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I asked my friend Eric to write about growing up with a queer primary care giver. Note: I have met very few straight dudes as "at ease" in groups of women as he is. And he can cook, you guys.




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Sometimes I read an op-ed piece about how us women should stop being such dirty sluts if we want to "be happy" (i.e. get married) and think, "surely this person is trolling for outraged feminists' pageviews in a most unseemly, Gavin McInnes-like fashion. I shan't encourage this behavior by feeding said troll with my angry attentions." But what do you do when the troll is legitimized by a publication with enough eyeballs and influence that he might actually be able to hurt people? A publication like, say, I don't know, The New York fucking Times? You fire back hard, is what you do, so I've brought out the big guns today in the form of guest blogger Julie Lauren Vick. She will now deign to explain why Ross Douthat is an incorrect, disingenuous, self-righteous, windbag prude unfit for employment by anyone, let alone the Paper of Record. --JPMore »

Davy Rothbart's confessional New York Magazine article about how men are getting so addicted to porn they can't get even off inside real vaginas anymore made me wonder: is this a real problem, or just a Davy Rothbart problem? (If it's the latter, someone should really tell him so he stops embarrassing himself on the teevee.) I've never heard of such a phenomenon, but what do I know? I'm a woman; I don't look at porn or have orgasms. I spoke to some men to see what they thought of it. 
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I generally try to keep Naked City focused more on gender and sexuality than matters of the heart, but I can't help wanting to comment on the cover story published today by my esteemed colleague Jen Doll, Dear Single Women of NYC: It's Not Them, It's You. The thesis is right there in the title. It's a great, well-written article, and certainly worth reading, but I take issue with many of its assertions. As someone who's spent six of her seven-and-a-half years in NYC as a single woman actively seeking a relationship, I've come to believe that most of the time, it's not your fault at all if you haven't found what you want yet. Finding romantic love, the kind that we're now all spoiled enough to hold as a prerequisite to marriage, is really, really difficult. Unless you're unbelievably lucky, it doesn't happen overnight. And that's okay.More »

What kind of sex ed did you have growing up? I grew up in Connecticut in the hyper-conscious nineties, so my sex ed was all "accurate information" this, and "don't get AIDS" that. But for many, the sexual education they received in school was spotty at best, dangerously inaccurate at worst, as it was often taught by ill-equipped individuals like coaches or home ec instructors. Someone recently started a tumblr to calatogue such stories, and it's both horrifying and hilarious.More »

So Peta has unveiled its latest rejected Superbowl ad, and despite the apparent freshness of the vegetables therein, something about it leaves a bad taste in my mouth. In what seems like  a parody of its previous, sincerely sexual ad, in which women waste food by rubbing their vaginas all over it, young women are pitted against one another by a shady, Uncle Terry-esque figure to see who can waste food in the sexiest manner possible. Animal rights-y!
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Have you heard of this crazy new trend called "sexting"? I want you to listen carefully now, because it can have some very dangerous consequences. Dangerously hot, that is. More »

As I discussed yesterday, OSU's blackballing of Tristan Taormino says some depressing things about sexual education and feminist discourse in our country. Sadly, these kinds of shenanigans have been going on for a long time, and show no signs of stopping. But sometimes, students take it into their own hands to try to change things. My friend Lilit Marcus, editor-in-chief of The Gloss, was once one of those students. Here is her take on the matter. 

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I've made no secret of the fact that I hate American Apparel's new style. That early-nineties WASP look makes my skin crawl to no end. Besides being horribly unsexy, it reminds me of my Connecticut upbringing, which involved much torment of my fragile baby-Goth psyche at the hands of numerous preppy bullies. Regardless: there's one thing this style has gotten right, and that is bush. At least in this new ad.More »

Want to kiss someone on New Year's Eve, but too scared to make the first move? You're in luck, because an altruistic outerwear retailer has set up a service to help make all your dreams come true. No, really.More »