Search

From the Kaiser Health Disparities Report: A Weekly Look At Race, Ethnicity And Health: Blacks were disproportionately affected by sexually transmitted infection rates in 2007, including chlamydia rates that reached a record high and syphilis rates that increased for the seventh consecutive year, according to a CDC report released on Tuesday, Reuters Health reports (Dunham, Reuters Health, 1/13).

To answer your question, I find myself wanting to give a little bit of background information and talk about the language I’m going to use, just so we’re all on the same page and you can best understand where I’m coming from! Hopefully you can bear with me for a minute while we talk about that, and…

From both our personal experiences of our own varied sex lives, and in our work in sexuality with many other people, it seems pretty clear that really letting someone into an internal space in your body, or going into someone else’s insides – which we know might sound a little gross, but that is what’s going on with this stuff – is a fairly big deal for many people. So, what might make sexual entry different from other sexual activities?

I think the easiest way for the two of you to get out of the cycle about arguing about this is to take it off the table for right now. Here’s what I hear: • I hear that he is feeling conflicted about whether or not he is ready, in many ways. However, it sounds like most of what he is saying is that…

Before I say anything else, I want to be sure to connect you with a couple of avenues for help because I am very concerned about the state you’re in right now. Clearly – and it’s really common for this to happen – seeing your rapist has triggered a lot for you and clearly, you are in a state of…

I hear you that this is a tough situation to be in, turbo! It certainly may seem like the reverse of what most people face when they are questioning their sexual orientation. However, I assure you that it is actually much more common than one might think. For all the great resources there are about…

Dear Scarleteener, congratulations on being such an active participant in your own health care, and for doing your best to take care of both your physical and emotional well-being. That can be hard to do, particularly when life and school get crazy (as they tend to). I’m hoping that the gynecologist…

From the leading bloggers in the fat-acceptance movement comes an empowering guide to body image- no matter what the scales say.

I will start by saying that, as confusing as this situation may seem right now, you have a really good head on your shoulders: You know who you are and what you’re interested in, and seem OK with it. That right there is fantastic, because it’s something that many people of all ages continue to…

You two always talk about joke around in class, brightening each others’ school day. You laugh at each others’ jokes, which is always special and not to be underrated! Although there may be some differences in your physical appearances, you have very many deeper things in common- and that’s what’s…

He may be older but he’s not wiser, and he’s not acting like a grownup. He doesn’t want to grow up, which is part of why he’s dating people he perceives as not grownup themselves. He also doesn’t have the bad stuff that happens to you because of him happen to him to make him want to change: if he was in your shoes, he’d ditch him in a heartbeat.

Unfortunately – albeit unsurprisingly – President Bush, much in the way he entered the office, feels the need to leave it by spitting right in the face of women and our health.

Without hormones, our bodies would not be able to function! Hormones are essentially chemical messengers that deliver the memo to cells that they are supposed to change up what they’re doing. Not all hormones are sex hormones; there are lots of kinds! Many hormones are produced by our endocrine…

A dildo – or any other sex toy – is not likely to do anything to the nerve endings within your vagina. In fact, it’s completely likely there isn’t a single thing wrong with you, and that nothing whatsoever has happened to your vagina to result in you feeling this way. As we’ve explained many times…

I’d like to focus this on the three primary issues you brought up here: your need for basic physical affection, your problem with upholding your own boundaries, and your ideas about how without intercourse, the sex you or anyone else are having cannot possibly satisfy either of you. On all of those…

There’s a lot I want to say, but I need to get a hugely important piece out there as soon as possible. If you are thinking about self-injury, suicide, or hurting someone else there is immediate help available. I want you to stay safe so we can talk more about what is going on with you, so if you are…

It sounds as if you’re concerned about your performance abilities, and whether your partner is going to get pleasure out of intercourse. From what I’m reading, it also sounds to me like you’re already having “actual sex”—indeed, oral sex, manual sex….it’s sex! And with sex comes the need for good…

An FDA advisory panel unanimously approved the FC2 female condom. The FC2 is very similar to the current version of the female condom and is in fact intended to replace it. The primary difference is the FC2 is made of nitrile instead of polyurethane, making it cheaper to manufacture. As that one of the primary barriers preventing women from using female condoms is cost, this is excellent news.

What I am hearing is…well, the reality that when it comes to love, we simply cannot often get everything we want, or have love happen in exactly the context we’d most prefer, or are most comfortable with. In a word, we often just can’t have everything (and as comedian Steven Wright once asked, if…

Erin’s question continued And I said it wasn’t that I didn’t want to, but that I should at least wait until I get on birth control or something. And he started begging, so I said we could do anything except for that. And then he told me nothing else would be good enough, and got really angry and…

There’s no sense in being anything but frank. Sex does tend to change things. It can bring about or illuminate changes in the relationships it occurs within, changes in our other relationships, and changes in ourselves. Often, we have to add some factors to our lives we may not have had to before…

HurtandUsed’s question continued He then went and put his hands down my pants and started touching me there. I wanted to say no, but I couldn’t because I was afraid he would get mad or break up with me. He then went and grabbed my hand and put my hand down his pants. I pulled my hand away but he…

If you are obsessively scrubbing and scrubbing like Lady Macbeth, that in and of itself may be a big part of this issue. The vagina is a self-cleaning organ. It’s also an organ that doesn’t tend to respond well to soaps, douches, and other cleansing agents, because those things can knock off the…

Feeling uncomfortable or trapped by one’s own body is a really hard feeling to manage. I’m really glad that even though it was a challenge you were able to put some words to your feelings, and I hope that maybe this response can help you feel a little less isolated in those feelings. The first thing…

Ever wonder what “LGBT” means? Or why “queer” can be both an insult and part of the title of a hit TV show? Visit GLAAD’s glossary to find out! It also includes a list of offensive terminology to avoid.