Thanks to the initiative of activist Rachel Crandall and the subsequent sustaining efforts of TRES (Trans Student Educational Resources), International Transgender Day of Visibility has been celebrated every March 31st since 2009. In contrast with International Transgender Day of Remembrance (which acknowledges those whose lives have been lost to transphobic violence), Trans Day of Visibility has historically been an occasion for anyone under the broad transgender umbrella to be not just visible, but loud, proud, and determined to push our way from margins to center.

I do not speak for all trans persons, but I do believe that I echo the sentiment of many in my community when I say: Trans Day of Visibility feels different this year.

As trans persons, we do not yet have proportional representation in nearly any aspect of public life or culture. In the United States, whether we are legally protected from being fired, losing our homes, or experiencing other forms of social and structural injustice varies depending on what state we live in. In some other places in the world, we can be imprisoned or killed, solely for being transgender. As it stands, the only place where we have consistent representation is in the minds of conservative lawmakers who actively vilify and scapegoat transgender persons (especially transgender women) as part of their ongoing effort to further erode bodily autonomy, legislate self-determination, and legally enshrine cishetero-patriarchal domination.

Voluntary celibacy is a personal choice that individuals make to abstain from sexual practices. Just as sex is unique to different folks, celibacy can also differ from person to person. A voluntarily celibate individual can choose to abstain from sex completely or they can only indulge in outercourse with their partner(s) or solo masturbation. More so, celibacy can last as long as you’d want, some start at two months and some have gone ten years. It doesn’t have to be a lifestyle that you live forever as falsely advertised in popular media. With intentional efforts, it is you who decides the rules, and creates the boundaries. It’s about what you want! 

Celibacy is also often misunderstood as asexuality. One is a choice and the other one is defined as a spectrum of sexual orientation with very little to no sexual interest, respectively. Celibate folks do have sexual urges but they opt to restrict acting on those desires. Remember that sexual wellness is not contingent on sexual engagement. If you believe abstaining from sex is healthy for you, you make that decision for your overall well-being. A 2006 study suggested that abstaining from sex was correlated with positive behavioral outcomes in adult women. So let’s dive into the world of celibacy to explore what it looks like, and how you can engage with it! 

Sex education, at its very core, is about promoting pleasure and safer sex practices for all. However, the existence and quality of comprehensive sex education are primarily dependent on the distinct cultural, religious, and social values around the world. In the U.S., after substantial research disproved the idea that abstinence-only sex education effectively prevents pre-marital sex, Obama’s administration budgeted more funds for comprehensive programs. This shift in the importance of comprehensive sex education–even though moving slowly–has opened doors for the school curricula to identify the crucial role of providing sexual and pleasure-based information to students. Nonetheless, as we glance at the world through the sex-ed lens, we come across a rather disappointing yet grave conclusion–Sexuality education still requires a lot of attention in terms of cultural-specific research, sex-positive parenting, and overall government support. Understanding the present state of sex education is an important element in considering appropriate interventions and forming sex-positive discourse. So let’s take a brief tour to see how sex education is explored in just some of the cultural hubs of our world.

Amsterdam is notorious for legalized sex work and, perhaps more specifically, its Red Light District but what you may not have known are the numerous other laws around and celebrations of sexuality in Amsterdam that are notable and unique. In many ways, Amsterdam is considered the birthplace of LGBTQ+ rights. For instance, homosexuality was decriminalized in 1811, the first gay bar was established in 1927, and the COC Nederland, one of the world’s first gay rights organizations was founded in Amsterdam in 1946. In comparison, the first US state decriminalized homosexuality in 1962, 151 years later than Amsterdam! By 2001, Amsterdam became the first country to legalize same-sex marriage; today there are only 29 countries where same-sex marriage is legal. 

Though the initial goosebumps and sprinting heartbeats are normal experiences of getting into bed with someone, it is vital to notice when the more typical anxiety turn to a not-so-typical and almost suffocating feeling. Sexual anxiety is one of the most common elements of sex that people complain about. There can be a plethora of reasons why you or your partner(s) feel anxious during sex including past trauma, body image dissatisfaction, and other life stressors. Another common and insidious reason for anxiety to be high during coitus? Worrying about your “performance.” Considering sex as a performance rather than an experience takes away its normality and adds the stress of performing well. Once we start to dismantle this view and identify sex for what it truly is– a pleasure-filled experience–it will be easier to overcome the pressure and anxiety. To help you deconstruct these societal stressors, defeat the overpowering anxiety, and experience the sex you deserve, we have come up with a few useful tips! 

This past weekend, the Sexual Health Alliance hosted yet another Sexceptional Weekend featuring experts in the field of sex and sexuality. For this weekend’s lectures, SHA brought back one of our favorite presenters, Jet-Setting Jasmine, along with her husband, King Noire, and other special guests to talk about race, pornography, and sex-positive parenting. Though SHA has featured Jet-Setting Jasmine and King Noire, along with their discussions on sex-positive parenting and the porn industry, this weekend’s talk brought new faces to the discussion. 

Sugar-dating–a type of dating where benefits are exchanged for some form of romantic or sexual companionship–has become a common approach to paying for a college education. An astounding number of sugar babies on famous websites like seeking arrangements are college students. With the tuition rates only increasing in recent years it won’t be surprising to see the sugar baby numbers rising. 

When I first heard about sugar-dating from a friend in my freshmen year, it took me only five seconds to find seeking arrangements and make my sugar baby profile. My pupils dilated as I noticed how in demand I was but soon enough I started panicking and almost ran a fever. Do I even know how to be a sugar baby in college? What do I even want out of this? These burning questions induced the end of my sugar-dating dreams. But that’s only my part of the story as many students do fully engage in it. The lack of resources for students to understand how to attract healthy sugar relationships and avoid toxic interactions is unfortunate and needs our attention. We know it’s happening on several college campuses, so it’s about time we find ways to support them. Thus, after talking to a bunch of students, most of whom want to remain anonymous, I’ve compiled a list of guidelines to follow before you unleash the sugar baby in you. 

The sex education I received in junior and high school was absolutely shocking. At the time it was a funny class where we could say “penis” or “vagina” without being told off, but on reflection, I don’t recall actually learning anything helpful to myself or others. This article will delve into my childhood memories of the sex ‘education’ I received, and take a look at the updated government curriculum to see if sex education in England has changed for the better. 

My first sex education lesson was at the end of my time in primary school (or as it’s considered in the States, junior high school) when I was 11 years old and knew absolutely nothing about my body or sexual health. Now, ten years later, I will admit that my memories of these classes are no longer crystal clear, but the parts I do remember were either scare tactics or non-informative. Being taught separately from the boys.

F1NN5TER is a 22-year-old cishet British Minecraft YouTuber with around 500,000 subscribers who’s been posting videos since 2015. He’s charming, funny, and, I have to say, pretty cute. But I don’t know F1nn from his Minecraft content and, if you’ve heard of him, I suspect you don’t either. For the last couple of years, F1nn’s taken on an additional gig that’s even more popular: being force feminized publicly for the internet’s enjoyment, and all while remaining almost entirely safe for work. He’s been so successful in this field, his face is literally on the definition of “submissive and breedable.” So, let me guide you down the squirmy pink path of F1NN5TER lore, address a few issues around his brand, and explain why I find F1nn not only enjoyable but, as silly as it feels to admit, a bit inspirational.

F1nn’s online crossdressing career started in February of 2019. As the story goes, F1nn lost a bet to a friend and as  “punishment,” she put makeup on him and insisted he looked “like an actual girl.” He wanted to prove her wrong, so he recorded himself going on Omegle dressed up to see people’s reactions. F1nn uploaded that video to a separate channel, at the time wishing for any crossdressing it to remain unconnected to his Minecraft content. Something interesting about this first example of F1nn crossdressing for the internet in hindsight is how dissonant its tone is from the streams of today. Sure, in the lore he was “made” to wear makeup, but the narrative of the video never mentions this and instead frames F1nn as a somewhat problematic crossdressing caricature who “fucks with” unsuspecting strangers by pretending to be a girl. Although this narrative device is still employed to some extent in the F1NN5TER content of today, there’s been a pretty noticeable shift when it comes to the framing of F1nn’s presentation. Now, instead of cheekily orchestrating crossdressing pranks, F1nn tends to be “forced” into dressing, behaving, and even sounding more typically feminine by his eager audience, and this, let’s say, transformation was foreshadowed by his second-ever bit of content while dressed as a girl.

From attending drag brunches, trans-rights protests, and gay coffee shops, Real Queer America by Samantha Allen, shines a light on the beauty and slices of heaven nestled within red states Allen and her best friend road-tripped across the country investigating how and where queer people find solace and community in anti-LGBTQIA+ rights states. “Queer safe havens” are places where LGBTQ+ people feel free to be themselves without the threat of homophobic violence and hate. To be clear, there are no real safe havens for queer people. The looming threat of hate is everywhere, no matter your city. However, there are places where queer people can gather where they feel protected and seen; these are called safe-havens.

It’s weird, isn't it, that grief is a universal emotion, yet so hard to talk about? One thing that is undeniable and inevitable in our lives is loss. We have all lost someone, will lose someone, and eventually, someone will lose us too. With loss comes the overbearing emotion and experience of grief – a feeling that has no explanation and no expiration date. We’re all aware of how emotions work, they affect how we interact with the world and people around us. Unlike other emotions, grief can keep a tight grip on our everyday life in both sensical and surprising ways. For instance, intimate and sexual acts and feelings may feel harder to come by naturally while you are grieving, whether you’re an extremely sexual person or not! Different bodies and brains will react in various ways to the stress chemicals we produce when grieving. Some may have an extreme loss of libido, while others may have an increase in desire for sex, to avoid or distract from intensely dark feelings, or to gain feelings of comfort and tenderness.

If you're a parent raising a child today, porn is even more accessible than when I was a kid. Pornography is so ubiquitous on the internet that even the best digital parental controls can’t always filter it. Your child may type in a website wrong on their browser, for example, and a pornography site may pop up. They may receive an unintended text message or video link and unknowingly find themselves on a porn site. For many of us, porn is our first exposure to real-world sex education and can be damaging. Having the “porn talk” with your child sooner rather than later is essential so they have the tools to understand what they are looking at and answer any questions about it. 

This week is Aromantic Spectrum Awareness Week, a time when we are invited to center our advocacy on the projects of raising awareness and fortifying allyship toward anyone who identifies anywhere along the broad aromantic spectrum. Each year, this time of awareness is observed during the first full week—starting on Sunday—following that infamously amatonormative holiday, Valentine’s Day.

“Amatonormativity” is a term coined by philosopher Elizabeth Brake to describe the persistent cultural messaging that tells us over and over from a very young age that anyone who isn’t in a committed, long term, monogamous and romantic relationship had better be seeking one—and if they’re not, they’re in some way deviant, deficient, defective, or delusional. (“Amato” is Italian for beloved, making amatonormativity the “standard of the beloved.”)

It is true that parenting is a never-ending job. In the US today, parents of LGBTQIA+ children, and the children themselves, continue to battle for basic human rights and better representation. To be a sex-positive parent is to be a sex-positive person, which is something many might struggle with due to their own upbringing and current societal standards. Being a sex-positive parent means you are a true ally to your child, their friends, and the world as a whole. Being a sex-positive parent means you are concerned with the backward trajectory of our country and are working toward a future where everyone is safe, regardless of their identity. Being a sex-positive parent means your child knows they can come to you with their problems without fear of shame, rejection, or violence. 

Nothing starts the new year better than a kinky conference, and that’s exactly what took place this weekend. Hosted by the wonderful Midori, the supernova of kink, we covered a wide range of topics—ranging from negotiation and kink, to kink and neurodiversity. The day started with Midori providing us with an excerpt from her presentation “Best Kinky Advice Nobody Told You,” in this, we went over common terms in the kink community such as sadist, bottom, fetishist, and dominant, questioning our own definitions and beliefs on them. Here we faced the nuance of kinky language and the importance of context and specific terminology. We were provided with a wealth of information through the useful analogies Midori gave to us, as well as learning the importance of speaking in verbs rather than nouns—instead of stating “I am a dominant” it should be “I want to dominate you tonight” which allows someone to separate their sexual appetite from their identity. 

Jealousy can be a common occurrence in any relationship, whether that be when the waiter only pays attention to your partner or someone seemingly paying them a bit too much attention at a party. Whilst having these fleeting feelings in the moment is normal, issues occur when these feelings of jealousy stem from insecurity about who your partner has been attracted to, or dated in the past. Retroactive jealousy refers to envy and resentment towards your partner's previous relationships. Conversations and interests about your partner's previous relationships are normal and common, but when interest becomes an obsession, it can turn into something unhealthy and destructive. Mental health counselor Monica Miner explains that retroactive jealousy often involves tactics to gain information about the partners’ pas

There’s a queer form of existence you’ve probably never heard of (especially if you’re cisgender) even though it’s estimated that at least 1% of the population experience it: Plurality. Plurality (also known as Multiplicity) refers to “all experiences of being or having, more than a single individual, within a single body.” In simplest terms, it’s a descriptive term and identity label for people who aren’t alone in their brain – for minds that contain multiple conscious individuals. You might feel confused: How could this be real? Isn’t that some kind of a disorder? If Plurals are so common, why don’t I know any? That’s perfectly alright. Learning about experiences outside of our own can be disconcerting when they’re incongruent with our assumptions, and Plurality is so overlooked and stigmatized culturally that most of us haven’t had a chance to educate ourselves on it yet. I wasn’t able to grasp Plurality until I took a breath, reminded myself of my goal to be ever empathetically curious, and took steps to educate myself on the Plural experience (well, experiences). So, I encourage you to stick with me while I explain Multiplicity more deeply, address some common misconceptions, and help you begin your journey towards being the best ally you can to your Plural peers and loved ones. 

Unfortunately, the marginalization of Plurality has resulted in a lack of shared vocabulary amongst Plurals and those who live in bodies alone. Because of this, we’ll need to cover some terminology before we jump in. As with just about any marginalized community, Plurals don’t all prefer the same words for themselves. Some terms can be accurate for some while being unhelpful or offensive to others. So, I’ll share with you the most generally accepted terminology I’ve found in my research and my personal experience with Plurals, but it’s always a good idea to ask people what words fit for them and those they share a body with. Often, groups that share a body are called “systems.” Many have a system name (also called a collective name) that refers to the whole group, sort of like a family name. Some examples might be “The Willows,” “The Solidarity System,” or “The Loving Collective.”

Pornography is something that most of us engage with from a relatively young age. As we grow up, it seems that people develop a clear anti-porn or pro-porn stance regardless of whether or not they viewed pornography behind closed doors. The reality of the situation is less opinionated. Pornography is beautiful, but it is only truly good when its creation and distribution are entirely ethical. To put it bluntly, porn is either morally and ethically sound, or it’s not. Unfortunately, most mainstream pornography is not produced with ethical standards in mind. As a result, the scenes you watch on popular tube sites like Pornhub could, at best, not fairly compensate the performers (especially female performers) or, at worst, include traumatic events like sexual assault or rape. The majority of mainstream porn relies on problematic gender stereotypes for their storylines, often depicting women as submissive vehicles for male penetration and subsequent domination. Dom and sub-dynamics do healthily exist in BDSM but follow a strict code of consent and respect that most tube sites fail to depict these essential boundaries. This can create an in-authentic depiction of sex. In my opinion, there is only one way to help move the industry toward safe, authentic porn creation: for us consumers to engage solely with ethical porn sites and creators. 

Picture this: it’s getting steamy back at your place after a first date with that woman you haven't been able to stop thinking about from Hinge. Your sexual chemistry is fiery and things begin to escalate quickly. You get anxious because you want to go down on her but have not had the STI talk yet. As if she read your mind, she says, “Hey before anything else happens, I wanted to let you know that I’m wearing this latex underwear that has similar properties to a dental dam for STI protection. I want to keep going, but you can leave my underwear on as you go down there.” As you make your way down, you wonder why you’ve never heard of these underwear before…sexy, safe, and soft…that’s a triple threat!

Many people have probably not heard of latex underwear, but I suspect it’s on its way to being the talk of the town. On April 22, 2022, the FDA cleared Lorals, the thin, stretchy, flavored, disposable underwear, as a barrier when engaging in oral vaginal or oral anal sex. According to Brueck at Insider, “The underwear are only the second form of protection the FDA has OK'd to protect against orally-acquired STIs. (The much older oral sex protection option, dental dams, are pretty unpopular.)” For instance, Carol Queen, a sexologist for the sex shop chain Good Vibrations says “the company sells less than 600 dams per month in the United States, across 13 stores and its website.” Let’s face it, dental dams were not first invented as an STI barrier, they were invented in 1864 for dental surgery. ThankfullyHowever, Melanie Cristol, the creator of Lorals, had a new, less archaic idea.; Melanie Cristol says that she Cristol wanted to make a product that “was made with my body and actual sex in mind.” So, in 2018, Lorals was born. A company that sells single-use underwear for people with vulvas. 

Confession: I only became interested in Patti Smith because I thought she was a lesbian. While I was standing in a gallery exhibition on the history of punk music, a photo caught my eye. The cover art for Horses (1975) is nothing if not captivating. Smith makes direct eye contact with the camera, displaying a confident yet slightly dreamy expression in a white button-up and a black jacket tossed casually over one shoulder. The picture has a sapphic magnetism that led me quickly to the artist’s music library. And – wouldn’t you know it? – her most popular song is about having sex with a woman. Once I learned she was lifelong best friends with my favorite photographer, Robbert Mapplethorpe, I couldn’t help but follow my mother’s advice and read her biography Just Kids (2010). You can only imagine my dismay when, hours into the audiobook, my mother broke the news to me that Patti Smith is, in fact, heterosexual. “Gloria” (1975) may well be about sex with women, but Patti Smith was only covering an old favorite not pronouncing her sapphism. The thing is, even after I received this news I didn’t feel quite convinced. Sure, part of this was just denial. What do you mean she’s straight? – she’s so cool! Beyond this, though, was something else. Despite centering a heterosexual cisgender woman’s relationship with a man, the life story outlined in Just Kids is anything but heteronormative. Smith’s presentation is androgynous, her art breaks gender expectations, and the connections she forms disrupt cultural expectations. Patti Smith may not be queer in the LGBTQIA+ sense, but her life certainly has queered norms around gender and relationships.