This is where we share stuff we can’t share on Facebook page for fear of being kicked out! Read why here. Usually the posts are about body image, sometimes there’s nudity but we’re all adults here. Right?
Sex-Positivity Means Unlearning Shame
Much of my sex education came from social myths. It seemed widely understood that for people assigned male at birth, pursuing sex was totally normal and natural, but for people assigned female at birth (AFAB), it was devious and shameful. Adolescent me looked on in horror as the girls who wore low-cut shirts or miniskirts were admonished for having no self-respect, and the ones who made out in the back rows of movie theatres were villainized and shamed for being “sluts. l I learned, through years of observing the social stigma attached to sexual girls, that sex was something to do quietly and privately — that if I was going to do it, no one should know.
For years, I believed that something was wrong with me for being curious about sex for pleasure and for fantasizing about being intimate with another body like mine. I saw sex as something strange and dangerous, not just for the physical risks it posed to the body, but for how quickly it could lower one’s social worth. So I suppressed my sexual desires. I learned to be ashamed of them.
The Rise Of ‘Sex Menus’: Cataloguing Your Kinks
It was my very wise friend Toni who introduced me to the sex menu. She created hers to avoid the tricky, mood-killer conversation about what she didn’t enjoy in bed. The menu, she reasoned, could be a way of sidestepping the underwhelming sex we too-often have to endure with new partners.
Her menu is broken down into three categories: “Things I Love”, “Things I Don’t” and “Things I’m Curious About”. There’s stars next to the things that make her orgasm, and she also has a little introduction characterising her general sexual outlook, because, well, she’s just that much of a badass. As a lover of both thoroughly well organised Google Docs and doing freaky sex things, I decided to write my own.
It’s a simple idea, but the sex menu is pretty revolutionary. When was the last time you did a thorough inventory of all your kinks and desires, all really focused on the kind of sex you’d like to be having? We routinely evaluate our feelings and goals relating to say, work or physical fitness, but rarely afford the same level of analysis to our sex lives. Writing a sex menu gives your desires the headspace they deserve, and puts the emphasis firmly on what actually works for you.
The Sex Educator Teaching BDSM to People With Disabilities
It’s impossible to miss Robin Wilson-Beattie when she walks into a room. With chin-length purple hair, perfectly drawn red lips, and cat-eye glasses, she looks like she walked off the pages of a punk rock Sears catalog from 1960. Then there’s her walker, which is covered in flower stickers.
Wilson-Beattie is a disability and sexual health educator spreading the message that people with disabilities want to have sex—and that they’re into the same things as anyone else, from missionary to full-on BDSM.
“People just assume that people with disabilities aren’t interested in having sex,” Wilson-Beattie told Broadly. “I don’t understand that thinking at all. It’s part of human instinct. Having a disability doesn’t mean you don’t want to eat. Or you don’t breathe. Or you don’t want to sleep.”
Why This Mom Won’t Teach Her Daughter to Dress Modestly
Jessica and Jeremy Martin-Weber have six daughters, ranging in age from 5 to 18, and a baby on the way in the fall. With all that experience, they’ve learned a few things about parenting, which they share on their family blog and Facebook page, Beyond Moi.
Among lighter parenting fare, the Martin-Webers frequently discuss topics such as sex positivity, body autonomy and consent, and the toxicity of gender roles for boys and girls. All these play into their recent Facebook post on why they don’t enforce a modest standard of dress for their six daughters.
“We were asked yesterday and have been asked before what are our standards of modesty in how our children dress and how do we enforce that,” Jessica began the post, which included a photo of herself and two of her daughters in summer clothing.
“Here’s the short version: we don’t teach or enforce any standards of modest dress for our children,” she wrote.
