Consent
Confessions
How to Give a Sex Ed Lesson at a Slumber Party

A dad friend of mine, who’d read my recent piece on making sexual assault in the news a teachable moment for kids, forwarded me the following tweet from Andi Zeisler while I was in the middle of my 11-year-old’s birthday slumber party: The 4th-grade boys coming to my kid’s slumber party tonight are really in […]

News
The Harsh Reality of Religion-Driven Sex Ed in America

Pantsuit Nation, the private Facebook group of around 4 million members, was originally created as online camaraderie for Hillary Clinton supporters in the 2016 election but has since morphed into a sort of support group for progressives facing trying times under the Trump administration. The following is a recent post to the group from a midwestern parent who gave us […]

News
Teaching Kids They Can’t Say “No”?

Utah excels at socializing male supremacy and female acquiescence. While students at Kanesville Elementary in West Haven, UT, were not required to take part in the Valentine’s Day sixth-grade dance, those participating would be asked to fill out a dance card with the names of students with whom they wanted to dance — anyone whose […]

Confessions
Talking to Your Daughters About Comfort and Consent

A friend recently wrote us about her real world application of some of the advice Lo recently gave in “How to Prevent a Brock: 10 Practical Ways Parents Can Fight Rape Culture.” We couldn’t be more delighted! Raising conscientious kids with agency — especially girls — is possible in small, everyday ways like this: I wanted to […]

Personal Essays
Confession: Saying “Yes”and Finally Meaning It

KERRY NEVILLE — author of the award-winning short story collection, Necessary Lies, and the forthcoming collection, Remember To Forget Me — writes of the long road toward true consent.   Natalie and I played boyfriend and girlfriend: She was “Michael” and I was “Rebecca.”  We would walk around the block holding hands and when we reached […]

News
The Difference Between Kink and Abuse

Are there no decent men in the world? NY Attorney General Eric Schneiderman was supposed to be one of the good ones, a champion of the #MeToo Movement who was going after alleged serial sexual assaulter and rapist, Harvey Weinstein. But then The New Yorker (which might seriously need to consider changing its name to “To […]

Confessions
What Pickup Artistry Can Teach Us About Consent and Better Sex

I studied and practiced “The Game”-style pickup artistry back in the day. This may sound far-fetched, but it’s actually shaped my attitude on the subject of sexual communication and consent for the better. One of the biggest teaching points of many PUAs (pick-up artists) relates directly to the topic in the news of late: sensitivity […]

Celebrities
A Tale of Two Dates: 15 Lessons from the Aziz Ansari Case

To read the Tweets and comments on the Babe.net story about one woman’s horrible night with actor & comedian Aziz Ansari (read it here if you haven’t already), you’d assume there were only two possible, mutually exclusive conclusions to draw: either you believe that Ansari is a sexual assaulter who’s career should be over OR […]

News
The Power and Pitfalls of Consent

A lot of strides have been made in educating people, especially college students, about consent. Many now understand you have to ask for it throughout a hookup, it must be given enthusiastically and verbally as you go, it can’t be given by people impaired by drugs or alcohol, and it can’t be given by minors. […]

News
Did Milo Yiannopoulos REALLY Defend Pedophilia?

Conservative provocateur and all-around asshat Milo Yiannopoulos got disinvited to 2017’s Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), had his lucrative book deal with Simon & Schuster cancelled, and resigned from Breitbart as an editor — all within 48 hours — over comments about child sexual abuse he made on two podcasts (one in 2015, the other in early 2016) that […]

Personal Essays
Why You Can Be a Feminist and Still Like It Rough

Miranda Levy is a major in Women, Gender & Sexuality Studies at Elon University where she pens a sex column for its student-run lifestyle magazine, The Edge.  “Just because you like to be tied up, spanked, and called ‘bitch,’ doesn’t mean you’re a bad feminist.” — Em & Lo, “The Big Bang” The first time […]

How To
10 Super Easy Ways NOT to Be a Misogynist Pig Like Trump*

*Or Billy Bush Can’t seem to view women as human beings? Is that psychic club from Cro-magnon Man days weighing you down and holding you back? Well we’ve got 10 easy ways to help you conquer your ass-backward ways. Follow these simple steps, and soon you’ll be striding upright with confidence into the 21st century! 1. First […]