When we think of sex, we want to be thinking of pleasure. After all, Mother Nature designed sex to feel incredibly good while we’re doing it, and even better in the hours that follow, when our bodies are flooded with a cascade of feel-good hormones.

In truth, sex is a splendid mix of pleasure and pain.

The BDSM world embraces pain as a stimulant, and sadly, research shows that 1 in 10 women find sex painful.²

Sex need not be painful and should not be painful if you don’t want it to be. …

The Most Important Lessons Series

Most Important Lessons is a series of ten letters to my teenage daughter. When she was one year old, I helped her learn to walk and talk. Now, these lessons on healthy sexuality are the most important I can teach her. In this one, I tackle periods and the pesky idea that women are somehow the second sex.

At its heart, this is a letter about shame. It is a shame fueled by three great lies. Without them, we would awaken to realize that there is no greater blessing than being born a woman.

Dear Eve,

Sitting amongst a circle…

Celebrating Medium’s $500 bonus!

Kudos to Medium for investing in1,000 writers in April, boosting our monthly earnings by $500. May it be the first step in a new ethos of partnership between Medium corporate and its hard-working freelance writers.

When it comes to 21st-century technologies, I suspect that hindsight will demonstrate that Medium, alongside biggies like YouTube and Twitter, is a winner when it comes to applying the insights of what is known as “persuasive technology.”

What Is Persuasive Technology?

Based on the theories of Behavioral Researcher BJ Foggs, Persuasive Technology, recently rebranded “Behavioral Design,” has arguably been the most impactful idea of the…

May is National Masturbation Month

There are so many unexpected benefits of being an active Medium user. Were it not for this community, I would never have known that May is National Masturbation Month. Even better, when learning about the existence of National Masturbation Month and having the reaction, “C’mon?! Who made that up?!” Medium offered up this excellent reporting by Kiki Wellington on the topic. It’s about activism, folks! Give it a read.

To be good citizens, this is not a “National Month of…” that we want to miss.

Every great sex writer on Medium has published her own…

Well, I mean it...

You know, I made this sweet little survey to get to know my Substack subscribers better and for fun, published it on here today. (It's about sex...) All day, men have been filling it out, and so far 50% of those who have rated their level of satisfaction with their partnered sex lives in the toilet and identified reading our writing as the ray of light that is helping them to feel that they're growing sexually. I didn't list anything remotely like "reading work on Medium" as an option. They entered it as free text.

I…

But, it was still too late to save my marriage

Even though he ruled my every move for months, I only met my Dom one time in the flesh. We never slept together. Instead, he begged that we run away together. When I refused, we began my own initiation as a Domme. While it is not a title I now use, my months under his tutelage transformed how I see the world and all relationships.

Ours was not a model Dom/sub relationship and not one I recommend. It was shrouded in lies, a tangled web whose unraveling sent us both…

Years ago, I used to run emotional support groups for teenage girls. The program is faith-based and is designed to offer the girls access to a mentor who is not their parent, who can help them to navigate the ebbs and flows of teenage life.

I loved the work.

Month after month, as our groups would come together, girls would open their hearts, sharing their hopes and their fears, their certainty that they were not good enough, that everyone was always watching, but that despite it all, there was a uniqueness in them if the world would only stop to…