Movies and television series can provide a great platform to discuss and represent societal issues. There have been profoundly touching movies released discussing a plethora of issues, ranging from racism and sexism in Hidden Figures (2016) to medical ethics in My Sister’s Keeper (2009). Within these visual platforms, there has been an uncountable amount of visual depictions of sexual violence. Whilst this is an important topic to be discussed, scenes of it are more often than not glamorized or romanticized or, worse yet, are shown and never discussed again. There is further the question as to whether or not these scenes are actually necessary to the plot — is it worth triggering viewers and trivializing sexual violence simply for the plot or “character development?”

I was inspired to write this article after the recent release of Luckiest Girl Alive, a mystery thriller directed by Mike Barker from a screenplay by Jessica Knoll, based on her 2015 novel of the same name. I have neither read the novel nor watched the movie, being put off by several critiques of its unnecessary inclusion of rape scenes. With an absence of a trigger warning, viewers of this 18-certified film are unaware of several scenes of intense sexual assault, in which there are three graphic rape scenes lasting approximately three minutes in total. Some viewers have come in to claim that whilst these scenes are hard to watch, they are ‘necessary.’ Jenna Ryu, a wellness reporter at USA TODAY, claims that “seeing sexual assault is supposed to make you uncomfortable and outraged,” using this as a reason to excuse the inclusion of these graphic scenes. Ryu’s article also includes a statement from Elizabeth Jeglic, a professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice who researches sexual violence.

One of the many services the Sexual Health Alliance (SHA) provides is a sexual attitude reassessment or a SAR. If you’ve ever wondered what SARs are all about, who they’re for, or why you should attend one, you’re about to learn all that. Plus, I’ll explain why you might choose SHA’s sexual attitude reassessments over those hosted by others. SARs are structured group activities, which set them apart from other conferences or workshops. A SAR is more than just a learning experience or a change in your personal beliefs and values surrounding sex; it’s an active process of assessing your attitudes about sex and reflecting on how this might impact the services you provide your clients, patients, or students. These experiences promote growth and compassion for others by exposing you to sexual behaviors and preferences through erotic media–typically video–and let you discuss the content with other professionals, reducing the chance that the first time you hear about a particular sexual desire isn’t from a client who needs your support.

Have you heard of free use? No, this doesn’t have anything to do with copyright law. “Free use” is a porn genre and a type of erotic fantasy that can offer an interesting peak into human desire. So let’s talk about what “free use” means, what’s hot about these fantasies, and what they could show us!

It’s hard to know when “free use” first started being thrown around as a porn keyword, but it seems like it’s been growing in popularity over the last several years. By 2014 it was already popular enough to have a subreddit, which now has grown to have over a million members and counting. The most popular fanfiction website Archive Of Our Own has over 800 stories tagged this way. But…like…what is it.

In its most distilled form, free use refers to the fantasy of someone being available for sexual “use” at any time. Generally speaking, this means that no flirtation, seduction, or foreplay is necessary to initiate a sex act. This can be within a specific relationship, scenario, or even broadly with anyone anywhere at any time. Classically, free-use narratives involve a man or multiple men “using” a woman, although gay and gender variant variations aren’t uncommon. At first glance, this sounds very similar to fantasies about sexual assault or sexual submission, which isn’t entirely untrue. The scenarios in free-use fiction don’t tend to meet real-life requirements for consent and people certainly do tag rape fantasy stories with the term sometimes, but generally speaking, free-use porn’s erotic tension doesn’t seem to derive from lack of consent. In fact, r/FreeUse explicitly bans “anything involving rape/non-consent.” Instead, free-use erotic media seems to have a unique set of elements that create eroticism without relying purely on the popular fantasies of dominance, submission, and overpowering lust.

In the same way that no two snowflakes are identical, no two people masturbate the same. We all have our preferences in position, speed, and intensity. Whilst it’s amazing that we are all so unique in our masturbation preferences, this grand variance can cause issues in partnered sex. Idiosyncratic masturbatory style, a term coined by Michael Perelman, can be defined as “a masturbation technique not easily duplicated by the partner’s hand, mouth or vagina,” and is something that can lead to delayed ejaculation for people with penises. Though idiosyncratic masturbatory techniques are discussed in the context of penis owners, this article will give an all-inclusive overview.

I still remember the day I first heard Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion’s chart-topping hit “WAP”, but I have to admit, I didn’t understand why it was getting so much media coverage at the time. I grew up around plenty of sexual songs, despite my relatively sheltered upbringing. I listened to Lady Gaga’s “Love Game” far before I knew what a “disco stick” was, I didn’t understand why my parents were so worried about ten-year-old me’s obsession with Rick James’ “Super Freak,” and Salt-N-Pepa’s “Let’s Talk About Sex” arguably put me on the sex-positive path I walk to this day. I’d followed both Cardi and Megan for a while before “WAP”’s release, and the song itself only stood out to me at first because it was a collaboration between two of my favorite artists. Nonetheless, the internet blew up with moralizing backlash, feminist defenses, and, of course, plentiful Ben Shapiro memes. Arguably, this one song (along with the rise in popularity of female rap generally) has changed the culture of pop and rap music for years to come. Now that it’s been a couple years, it’s a good time to take a step back and look at the legacy of explicitly sexual music historically and some affirmations and critiques of this type of work. Along the way you’ll get some fun, horny music recommendations too!

The term “sexy” seems to originate from the early 1900s but has since changed meanings multiple times so that it now encompasses many connotations. In 1905, “sexy” meant to be “engrossed in sex,” indicating that “sexy” was still inherently linked to the physical act of having sex. It wasn’t until 1912 that “sexy” began to shift to mean “sexually attractive.” In the modern day, it is common to use “sexy” for a myriad of things both not necessarily related to the physical act of sex or attraction only in a sexual nature. After 1987, the Merriam-Webster dictionary started defining “sexy” as “generally attractive or interesting.” This simple change allows for anything to be sexy, theoretically, depending on the obvious subjective nature of individual opinion and context. If this seems overly vague, that’s because it is. In fact, a popular Urban Dictionary post defines “sexy” as “people can be described as sexy due to their physical appearance, behaviour, personality and other stuff.” The post continues with examples including “man, Jess has such a sexy body, look at the way Liv and Kim are dancing. That's sexy. Abbey's got a sexy walk. And the way she talks really revs my engine,” and “Jules is so confident in herself, it's sexy.” If all these things are considered “sexy,” what really is sexy? One of the paradoxes of language is the more a term is used, the less it means.

The Sexual Health Alliance held a transformative and inclusive conference on Philosophy, Identity, Activism: Exploring Queer and Trans Identities - facilitated by Dr. Ley David Elliete Cray, SHA alum and teacher. We heard from queer, non-binary, and transgender professionals, including asexual advocate Yasmine Benoit, gender-affirming medical professional Dr. Jerrica Kirkley, graphic novelist Justin Hall, health nurse practitioner Rachel Featherstone, professional counselor Taylor Mizuno-Moore, sex worker and advocate Margaux Underwood.

Ley opened the conference with an electric statement addressing that now more than ever, we need to uplift the voices of queer folk, especially with the rise of hate and bigotry towards queer and trans communities. Throughout the United States, conservative politicians and activists are attempting to silence the voices of the LGBTQ+ community - this conference is a symbol of resistance. SHA is crafting educators, counselors, and therapists to become interpersonal allies, advocates, and mentors for queer and trans people.

I grew up in a Catholic household and almost every year the family broke out the same DVD to mark the holiday season: A Christmas Story. So many scenes in that movie fill me with nostalgia, but I can only point to one plotline that I’m sure, without a doubt, was sexually formative to me: the lamp. If you haven’t seen the movie, it’s basically a series of vignettes about a suburban family in 1939. In one of them, the father receives a mysterious “major award” in the mail which turns out to be a particularly sensual lamp. It’s a long, shapely glowing leg topped with a tasseled shade designed to evoke a skirt. Most entrancingly (at least for me), the lamp is wearing a high black heel and a thigh-high fishnet stocking that our ten-year-old protagonist Ralphie just can’t keep his hands off. According to the narrator, when the lamp was lit-up in the family’s window “the entire neighborhood was turned on.”

Now that I’m an adult with what some might call a full-fledged fetish for hosiery, this plotline is an easy source to thank for my desires, while also serving as an example of how our culture treats stockings. On the one hand, they seem to be semi-universally understood to be sexy. They’re often part of lingerie sets, they appear in vanilla porn and burlesque shows very frequently, and even mainstream movies like The Graduate use them in ways the audience is clearly meant to process as seductive. At the same time, they’re sort of treated as a safe form of eroticism. A Christmas Story is considered a child-friendly film and I’d be very surprised if I rewatched it with my family one year and discovered a scene of Ralphie groping a statue’s chest or crotch. But for some reason, a long beautiful leg in sensual hosiery is considered just sexy enough that adults will understand but not lewd enough to be inappropriate, despite the fact many people are extremely turned on by them. So how did this little cultural kink for hosiery come to be, what do people find so sexy about it, and how can you start exploring if you want to?

If you’ve spent any amount of time around your local kink community it’s likely you’ve heard people talk about the Old Guard. This controversial term has no one agreed-upon definition, yet it’s been part of conversations in the leather community and broader BDSM sphere since at least the early 1970s. For many, it refers to an idyllic past when S&M and leather culture were more meaningful and untainted by mainstreaming and internet culture. For others, it sets off alarm bells for dismissive gatekeeping, toxic masculinity, or even coercion into practices that cross people’s limits. It’s a complex and often sensitive topic, and a simple blog post by someone outside of the leather community could never do it justice. At the same time, it’s worthwhile for people first dipping their toes into the kink scene to learn a bit about the concept of Old Guard and the background on some ideological tensions which pop up semi-frequently in the world of BDSM.

Although arguably elements of kink have been practiced for millennia, modern Western BDSM has a relatively short history that is deeply intertwined with that of American gay men and leathermen in particular. Leather has also served an important part in lesbian history, although unfortunately this blog post’s scope is confined mostly to gay men. As Peter Hennen discusses in his 2008 book Faeries, Bears, and Leathermen, leather culture first emerged in the mid-20th century as many gay men sought community after serving in World War II. Separated from family, traumatized by violence, and bound by shared structure and comradery, many veterans felt no interest in or ability to return to everyday civilian life once combat ended. For gay men in particular, the war had created a space for homosocial and homosexual bonding, despite the military’s officially anti-homosexual stance, and returning home to expectations of heteronormativity and nuclear family creation was daunting. Gay veterans yearned for a community with other men but shied away from the effeminacy that was heavily associated with men’s queerness at the time.

I don’t know what the average person thinks when they hear the term “step mommy” or “stepsis” out of context, but I sure know what my mind jumps to and it’s not a typical family relationship. Perhaps you’re more innocent than me. To be fair, I came of age with access to an ever-growing cornucopia of internet porn and yes, I’m a bit of a pervert. But I swear I’m not the only one that associates these innocent terms with porno storylines. People have written stand-up bits, published YouTube skits, and made TikTok videos all hinging on the overwhelming popularity (or, at least, ubiquity) of step-family-themed porn, often referred to as “fauxcest”. So, what’s the deal with that? Why are incestuous relationships so common in pornography storylines that there’s not just one but multiple popular meme formats revolving around it?

Well, a common theory is that porn consumers are just so over-saturated with sexual imagery nowadays that “normal sex” isn’t enough. Porn viewers keep chasing bigger sexual thrills when the old plotlines start falling flat and suddenly they’ve popularized the dirtiest topic of them all: incest. Now, this may be true for some people, however, the idea that pornography is drug-like in this way is not generally backed up by science and seems to be a myth often used by anti-porn organizations to paint porn as inherently dangerous. The same organizations relying on this narrative will claim that watching porn made by consenting adults is the beginning of a slippery slope that leads to child porn and bestiality.

What’s that you have there? Do you want me to call it a pussy, or how about a dick? You might not have heard this question before, and maybe it even seems a little weird. It’s possible you think of the parts in your underwear as obviously one or the other and you don’t understand why someone would ask. The thing is, not everyone is comfortable with the same language when it pertains to their parts, not to mention the fact that many people have bodies that don’t fit into the sexual binary. So let’s talk about why people might like some terms more than others, why that’s important, and how to have that conversation!

There are so, so many words for body parts and an astounding amount are just for genitals. Some of them sound more medical, some are more vulgar, and some are just silly like “Purple-Headed Yogurt Slinger.” The thing is, not everyone has the same association with these terms. As an example find the word “vagina” overly medical for dirty talk, but my roommate is absolutely fine with it. Using the wrong term might sometimes just be a bit of a turnoff while throwing certain words around without asking could be hurtful to a partner.

Erotic hair pulling is one of those sexy activities that are so popular many people don’t even consider it a kink. It tends to float around in the “rough sex” zone where people so often put things like spanking and biting. I don’t think this idea is particularly accurate or helpful because it lumps many diverse activities together as if being interested in one necessarily means you’re interested in others. It also treats these activities like they hold little to no risk of harm. For example, hardly any work has been produced on how to pull hair safely, possibly because it has a reputation for being “entry-level” and not needing to be explained. Unfortunately, hair pulling holds substantial risk when done incorrectly. So let’s go over different kinds of hair pulling, how to pull hair relatively safely, and all (or some, at least) of the ways hair pulling can be incorporated into activities that aren’t traditional “rough sex.”

First and foremost we need to talk about what, exactly, erotic hair pulling is. Porn and other kink photography tend to depict hair pulling as one person dragging someone around by their hair or tugging on the ends of braids or ponytails-like handles during doggy-style sex. Obviously, the breadth of human sexuality is near infinite so people can be into all sorts of variations, but these techniques are not particularly safe and do not consistently produce the erotic effect that many enjoy. Instead, many people enjoy the feeling of having their scalp stimulated directly through hair pulling that’s tight against their head. The typical technique involves lacing fingers into the base of your partner’s hair in order to pull from the scalp. Conveniently, this is not only the safest method but is also doable on surprisingly short hair. You probably wouldn’t be able to form a fist in hair shorter than about two inches, but even just sliding your fingers into the base of short hair and squeezing them tightly together can produce a similar effect. When hair is pulled at the base, the sensation is more like an intense scalp massage than pure pain. It has an element of masochism to be sure, but it’s the sort of ambiguous pain that many people who don’t consider themselves masochists might really enjoy.

On August 18th, 2015, the FDA approved Flibanserin (Addyi) to help premenopausal women who were experiencing low sexual desire that resulted in personal distress or difficulties. Taken in tablet form, this non-hormonal pill acts as a “multifunctional serotonin against antagonist” (MSAA) to provide treatment for those facing hypoactive sexual desire disorders. Whilst this may sound like a good idea on paper, the safety and testing behind this “female viagra'' is both dangerous and problematic.

Flibanserin, also called Addyi, went through the normal approval protocol, giving the illusion that it was safe for female consumption. It comes as a 100mg dose that should be taken daily right before bedtime. There are however multiple dangerous side effects that Flibanserin may cause which this 2018 paper goes into detail about. Administration during waking hours increased the chances of hypotension, syncope (passing out), accidental injury, and depression. Flibanserin “may also cause (CNS) depression with somnolence and sedation. Fatigue, insomnia, and dry mouth can also occur.” Those taking Flibanserin should not drive or engage in any activities that require full alertness until it has been at least 6 hours after taking flibanserin. At this point, I’m beginning to wonder how the heck this was even passed as a safe drug. But it gets a lot worse from here…

Most people have probably heard of spanking in the context of kinky sex before. It’s a fairly common fantasy to imagine being forced over someone’s knee and told you’ve been bad and you’re going to be punished. Even people who aren’t into a formal punishment aspect might consider it fairly every day to have some light swats to the butt in the bedroom. When I decided to write about spanking, however, I had something else in mind. Spanking is an activity that some people enjoy as much more than a bit of spice during foreplay or sex. These people (often self-identified as spankos) center spanking in their erotic life and many aren’t particularly interested in more typical forms of sex. In this piece, I discuss spanking as a complete, isolated sexual act in addition to what people find enjoyable about spanking, and how to explore spanking beyond some playful butt slaps during sexual intercourse.

Unfortunately, spanking is a term in our culture for forms of physical child abuse normalized as too mild or common to call battery. However, this blog post uses “spanking” to describe the erotic practice of consenting adults hitting other consenting adults’ buttocks. This can simply be with an open palm or with implements such as hair brushes or paddles. Often there’s an element of dominance and submission, where one partner (the spanking top) takes on the role of punishing, humiliating, or otherwise holding power over the other partner (the spanking bottom). Spanking can be done over clothes, with underwear exposed, or on bare bottoms. It can be incorporated into broader BDSM relationships as well in different ways. Some enjoy spanking as a pure indulgence in the pleasure of masochism, others use it as a disciplinary element consensually chosen by the participants as a way of correcting unwanted behaviors, and still others desire regularly scheduled spankings as a way to maintain a connection to their BDSM identity and the visceral power exchange element in their relationship.

It’s been just one month since Sexual Health Alliance covered the topic of “cyber-flashing” and its various degrees of legality across the nation. This term, while previously relatively unknown, has gained some recent popularity due in part to the dating app, Bumble. On September 23, California bill SB 53 “Unsolicited Images” was approved by California Governor Gavin Newsom and chaptered by the Secretary of State. The bill, authored by Senator Connie M. Levya representing California’s 20th District, allows recipients of unsolicited lewd photos to sue the sender for up to $30,000. Moreover, the minimum damages payment is $1,500, and recipients can seek court orders blocking any further online harassment. This action not only validates and supports survivors of virtual sexual harassment but also solidifies California’s place as a policy leader in the United States, encouraging other states to follow suit. While Texas and Virginia already have similar regulations, it would not surprise me if, in the coming months and years, other states create similar laws to protect people from online attacks. Eventually, legal language like this may be used to create federal sanctions for assailants.

So where does Bumble come in? Well, as anyone who has ever been on a dating app could tell you, they are breeding grounds for unsolicited sexually explicit pictures. However, instead of assuming this an absolute, Bumble decided to take a stand. For context, Bumble’s founder and CEO, Whitney Wolfe Herd, has been breaking molds since Bumble’s inception, and in her quest for gender and racial parity, she has stayed on the cutting edge of technological innovation. The concept behind the app itself represents these values; giving women the power to control their love and sex lives while advancing gender roles. Furthermore, Bumble reinforced its commitment to kind online communities back in 2017 following the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements. As we know, social media is a huge driver behind modern social movements, and Bumble plays into these in the best sort of way. The app has a zero-tolerance policy for hate speech and, now, unsolicited nudes.

Why is the clitoris so misunderstood and ignored in social and medical society? Because it's more than a pleasure system—the clitoris is a symbol of liberation and fear. The history of the clitoris is intrinsically tied to the patriarchy’s insidious plot to misinform and silence women’s sexual liberation. Zoe Mendelson, a writer, speaker, and advocate created the book Pussypedia - an inclusive guide to the vulva and vagina. Within her book, she provides transparent information about the pussy through bright fun graphics and casual language. In PussyPedia, she demonstrates how the medical industry refused to acknowledge and discuss the pleasure system within the vulva, specifically the clitoris. She illustrates that the medical and social dismissal of "pussy sexuality" advertised that it was frail and unfeeling.

With the limited sex education I was given in school, the information about periods was extremely scarce. We were instructed about cramps and PMS, but there was zero mention of the existence, or ways to navigate “period poops.” Your period can make you poop more or less, and it can come in many forms: constipation, bloating, diarrhea, or even all of the above. But do you know why you are experiencing changes in your bowel movement, before and during your period? This article will delve into the science behind it, and ways to make your experience a little less shit (pun intended). Hormones are what you want to blame for your sudden increase in poops. Before your period starts, progesterone levels rise in order to prepare for a possible pregnancy. When menstruation begins instead of pregnancy, your body increases levels of prostaglandins, whilst progesterone levels fall. It is prostaglandins that encourage your womb muscles to contract to help break down the uterine lining and resulting in the hell that is menstrual cramps. In terms of poop, if your body produces more prostaglandins than necessary, it can enter the bloodstream and affect muscles, including the bowels and other digestive organs, and result in more frequent trips to the toilet. Lower levels of progesterone can also result in diarrhea.

Penis size is a loaded topic in much of the world, and the rise in popularity of internet porn makes unrealistic body standards even harder to avoid. To make things worse, small penises are the butt of jokes all the time even as our culture seems to be moving away from body shaming. Small penises are imagined to be symbolic of a lack of masculinity and power. Despite the fact many trans men without bottom surgery have very fulfilling sex lives and 85% of straight women report being happy with their partners’ size, many still spread the idea that penis measurements are central to desirability as a man. With all this in mind, it’s no surprise that almost half of the people with penises studied (all cisgender and heterosexual men) wish their penises were bigger. There are many healthy ways to address insecurities, but for a lot of people, the most fun (and kinky!) is addressing the issue head-on. Erotic humiliation or specifical small penis humiliation (SPH) is perfect for this!

Humiliation play gives people the opportunity to have their worst insecurities pointed out and their most painful fears about themselves confirmed in a controlled, consensual environment. Sometimes this comes from reenacting old traumas around embarrassment, sometimes it’s more original or abstract. Small penis humiliation (SPH for short) is a popular subsection of the erotic humiliation kink, probably because so many people are insecure about their size down there. And that’s the thing – you don’t even have to have a small penis to enjoy being made fun of for it! Plenty of people with average and even exceptionally large penises enjoy SPH.

Given the smaller scale on which American universities signify societal power relations, college campuses often constitute a microcosm in which policy changes can be applied and evaluated. In this way, universities not only echo societal issues but magnify them. Specifically, the issue of sexual assault controversies on campuses displays societal attitudes on the topic thus highlighting the priorities of national, state, and administrative policymakers. To demystify this issue, let’s synthesize the literature on campus sexual assault policy and practice by way of case studies on similar, progressive state legislation (California) and universities (Stanford) to illustrate the resulting political compromises as well as their short and long-term consequences.

Policies are not the only factors to be considered when discussing the real-world effects of sexual violence. In the modern-day, media coverage can significantly impact any policies felt by specific populations. Additionally, the media can either highlight or hide certain issues. Highlighting cases of sexual assault often will arouse public outrage for a short amount of time until the news cycle moves on. Further, in the media coverage of a sexual assault case, issues can be blown out of proportion to enhance the ethos draw of the event. This illustrates the fact that there is almost no way for the media to present an unbiased report of such a complex issue, although this was the intention behind free media at the beginning of democracy.

When it comes to consensual non-monogamy, most people probably spend more time thinking about the logistics or the sexual gratification of having multiple partners. Yet, the words we use to talk and think about different topics matter. That’s why it’s worth analyzing what it means when we describe the act of having consensual relationships with more than one person as “consensual non-monogamy,” which is often abbreviated as CNM. It’s not that the phrase isn’t helpful–Non-monogamy illustrates how someone may have relationships with multiple people or how a relationship may even include more than two people. And by pointing out that it’s consensual, we differentiate between CNM and non-monogamy, where one party isn’t aware that their partners have other sexual or romantic relationships. Often, this takes the form of cheating, but it may be the case that some people could be in consensual non-monogamous relationships if they knew it was an option.

For those who know the difference and practice non-monogamy only when it’s consensual, it’s important to distinguish their relationships from cheating. Some people also use ethical non-monogamy (ENM), which emphasizes the same point. CNM has traditionally been used by researchers, but it has overtaken ENM as the terminology of choice in some circles. Page of Polyland explains that she prefers CNM because ethics vary. Either way, focusing on honesty and consent is something from which many people in more traditional relationships could benefit.