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Brook is the only national voluntary sector provider of free and confidential sexual health advice and services specifically for young people under 25. Brook is a registered charity, and has 40 years’ experience of providing professional advice through specially trained doctors, nurses, counsellors…

(Porte’s question continued) I’m ashamed of my body. I’m scared of showing him. All my life I’ve been made fun of for being ‘fat’ my whole life basically. I don’t care what people say about me anymore (usually) and I like myself. Kinda. I don’t think of myself as like…this huge chick who stuffs…

It’s absolutely normal to feel unsafe with someone who has demonstrated that you are not safe with them. After all, if I told you I didn’t feel safe having someone over for dinner who mugged me last week, you’d hardly be surprised. It’s also absolutely normal not to feel sexual with someone who hasn…

Looking for an alternative to tampons or pads? A user asks about menstrual cups, and we give her – and you – the scoop.

Usually sexual anatomy is taught through the lens of reproduction, so it’s only about penises and vaginas, testes and uteri. Seen through the lens of of pleasure, sexual anatomy looks different.

I know it’s only so much consolation to you right now, but the older I get, the more I notice how much easier having a positive body image becomes. I know that’s clearly not the case for all older women: after all, plenty of women my age and older are getting sliced, diced and Botoxed to within an…

One of the first things you generally want to think about in terms of any problems during or after sex such as you’re having with irritation, is when was the last time you were in to see your gynecologist? I can see from your question that you’ve been to a doctor about the UTIs, and that’s good. But…

Our sexuality is about so much more than our genitals. Our genitals are actually one of the smallest parts of our whole sexuality and our sexual response and experience, believe it or not. Without our brains (and everything that goes on in them), our neurological, cardiovascular and endocrinological…

I’ve wondered, with a lot of women’s sexual issues, why am I so passionate about it?

Originally written for The Guardian , condensed version can be seen there. In 2008, over 5,000 UK women under the age of 20 had an abortion that was not their first. As was made clear by the alarmist headlines following the publication of those numbers, this is a big concern for the public. A woman…

The mythical status of the hymen has caused far too much harm for far too long.

Placing a child for adoption as a birth mother makes “do you have any children?” hard to answer sometimes.

The holidays are here and you know what that means! Well, if you’re a person of color in an interracial relationship, it may mean having to sit through yet another uncomfortable, racially-charged conversation with your significant other’s fam. I know I have, and December’s barely here.

I get the impression that some, if not many of of our users think that condom failure rates are the same as condom breakage/slippage rates. In other words, think that when we explain that in typical use, condoms are 85% effective, that means that 15% of condoms break. It doesn’t: that is NOT what those rates mean. I hate for anyone to be presuming it is and to panic about a potential pregnancy via condom use because of that misunderstanding.

Sex leads to pregnancy leads to childbirth. This, of course, is a huge oversimplification.

The LGBT National Help Center is a non-profit, tax-exempt organization that is dedicated to meeting the needs of the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community and those questioning their sexual orientation and gender identity. We are an outgrowth of the Gay & Lesbian National Hotline, which…

I don’t think that how we feel emotionally is ever about a matter of rights. We cannot control what we feel, after all: we can only control how we process, hold, express and manage our feelings. You feel upset: whether or not you or anyone else thinks you have a right to have those feelings, there…

You’ve probably heard or thought some things about condom use that might be keeping you or others from using them or from using them consistently, and I’m willing to bet you haven’t heard everything I’m about to say. Even if you’re already using condoms and using them every single time properly, I bet you know someone – a sibling, a friend, a sexual partner – who could stand to hear ten great reasons to use condoms.

I am a volunteer abortion clinic escort. This means I am there to walk with women coming into the abortion clinic. It’s usually no more than a minute’s walk from their cars to the front door of the clinic. Under normal circumstances, my help would hardly be needed. Except the circumstances outside an abortion clinic are rarely “normal.”

As someone who was all but completely celibate throughout high school and this was not at all by conscious choice, I can tell you that I often found it frustrating to deal with the fact that a lot of teenagers were under- or mis-informed about safer sex, that a lot of teenagers were sexually active, and that a lot of politicians and think tanks believed in stanching teenage sexual activity entirely. I was fourteen when I started listening to Loveline (though I didn’t always agree with Dr. Drew) and it began my path of sex-pertise (as it were). I was eager to get informed.

That’s the verbatim response to the question “What if I want to have sex before I get married?” in “No Second Chance,” a film that is part of Sex Respect, an abstinence-only program. This particular message in the video, that sex (and only sex outside of heterosexual marriage) equals death is a common thread in many, if not most, abstinence-only curricula and programs. I figured it was high time we just unpack it, take a good look at the real deal, and be done with it.

I don’t think it’s very realistic to expect most of us to feel the exact same way, or “equally,” about all men, all women or all people whose gender is outside of that binary. I’m not even sure, I have to say, what feeling “equally” about people, period, would be. People are so radically different…

Good news from the White House! President Obama announced today that the US will overturn its current law banning HIV-positive individuals from entering the United States as tourists or immigrants. He explained that lifting the ban will help end stigma against people with HIV/AIDS; in fact, the ban itself has kept many people from getting tested and, therefore, could even be said to increase the spread of the disease.

I’m so sorry you had to experience a rape. But I’m glad you survived it and very glad you feel able to ask for help and support. The vagina can’t really be “broken.” A person with a vagina can sustain injuries to their genitals – via rape, consensual sex, intentional genital mutilation, childbirth…

There is little in the world that varies as much as human sexuality does. So, even when we have a couple common variables – let’s say all 18 or 19-year-old women: both an age and a single sex or gender there – we are still going to see a huge variety within that group based on all the other…