Sexuality
A Brief Guide to Consenting with a Nonverbal Partner
What if a partner is nonverbal due to disability? Here are some tips on how to seek and obtain consent and how to generally communicate during sex with a nonverbal partner, so sex can be safe, satisfying and fun for everyone involved.
Sex on Screen: Reality-Checking Mainstream Porn
Part two of Alice O's exploration of mainstream porn to help increase your sexual media literacy. Includes information about sex positions, orgasm, consent and communication, boundaries, birth control, safer sex and more as they exist (or don't!) in mainstream porn, and how this can or should all go in real-life-sex to compare and contrast.
Well, F*ck Me! It's a Scarleteen Zine!
Say hello to our new zine, F*ck Me! It's a (free!) flight of super-helpful fancy that can help you -- or your intimate companions, your platonic friends, your students, the people who come into your clinic, your younger brother, your favorite cousin, and maybe even your parents -- identify the basics of what you really want and need when it comes to sex with others, and give you a foundation for clear, candid, and meaningful sexual communication.
Bare Bodies: Reality Checking Mainstream Porn
A clear-eyed, in-depth exploration of mainstream porn that can: amp up your sexual media literacy so you can better suss out what's really going on with and in porn, fill you in on how it may or may not -- and sometimes just plain shouldn't -- match your expectations or experiences of sexuality offscreen, and tell you more about its politics and behind-the-scenes realities.
Getting to Know Your “New Normal”: Tips for Sex When You Have Pelvic Pain
It can be incredibly frustrating when a part of the body we strongly associate with, and expect to give us, pleasure ends up causing us chronic pain. If you have chronic pelvic pain, what do you do if you want to get sexual with yourself or someone else? How can you be physically intimate if you’re in pain? How do you talk to your partners? If it starts hurting, should you stop? This guide from Nicole Guappone offers some great help with all this and more.
A Manifesto on Pleasure and Self-Love for We With an STI
Despite the initial shame, guilt, name-calling, jokes, and fear related to disclosure, my STI presented me with a chance to love myself more deeply. It gave me a chance to sit with myself, who I thought myself to be, who I thought I was going to become, and who I really was.
Sex & Spasticity
Cerebral palsy, multiple sclerosis, and spinal cord injuries, among other disabilities, can involve spasticity. People often have day-to-day coping mechanisms to help manage their spasticity, but what do you do when you have spasticity and want to have sex?
How to Approach Sexual Fantasy and Desire on Your Own Terms
Fantasy is an important part of our relationships with ourselves and our sexual desires. But it can also be a source of shame. How can we find ways to reconnect with our sexual fantasies and create a healthy relationship with desire.
Embracing Newbiehood: How to Approach Dating and Sex in Your 20s With Little or No Experience
It can feel like the world will end if you haven’t had sex or a sexual or romantic relationship by your mid-twenties. There are countless ways in which our culture puts pressure on young people to gain experience in romantic and sexual relationships. But truthfully, if you don’t have much, or even any, experience with dating and sex, you are not doomed to never experience romantic and sexual connection. The world also will not end.
A Disabled Persons Guide to Talking with Your Partner(s) About Sex
Disabled people get a lot of practice telling people about our bodies: doctors, therapists, care workers, or people in our support networks like family and friends. It's so important to be able to tell our partners how to support and pleasure us in the ways that work for us, but even though we’ve got all that practice, this conversation can still be really hard to start. Here's some help.
How to Reconnect With Your Body In Spite of the Impact of White Supremacy
We've all been influenced and impacted by white supremacy for longer than anyone alive can recall. Throughout history, white supremacy has idealized and normalized dominant identities and behaviors, and has shamed and oppressed those outside of them. Here's some ways this has manifested in our bodies and some ways you can start to dismantle that impact and reconnect.
Sex and Parent Caregivers
Depending on your disability, everything involving sex may require help – and if your parent is your primary caregiver, bringing up these topics (let alone asking for assistance with them) is not an easy task. It is possible to have a healthy and fulfilling relationship and sex life as a disabled person with a parent caregiver (or any other kind of caregiver). Here's a guide to help you out in this department.
Man to Man: On Sex, Masculinity, and Being Yourself
Gender norms are really hard, but are much easier to deal with when we learn we’re not alone. When we can talk openly about the pressures we’re feeling, and realize that those pressures don’t have to control their lives, we can start figuring out ways to resist them.
Amelia Is Shouting: A Conversation About Abortion
I wanted to have a candid conversation about abortion for the benefit of young people, like what to expect, how to help a friend having one, and the best candy to keep on hand for recovery, and I knew Amelia Bonow was just the right gal for the job.
Impurity Culture: Surviving Virginity
Maybe you grew up in purity culture. Even if you didn’t, you’ve probably encountered and have to live with its ideas about virginity. I want to unpack some of those things, and consider what’s true and what isn’t.
Impurity Culture: On Sexuality & Sin
What is sexual sin anyway? Impurity Culture's Hannah Boning offers her unique perspective on the bible, sin, and sexuality.
Going Solo: The Basics of Masturbation
Self-love. Solo sex. Jacking off, jilling off, whacking off. Paddling the pink canoe, pocket pinball, teasing the kitty, testing the plumbing, spanking the monkey, surfing the channel. No matter what you call it—or how goofy what you call it is—masturbation is one of the few things that almost everyone does, has done or will do. Here's some most basic things to know about it.
Disability and Dating: I'm Sexy, Seated, and Single Forever
It took a long time for me to come to terms with my singledom, but now that I'm here, I couldn't be happier.
Let's Talk About Girldick
If you or your partner is packing girldick, navigating your sexuality takes time, communication, and self-love.
Sick, Sexy, and Disabled
When your disabled body decides to literally crap out on you, how do you bring sexy back?
What's This Bisexual/Pansexual Thing All About, Anyway?
The coming out of celebrities like Janelle Monae pave the path for a better understanding of sexual identifiers.
Making Sense of Sexual Media
What is sexual media, how might we think wisely about it, and how can we figure out how to feel and what choices to make with it?
Will the Real Bad Sex Please Stand Up?
A lot of people are talking about "bad sex" when they mean coercive sex. So let's have a conversation about when sex just isn't satisfying.
The Answers (for Now)
If you're unsure of your sexual orientation, that uncertainty can feel overwhelming. You're not alone in this feeling, though! We've compiled the experiences of several people who've gone through that questioning process in the hope that their experiences might be relatable or comforting.
Wilderness Tips: A Survival Guide For Your Sexual Adventures
Surviving in the sexual wilds -- and having your great adventures be just that, great -- involves some basic smarts, skills and conscious effort. Let’s see what we can do to help make all your trails happy ones.