sex

Need to check out what your sexually transmitted disease or infection risk might be in a jiffy?

A candid memoir of first-time intercourse from the founder of Scarleteen.

What’s safer sex? Find out how you can best reduce your risks of STIs and protect your health and how to do it and be supported in it without feeling like the Sex Decency Brigade or bringing on the buzzkill.

Many people in long-term, committed relationships, be it marriage or steady partnership – no matter their age – have ideas about sex in partnerships they may not even be aware of. Often we base our ideas of relationships and sexuality on what we see in the media or in movies, on what our parents relationship is like, or on what we imagine, in a perfect world, sex and love to be. Talking about what those ideas are, communicating our feelings honestly, and creating clear limits and honoring them make everyone happier and healthier.

How a pregnancy happens is a lot more complicated and a whole lot more interesting than just a sperm cell and an egg cell running into each other. Here’s our map to the way there…or not.

Thinking about partnered sex? Do yourself a favor and look through our checklist to get a good idea about the readiness of you and your partner – it’s more complicated and demanding than many people think, and knowing what you need to get ready can help assure that your sexual experiences with a partner will be as great for both of you as possible.

What we are talking about here is celibacy, the deliberate choice not to have a sexual partner for any period of time. There’s nothing ambiguous about that. Being celibate entails sharing NO sexual acts with a partner: any kind of intercourse (vaginal or anal), oral sex, manual sex, and so forth. In other words, no physical, sexual contact with others; meaning any genital (penis or vulva) touch, with mouths, hands or anything else between you and someone else is off limits.

A lot of false assumptions are often made when people are talking about BDSM. Let’s start with a little glossary to be sure we’re all on the same page.

The next time anyone tells you that only losers masturbate, or that they don’t, and never would, bear this in mind: according to most studies and surveys, about 95% of adults have masturbated or continue to do so. Were many falsehoods and misconceptions about masturbation true, it would mean that 95 out of every 100 people would be blind, drooling psychopaths with hair on their palms and shrunken genitals.