Reading Time: 3 minutes If someone claims to see “sex differences”—apparently concrete and non-varying differences between men and women—I can be reasonably sure that they’re sexist, or that they benefit from sexism, which is basically the same thing. The whole notion of “sex difference” is somewhat outdated, along with “sex role” which we now call “gender role,” but the […]
Sex & Gender
Exploring sex and gender from the secular perspective.
Posted inSex & Gender
Sex work isn’t always about sex
Reading Time: 4 minutes When I was 25, my friend and I went to New Orleans for a working vacation, and found ourselves in a fairly new club on the famous Bourbon Street. It was an old building that began its life as a brothel. You’re shocked, I’m sure. It had a window that faced the street where the […]
Posted inArts
Is the Pussy Riot ‘Punish’ music video calling out Putin and the Russian Orthodox Church?
Reading Time: 3 minutes I don’t typically write about music, but the Satantic references (along with some interesting commentary on Putin and the Russian Orthodox Church) in the latest Pussy Riot music video, definitely caught my attention. While it’s certainly not the first time a band has used its platform to spotlight current issues, whether social or political, and […]
Posted inSex & Gender
Sex work is work: Decriminalization is how we make it safer
Reading Time: 3 minutes In my writing about my job as an adult entertainer, I haven’t been shy about my criticisms of prostitutes. At least when they are working out of the strip club. Not just critical either. I’ve been kind of mean. When I started dancing, the line between stripper and prostitute was very clear. Strippers were entertainers […]
Posted inCulture
Why I started writing about my life as a stripper
Reading Time: 3 minutes Recently, someone asked me why I started writing. While being a writer was always a dream of mine, it didn’t feel like an attainable goal. More like the silly pipe dream of a nerdy seventh-grader. But after I started dancing, the idea of writing a memoir began to lurk in the shadows of my mind. […]
Posted inEducation
Yet another study found that sex education reduces teen pregnancies
Reading Time: 3 minutes Educating kids about sex is far better than pretending they won’t have it before marriage
Posted inCulture
Soulmates? No. The person who changes your tire at 10pm in 10-degree weather? Yes.
Reading Time: 3 minutes As someone who studies non-monogamy and the messed-up gender norms in heterosexual relationships, I’ve never been super into the concept of soulmates. It sounds nice on paper, but I’m more interested in proof, like who has your back when the going gets tough. One of the main points I’ve made about non-monogamy in the past […]
Posted inSex & Gender
Conversion therapy: inventing new terms for old quackery
Reading Time: 4 minutes When Denise Shick was nine, her daddy told her that he’d much prefer to be her mummy. He eventually transitioned and began living as a woman. That experience apparently proved so emotionally damaging that Shick embarked on a mission to spare others from the “horrors” of homosexuality and transgenderism, writing back in 2019 that “accepting […]
Posted inSex & Gender
Dr. Phil ambushed trans guests with online troll Matt Walsh
Reading Time: 3 minutes When activists Addison Rose Vincent and Ethan Alexander were invited on “Dr. Phil,” they didn’t expect Matt Walsh to be there too.
Posted inPsychology
I loved being a stripper, but I wouldn’t recommend it
Reading Time: 4 minutes I loved being a stripper. The liberation from traditional employment—schedules, pants—was fabulous. I have never quite fit the mold. I tried fitting in, shutting up, and just going along with it. But I never really managed to maintain the façade, however hard I tried. When I answered an ad in a newspaper to be a […]