Gender Issues
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 […]

Pop Culture
If You Challenge Gender Stereotyping, Prepare to Be Vilified

Our journalist friend Diane Stopyra recently penned an excellent piece for MarieClaire.com entitled “Dear Parents-to-Be: Stop Celebrating Your Baby’s Gender,” which argued that gender-reveal parties are misguided attempts at fun which reinforce harmful gender stereotypes (and, let’s face it, are just a tad narcissistic). Why pigeon-hole you’re kid before they’re even out of the womb? […]

How To
In Honor of International Women’s Day: 7 Ways to Achieve Sexual Equality

Every year, March 8th is International Women’s Day, a political holiday that honors the struggles, achievements and hopes for women worldwide. Since its first observance in 1908, we’ve come along way, baby — but not nearly as far as you might think: The World Economic Forum predicted in 2014 that it would take until 2095 […]

Pop Culture
Best Actor, Best Actress — Why Differentiate?

A 1995 study called “The Role of Classification Skill in Moderating Environmental Influences on Children’s Gender Stereotyping” showed that the simple organizational technique of separating kids by gender in elementary school classrooms has a profound effect on the way those kids think about gender. In her excellent book, Parenting Beyond Pink and Blue: How to Raise Your Kids […]

Pop Culture
When Your Son Wants to Wear Nail Polish…

Show him this! Em’s six year old is a cool, creative kid who occasionally likes to wear nail polish and hair dye. He also happens to be a boy. This — surprise, surprise! — means he’s been teased multiple times at school for it with the refrain “Only girls do that!” It’s a narrow world-view […]

Wise Guys
Wise Guys: Why Do Men Get in Touch with Past Flames?

Advice from three of our guy friends. This week a straight woman asks, “Why do guys get back in touch with old flames? Booty call? Rekindle the romance? To prove they’re over the woman? Just to say hi? Just got dumped and need an ego boost?” Straight Married Guy (James Glazebrook): At the risk of […]

Confessions
Can You Guess Which of These Cats Is Female?

A choose your own gender-venture! Our family recently adopted two kittens. We had our pick of the litter, so we figured we’d get a girl and a boy, just like our two kids. They decided to name the girl Rey and the boy Po. (Star Wars fans relax: for whatever reason — let’s call it […]

Personal Essays
Confession: How My Asexuality Affects Love and, Yes, Sex

by Erika Price   It’s SO different when you don’t feel any sexual desire. In high school, I openly identified as asexual, and I don’t think it ever stopped being true really. My friend Erik introduced me to the term. We were in tenth grade and his friend Jared was driving us both home from […]

Personal Essays
My Top 5 Romantic Goals for the New Year

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. As someone who is recently single, I’ve decided this new year is going to be full of love-life firsts. What better time to assess past relationship mistakes, question […]

News
What Do You Call a Trans Man Who Gives Birth and Nurses?

Lucky! Time Magazine recently ran an article entitled “My Brother’s Pregnancy and the Making of a New American Family” by Jessi Hempel about a transgender man getting pregnant, having a baby and nursing his child (which introduced us to our new favorite term, “chest-feeding”): Pregnancies like Evan’s—and the many that are likely to follow—will stretch our cultural perceptions […]

Confessions
The Great Strap-On Debate: Can a Woman Pressure Her Boyfriend to Get Pegged?

Every few months, a new debate pops up in the comments section of one of our most popular, evergreen posts — “Confession: I Want to Do My Boyfriend with a Strap-On” — written by an anonymous female contributor a few years ago. The standard fare is usually something tired about how “it’s gay and feminizing […]

Pop Culture
Goodnight Sweet Prince: Remembering The Legend’s Sexiest Songs

I guess you could say he was a sex fiend. Prince — who died on April 21st, 2016 at the young age of 57 — dedicated a lot of musical acreage on most of his albums to unabashed sexual expression. There was plenty of macho posturing, for instance, boasting in the 1980 song “Head” about […]

Dream Interpretation
I Dream of Masturbating As a Guy, But I’m a Woman

Other people’s dreams are never interesting…except when they’re about sex. If you’ve got a good one, our dream analyst Lauri Loewenberg just might tell you what it means! Click here to submit yours (18 and older only for dream interpretations, please). This week, a reader asks Lauri: I’m a cis female and have been having sexual dreams. In my dream I am […]

Dream Interpretation
Dream Interpretation: I Was a Playa Man

Other people’s dreams are never interesting…except when they’re about sex. If you’ve got a good one, our dream analyst Lauri Loewenberg just might tell you what it means! Click here to submit yours (18 and older only for dream interpretations, please). This week, a reader asks Lauri: I had a dream that I was a man and I had sex with like […]

Sex Poetry
Adrienne Rich’s Poetic Underwater Exploration of Androgynous Bisexuality

Adrienne Rich (1929-2012) was one of the best known, most beloved American poets of the second half of the 20th century. And “Diving into the Wreck” is one of her best known, most beloved poems. In 1973, Erica “Zipless Fuck” Jong analyzed it beautifully for Ms. Magazine: In “Diving into the Wreck,” the title poem, it is the […]

Pop Culture
A Line-by-Line Take Down of “Baby, It’s Cold Outside”

The song performed in the 1949 musical “Neptune’s Daughter” ’Tis the season to be sexist, with the “traditional” Xmas pop played on an eternal loop, reinforcing old gender stereotypes about boys only wanting cowboy boots and guns while girls insist on walking, talking dollies. There’s the infernal Love, Actually movie which, despite its charming British […]