I’ve worked with a mentee of mine for about a year who, while immensely bright, struggles with some sexual compulsivity issues. (Yes, this mentee is also in therapy; I’m not overstepping my role.) “Kelly” read this old post of mine about flirtation, and brought the subject up...

Amanda Marcotte has a short piece up at RH Reality Check on women and libido. For such a brief post, she manages to touch on two separate but interlinked issues: one, the problem with pathologizing low female libido; two, the root cause of widespread “lack of interest.” Here’s the ...

Below this January 14 post on experience and numbers, bmmg39 writes: …my view is that, often, people with little or no experience in a certain thing — it CAN be sex but it could also mean romantic love, or kissing, or slow-dancing, or whatever — often seek others with the same low level or...

After yesterday’s post in the continuing series of posts on the subject of disclosing one’s sexual past to a partner, I got an email from a woman who is a regular reader and a Facebook friend. She writes: My question comes from your “exclusivity” post. I’m wondering, if...

In July 2005, I wrote a long post entitled “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, and the Right to a Private History”. I wrote about dealing with one’s own — and one’s partner’s — sexual past in a relationship, and the importance of not allowing one’s con...

In mid-December, I ordered a copy of “Yes Means Yes! Visions of Female Sexual Power and a World without Rape, edited by Jaclyn Friedman and Jessica Valenti. YMY is an anthology filled with essays by writers well-known in the feminist blogosphere, and others who aren’t; by men, by women, ...

We wrapped up my History 24F class (intro to Lesbian and Gay American History) yesterday. As I usually do in such a class, I asked the students what they would be taking away from the course now that the semester was over. Many expressed excitement at finally learning that “We have a history t...

It’s always dangerous to write about books one hasn’t read. Still, I find that I learn a lot from book reviews. For as long as I can remember, my mother has subscribed to the New York Review of Books. Since I started graduate school nearly twenty years ago, she’s given me a gift su...

This is part one of a four-part series this summer on Christianity and sex. Part Two will look more closely at issues of sexuality and global justice, part Three will look at how to reconcile contemporary sexual ethics with Scripture and tradition, and part Four will provide a whole bunch of good re...

I had coffee this week with one of the girls from my old youth group at All Saints church. “Brynne” has just finished up her junior year, and in the past few months, has started dating “Scott”, who is a year older and has just graduated. Scott is off to university in the fall...