sexuality

Growing up in the United States is like playing a foucauldian game of discipline and punish. Disciplined by a morally bankrupt narrative about sex and sexuality and then punished for daring to question it.

For someone choosing to hold off on sex until marriage, what to do about the fact that most other people, including potential partners, will not have made the same choice? How much should your own sexual ethics and values hinge on those of others?

Do "all guys" really always want more sexually than you really want or feel ready to do yourself?  No. But even if they did, that doesn't mean it'll always be right for you -- or them! -- to engage in sex you don't feel ready for yet or don't really want yourself.

Navigating sex and sexual relationships after assault can be challenging: how do you deal with a relationship that seemed to facilitate healing at first, but now seems to be standing in the way, especially when the roof over your head seems to require it?

Knowing the issues with clitoral versus vaginal orgasms in terms of history and the politics around women and sexuality, how do you rectify when orgasm feels different based on those different kinds of stimulation?

How do you tell a partner that you're not comfortable with something they want to do, whether you have sexual abuse in your history or not?  You tell them you're not comfortable with something they want to do.

Is it better to be a man or a woman when it comes to sexual pleasure?

How can you tell Mom you've become a sexual adult without disappointing her?  How can you ask her for birth control? How can you disclose being sexually active?  And is it okay to use her sex toy eithout asking?

Even more than that, the women in these stories have transcended being "good female characters" who subvert stereotyps into just being good characters, period; real ones, ones whose journeys we are, sometimes to a desperate extent, obsessed with.

Do you have to worry that simply by virtue of being a male person with a sexuality, you'll abuse someone?  No. Being a certain sex, having a certain gender or having a sexuality does not mean a person has any kind of innate predilection to abuse.