by Veronica Monet

Womb isn't a particularly sexy word. A term for the uterus, womb also refers to a place where something is generated or an encompassing, protective space. Womb is where things originate and for the purposes of this column, womb is where orgasm and love can find their deepest expression.

By John Lennon
 

I'm sick and tired of hearing things
From uptight, short-sighted, narrow-minded hypocrites
All I want is the truth
Just gimme some truth

by Rachel Kramer Bussel

“Dating” sounds like a dirty word to me, and not in a good way. I love traditionally dirty words in the right context, but dating? Not so much.

by Em & Lo

Readers are always asking us this question, and the masturbator in question is pretty much always a man. Sometimes his female partner writes to us, asking if she's right to feel cheated on. Other times the man himself writes to us, asking why his partner can't understand how benign his porn masturbation habit really is.

by Barak & Sheba

From an innocent tickle and slap on the ass to whips and chains or masters and slaves, the world of kink and BDSM is hardly the same for everybody involved. But what all kinky folk do have in common is the desire for what's at the heart of all kinky activity: creative sexual expression.

by Tinamarie Bernard

This author thought she had the street smarts to avoid sexual scam artists. The only problem was, this one came wearing a faux halo and rugged six-pack.

by Liz Langley

So you’re not one of the world’s six (of six billion) beautiful people. Think about the gulf between Steve Buscemi and Madea: unless you’re a whole new life form, you’re in that mix and somebody digs it.

by Midori

Small acts of kindness toward a stranger can lead to an heroic effect in that person's life.

Why I Don’t Want to Know How Many Stars Your Ex Gave You

by Rachel Kramer Bussel

These days, you don't really have to go on a first date with a total stranger. You can Google, you can hunt them down on dating review sites, you can get a glimpse into who they are before you ever get a glimpse of them at all. But is this really the best way to get to know someone, or the most accurate for that matter?

How Unrealistic Expectations Hurt Men and Women

Like women, men are pushed to obsess over unrealistic ways of looking and acting. And that hurts everyone.

By Cristen Conger and Hugo Schwyzer, Bitch Magazine

In the following interview, history and gender studies professor and writer Hugo Schwyzer talks about the increasing pressure on men to fit unrealistic body ideals.

How We Self-Medicate With - And Get Addicted To - Love

Examining how and why love cycles affect the brain (and our loves).

By Liz Langley

by Rachel Kramer Bussel

Rachel White's Kinseyesque scale for measuring the degree of your submissiveness offers insights into more than just how submissive you might be in the bedroom.

I rarely take Internet quizzes to tell me what kind of personality I am, whether it’s which Sex and the City character or which dessert I most resemble, but I recently found one extremely intriguing: the submissive scale that my fellow SexIs writer Rachel Rabbit White posted on her website, which I highly recommend checking out whether you’re into kink or not (or aren’t sure).

Many Russians may remember a black and white documentary of the years of perestroika in which a woman moved small objects sitting before her on a table and rotated direction of the magnetic devices. Ninel Kulagina is still considered one of the most mysterious phenomena in the field of ESP.

by Tinamarie Bernard

"And is there anything you would withhold? Some day, all that you have shall be given. The trees give that they may live, for to withhold is to perish."

— Khalil Gibran

THE STRATEGY OF CREATIVITY

By Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr.

In any competent attempt to deal with the actual principles of modern warfare, it is essential that the measure associated with a mistaken, sense-certainty-based notion of a proper standard of measure, must be discarded. That must be done in favor of what I shall restate here, as a truly Riemannian notion of the transcendental, as this is to be reconsidered from the vantage-point of V.I. Vernadsky's presentation of the universal physical principle of the Noosphere.

by Liz Langley

Because love and sex don’t come from a bartender, dealer or pharmacy (unless you’re banging the bartender, dealer or pharmacist) we often don’t give their chemical powers the fearsome credit we give to drugs we can see. But they do trigger chemicals and those chemicals wield a crazy amount of power.

Neuro-sexual-science and the Really Big Bang

by Modern Love Muse

To fully appreciate a woman’s body, consider the following vulva et al fun facts: only female mammals have a clitoris, an organ with one singular purpose. That would be pleasure, aided and abetted by 8000 nerve endings (twice that of the average penis) that call the Female Fun Button home.

by Modern Love Muse

Sexual freedom is at the core of sacred sexuality. From the outside looking in, it might be confused with promiscuity, so understanding the difference is essential to our journey.

“It is no coincidence that the word sacrum is also the anatomical term for the triangular bone at the base of the spine. Our language suggests that once upon a time, Western Civilization understood the sacred nature of sex. This wisdom was lost during the Inquisition, in fact, one might say that this was the purpose of the Inquisition: To create a cultural shift from sex as sacred to sex as sinful.” Deborah Anapol

by Kal Cobalt

What they don't tell you when you sign up to join a poly household...

You can only prepare so much for your first polygamous relationship. You might have thought about potential jealousy issues, income stream issues, and sexual situations — but what’s it really like to live in a polyamorous household? What do those rare how-to guides forget to tell you about the long haul?

By: Sorcha Faal

A secret report prepared by the Russian Federal Space Agency (FKA/RKA) circulating in the Kremlin today states that the new inter-dimensional “Star Gate” opened on 22 June off the Hawaiian Islands in the Central Pacific was “triggered” by signals emanating from the mysterious ancient satellite orbiting our Earth known as “The Black Knight.”

by Barak & Sheba

You meet someone new and you wonder...is he kinky? Will he run screaming into the night when I let slip my taste for being tied up? Now is not the time to panic, now is the time to sit back and carefully consider how to introduce your kink to someone you think is vanilla.

by Modern Love Muse

We explore modern and ancient views on virginity and ask: when did a flap of skin come to mean so much about a woman’s worth?

“I want my daughter to have sex before she gets married, and NOT with the man who will be her husband,” he said to me.

by Alton C. Thompson

The late (1937-2002) Viola F. Cordova—a Jicarilla Apache/Hispanic philosopher—asserted that humans are born “’humanoid,’ that is with the capacity to become ‘fully human’ through the exercise of all of their faculties.” “Intelligence” is one of those faculties, but so are the emotions, “for example, guilt, which calls us to rectify what is wrong, and sympathy and empathy, which call us to be aware of the other as someone like one’s self. Humans have many qualities that must be fostered for one to become fully human.”

What is really important for women in bed? Not only men but also scientists have been looking for an answer to this question. There is a multitude of different opinions from both sexes. The authors of a new book, famous American neuroscientists, argue that the mechanism of the sexual desire in women and men differs greatly.

The place of anger in sex has been widely debated. Is it a great release of tension, or just a way to avoid actual resolution?

By Anna Pulley

Veronica Monet briefly surveys the instruments on the floor nearby before choosing a two-sided paddle, soft fur on one side, hard, black leather on the other. In front of her stands a middle-aged man in nothing but a leather thong, wide-stanced and back to the audience, ready to receive his punishment in front of a group of total strangers.

Passing Judgment is Connected to Immature Emotional Nature: Changes in Brain Circuitry Play Role in Moral Sensitivity as People Grow Up

People's moral responses to similar situations change as they age, according to a new study at the University of Chicago that combined brain scanning, eye-tracking and behavioral measures to understand how the brain responds to morally laden scenarios.

(He who is without sin, cast the first stone?)
(Walk a mile in his shoes?)

by Modern Love Muse

Can we resurrect Goddess authority without stripping her bare of her hallowed curves, or finding ourselves fixated on her hollowed spaces?

by Midori

Burlesque has been making a comeback in recent years, not only as an art form, but as a new source of body confidence for women and men alike. Midori sits down with two performers to talk about burlesque body confidence and the evolution of burlesque culture.

Why we shouldn’t knock the quickie

by Cherry Trifle

I’ll say it right up front: I love quickies.

Getting In Touch With Your Inner Slut

by Rydell Johnson

Getting in touch with one’s inner slut offers a new world of empowerment, liberation, and … fun.

A new study shows that religious people have as much sex as atheists, but with less sexual satisfaction and more guilt.

By Greta Christina

Do atheists have better sex? Yes. According to science, that is -- and more specifically, according to the recently released "Sex and Secularism" study.

Even the couples who have lived together for many years have their own "forbidden areas". There is much less in common between sex and talks about it than it seems. Interestingly enough, the Old Testament contains 200 references to sex. What is it about sex that makes it so difficult to sit down and discuss it with your partner?

Many ballsy women are afraid to say 'Please do this' or 'Don’t do that' in bed. Here’s what some women are really thinking.

By Amanda Marcotte

Our sexist culture unleashes many forms of toxic socialization on its inhabitants, but few lessons seem to take as well as teaching girls from the cradle to coddle the male ego, not just with flattery but with a deep unwillingness to speak truths that could cause men to feel uncomfortable or imperfect.

By Al Smith

Do you wonder why life is a chaotic roller coaster of both positive and negative events? Have you, like most, earnestly tried positive thinking, meditation or prayer without any tangible beneficial results? Do you stress over your quietly desperate realization that you have little control over your own life? Do you fear that most of us are floating helplessly like plankton on the waves? Don’t you wish you had a magical power to change your life and the lives around you for the better? Well, the good news is that you do have enormous magical powers!

by Midori

Aftercare is a much debated topic among those who are into the rough and tumble play of BDSM. Whose responsible, what is needed and how long it should last are often discussed, but with the submissive in mind. Dominant aftercare is a phrase you almost never hear.

Why "Non-Religious" Is the Fastest-Growing Preference in America

Authors Phil Goldberg and Greg Epstein share their provocative views on why a quarter of Americans now call themselves agnostic, atheist or nonreligious.

By Terrence McNally

by Em & Lo

We constantly hear how we should avoid getting into a sexual rut and keep trying new things. But just as important is to develop some good sexual habits — things that you should be engaging in on a regular basis with your partner (whatever regular means to you) — now and always.

Women feel greater guilt about looking at porn than do men. Why are they primed to feel bad about pleasure?

By Liz Langley

The first time I rented porn alone I wasn’t really alone. There were other customers in the store, a small chain, popular in the days before Blockbuster had swallowed and sanitized most neighborhood VHS rental outlets. Back then most video stores had a back room where you could find adult films, typically separated from God’s wholesome sunlit earth by a set of white, swinging saloon doors, so that you'd feel like a big sex outlaw just by swaggering in. Which you never did. You skulked casually past a few times before sidling into the pervert annex and getting knocked in the face with an array of filth beyond your wildest dreams.

by A Modern Love Muse

Sacred female sexuality, with its feelers in earth-based worship, meets resistance in various circles. The idea that woman with all her undulating curves & desires can cohabitate with formal religion creates waves of awe & shock, depending on perspective & historical understanding.

Fairy Tale Lust

by Cherry Trifle

“Grandma, what big teeth you have...” Even as a child–perhaps, a slightly peculiar one–I noticed there was something more provocative about the wolf’s teeth than there should've been. I could see him, hulking and hirsute in grandma’s nightie, bed frame creaking beneath his sinewy bulk as he surveyed the young girl, his sinfully long tongue wetting those ominous, luminous canines. Slavering.

Susie Bright's Story

Susie Bright, pioneer of frank feminist sex talk, gets personal in a new memoir.

About a third a way into her new memoir Big Sex Little Death (Seal Press) Susie Bright, writer, feminist, and sex-educator, tells a story about the time she went to a high school dance that was held, oddly yet appropriately enough, at the Playboy Club in Los Angeles.

In 1944 our mother married our father, a fresh seminary graduate and moved with him from Ohio to eastern Montana. She was twenty-two, bright, pretty, and funny. Besides her upbringing in a loving, pious, church-going family, she probably knew little about what her role as a minister’s wife would entail.

At her first ladies aid society meeting she found out that they started each session by having everyone recite a Bible verse. Taken unaware, she quoted the shortest one she knew, “Jesus wept.”

Rachel Kramer Bussel

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how one’s sexual experience shapes their outlook on sex and relationships. Is more experience, not necessarily your “number,” but practical experience with other sexual partners, helpful when it comes to knowing what to do with a new partner?

Many researchers and journalists continue to find something new about the imminent end of the world. Well-known blind Bulgarian mystique Vanga and her "heiresses" often serve as a source for such discoveries, which many people may find doubtful, of course. However, is it possible to say that Vanga "left" her gift to someone else? What exactly did she predict at all?

What if everything we've ever learned about our basic motivation to have sex — the procreation of the species — is unequivocally wrong?

by A Modern Love Muse

What if everything we’ve ever learned about our basic motivation to have sex — the procreation of the species — is unequivocally wrong? What if making babies is a byproduct of the real purpose of our couplings?

by Midori
The Traveling Sexpert

The world is falling apart and I’m teaching fine cock sucking. Am I just playing in the band as the Titanic sinks? My birth nation is having a nuclear meltdown, and I’m carrying on teaching blowjobs and bondage, while fundraising for HIV. Yes, this may seem odd, and I know some may think me uncaring and having poor priorities, but somehow I know this is the right thing for me to do right now.

Sex and Violence

By Tom Jacobs

Research from Hong Kong suggests that, among men, the impulses to make love and war are deeply intertwined.

(So Bush really wanted to go to bed with Saddam Hussein! and Bama is in bed with Ghaddafi)

by Kal Cobalt

You've heard the roles before: naughty nurse, horny pizza guy, frisky babysitter, suave pool boy...but what if the roleplay you're into doesn't fit into porn's top ten? Whatever your ideal fantasy scenario is, you can accomplish it with a little work.

by A Modern Love Muse

How many of us think of ourselves as polyamorous? Some do, of course, but probably most of us think of ourselves as monogamous. Yet, how many of us can claim we've loved just one person in our lives? Likely, not many. So, are we truly monogamous or are most of us serially polyamorous?

Sex Party:

Like many forms of sex deemed "deviant," group sex seems to be becoming more mainstream.

By Anna Pulley