Bodies

Reprinted from S.E.X.: The All-You-Need-to-Know Progressive Sexuality Guide to Get You Through High School and College , © 2007 Heather Corinna/Marlowe & Company. Illustration by Molly Crabapple. Want to print out copies for yourself? Click here to download one in PDF format. Enjoy!

We get a LOT of questions like this, every single day, and have for as long as we’ve been online. Here are just a few more recent ones: I have been with my boyfriend for the last three years, and just last May we had sex for the first time. I was a virgin, he was not. We have had sex on a few…

You know, KY is really one of the lower quality lubricants out there. If you’re using the jelly, it really isn’t going to help much, but even their liquid lubes aren’t as good as a lot of others in my opinion. An excellent lubricant is not only as good as “natural” lubricant, sometimes it’s even…

My body hair first became a problem for me when I was 10. One summer day at the pool, I looked down – there was pubic hair showing out of the bottom of my bathing suit. I was absolutely horrified. I had never heard of anyone having such a problem. I knew that it was normal to have pubic hair, but surely this was abnormal. I felt like such a freak.

Oh sweetie, please please please don’t try cutting anything off your body. You could very easily end up doing serious nerve damage, causing scarring, getting an infection, bleeding out, or all sorts of other bad (and very serious) consequences. So let’s forget entirely the idea of cutting off bits…

I sure can, and I’m glad you asked. Know what? Some gay men do NOT like having any sort of anal sex. Enjoyment of anal sex does not define or determine homosexuality, and lack of enjoyment of anal sex does not define or determine heterosexuality. So, a guy can be gay and yet not be all that…

First up, I think you ought to rent a movie called ‘Real Women Have Curves.’ It stars America Ferrera, and is about a fat girl who has to deal with all the usual teen stuff: family, boyfriend and going to college. I think you’d identify with it and probably learn something from it. At the least, it…

You probably put the word cherry in quotes because you’re not exactly sure what on earth it even is. That’s understandable, since nobody really does, as it’s not something real. Usually, when people talking about “cherry-popping,” when it comes to sex, they are colloquially saying that someone…

Not all people with vaginas bleed with first intercourse. Given your age at the time of your first intercourse, it would have been even less common for you to do so since by 26, it would have been more common for most of your hymen to have mostly eroded by then – simply due to basic development…

Assuming that it’s definitely not menstrual blood, whenever a person with a vagina bleeds after sex, it’s generally the result of an injury. Sometimes if there’s blood spotting and pain after sex, it’s because there’s an infection in the cervix like trichomoniasis, chlamydia or gonorrhea. Irritation…