pleasure
Sexuality: WTF Is It, Anyway?
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?
Driver's Ed for the Sexual Superhighway: Navigating Consent
As it is on the road, being attentive to and giving clear signs and signals is a big deal between the sheets. If consenting feels complicated or confusing, here's a guide to clear it up.
What's Sex?
It's obviously important if you're here for information that you know what we mean when we say "sex," so we thought we'd make it clear.
With Pleasure: A View of Whole Sexual Anatomy for Every Body
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.
Quintimacy: An Interview with Beck Thom
Britain’s Quintimacy is a space that intends to cultivate queer intimacy through trauma-informed and embodied connection. In an interview with Scarleteen, founder Beck Thom talks about their working frameworks, sex ed in the UK, what they do at Quintimacy and the need to better educate people, including children and teenagers, about trauma and consent.
Youth Sexpert: An Interview with Tara Michaela
We’re big fans of young people taking sex ed into their own hands. So, it’s no surprise we were thrilled to interview Tara Michaela, who founded the Youth Sexpert Program (YSP) when she was nineteen.
The Confidence of Fat Sexuality: An interview with sex educator Elle Chase
With her book Curvy Girl Sex: 101 Body-Positive Positions to Empower Your Sex Life (Fair Winds Press, 2017) Elle Chase gave us a guide for methods, positions and sex hacks for fat lovers with a range of different body types, centering all kinds of people who have long had their sexuality marginalized, denied or erased. In a conversation with Scarleteen, Chase talks about the book, how the media is changing its portrayal of fat people, the relevance of the word “plus size,” and her personal experiences with her own body acceptance and sexual journey.
Taking Time to Care: Empowered by Aftercare
The end of sex can feel sudden and shocking. It can set off other uncomfortable feelings that might be related to other issues or memories. But by incorporating aftercare into your sex practices, those feelings can be diminished or alleviated. Not only is aftercare beneficial to your overall pleasure, it’s an important aspect of ethical and respect-based sex.
Kaci Mial Wants to Change Sex for Pregnant People
Sex and sexuality are still often taboo for pregnant people, and for members of the LGBTQIA+ community and other marginalized people who don’t fit a given culture’s ideas or ideals of pregnancy, it can be even more challenging. American sex coach Kaci Mial, M.Ed. works with people trying to get pregnant, during pregnancy, and postpartum.
Impurity Culture: Masturbation Is Self-Care
Masturbation is a topic you might need to do a little extra work on defining your values around if you grew up in purity culture being told that it was a sin—and that’s especially true during the pandemic, when pleasurable touch from others is not always safe or accessible to us and self-care has become more important than ever as we try to process all the painful things happening in our world. Self-pleasure can be an extremely important aspect of self-care even during non-pandemic times, and right now that is especially true.