Sex & Sexuality

What’s sex? What’s sexuality? How do people experience and actively express their sexualities, by themselves, with partners or both? How can we take part in sex in ways that are wanted and consensual, physically and emotionally safe and enjoyable for everyone? How do you figure out what you like? How can you communicate about sex? How do you deal with feelings like fear, shame, anxiety, dysphoria and other body image issues? How do you create the kind of sexual life you want? You’ll find the answers to all these and more here.

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Articles and Advice in this area:

Article
  • Heather Corinna

The term “sexuality” can be used a lot like the word “sex.” They’re both terms we say and hear a lot, but which often aren’t clearly defined. We take for granted everyone knows what sexuality means, a heck of an assumption to make with something that covers so many important things and can feel as murky as Lake Erie. So: what’s it all about?

Advice
  • Heather Corinna

We’ve been receiving and answering a lot of questions like yours lately, but I think it’s really important to keep talking about if people keep asking. Because we keep hearing girls asking questions like this about guys, it seems clear there are a lot of people who aren’t getting some things we…

Advice
  • Heather Corinna

My best advice is to just try and let yourself go there. I think the safest way to do that, emotionally, would be to first try that in whichever sexual situation you tend to feel safest in, whether that’s alone, in your masturbation, or during sexual activities with a partner. More people than not…

Advice
  • Heather Corinna

You know, our gut feelings are usually very trustworthy. When we find we feel very scared and nervous, it’s usually because we have good reason to be. Those kinds of feelings are usually excellent cues for making our best choices. I’m not 15. I’m in my 40s. I’ve been engaging in sex for a very long…

Advice
  • Heather Corinna

Assuming that you’re engaging in manual sex – hands or fingers engaged with your genitals, fingering being one term for that – to express or explore your sexual feelings or desires, fingering IS sex. Just like intercourse can be sex, just like oral sex can be sex, just like full-body massage can…

Advice
  • Heather Corinna

I thought your question would be a great one to pose to Jaclyn Friedman, a Scarleteen colleague and supporter who is making the internet rounds with a blog book tour right now. I think you’ll find what she had to say and share around this very helpful, and I also think her book is one that would…

Advice
  • Heather Corinna

I’m not concerned about you looking desperate by doing anything to try and convince your partner to have sex it seems he’s made clear he’s not comfortable having. What I am concerned about with any situation like this is, instead, your partner possibly not having his limits and boundaries respected…

Advice
  • Heather Corinna

Feeling like you didn’t “get anything in return” sounds very troubling to me. That strikes me as a huge deal, and like something that’s probably bigger and about more than sex being a first-time for you and not for him. Someone with partners before you isn’t limited in their ability to do their part…

Advice
  • Heather Corinna

Intimacy is often awkward. And that isn’t a bad thing. In some ways, I’d even say it’s always awkward, in the sense that it’s never really something that’s exactly easy, especially when we’re just starting to get intimate with someone, rather than when we have been for a long time. Getting and being…

Advice
  • Heather Corinna

Just because someone might want something from someone else doesn’t mean it’s right for that other person, either person, or that the time when they want it is the right time for it to happen. Few people in their early teens have a lot of what is needed in order to have healthy and satisfying sexual…