sex

Watching porn in an auditorium filled with people helped me take a critical look at my sexuality.

Here's the latest installment of my sex toy review comic series: Pink lube!

Over the past several months, I have found myself increasingly depressed and enraged by what seems to be endless stories about sexual and physical violence directed toward girls. There is something that tends to haunt our culture’s thinking about girls: suspicion.

For the second installment of my comic series on sex, I attended a Disney-themed pole dancing event. Yep. You read that right. 

My passion for everything relating to the world of sex is rivaled only by my love of comics.

Really, it was only a matter of time before I'd combine these two topics to bring you, dear perverts, a weekly comic sharing my experiences with everything the sex industry has to offer. Toys, workshops, birth control, I wanna talk about it all. With the aid of guest reviewers, this comic will cover products for ALL the different anatomies people posses, from vulvas to penises and beyond. 

Check out my first comic below. 

Knights and queens, high-walled castles, brothels full of exquisite lady companions, more wine than anyone can drink—this is the world of HBO’s Game of Thrones. Though the show is set in a medieval land of chivalry where men hold most of the legal power, women find ways to pull the strings in Game of Thrones’ tales of conquest and copulation.

As Queen Cersei Lanister advises one young lady, “Tears aren’t the only woman’s weapon. The best one’s between your legs.”

This idea of cleansing oneself has permeated this season—and the theme continues in this episode. Our characters here aren’t particularly good at cleaning up and starting afresh, but what they are good at is self-sabotage. In this episode, "On All Four," several characters successfully take themselves out at the knees. 

Last week, a woman at Adam's Alcohollics Anonymous crowd set him up with her daughter, Natalia. Surprise, surprise, the two actually hit it off. Suddenly, they're going to see romantic comedies starring Sandra Bullock, taking lunch breaks together and even attending friend’s engagement parties. Natalia seems good for Adam, mostly because she’s completely up-front about what she wants. When the two first have sex, it at first seems awkwardly negotiated. But Natalia tells Adam what she won’t do, what doesn’t work for her, and is clear about her boundaries. Adam isn’t really used to. He says, “I like how clear you are with me.” To which Natalia responds, “What other way is there?” 

Welcome to the latest installment of Ms. Opinionated, in which readers have questions about the pesky day-to-day choices we all face, and I give advice about how to make ones that (hopefully) best reflect our shared commitment to feminist values—as well as advice on what to do when they don't.

Dear Ms. Opinionated, I'm a college student of 21, and engaged to a 30 year old man with whom I've been for two years. He's very respectful and loving and I plan to marry him after I graduate (in a little more than an year), but chances are we might move in together before that. Right now, he lives in another city almost two hours away, so seeing each other ends up tiring and consuming—time and money-wise. The thing is, our parents will probably oppose. My mother has had terrible experiences with being a single mother, and then moving to an unknown country to end up in a psychologically abusive relationship, plus has very traditional views (i.e. sex after marriage). His parents are traditional Christians. None of them know my fiancé and I have already had sex. How can I bring up the possibility of moving in together without gaining opposition from the people we expect the most support?

To celebrate the release of our new Pulp issue, I dredged up a handful of pulpy 1960s bottom-of-the-barrel paperbacks from a Portland vintage store. I’ll be bringing three of these long-forgotten titles back to light this week. 

Today’s title:

The Promiscuous Breed

I love old books.

It’s not about a smell, or a particular shade of yellow the pages become. I like a musty paperback as much as the next girl, but I will read Persuasion on a tablet or Jane Eyre in a spare browser tab. The dirty secret of old books—the ones you’ve heard of, the one’s you may cringe at the thought of reading—is that they are often dirty too.  And if they are skimpy on sex, they are brim-full with melodrama. This is what I can’t get enough of: a crazy-ass plot buried beneath the prim patina of age. Madame Bovary: lots of carriage sex. Ulysses: actually mostly farts. Moby-Dick: a “sperm squeezing” scene that is even more masturbatory than you can imagine. Obviously these works are also rich and complicated and subtle, too, but that’s no reason not to enjoy their crassness, their buffoonery, their animal charm. (And why deny yourself the bragging rights?)

I recently read a book I've been meaning to devour forever: Dracula.

What all vampire stories are about, ultimately, is sex. Full of nighttime assignations, penetration, the exchange of fluids, visceral desire and latent shame, and the fear of contagion, of contamination, of death—Dracula is no different.