Politics
Sexuality: WTF Is It, Anyway?
The term "sexuality" can be used a lot like the word "sex." They're both terms we say and hear a lot, but which often aren't clearly defined. We take for granted everyone knows what sexuality means, a heck of an assumption to make with something that covers so many important things and can feel as murky as Lake Erie. So: what's it all about?
Driver's Ed for the Sexual Superhighway: Navigating Consent
As it is on the road, being attentive to and giving clear signs and signals is a big deal between the sheets. If consenting feels complicated or confusing, here's a guide to clear it up.
What's Sex?
It's obviously important if you're here for information that you know what we mean when we say "sex," so we thought we'd make it clear.
Youth Sexpert: An Interview with Tara Michaela
We’re big fans of young people taking sex ed into their own hands. So, it’s no surprise we were thrilled to interview Tara Michaela, who founded the Youth Sexpert Program (YSP) when she was nineteen.
A Collective Cause: Brazilian and Portuguese-language Sex Ed Resource Caos.a
Caos.a (a play with the word “Causa”, Portuguese for “Cause”) began during the early stages of the Covid-19 pandemic, and was created by television host Barbara Thomaz, with professor Ana Sharp, lawyer Natália Veroneze, advertising pro Flávia Zaparoli and actress Maira Dvorek. Gabriel Leão is here to tell you all about it.
Radical Acts of Compassion: An interview with Denise Rodriguez of the Texas Equal Access Fund
TEAF’s Communications Director Denise Rodriguez explains the current state of the organization and abortion in Texas, and talks about how marginalized people do and will endure the worst of the brunt from both the recent changes due to the Dobbs decision as well as other restrictions and access issues that were already in place.
Surviving Success: Achievement After Sexual Violence Does Not Invalidate Our Struggle
Intellectually, I understand that success and safety do not invalidate struggle. I understand that I will feel the impacts of sexual violence regardless of how well I do in school or how much better life gets for me. But because a majority of people in my life only see the “successful” parts and not the difficult parts, and because so often people’s expectations of survivors stand counter to this, many people find it harder to believe that I’ve even experienced sexual violence. And that can make it harder for me and other survivors to emotionally feel and believe what we intellectually understand: our success does not invalidate our struggle.
Women, Life, Liberty: Feminist Giant at Scarleteen
The Iranian Revolution was co-opted by the clerics who then claimed as an achievement the mass covering of an entire nation’s women’s hair. Who owns my hair, let alone my body, when a revolution in which women fought alongside men soon after declaring victory, enforced hijab? When you shave the hair under that enforced hijab, are you then the revolution of one, defying, disobeying, and disrupting? When you rip off that compulsory hijab in public and shave off your hair in public, are you finally completing the revolution that the theocrats and the misogynists stole from you?
Organize Like a Sex Worker: Learning from Worker and Organizer Kate D'Adamo
Kate Adamo is a sex worker who heads up the policy and advocacy work at Reframe Health & Justice consulting, which supports organizations and movements engaging in “practices of care, compassion, and collaboration,” all through a harm reduction framework. Kate shared her thoughts on the necessity of sex workers and their perspective as we fight for reproductive autonomy, and the internalized sex phobia that progressive spaces still need to get rid of.
On Menstruation, Education, and Activism: An Interview with Saniya Ghanoui
Saniya Lee Ghanoui is a historian and critical media studies scholar who focuses on the intersection of gender and sexuality, medicine, and media. Through her studies, she became intrigued by how society created stigma and taboo around the menstrual cycle, which led her to focus on critical menstrual studies investigating the construction and depiction of menstruation in television, the history of menstrual education films, as well as the history of sex education in the United States.