pleasure

Britain’s Quintimacy is a space that intends to cultivate queer intimacy through trauma-informed and embodied connection. In an interview with Scarleteen, founder Beck Thom talks about their working frameworks, sex ed in the UK, what they do at Quintimacy and the need to better educate people, including children and teenagers, about trauma and consent.

Sex positivity should have given me the courage to ask for what I wanted. Instead, I thought it meant accepting what I got.

When my assault happened, I was stunted in my sexual exploration, and I had no choice but to start anew. I’ve learned it will always be an ongoing battle for me, but a possible feat. Scarleteen readers confronting a comparable situation should know there’s hope for you too. Reclaiming our right to pleasure combats apathy by demonstrating our capacity to enjoy again. While we can’t reverse rape, recovery begins when we remember we have alternatives.

Hi Ghost, It sounds like pleasure is a bit tricky to figure out - both by yourself and with a partner. Fortunately, there are solutions! You’ve touched on something important by mentioning that you don’t experience much pleasure not only in your genitals, but also in most of your skin. It might help...

It can be incredibly frustrating when a part of the body we strongly associate with, and expect to give us, pleasure ends up causing us chronic pain. If you have chronic pelvic pain, what do you do if you want to get sexual with yourself or someone else? How can you be physically intimate if you’re in pain? How do you talk to your partners? If it starts hurting, should you stop? This guide from Nicole Guappone offers some great help with all this and more.

Despite the initial shame, guilt, name-calling, jokes, and fear related to disclosure, my STI presented me with a chance to love myself more deeply. It gave me a chance to sit with myself, who I thought myself to be, who I thought I was going to become, and who I really was.

Cerebral palsy, multiple sclerosis, and spinal cord injuries, among other disabilities, can involve spasticity. People often have day-to-day coping mechanisms to help manage their spasticity, but what do you do when you have spasticity and want to have sex?

Fantasy is an important part of our relationships with ourselves and our sexual desires. But it can also be a source of shame. How can we find ways to reconnect with our sexual fantasies and create a healthy relationship with desire.

This sounds like a frustrating situation, and I'm sorry this side effect of your testosterone has made things so much trickier in this one respect, but in case it helps to have a reminder: your lack of interest in masturbation or sex doesn't mean there's something wrong with you, and I'm sorry to...

A short, fast, sex ed summary of basic sexual anatomy.