The anxiety starts in my chest and then blooms, smothering my lungs and filling my belly: a guy has just asked me out. Oh no, I think, panicked. Am I interested? How do I turn him down? I’m not a character in a preteen novel, with butterflies in her stomach because she’s never been asked on a…
Category: Sexuality
Indian Supreme Court Decriminalizes Queer Sex, and Everyone Celebrates!
HAPPY 377 READ DOWN DAY, EVERYONE! In a rare piece of absolutely fabulous news, on Thursday, September 6, the Indian Supreme Court officially decriminalized homosexuality. Technically, the Court “read down” Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code to exclude consensual sex. Implemented in 1860 under British official Thomas Macauley, Section 377 outlawed “carnal acts against the order…
10 Inspiring Self-Love Quotes from LGBTQ Icons
When trans women of color led the way in the Stonewall Riots of 1969, Pride was born. It was a movement against police harassment and to claim space for a marginalized community. By fighting back, members of New York City’s queer community signaled they would not be pushed into the shadows anymore. The Stonewall Riots are part of a…
Chokhri, a New Sexual Health Project, Maps Marital Rape and Abortion in India
There’s a scene about birth control in the questionably feminist 2017 Hindi flick Lipstick Under My Burqa that stuck with me. Shireen, whose abusive husband rapes her and refuses to use condoms, goes to the gynecologist for another abortion. The gynecologist tells her she can’t keep having abortions and using the morning after pill, and the only other form of available birth control…
Seven Reasons Consent Apps are a Terrible Idea
Feminists: making everything harder for god-fearing gentlemen who feel entitled to get laid. We’ve come a long way from the good old days when men had a right to sex with their wives regardless of women’s opinion on the matter (marital rape was legal in the US until the 20th century). With the evil witch-hands of feminism continuing…
Humans from Time Immemorial have Loved Penetration with Vegetables. Into it? Here are Some Tips.
The Christmas I was fourteen, my mom gave me and my sisters the best gift you can give to a bunch of teenage girls: A copy of Our Bodies, Ourselves. I was a budding feminist, an avid reader, and obviously super interested in sex, and so I spent days—months—years even, poring over that book and learning…
Dating as a woman: Balancing a desire for intimacy with the threat of violence
“Why don’t you date?” My therapist’s comment took me aback. After a difficult relationship, why didn’t I put myself back out there? After all, meeting new people would be a healthy distraction, enrich my social life, and build up my confidence by reminding me how ridiculously charming and attractive I am. Okay, maybe I don’t…
Interviewed for Playboy article on “Fifty Shades of Grey”
Check out Adam Howard’s great piece on the Fifty Shades of Grey franchise over at Playboy It’s a great examination of the contradictory appeal of this very contradictory franchise—featuring some commentary from yours truly: I do think it’s an interesting franchise because it’s premised on this whole idea of the forbidden,” Reina Gattuso, a columnist for Feministing who writes about gender,…
The Psychology of the Orgasm Gap
We know that women face a number of challenges to achieving equality. In the boardroom, we face the wage gap. And in the bedroom: The orgasm gap. Researchers (and everyday people!) have found that a gap exists between the frequency with which men and women experience orgasm, especially during heterosexual sex. Specifically, women consistently have fewer…
How Psychology Stigmatized Female Orgasm (and How We Got It Back)
Read the full article at Talkspace. For most of us, orgasms are, simply, awesome. Yet from the origins of modern psychology in the late nineteenth century, a combination of cultural stereotypes, pseudoscience, and plain old misogyny created an enduring notion that women’s orgasms were a problem to be solved, rather than a normal part of sexual…
