identity

As we go through childhood and our teens, our boundaries tend to change. It’s typical for young people growing up to want increasing privacy and also to have an expanding personal space bubble: to want your family and other people close to you to support you feeling like your body is absolutely your…

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…

Some of what you’re describing is what plenty of people who identify as asexual describe. Many asexual people report that it’s not a matter for them of not having sexual feelings, but instead, a matter of lacking any motivation to pursue those feelings actively with sexual partners, and also for…

Do you think you or your friends are too young to know if you’re straight? Hint: there’s actually no right answer to that one. If you say yes, people at 14 can know they’re heterosexual, then it only makes sense to posit that if a person can know they are one orientation at that age, they can know…

Wearing tampons when you aren’t menstruating isn’t a good idea in terms of risks of TSS and uncomfortable vaginal dryness, but doing so won’t have any sort of permanent effects on the vagina. Same goes with having intercourse: the vagina is a muscle, and use of it doesn’t cause atrophy – that doesn…

(Charleten’s question continued) Last summer, I came out as a lesbian to my family and friends, because after about a year and half of questioning and soul-searching and doubting and ALL that fun stuff, I concluded that I was romantically and emotionally (and sexually, though again I just am not…

Our sexual fantasies really don’t limit our actual, out-of-our-heads sexual experiences. Sexual fantasy and sexual reality are separate. Fantasy is influenced by reality, and reality can be influenced by fantasy if we choose, but they still are two very different things. For many people, much of…

Shaun: if not reaching orgasm with a partner during intercourse meant a person was still a virgin, there would be an AWFUL lot of cis women in their forties who have been having sex for two decades but were still virgins. Virginity isn’t some medical state or condition, or something you can get some…

The same way anyone else does. Which is to say, any vast number of different ways. Sex isn’t just vaginal intercourse. Sex is any number of combinations of things people of all stripes do together to seek mutual sexual pleasure, and what those things or that combination are varies for everyone, even…

Want to step up and start standing up for the issues most important to you? Here’s a few basics on how young activists can get started.