Latest news with #sex
WIRED
a day ago
- Entertainment
- WIRED
What's Behind Gen Z's Sex Recession?
Jul 21, 2025 12:56 PM On this episode of Uncanny Valley , author Carter Sherman breaks down the forces shaping Gen Z's unique relationship to sex. Photo-Illustration:All products featured on WIRED are independently selected by our editors. However, we may receive compensation from retailers and/or from purchases of products through these links. In today's episode, we look into why Gen Z is having less sex than other generations—and what it says about how we are all relating to each other. WIRED's Zoë Schiffer is joined by author and journalist Carter Sherman to talk about her latest book, The Second Coming: Sex and the Next Generation's Fight Over Its Future , which reveals how the internet, politics, and conservative legislation have shaped how Gen Z views sex. Mentioned in this episode: How Social Media Is Fueling Gen Z's Sex Recession by Manisha Krishnan Thinking Machines Lab Raises a Record $2 Billion, Announces Cofounders by Will Knight You can follow Zoë Schiffer on Bluesky at @zoeschiffer. Write to us at uncannyvalley@ How to Listen You can always listen to this week's podcast through the audio player on this page, but if you want to subscribe for free to get every episode, here's how: If you're on an iPhone or iPad, open the app called Podcasts, or just tap this link. You can also download an app like Overcast or Pocket Casts and search for 'uncanny valley.' We're on Spotify too. Transcript Note: This is an automated transcript, which may contain errors. Zoë Schiffer: Hey, this is Zoe. Before we start, I want to take a chance to remind you that we really want to hear from you. If you have a tech-related question that's been on your mind or a topic that you wish we'd talked about on the show, you can write to us at uncannyvalley@ And if you listen to and enjoy our episodes, please please rate the show and leave a review on your podcast app of choice. It honestly really helps other people find us. Welcome to WIRED's Uncanny Valley . I'm WIRED's, director of Business and Industry, Zoë Schiffer. Today on the show, why Gen Z is having less sex than prior generations, and why it has a lot more to do with tech than you might think. According to a 2022 survey by the Kinsey Institute and Lovehoney, one in four Gen Z adults, meaning people between the ages of 13 and 28 in the year of our Lord 2025, have never had partnered sex, and the most recent data available from the CDC shows that only around a third of high schoolers reported having sex, down from 47% in 2013. There's been a lot of talk around why Gen Z seems less interested in sex with the prevailing theory being that they're just a more puritanical generation. But in her new book, The Second Coming: Sex and the Next Generation's Fight Over Its Future , writer and journalist, Carter Sherman, found that it's not quite that simple. Social media, the pandemic, and conservative legislation have all influenced Gen Z's current predicament. To break it down, Carter Sherman joins us today on the show. Carter, welcome to Uncanny Valley . Carter Sherman: Thank you for having me. Zoë Schiffer: So you open up the first chapter of your book by describing the moment that we're in as a sex recession, particularly for Gen Z. What exactly is a sex recession and why does it matter? Carter Sherman: Well, a sex recession is the cutesy name that we have given this phenomenon that you just described where young people are having sex later and less frequently than past generations. We tend to associate the, quote unquote, "sex recession" with Gen Z, but it actually began amongst my cohort, late Millennials. So this is not a phenomenon that we can peg to, say, the pandemic. It started before we were all locked down within our homes. The reason why it matters in my view is less so about whether or not young people are actually engaging in the physical act of sex and more about whether or not sex is a proxy measure for things like connection and vulnerability and the development of empathy. That's what I worry about, because in my book, I talk to more than 100 young people under 30, and a lot of them felt a great deal of shame over the fact that they felt like they weren't having enough sex, over the fact that they felt it was really difficult to cultivate intimacy with other people their own age, and so what I really wanted to understand about the sex recession is what factors led to it and what can we do to alleviate not necessarily the lack of sex itself, but alleviate the lack of connection that we're seeing in our society at this time. Zoë Schiffer: That's really, really beautifully said. I feel like one of the first factors that you point to in the book as being responsible or partly responsible for this decline in young people having sex is social media, not just because of the time we all spend on it, and it really is all of us. It's not just Gen Z obviously, but because it's shaped how Gen Z interacts with each other in a particular way. So what did you find as you were talking to people? Carter Sherman: So a lot of the trends that we see right now in things like sex and mental health, we can trace back to around 2010, which is when we all got smartphones that had social media on them, and when we could spend so much more of our day staring at these screens. The thing that I found about social media is it really contributes to this phenomenon called, quote unquote, "comparing and despairing", which is basically what it sounds like. You look at other people's lives, you look at other people's bodies, and you are made to feel like you are less than. And young people described basically being very aware of their sexual marketability, which is to say that they became really aware of how attractive they were or were not through things like likes and matches and follower counts, and that constant rating on yourself can make people not really want to engage in intimacy, in sex, in relationships. If you feel like your body has to be perfect in order to get naked, the chances are you're not going to get naked. Zoë Schiffer: Yeah, this feels particularly true, I don't know if you can speak to this part, but for women or women identifying people. The desire to have sex has so much to do with feeling sexy, and if you're constantly comparing yourself and your body to other people, I can't imagine that it's very difficult to feel that way. Carter Sherman: Absolutely. I think this is something that very much affects women and girls in particular. There was one young woman in particular I remember talking to who was posting photos of herself in a bikini in high school the way so many young people do, and her friends were commenting on how her hips looked or how her breasts looked or how her legs looked. And she liked the compliments that they were giving, but it did make her feel very much like, "Oh, they're evaluating me. Oh, we're in competition with one another." And initially when we spoke, she wasn't really aware of why she was posting these photos, and then as we kept talking, she said it was definitely for men. It was for men's appreciation of me. And in fact, I talked to another young man who said, "As I'm scrolling through my social media platform, if I see one girl who looks cute and then I see another girl who's in a bikini and also looks cute, I am comparing them. I might go for the girl in the bikini over the girl who's not," and I appreciated the honesty that he had about it. He also talked about all the young women that he knew were using things like filters to change how they looked online, and I asked, "Oh, have you ever altered your body, edited your body in any way in photos?" And he said, "Yeah, I made my shoulders look bigger in a photo." So this is not just something that affects young women, even if it affects young women more. Young men are definitely very much dealing with this. He kept on using this phrase, the criteria, that you had to meet the criteria on social media, and there's no way that feeling like there's a criteria for your body isn't corrosive. Zoë Schiffer: Absolutely. Yeah, I'm curious how dating apps fit into this, because that feels like another avenue where, especially with the current generation of dating apps, you're literally being evaluated all the time. Carter Sherman: Oh, yeah. I think dating apps are basically like an extension of social media because that's what they are at this point, especially because people now oftentimes date through social media so the boundaries between those apps have become much more blurry. And I found that oftentimes, yes, people had the same sort of comparing and despairing feeling because of dating apps. In fact, dating apps make legible a lot of things that I think are harder to see in IRL interactions, so for example, a founder of OkCupid once said that race is the ultimate confounding factor among Americans who are meeting online, and so you can really look at and measure how things like sexualized racism play a role in dating apps, and these are the kinds of things that make people feel terrible, but we can also see more clearly through this technology. Zoë Schiffer: Yeah, fascinating. So let's talk about the rest of the internet outside the social media, because Gen Z is the first generation that has always known a world where porn and nudes are readily available online in just a few clicks. And I'm curious, how has that impacted them? Carter Sherman: What's really interesting about porn is when I was going into this book, I thought I would find a diverse array of beliefs about it. I thought that people on the right would be more opposed to it, that people on the left might feel a little bit more warmly towards it. I thought that everybody would watch it, which was generally true, but I instead found that in general, no matter person's political background, they tended to feel like porn was really bad for them, that it had warped their sexuality in some way. Three quarters of Americans have seen porn by the time they hit 18. The thing is that the science on porn is incredibly muddy. It's very hard to find a control group, find people who have not seen porn, so you can't really do the best science on this, and so much of the research that we do have on porn is riddled with biases and baked in beliefs about what constitutes a degrading act or what constitutes rough sex. So what I found among young people is that they had what sociologists call a, quote unquote, "deep story", and a deep story is this belief about something that feels true, and this belief can be more powerful than the facts. And the deep story for young people is that porn was bad for them and that it had in particular normalized, quote unquote, "rough sex", and in particular, normalized choking. If you are under 40, you are almost twice as likely to have been choked during sex than someone who is over 40, and a majority of young people have not been asked before they were choked on every occasion or on some occasions. So for me, I think that if you enjoy choking, if you enjoy rough sex, more power to you, but I want you to be doing it safely and consensually and not just treat it like this is another average act you don't have to ask consent for. Zoë Schiffer: Yeah. It feels like with so much of this, it's less about the thing itself than our, or their I guess, relationship with that thing. Carter Sherman: Oh, yeah. Zoë Schiffer: It feels like there's a lot of shame surrounding it or sadness or it's detracting from people's lives in some way, then that's the issue, versus if they just had this relationship with porn that felt additive and totally fine, we wouldn't be talking about this. Carter Sherman: Yeah. I think the thing that porn does do is it portrays pleasure, right? It shows what it's like to give and receive sexual pleasure, and that pleasure might not be reflective of a lot of people's real life preferences, but we have in this country a real dearth of comprehensive sex education. Since 2000, the federal government has poured more than $2 billion into abstinence only sex education, and that sex education just can't account for porn, it can't account for pleasure because it's so narrow-minded and only focuses on telling people, "Oh, if you have sex, you will get pregnant and die," in the words of Coach Carr from Mean Girls. And so young people turn to porn because they want to know what pleasure looks like, and this seems to be the only way that they can find out about it. Zoë Schiffer: That thought completely blew my mind, and I want to get into high school sex ed in a little bit, but one more question just about online communities that have become more and more popular in recent years. Incels and trad wives, one recent survey found that in the US, over 35% of self-identified incels were between the ages of 22 and 25 years old, making this age group the most dominant. So how do they fit into the trend of Gen Z having less sex? Carter Sherman: I think we know that young women and young men are on wildly diverging political paths. Obviously, young men voted for Donald Trump in the last election, whereas young women are the most progressive cohort we've ever measured in US history, and I think that there is no denying that the manosphere and incel ideology are likely playing a role in this divergence. It's hard to say if this polarization is a symptom or a cause of this sex recession. Is it that young women and young men aren't engaging with one another sexually or romantically and that's making people run towards incel ideology? Which is not to blame young women, but I do think that young men are dealing with, to dame [inaudible 00:11:50] another big topic in the news right now, a loneliness epidemic and they're looking for answers about why this is happening, and it's easy for them to say, "Oh, I'm not having enough sex. Oh, it's women's fault." I talked to one young woman actually who I found very striking who said that she had not had sex even though she was straight and interested in having sex because she was afraid that she would encounter a man who was basically secretly poisoned by incel ideology. That he would evince misogyny, that she just wouldn't understand how to counter. She felt like incels have just totally taken over the theater of gender relations and their ideas are everywhere, and in fact, in reporting this book, I did feel like incel ideology is everywhere. There was one day where I was trying to procrastinate on writing the chapter that includes information about incels, and one of the things that incels like to say is they describe things as maxing, like you're optimizing, you're maxing out on something. And I opened the New York Times and they were talking about smell maxing, which is this phenomenon where I guess middle schoolers love to use a lot of cologne, and I was like, "Oh, this language is everywhere now." This is just how we talk at this point, and we don't even think about the fact that the manosphere is the source of so much of this lingo. Zoë Schiffer: Oh my God. Yeah, I feel like in AI, they're talking about bench maxing right now, which I totally missed as being an incel thing until you started talking about this, and I'm like, oh, yeah, that's like when we're talking about how AIs compare on benchmarks, that's a coded language. Let's go to break, and when we come back, we'll dive into how it's not just the internet. The changing political landscape has also affected how Gen Z views sex. Carter, you touched on this before, but Gen Z is obviously very politically aware. They've witnessed the Me Too movement, the overturning of Roe v. Wade. How have these developments impacted how they view and go about sex in their personal lives? Carter Sherman: They've impacted young people's sex lives massively. 16% of Gen Zers are now more reluctant to date because of the overturning of Roe v. which is in my mind a staggering statistic. I asked people in my interviews to name a cultural or political moment that had an impact on their sex lives, and almost all of them said Roe versus Wade being overturned, or Me Too, or both. I think for young women, what Me Too did is I think very much lead them to understand, certainly earlier than I did, that maybe if something had happened to them that felt off, that that action might have in fact been wrong, that it might've been sexual assault or sexual harassment, and that they deserved accountability for that. The thing is though that Me Too did not actually lead to many institutional changes. The only real legal reforms we saw come out of the Me Too movement were changes in the regulation of NDAs and more HR trainings, and these are not things that really help young people who don't work. And so for many of the young women I talked to, they understood that sexual harassment and sexual assault are everywhere, but they also understood that there was very little that they could do about those things, and that if something had happened to them, that institutions would likely not be on their side. So that creates just an incredible miasma of anxiety for young women to be walking through every day. It makes them afraid of sex, and I think for good reason. For young men, I really appreciated, there was one young man who told me that he felt like the Me Too movement was actually anti-cis male in some ways, and this is a young man who is liberal, active in Democratic politics, he is a reproductive justice advocate, and he did feel though that sometimes the Me Too movement demonized young men, and again, that leads to more anxiety. When it comes to the overturning of Roe v. Wade, I think a lot of people were just very aware that if they got pregnant, they might not have options. There was a run on contraception after Roe v. Wade was overturned, and I talked to one young woman who got an IUD after Roe v. Wade was overturned. And I think what both of these events did is it made young people very aware of the political valence of sex, and I think that that can be very helpful. I think we need to understand how much of our sex lives are determined by things that happen in school board meetings and courtrooms and state legislatures and in Congress, but I think sometimes the weight of all of that politics makes people unwilling to engage in sex or even maybe attached too much meaning to sex. Is the Sabrina Carpenter album cover really all that serious? Do we need to have all of this debate around it? I don't know, but I do think that it has something to do with the ways that we've made sex incredibly politicized in this moment. Zoë Schiffer: Yeah, this blew my mind as well. I think just the idea that something going on in national politics would impact such a personal decision, like whether or not to engage in sex. But then I also remembered that a lot of women of my generation and a lot of friends of mine have had climate change be a major, major factor in their decision about whether or not to have kids, and I was like, oh, I do think this is Gen Z's version of that phenomena. Carter Sherman: Absolutely. I think we want to pretend that we have total control over our sex lives or our reproductive lives or our family lives, but the fact of the matter is we don't. We do live in a country, we do live on a planet, and it is always this emotional balancing act of figuring out, okay, how can I still feel in control when I might not actually have the total control that would make me able to live my life fully? Zoë Schiffer: Okay. I want a chance to touch on something that we talked about before, which is the kind of sex ed classes that Gen Z is having or has access to, particularly in high school. I remember when I was in high school, we had a very, very, very explicit sex ed class, but maybe that was very unique in my generation, I'm not sure. But what is happening now? Carter Sherman: Where did you grow up? Zoë Schiffer: Well, I grew up in Santa Barbara. I think they were like, "Santa Barbara, these kids are partying way too much and having way too much sex, so we need to really tell them what's going on," and it rocked all of us. Carter Sherman: It sounds like it's left some scars, I have to be honest with you. I think that very much, your sex ed is so determined by the zip code in which you grow up, and so a state like California is going to have a really different sex ed curriculum than a state like, I don't know, Alabama or Mississippi. And I grew up in Seattle, and I feel like I had, relatively speaking, fairly comprehensive sex ed, but my sex ed did try to pathologize sex. It did try to make sex into this kind of scary thing, and I don't think we have a lot of sex ed in this country, even in the most progressive states that adequately addresses things like pleasure and healthy relationships and communication. It does try to say, "Okay, here's STIs. Here's pregnancy. Stay away from sex." but the thing that I found really interesting as I was reporting in this book is I did not know that when I started to go to school in 2000 as a kindergartner, that I was basically one of the very first guinea pigs in what I call a billion dollar federal virginity campaign, because it was during the George Bush years that the federal government started pouring more and more money, hundreds of millions of dollars, into abstinence only sex ed, and that money has continued throughout the Obama administration, throughout the Trump administration, throughout the Biden administration, and I assume it will again continue throughout this current Trump administration. I think we take for granted that sex ed is bad in this country, that the teachers want to scare us or that the teachers are incompetent, but there is sex ed that is comprehensive, and the young people I talked to who had comprehensive sex ed I think had just much healthier lives in general. They didn't feel the degree of shame that I think so many of us feel around sex. Zoë Schiffer: After doing all of this reporting and then writing the book, is there anything that makes you hopeful about the future of Gen Z and their ability to navigate sex and relationships? Carter Sherman: I do think it is hopeful that young people understand how political sex is. Even if sometimes it can feel like it goes too far, I think being aware of that political element is in general good for young people. In the book, I chart the clash between what I call sexual conservatism, which is the movement to make it difficult if not dangerous to have sex that isn't straight, that isn't married, that isn't potentially procreative, and sexual progressivism, which is a movement that I think is very much internet fueled by young people to not only fight against sexual assault and fight for abortion rights and fight for LGBTQ plus rights, but also to expand the ways that we think about sex and gender and make those definitions much more inclusive, and make the discussions that we are continuing to have in the public sphere much more broad-minded. And I really think that we tend to write off young people. We tend to always say that they're doing sex wrong, but there's a lot to learn from young people in the way that they're thinking about sex and reconceptualizing it. Zoë Schiffer: Okay, we're going to take another quick break, and when we come back, we'll share our recommendations for what to read this week. Welcome back to Uncanny Valley . I'm Zoe Schiffer, WIRED's director of Business and Industry, and I'm joined today by writer and journalist, Carter Sherman. Before we take off, we have some recommendations for you. I wanted to flag an article by our fabulous AI reporter, Will Knight, here at WIRED, about Thinking Machines Lab, which is Mira Murati's AI startup. They just raised an enormous seed fundraising round. They're getting ready to announce a suite of products, and they've confirmed their executive team to WIRED for the first time. So this is an area that we report on a lot. It's a left turn from this conversation with Carter, but Mira's doing really, really interesting work. I think it's obviously exciting to see a very prominent woman in this male-dominated space, and we're going to keep a close eye on the changes to come. Carter, what have you been reading this week? Carter Sherman: I picked up a book and finished it much more swiftly than I was anticipating. It is called Cue the Sun! It's by Emily Nussbaum. She is the TV critic over at The New Yorker, and it's a history of reality television, which I would say is actually not a genre that I love all that much so I'm not even sure why I got the book, but the book was so deeply reported and so nuanced and just unearthed all of this history, not only in television, but in the United States, that I had never heard of. And it was a nice break from the current political discussion, although the book was haunted by Donald Trump and the idea of how did we end up with a reality TV star for president. So if you want something that feels frothy but also grounded in reality, I would recommend this book. Zoë Schiffer: Frothy and grounded is always what I'm looking for, so thank you. That's our show for today. We'll link to all the stories we spoke about in the show notes. Make sure to check out Thursday's episode of Uncanny Valley , which is about how WIRED analyzed Jeffrey Epstein's video. Adriana Tapia produced this episode. Special thanks to Manisha Krishnan for her reporting. Amar Lal at Macrosound mixed this episode, Kate Osborn is our executive producer, Chris Bannon is the head of Global Audio, and Katie Drummond is WIRED's global editorial director.
The Guardian
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
There is one universal sex tip. It is simple, teachable and obvious
In the fifth season of the British cringe comedy series Peep Show about two dysfunctional flatmates, Mark tells Jeremy that, for the first time in his life, he thinks he's getting sex right. This is thanks to a new partner's very explicit instructions. 'That's cheating,' Jeremy complains. 'Anyone can please a woman if she tells you what to do. You're not allowed to ask. That's the whole point.' I've spent a year trying to figure out why straight women are statistically last on the list when it comes to having pleasurable sex, but that one minute of television pretty much sums it up. I've asked 55 women about the hottest moments of their lives and have never heard the same answer twice. When it comes to sex, the things that light us up are so specific and individual, I suspect that if I asked 1,000 women, I would get 1,000 different answers. When I asked women what they think their partner did to enable that one overwhelming moment, however, there was far less variety. Instead, I heard three answers over and over. The first two – great circumstances and great chemistry – happen by chance. But the third answer is astonishingly simple – and obvious. It takes no luck, no money and can be learned. It is: 'He just asked.' Everyone responds to physical touch in different ways. Every woman's fantasy life is different. Given the infinite diversity of taste, the best way to understand the person you are with is by asking them what they want. 'Ask your lover' is the only universal sex tip. Yet few men are taught it. Instead, through Hollywood films, pornography and locker-room talk, they learn that they should already know the answer (impossible). As Jeremy says to Mark, they are taught success is about the right guess. Sign up for the fun stuff with our rundown of must-reads, pop culture and tips for the weekend, every Saturday morning Maya*, who is in her mid-50s, once assumed her sex life was over. With her husband of 30 years, it certainly had been. But when she started dating post-divorce, she met a man who changed her mind. With him she went from 'a fairly vanilla experience of sex' to a 'whole multitude of experiences'. This partner was adventurous and knowledgable, and together they went on a 'deeply physical' journey. Through this relationship she learned what she really likes and what her body is capable of. In the early stages of this discovery period, she felt self-conscious about her inexperience and her appearance. She 'hadn't really ever experienced really great sex', she says. 'You don't know what you don't know.' But her partner kept asking about her fantasies, her desires and what felt good for her. He would bring her toys to try, to see what she might like. Slowly, she opened up. She learned that with the right setting and partner, she is multi-orgasmic and can experience orgasms from varied stimulation. Although that partner is out of the picture now, Maya still hums with sexual energy. It's an energy she has brought into new relationships. Now she knows what she wants and is confident asking her partners what they want too. Like Maya, some women I've spoken with did not know how to answer the first time someone asked them what they wanted. Others felt liberated, or relieved. And some women, upon realising that asking is the only trick, grew incandescent with rage. Not at the man who asked, but at all the men who did not. Talking may be the only key to a fulfilling sex life – especially in long-term relationships – but for many people, sex is easier done than said. So how does one get good at discussing sex when our genitals are synonymous with the word 'unmentionables'? Betty Martin, the founder of the School of Consent, suggests starting with a game. Given the paucity of good sex education, and the awkwardness and vulnerability that sex talk can entail, Martin says without deliberate practise, 'it's amazing that anybody has a good time at all'. For Martin, learning to ask and answer lies in action, not description. Which is why the Three-Minute Game is her cure-all. The game is played in pairs and consists of two questions. In Martin's version, these are: 'How would you like me to touch you?' and 'How would you like to touch me?' Each player takes turns asking and answering, giving feedback along the way, for three minutes at a time. The goal is to make the implicit explicit, teach turn taking and bring clarity to the sometimes murky waters of who does what and for whom. Playing in this way expands your repertoire as you learn to ask for new things, Martin says: 'So many women have never had an experience of being touched exactly the way they want. They just don't know it's possible.' But in the game, 'nothing happens except what you asked for'. At first, the game will feel awkward, she cautions, but, like most good things in life, it gets easier with practice. Sign up to Saved for Later Catch up on the fun stuff with Guardian Australia's culture and lifestyle rundown of pop culture, trends and tips after newsletter promotion I also sought out men whom women had nominated as excellent lovers, which is how I came to talk to Paul. Paul also asks questions and takes a creative approach to discovering his partners' desires. He asks them to write a list. He says the act of writing something down makes you really, rationally consider what you do and do not want. If you write that you want to be tied up, for instance, you 'already have the picture in your mind'. So you have to ask yourself twice before you say, 'I'm really writing that'. Writing lists is also a game with a name: Yes/No/Maybe. Playing involves writing down every sex act and scenario you can imagine (or taking one of the several hundred prefab lists you can easily find online), and sorting them into three columns: Yes for 'I think I'd like this and want to try it'; Maybe for 'I'd be prepared to try this if the circumstances were right'; and No for 'I never want to do this and I don't want you to do it to me'. While you're working on your list, your partner gets busy doing the same. Then the two of you get together, compare lists and discover all the ways in which you are compatible. For Paul, a Yes/No/Maybe list is 'like a perimeter' around where to explore. A sex psychology researcher, Dr Justin Lehmiller, has found that people who share their fantasies with partners tend to have more fulfilling sex lives – but also that not many people are willing to do so. When he surveyed more than 4,000 Americans on their fantasy lives, he learned that supposedly taboo sexual desires like BDSM and group sex are actually incredibly common. More than half his research participants report having these kinds of fantasies sometimes, which means many couples may have a lot of unexplored common ground. Paul says that during sex, there is pressure from a young age to know everything about yourself, what you like and how to get it. This feels like a form of insanity to him. 'We don't say that for food, we don't say that for travelling, we don't say that for friends,' he says. Sexual exploration, just like travelling or trying a new hobby, can yield many self-discoveries. This is why he has learned to ask his partners many questions, 'and I love to pay attention to their answers'. There's a reason the Three-Minute Game and Yes/No/Maybe, both of which are sometimes used by sex therapists, require mutual disclosure. Great partnered sex is an act of co-creation, in which all parties can take turns to ask, listen and learn. Before Maya re-entered the dating pool, she always thought of sex as 'something that's quite organic … just this sort of fluid thing' that did not need much discussion. But the partner who changed her approach to sex planned in advance and asked her for feedback. She says he was curious about her body: 'He was like, 'Oh, I wonder what she'll think of this. How will this feel for her?'' That attention made her feel 'completely sexy and desired'. She learned to trust him, to relax into the situation and be 'excited for … what's next on the menu'. * Name has been changed Alyx Gorman is Guardian Australia's lifestyle editor and the author of All Women Want, published by HarperCollins, out now
The Guardian
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
There is one universal sex tip. It is simple, teachable and obvious
In the fifth season of the British cringe comedy series Peep Show about two dysfunctional flatmates, Mark tells Jeremy that, for the first time in his life, he thinks he's getting sex right. This is thanks to new partner's very explicit instructions. 'That's cheating,' Jeremy complains. 'Anyone can please a woman if she tells you what to do. You're not allowed to ask. That's the whole point.' I've spent a year trying to figure out why straight women are statistically last on the list when it comes to having pleasurable sex, but that one minute of television pretty much sums it up. I've asked 55 women about the hottest moments of their lives and have never heard the same answer twice. When it comes to sex, the things that light us up are so specific and individual, I suspect that if I asked 1,000 women I would get 1,000 different answers. When I asked women what they think their partner did to enable that one overwhelming moment, however, there was far less variety. Instead, I heard three answers over and over. The first two – great circumstances and great chemistry – happen by chance. But the third answer is astonishingly simple – and obvious. It takes no luck, no money and can be learned. It is: 'He just asked.' Everyone responds to physical touch in different ways. Every woman's fantasy life is different. Given the infinite diversity of taste, the best way to understand the person you are with is by asking them what they want. 'Ask your lover' is the only universal sex tip. Yet few men are taught it. Instead, through Hollywood films, pornography and locker-room talk, they learn that they should already know the answer (impossible). As Jeremy says to Mark, they are taught success is about the right guess. Maya*, who is in her mid-50s, once assumed her sex life was over. With her husband of 30 years, it certainly had been. But when she started dating post-divorce, she met a man who changed her mind. With him she went from 'a fairly vanilla experience of sex' to a 'whole multitude of experiences'. This partner was adventurous and knowledgable, and together they went on a 'deeply physical' journey. Through this relationship she learned what she really likes and what her body is capable of. In the early stages of this discovery period, she felt self-conscious about her inexperience and her appearance. She 'hadn't really ever experienced really great sex', she says. 'You don't know what you don't know.' But her partner kept asking about her fantasies, her desires and what felt good for her. He would bring her toys to try, to see what she might like. Slowly she opened up. She learned that with the right setting and partner, she is multi-orgasmic and can experience orgasms from varied stimulation. Although that partner is out of the picture now, Maya still hums with sexual energy. It's an energy she has brought into new relationships. Now she knows what she wants and is confident asking her partners what they want too. Like Maya, some women I've spoken with did not know how to answer the first time someone asked them what they wanted. Others felt liberated, or relieved. And some women, upon realising that asking is the only trick, grew incandescent with rage. Not at the man who asked but at all the men who did not. Talking may be the only key to a fulfilling sex life – especially in long-term relationships – but for many people, sex is easier done than said. So how does one get good at discussing sex when our genitals are synonymous with the word 'unmentionables'? Betty Martin, the founder of the School of Consent, suggests starting with a game. Given the paucity of good sex education, and the awkwardness and vulnerability that sex talk can entail, Martin says without deliberate practise 'it's amazing that anybody has a good time at all'. For Martin, learning to ask and answer lies in action, not description. Which is why the Three-Minute Game is her cure-all. The game is played in pairs and consists of two questions. In Martin's version, these are: 'How would you like me to touch you?' and 'How would you like to touch me?' Each player takes turns asking and answering, giving feedback along the way, for three minutes at a time. The goal is to make the implicit explicit, teach turn taking and bring clarity to the sometimes murky waters of who does what and for whom. Playing in this way expands your repertoire as you learn to ask for new things, Martin says: 'So many women have never had an experience of being touched exactly the way they want. They just don't know it's possible.' But in the game, 'nothing happens except what you asked for'. At first, the game will feel awkward, she cautions, but, like most good things in life, it gets easier with practice. I also sought out men who women had nominated as excellent lovers, which is how I came to talk to Paul. Paul also asks questions and takes a creative approach to discovering his partners' desires. He asks them to write a list. He says the act of writing something down makes you really, rationally consider what you do and do not want. If you write that you want to be tied up, for instance, you 'already have the picture in your mind'. So you have to ask yourself twice before you say, 'I'm really writing that'. Writing lists is also a game with a name: Yes/No/Maybe. Playing involves writing down every sex act and scenario you can imagine (or taking one of the several hundred prefab lists you can easily find online), and sorting them into three columns: Yes for 'I think I'd like this and want to try it'; Maybe for 'I'd be prepared to try this if the circumstances were right'; and No for 'I never want to do this and I don't want you to do it to me'. While you're working on your list, your partner gets busy doing the same. Then the two of you get together, compare lists and discover all the ways in which you are compatible. For Paul, a Yes/No/Maybe list is 'like a perimeter' around where to explore. A sex psychology researcher, Dr Justin Lehmiller, has found that people who share their fantasies with partners tend to have more fulfilling sex lives – but also that not many people are willing to do so. When he surveyed more than 4,000 Americans on their fantasy lives, he learned that supposedly taboo sexual desires like BDSM and group sex are actually incredibly common. More than half his research participants report having these kinds of fantasies sometimes, which means many couples may have a lot of unexplored common ground. Paul says that during sex there is pressure from a young age to know everything about yourself, what you like and how to get it. This feels like a form of insanity to him. 'We don't say that for food, we don't say that for travelling, we don't say that for friends,' he says. Sexual exploration, just like travelling or trying a new hobby, can yield many self-discoveries. This is why he has learned to ask his partners many questions, 'and I love to pay attention to their answers'. There's a reason the Three-Minute Game and Yes/No/Maybe, both of which are sometimes used by sex therapists, require mutual disclosure. Great partnered sex is an act of co-creation, in which all parties can take turns to ask, listen and learn. Before Maya re-entered the dating pool, she always thought of sex as 'something that's quite organic … just this sort of fluid thing' that did not need much discussion. But the partner who changed her approach to sex planned in advance and asked her for feedback. She says he was curious about her body: 'He was like, 'Oh, I wonder what she'll think of this. How will this feel for her?'' That attention made her feel, 'completely sexy and desired'. She learned to trust him, to relax into the situation and be 'excited for … what's next on the menu'. * Name has been changed Alyx Gorman is Guardian Australia's lifestyle editor and the author of All Women Want, published by HarperCollins, out now
The Sun
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Sun
Love Island quitter Harrison Solomon breaks silence on having sex in the villa and how he REALLY feels about Lauren
LOVE Island quitter Harrison Solomon insists he does not regret having sex in the villa – but hopes his parents weren't watching. The footballer, 22, decided to leave the show on Thursday after being involved in a dramatic love triangle with Lauren Wood and Toni Laites. 7 Viewers were shocked when he was seen making a plea to re-couple with Las Vegas cabana server Toni, despite bedding Lauren the night before. But Harrison, from Burton upon Trent but now based in Miami, said he has no regrets about taking things to the next level on TV. Asked how he felt about his mum and dad knowing what he had done, he said: 'I hope they didn't see. But listen, it was a natural thing. 'I don't think I intended to have sex in the villa, but in there all the Islanders could tell we were so attracted to each other. Naturally, it was going to happen. 'The spark between us was crazy. I probably wasn't thinking about my parents and them watching it, but it naturally happened and I don't regret it.' Lauren, 26, who works as a dog walker in York, was booted from the villa on Wednesday night. She begged Harrison to follow and, 24 hours later, he made the choice to go. Tonight, fans of the series will see the pair reunite on the spin-off show, Aftersun. Speaking about Lauren, Harrison said: 'We will make the distance work. It will be no issue. 'We left on good terms, but the two days prior to leaving, we weren't talking properly. 'What is that-' ask baffled fans after Love Island's Lauren confronts Harrison over love triangle with Toni 'So it would be good to have a conversation, get everything out in the open and hopefully we move forward from there. 'I feel very strongly about the girl. 'I wouldn't have left if I didn't. 'I have no doubt in my mind that she'll be my girlfriend one day. I'm buzzing to see her and reunite. She's such a great girl.' Meanwhile, Harrison said he would be 'mortified' if someone treated his sister the way he acted towards Toni. He revealed: 'I'd like to think we could be friends. I did her wrong a few times in there, so I understand if she doesn't want to reciprocate that. 'The conversation prior to me leaving was a big moment for me and her. I reflected on my whole situation throughout the day, I just let it out. 'You could tell by me getting emotional, I was upset about how I've acted and upset about Toni being upset as well. 7 7 7 'Similarly, if someone treated my sister like I'd treated Toni in there, obviously I'd be mortified. 'I wanted to apologise to her and I think she could see I was being genuine. 'I'm happy with how things were left.' Aside from Toni and Lauren, Harrison also explored connections with air hostess Helena Ford and Shakira Khan in the villa. Harrison said: 'Normally, I say I live life with no regrets. 'But the way I went about certain situations, I definitely would have handled it differently on reflection. 'Should have been more honest' 'I feel like I would've taken myself away from the situation for a day or two and just really figured out what I wanted. 'I would've had those awkward conversations just to let people know where my head was at. I do shy away from those conversations on the outside. 'Especially here, I should have been more honest. 'It was for the greater good, and it would have stopped people's feelings from getting hurt. 'People were hurt more by me being so indecisive and trying to avoid awkward conversations. 'I definitely would have gone about handling triangles in another way.'
The Guardian
4 days ago
- General
- The Guardian
‘It's not just pleasure – it's resistance': portraits of people with their sex toys around the world
Most of us are taught to keep our sexual lives private. We're taught to hide our desires, and all too often, to be ashamed of them. Cultural instruction about sex tends to be very prescriptive. Sex happens in our bedrooms, behind closed doors, between a man and a woman. Sex is for procreation rather than pleasure. Sex is for marriage. Sex should only happen when you fall in love. If you're a woman, you should only have one sexual partner for the whole of your life. If you're a man, the sky's the limit. Certainly, some of these mores have shifted over time, relaxed a bit. But mostly, we're supposed to keep our sex lives to ourselves. And certainly, we aren't supposed to partake of anything that would strain the strictures of 'good taste', like say, pornography or sex toys. My Toys, a project from Italian photographer Gabriele Galimberti, is a frank celebration of the devices and accessories we use in our erotic lives. He photographed people, from around the world, with their collections of sex toys. It is a visual ode to pleasure, one that might be easy to dismiss or titter at given our general cultural discomfort with talking openly about sex and pleasure and what we do, what we use, how we enjoy our erotic lives. Our bodies can be lush sites of pleasure all on their own, but there is no shame in wanting, craving, seeking more. Toys give us access to that more. They afford us some control over our pleasure. They allow us to be expansive in our explorations of our bodies and the bodies of lovers. They allow us to test limits, to be voracious, even greedy with our sexual appetites. And why not? Galimberti's new work stands in stark contrast to a previous project, The Ameriguns, a series of photographs of Americans, from all walks of life, with their extensive gun collections. We know America has a gun problem, that there are more guns than people in the United States, that unfettered access to guns, no matter the consequence, is a core tenet of conservative ideology but still … to see the shocking abundance of weaponry laid out on a pool deck, or in a bedroom, or neatly organised in a room dedicated to firearms, is jarring. It is damning. It is terrifying. I was reminded of The Ameriguns, because there is far less cultural sanction toward such wanton displays of weaponry than toward overt displays of sexuality. My Toys is not prurient, but it is fascinating. The sheer range and quantity of toys on display is impressive and even educational. Each image in the series speaks to the diverse buffet of a healthy sex life – so much possibility in so many shapes and sizes. In the photos, the toys aren't actively being used. Instead, they are artfully arranged in a semicircle on a wood floor or in a neat row on a coffee table or on a kitchen counter or hanging from a large wall rack. The people allowing us these intimate moments look into the camera. Many of them have small but sly smiles, giving the impression that they know something delightful that we don't. I admire the unabashed confidence of the subjects, so willing to share with strangers a window into their sex lives, how they receive pleasure, how they give it. When you look at sex toys, it can feel kind of silly. Many look alien. You study them and wonder how, exactly, they're supposed to be used until, through trial and error, you figure it all out and, hopefully, enjoy the reward of your efforts. There is a pact many friends make, an entreaty, should something terrible happen to us, to rush to one another's homes, for the sole purpose of clearing out whatever cache of sex toys and other contraband we might have, before our families descend and go through our things. It's funny but also not, a reminder of the ambient anxiety many of us have around admitting that yes, we have sex, and yes, some of us use toys. That we care about what people might think about our erotic lives after we are dead and no longer able to feel shame or have to withstand judgment speaks to the way shame is intertwined with our sex lives. I don't really write about my own sex life. Perhaps, it is the Catholic in me. Or the fact that I teach college students. Or that I am shy. Or that I believe some things are better kept private, because they are intimate and sacred. My wife and I have toys, we enjoy them, though we aren't particularly organised about them. It's nice to have options. We don't have to limit ourselves. As consenting adults, we are free to explore the pleasures of one another without restraint (metaphorically) and with restraint (literally). As I have transitioned into middle age, I have become intensely bored by puritanical attitudes toward sex. The abnegation of pleasure, the valorisation of erotic austerity, hold no sway. To what end do we deny our desires? Who does our dissatisfaction really satisfy? But being sex-positive, libertine, open to the fullness of an erotic life is not apolitical. It does not happen in a vacuum. As Amia Srinivasan notes in The Right to Sex, 'the sex-positive gaze risks covering not only for misogyny, but for racism, ableism, transphobia, and every other oppressive system that makes its way into the bedroom through the seemingly innocuous mechanism of 'personal preference''. We want what we want, yes, but are we willing to interrogate why and what has influenced our desires? In some ways, sex toys liberate us from some of these questions. It is just us and, perhaps our partner(s) and a girthy length of silicone or strands of leather bound to a handle or metal nipple clamps dangling from a chain, and the possibilities of where our erotic imaginations lead us. In My Toys, we see some of what that looks like, a gorgeous atlas of abundant desire. It is a fantasy, though, to believe sex toys might free us from the ills of oppression. In some parts of the world, in some states within the US, the purchasing and/or owning of sex toys is verboten. In Thailand, they are considered obscene objects. Sex toys cannot be imported to the Maldives. They cannot be sold in Alabama, or Mississippi, and under Texas Penal Code 43.23 an adult can only legally own five or fewer sex toys. How the Lone Star state enforces that law, I couldn't tell you. It all comes down to control, but pleasure is one realm where few people will allow themselves to be controlled (nonconsensually). We must deny ourselves all kinds of things, for all kinds of reasons, but pleasure, that is ours. We have every right to embrace our libidinal selves, licitly and illicitly, alone, or with strangers, or partners or others. It is how we can surrender to the whelm of desire. It is why, in the images here, we see the smirks, but we also see defiance. Put another way: for our fifth wedding anniversary this year, my wife Debbie gave me a piece of art from Joseph Beuys, a 3inx8in piece of paper with the word 'SURRENDER' in bold type. My cheeks immediately warmed because I knew the art was not just art. It was an offering. Bustie, 49, burlesque performer, and Tony, 60, Amsterdam, Netherlands Bustie: Sex has really changed for Tony and me as our bodies have changed. For me, it's perimenopause, and Tony has a spinal cord injury. Tony was active in the BDSM scene and I was always a really sexual person, so there has been a lot of grief. But it was nice to take the toys out for the photo. Some of them we hadn't used for a while – it was a bit of a sad moment. You think, where have you been? Tony has started to give some away to friends because they should be enjoyed – especially the beautiful leather ones. Bodies change over time. What feels good now might not feel good 10 years later. What's changed is which toys we play with. To wield a whip, you need to be able to stand, balance, have strength in your arm; it's quite a workout. And for me, sometimes with perimenopause, genitals respond differently, and vibrators feel more intense. So we're using different, gentler toys now, much more foreplay and much more lube. The root of the stigma is the patriarchy. A straight man who has a lot of sex isn't shamed about it, but everyone else is. Frida, 37, sex shop owner, Milan, Italy My first sex toy was horrible! I got it in my early 20s from a shop in Berlin – this terrible red, huge, too hard vibrator. I think I used it once and put it in a drawer. It was a bit of a wake-up call for me. I thought, maybe I have to be the person who brings higher-quality products to people. So 10 years ago I opened a shop called Wovo (which sounds like the Italian word for 'egg'). It could trivially be considered a sex shop, but I wanted it to be a point of connection for Milanese subcultures, where people don't have to feel as if they need to hide or justify themselves for having unconventional sexual preferences. It's a place where the topic is, first and foremost, normalised. We organise sex parties which have strict rules about consent and people as sexual subjects, not objects, and this also challenges a very rooted cultural idea about owning one's partner. Social media has done a great job on the normalisation of sex and masturbation, but also of the non-desire for sex. It's important to make all people feel included. I also think the influence of family in Italy means that we inherit a cultural legacy of fascism from our grandparents, which obviously limits sexual freedom and gender expression. Historically, we have not been a particularly rebellious country that fought for its rights; whereas in Spain, for example, the feminist struggle has made itself heard much more. Griffon, 45, artist and entrepreneur, New York, US (photographed in Austin, Texas) I grew up in the Oregon countryside before the internet was around to answer my questions, give me ideas, or offer something like Amazon to deliver what I needed at a moment's notice. I used to use all sorts of things: tampons before I even got my period, vegetables from the garden – once I sculpted a dildo out of duct tape. Looking back, I am amazed at how resourceful I was. Now I love to use the Hitachi Magic Wand with my partners, combined with a thrusting dildo if I'm playing alone. Where sex toys are winning in my life is that I actually orgasm. I'm amazed at how often men don't even care if we enjoy it. Coco, 30, clinical sexologist, Thailand Sex is not just pleasure – it's resistance. Every time I claim ownership of my desires, I reject the patriarchal script that says my body exists for male consumption. Society polices women's sexuality through slut-shaming, purity culture, and reproductive control – but my autonomy is my rebellion. Whether I embrace celibacy, casual sex, self-pleasure, or committed intimacy, the power lies in my decision. Sex toys are illegal here in Thailand; talking about them has become how I 'screen' people. If someone claims they're open-minded but then says legalising sex toys is 'morally debatable'? Out. After sharing my story, I realised how many people were waiting for someone to say out loud that it's OK to like sex. To have a body that doesn't fit some bullshit 'standard'. To unapologetically take up space in a world that tells us to be quiet, ashamed, and small. I do it because the second I did, people exhaled. Enkiny, 29, artist, Qingdao, China I don't see any difference between the topic of sex and something like food – I can say I like spicy or sweet flavours, and I can express my love for sex toys. However, with older generations like my parents', I would never talk about sex toys in front of them; it's still something they would find difficult to accept. In my art, I explore themes of self-awareness, including sexuality. That is a result of the social environment we live in. My German friends and I can discuss sex, and there's no embarrassment. On the other hand, in China, most people tend to avoid the topic. My ex-partner and I both believed that sex toys were an important part of enhancing our experiences. But when I was gifted a whip, that took me by surprise! Serena, 35, nurse, Florence, Italy For me, sex is a necessity. I crave it and think it's essential in my relationship above all. As a homosexual woman, toys take the pleasure of penetration to a higher level. In long-term relationships, they encourage you to discover yourself and your partner. Also when you imagine how to first use them, it's fun. At the moment, the curve dildo is my favourite, because of its shape and dimensions. There aren't many spaces where you can share thoughts about sexuality without being judged. I don't really care what others think of my personal life – it's called personal for a reason. By showing myself to the public, I'd like to encourage people to live freely. Nadia, 36, geophysicist, Kilamba, Angola For me, sex is a synonym of relaxation. It's a biological manifestation of the fact we were born to complement one another. This is my favourite toy, but for me they are mere curiosity – I can live without them. Enrica, 33, data visualisation manager, Milan, Italy Sometimes with my partner I felt blocked, and so initially I used sex toys alone to try to get back in touch with myself and my body. The sensations you get when you know your body are totally different. It unlocks pathways to emotional connection with a partner, and also creates a connection with yourself and with your body that you then carry into the rest of your life. I bought my first dildo about two years ago out of curiosity, during a Black Friday sale. After using it, I wondered why I hadn't done it sooner and why none of the people close to me had told me to do it. My favourite depends on my mood, but it's probably the clit sucker. Talking about sex feels normal for me, like I'm showing tools that should be part of everyone's lives. You don't have to work in the sex toy industry for it to be normalised; you can work in analytics and still chat with people about it. I think while there's still stigma, we are more able to create sex-positive spaces. When people see this picture of me, reactions are split between positivity and, 'You're crazy to expose yourself like this!' and 'Are they all yours?' Daniel, 30, PA to an MP, Berlin, Germany Sex for me means joy, personal freedom and emancipation. Sexuality constitutes an important part of me as a human being. I have a positive idea of sex and admire the variety of sexual experiences, be it random or intimate, sensitive, rough or whatever. I prefer casual human bodily contact over the use of sex toys, which I have barely used with other people. But I still see them as a vital part of my sex life. It's easy fun that is available 24/7. Many people use sex toys – they bring joy and pleasure. Why shouldn't I speak publicly about them? Carmen, 38, motion graphic designer, Barcelona, Spain Sex is a way to discover yourself, a way to try new things and see what we like and don't like – and that evolves and changes. Over the past five years, I went into a research phase around my sexuality, and sexuality in general – reading books, listening to podcasts and so on. Reading about sex toys and sex education made me want to test out new things. I realised that at times, particularly when I was young, I was doing things not for my own pleasure, but because in some way someone told me to. I bought my first sex toy in 2011 after watching a Sex and the City episode where they were talking about the Rabbit. Right now, my favourite one is ceramic; I love beautiful objects, so that's a factor when choosing one. I'm tired of society always wanting us to shut up about sex. People have kinks, women masturbate just as men do and no, not everyone likes the same things. There are still taboos around it but I hope that talking about sex, self-pleasure and kinks is getting more normalised. Jessica, 35, cartoonist, Amsterdam, Netherlands My introduction to the world of sex toys was nothing short of iconic. I grew up in Maryland in a strong matriarchal family. When I was about 18 my mom found out I was having sex, sat me down and said: 'When it comes to your pleasure, you can't always rely on men to get the job done.' Then, with a knowing smile, she handed me some cash. 'Here's some money for a vibrator.' So armed with her encouragement and the legendary Rabbit vibrator, I embarked on a journey of self-discovery and took control of my own pleasure. It took me years to realise I could bring my partner into this process. Men often have a fear of sex toys because they think, 'But where am I in this?' Men grew up being told the goal is to perform and women were taught to fake orgasms and centre male pleasure. I still think a big problem is that many women don't know that their own pleasure is valid. Sex toys are a normal part of many people's lives, yet a lot of shame still surrounds them. I moved to the Netherlands a decade ago and found myself living in this 17-person university flat, heartbroken, unemployed and embarrassed about my life. So I decided to draw about it. That led to the creation of Vanillacooldance, my cartoon on a mission to break taboos about sexuality and relationships. By sharing my stories and the thousands I get back, we all collectively realise that we're not alone. Silence breeds shame. Alexis, 46, writer, Berlin, Germany Toys teach me to slow down and savour new pleasure paths. My ex-partner gifted me a toy for my 40th birthday. My clitoris was thrilled! Now I test them for the brand. I wish we were given toys as teenagers as part of public education, before we even had partnered sex. Because from a female perspective, I think we are overtly and subconsciously taught that we are here to give pleasure, to perform pleasure and to be receptive to this external force. And that creates a really messed-up feedback loop. If we were to give a young lady of maybe 16 a toy to start to explore her body, it would help de-stigmatise self-pleasure and agency. Can you imagine the dialogue that would open up around that? Hugo, 31, painter, and Tania, 34, performance artist and acrobat, Berlin, Germany Tania: Sex should be playful and exploratory, a way of showing love and affection to yourself and your partner. Toys are the perfect way to experience new sensations and intensify existing ones, and also to explore outside the gender roles of sex. I came out as queer not long ago and it was life-altering to realise that if I wanted a big and beautiful pink cock, I could have one. It has been a slow journey of self-discovery with my own desires and sexuality. Growing up femme-presenting and a people-pleaser, sex was more about the other person than my own experience of pleasure. My first toy was a little bullet vibrator that my roommate in college went to buy with me when one drunken night I told her I had never had an orgasm. It wasn't until I met Hugo that I really got into sex toys. I remember being a little overwhelmed and excited seeing his collection for the first time, and almost surprised that he had so many toys designed for female pleasure. I had never had a partner who was interested in pleasing me without reciprocal expectations. I grew up in a household that never discussed sex. I was born in Italy, where you don't even talk about tampons; then I went to Catholic school in Georgia, US. Our sex education was basically just showing all the diseases you could get – it stunted my sexuality. Living in Berlin, and with this relationship in particular, I felt excited and safe exploring my sexuality. Our connection has only deepened through the use of sex toys; they allow us to please each other in ways we never thought possible. Hugo: I'm a surrealist painter and include sex toys in my paintings. When I was growing up, there was an idea that sex toys were only for women or old people. Men can be scared of them. First, there's a bit of homophobia; then also the idea that if you introduce one into your relationship, you're admitting you're not enough for your woman. But toys bring a lot of pleasure and fun, especially in a couple situation. Gulim, 41, writer/content designer, Almaty, Kazakhstan I don't have a partner right now, so toys help me not to lose interest in sex. A close friend owns a sex shop and gave me my first one. I don't use it any more, but keep it as a souvenir. At the moment, my favourite is the Womanizer; I call it the Porsche of vibrators. In Kazakhstan, the topic of sex is taboo. When I published photos of myself in underwear on social networks, several people said overweight women should be ashamed to show themselves. I want to fight prejudices about overweight women. We are also beautiful, sexy, love sex and orgasms.
