50 Great Articles & Essays about Sex
The best writing about sex, porn, prostitution and more, all free to read online
In order to transcend the discomfort that sex typically stirs, you may need to radically rethink desire, marriage, fidelity, and much more.
Despite the easing of taboos and the rise of hookup apps, Americans are in the midst of a sex recession.
The intensity of orgasm is sublime, but the gentle love cocktail that follows is what helps relationships to endure
American culture still treats disinterest in sex as something that needs to be fixed. What if any amount of desire—including none—was okay?
That's what I want to know. If you're going to wreck some other person's world, what's the good thing you're going to get?
Is the hookup culture an engine of female progress?
I've gone into more than a few relationships with the safest of intentions and discarded them soon after, and my hunch is that I'm not the only one...
Should you laugh off a lifetime of objectification – or get angry?
The numbers in my phone don't belong to the men who were best at fucking me, but the ones who were, and are, best at telling me how they would fuck me...
When I first met Hannah in graduate school I was a woman gone numb. I would do anything. Anytime. Anywhere...
At 13, who I was inside, who I wanted to be, didn't match the intentions of my body. Outside, there was no little girl to be loved innocently
Nobody would gasp if they heard a fifteen- or sixteen-year-old had lost her virginity. The clock was ticking
As it turns out, a Hideous Man marks practically every stage of my life...
I was saved around a bonfire the summer I turned 13...
How dating apps, social media and porn are reshaping tennager's lives
A recent scandal reveals how kids think about sexting--and what parents and police should do about it
A shocking tale of sexual assault in the digital age
Porn
Critics say that porn degrades women, dulls sexual pleasure, and ruins authentic relationships -- are they right?
Ever-faster feedback loops and micro-targeted digital porn are pushing human sexuality into some seriously weird places
American adolescents watch much more pornography than their parents know — and it’s shaping their ideas about pleasure, power and intimacy. Can they be taught to see it more critically?
The streaming sex empire may have done more to expand the sexual dreamscape than Helen Gurley Brown, Masters and Johnson, or Sigmund Freud.
As recently as 15 years ago, if somebody wanted vivid depictions of, say, two men simultaneously performing anal penetration on the same woman, securing such a delicacy would require substantial effort...
Struggling with the world’s, and his own, homophobia, one queer young man searches for intimacy in the world of internet porn.
Max Hardcore and other XXX pornographers awakened something dark in me. Or perhaps it was already there.
Porn is a crude business. Even the fantasies it sells have the feel of cheap disillusionment. What seduced me was the reality.
Sex Work
A three-part series on the global sex trade (
part 2, part 3)
A prostitute interviews a client.
A prostitute interviews a client.
Two conflicting but equally sentimental narratives of the lives of prostitutes -- and by implication the men who pay for their services -- confront each other at the moment...
The new prostitution economy
Is the growing market for male escorts a sign of female sexual liberation or just a re-run of the same old stereotypes?
Her first move, it must be said, was devastating.
Straddling my legs with her knees on my chair, she flicked her long blonde hair over the top of my head so that the two of us were now in a sort of dark, warm tent, eye to eye
A modern Robin Hood story: the strippers who stole from (mostly) rich, (usually) disgusting men and gave to, well, themselves.
The best articles about love and articles about relationships -- Great articles on love and articles on relationships
Interesting psychology articles from around the net -- Great articles about psychology -- A list of the best articles on psychology
A comprehensive review of the biological underpinnings of sexual behaviour, from flirting and courtship to infidelity and break-ups.
How cutting-edge research is helping to unravel the many complexities of female desire.
A critical look at the widely held belief that all men want to play the field, while women are programmed for monogamy.
Did sexual reproduction evolve to keep up with mitochondrial mutation?
The idea that millions of sperm are on an Olympian race to reach the egg is yet another male fantasy of human reproduction
Evolutionary theory says men stray to increase offspring, but what motivates women? Enter the mate-switching hypothesis
Sexual Deviance
Meet the founder of a support group for non-offending teen pedophiles who are struggling to find help and control their dark secret
When juveniles are found guilty of sexual misconduct, the sex-offender registry can be a life sentence
"No one," a probation officer said, "likes to think about what's back there."
This is Mitchell Gaff. Mitch lives in a special place. A facility the state of Washington created for sexual predators. Mitch's therapists think there's a chance that Mitch won't go raping again next time he has the opportunity. Which is a good thing. Because, soon, Mitch and the thirty men who live with him are getting out.
Coitus reservatus is an ancient technique promising bliss and longevity. Does orgasm data back up these tantric ideas?
Why men are quitting masturbation
What it's like to have sexsomnia
If I were in Paris, what would I do? Of course. Silly me. I'd take a lover
When I tell people that I recently finished serving a 10-year prison sentence for armed robbery, I often feel a question lingering in the air...
From the Wild West to the Wild White House, the author explores the blowjob’s emergence as the nation’s signature sex act...
A pick-up artist in Denmark
My analyst and I grew more intimately connected each week of treatment...
"The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex"
The science of female desire
Four journeys in the world alternate sexuality
The ultimate sex manual
An annotated anthology of sexual fantasies written by normal women
A memoir of submission and taboo