Let me be clear- Sharing my personal sex life, (and that of my partner) is not easy. I know my blog sometimes falls into the wrong hands, I know my family or my boyfriend’s family could find it and there could be serious consequences. I choose to share everything: my anxiety, my fights, my faults, my tips. It’s more often than not embarrassing and scary to post what I do. But here’s why I do it ~ I think I have managed to find a way to write about sex in a nonsexual way. We see so many images in our day-to-day: porn, sex scenes in movies, objectifying ads, that feed us false information about our sexual and sentient selves. I noticed at a very young age the objectification of my being. I noticed the lack of education I was receiving. I noticed boys talking about their penises, balls, wet dreams, girls’ bodies, and yet my friends and I barely understood what was between our legs. We didn’t even start talking about masturbation until we were 18, asking about the clit, and how we orgasm, and even then some girls left the room, feeling not comfortable with the subject. Years later, I still get so many messages from women about how to masturbate and how to orgasm. Sure the world is more progressive now, we can talk about sex a little more... But how are we talking about sex really? Mainstream porn is getting worse by the second, anyone whose had sex can point out what’s inaccurate about a sex scene in a movie... and here’s the thing about sex- most of us are doing it! We’re all affected by it! So why can’t we all talk about it! I recently received some backlash for talking about sex as openly as I do. Someone suggested I stop writing about my personal life but only others’ sex lives because sharing my own experiences is quite risqué. As if, somehow, reading about a 23-year-old woman with a degree in Gender, Sexuality and Society’s sex life is more inappropriate than the casting couch porn of girls made to look 16, or the behavior of men like Harvey Weinstein or Bill Cosby. My sexual experiences are my truth. If I am giving an advice, or sharing something about what I do in the bedroom, it is because I lived it, I did it. I would not feel genuine to share advice or stories that I have not lived, (unless it’s clearly marked in my two interview blogs). My truth, and my goal as a sexologist, or whatever I may become, is to only share what I really know. We live in a fucked world- and I have to argue that writing about sex, and the silliness/messiness/loveliness of it, amidst the ginormous patriarchal misogynist mainstream media shit storm we live in, is just not the worst thing. If you don’t like my blog, that’s fine, don’t read it. If it makes you uncomfortable, don’t read it. But I sure as hell, will keep writing it. I write it for the women (and girls) and men who have written me to say thank you. For the people who told me my blog liberated them in someway, or allowed them to begin loving themselves, or taught them how to masturbate, or made them appreciate the small moments with their partner. My blog is for anyone and everyone who wants to read it, but it’s especially for women. Women who have been wronged by the current sexual hierarchy. Women who were never told that they deserved pleasure. Women who may have been told they deserved pleasure but were never taught how to receive that pleasure. How many times have we had sex with the end goal of making a man come? How many times have we had to fake an orgasm? How many times have we been honked at in the street? How many times was our “no” not honored? How many times have we feared walking alone at night, or even during the day? How many times have we been followed down the street? How many times have we been punished for having the bodies we were born with? How many times have we felt horny and then had unsatisfying sex? How many times have we come on our own but not from sex? How many of us count our blessings we were not born somewhere that practices female genital mutilation? How many of us have had our genitals mutilated? How many of us feel good when we leave the house but then fear for our lives when we see the way men look at us? How many of us have been assaulted, raped, harassed? Too fucking many. If my writing, in any way, can help women experience themselves in a positive sexual way, then it’s all worth it. If my writing, in any way, can help men learn about a woman’s sexual experience, and how he should treat her (like a human), then it’s all worth it. The first boy who ever touched my vulva, the first sexual experience I ever had, was not consensual. He took that from me. And I got blamed for it, I was 12. How many of us have similar stories? Enough is enough. That’s why I write about sex.