Sex & Sexuality

What’s sex? What’s sexuality? How do people experience and actively express their sexualities, by themselves, with partners or both? How can we take part in sex in ways that are wanted and consensual, physically and emotionally safe and enjoyable for everyone? How do you figure out what you like? How can you communicate about sex? How do you deal with feelings like fear, shame, anxiety, dysphoria and other body image issues? How do you create the kind of sexual life you want? You’ll find the answers to all these and more here.

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Articles and Advice in this area:

Advice
  • Jacob Mirzaian

Hi feministconundrums, Genital sensitivity – and sometimes sensitivity of some other body parts, too – is common for many people after orgasm. The length of time after an orgasm that it can or does last varies from person to person, experience to experience and it can often vary with age too. It…

Advice
  • Heather Corinna

When it comes to sex with and for only yourself – masturbation – it should be just like sex with a partner when it comes to if you do it or not. If it’s something you want to do and feel comfortable doing, then you can choose to do it. If it’s not something you want or don’t feel comfortable with…

Article
  • Cliff Pervocracy

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.

Advice
  • Heather Corinna

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…

Advice
  • Robin Mandell

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…

Advice
  • Johanna Schorn

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…

Advice
  • Heather Corinna

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…

Advice
  • Heather Corinna

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…

Article
  • Heather Corinna

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?

Advice
  • Heather Corinna

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…