I have always had really strong principles when it comes to sex and relationships. I always envisioned myself with a nice, steady boyfriend before I would do any more than just kissing. About a month ago I was at a party and out of pure curiosity (not drunkeness) I made the decision to let a boy finger me, but I didn't really know him very well....

Living In a World of Prudes, Sluts and Nobodies At All

In my experience it feels like there are two crowds, those who are 'cool' and have frequent sexual activity, hookups etc both in and out of relationships (or at least portray themselves as doing so) and those who are 'pure' who have decided at this point to abstain from sex until marriage, who are frequently Christian or otherwise religious. I think there's pressure to fit into one of those groups, either to go out and have lots of sex or to not have sex at all.

How Do We Best Define Sex?

When we're quality sex educators; when we are or aim to be inclusive, forward-thinking and do sex education in ways that can or do serve diverse populations, we will tend to define sex very broadly, far more so than people who don't work in sex education often tend to, even if and when their experiences with sex and sexuality have been broad. Often, the longer we work as sexuality educators, and the longer we also just live and experience our own sexual lives, the more expansive the definition becomes. If we live and/or work on the margins, like if we or people we serve are queer, gender-variant, culturally diverse, have disabilities, the diversity in our definitions of what sex can be will become even greater.