Sex & Sexuality

Life has scripts. Little socially-agreed plays that we enact rather than trying to figure out all our interactions from scratch every time. Many of them are very simple. There’s also scripts for sex. Unfortunately, the most common script out there is terrible.

One of the biggest messages I (and most other sex educators I know) wish everyone would receive and embrace is that when it comes to how you express yourself sexually with things like this, there is no “supposed to.” All there is, and should be, is what feels true and real for you, what you find…

This doesn’t sound weird to me at all. Many of us have grown up getting a lot of direct and indirect messages that our own sexuality is the one thing we’re all just supposed to know how to do. We see variants of this question a lot, and I’d venture to say that there are many, many more people who…

It sounds like you’re really struggling with these expectations you have for yourself. Let’s see if we can’t help you feel a little better about yourself. First, let me see if I can’t put this in perspective a little by clearing up a misconception. The average time it takes someone with a penis to…

The only sound way we can tell if someone has or hasn’t already had any kind of sex is by asking them and accepting their answer. Obviously, sometimes some kinds of sex can result in certain outcomes, like pregnancy or sexually transmitted infections, which can also tell us if someone has engaged in…

I think one of the coolest things about sex is that it’s a lot like our taste in music. When it comes to music, we get to like what we like, and listen only to what we want to listen to when we get a choice. Obviously, in the grocery store or at a club what we hear not going to be up to us, but that…

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?

We’ve been receiving and answering a lot of questions like yours lately, but I think it’s really important to keep talking about if people keep asking. Because we keep hearing girls asking questions like this about guys, it seems clear there are a lot of people who aren’t getting some things we…

My best advice is to just try and let yourself go there. I think the safest way to do that, emotionally, would be to first try that in whichever sexual situation you tend to feel safest in, whether that’s alone, in your masturbation, or during sexual activities with a partner. More people than not…

You know, our gut feelings are usually very trustworthy. When we find we feel very scared and nervous, it’s usually because we have good reason to be. Those kinds of feelings are usually excellent cues for making our best choices. I’m not 15. I’m in my 40s. I’ve been engaging in sex for a very long…