With so much sex information and advice out there, it can be a real anxiety-provoking hunt to find something that’s right for you.
In particular if you:
- Are new to the journey of discovering yourself or others sexually
- Don’t fit into mainstream moulds or images of sexual identity
- Have survived sexual violence or a traumatic experience
- Want to explore what turns you on
- Feel as though you are ‘weird’ and looking for connection (and relief)
- Have kids and are freaking out about having ‘the sex’ talks
- Really aren’t sure what great sex ‘should’ feel like for you or a partner
It’s hugely challenging because you can be subjected to unforgettable horrors by the most innocent of searches.
Ethical sex has never been hotter, but how can you discover your own body and your own gurus without being scarred for life along the way?
Here are 7 fantastic sexy sources for genuine information:
1) Cyndi Darnell
(Therapist. Coach. Mentor. Sexologist)
Cyndi is an Australian sex therapist now located in New York City who has reached the heights of celebrity status for good reason. She’s smart, qualified, gentle, warm, fun, honest, intuitive, supportive of diversity, and provides excellent ideas for assisting all folks of all experience levels with sexual dilemmas.
Cyndi provides a number of options for working with her. She offers online courses, runs workshops, and you can email or talk with her on Skype. But her website also has wonderful free resources: pick up her extraordinarily thorough freebie workbook by signing up for her blog (I’m on her list and it’s a breath of fresh air to only receive the odd email, always with something great in it).
If you think Cyndi looks familiar but not sure how, you may have seen her on the ABC series Luke Warm Sex (see more below).
2) Autostraddle
(Online Magazine)
From their website: Autostraddle’s girl-on-girl culture is rooted in basic social values and ideals — we want women to feel good about themselves, we want equality and visibility for all marginalized groups and ultimately, we’d like to change the world.
We seek to be a fresh, energizing voice for lesbian, bisexual and queer women, one that takes the reader seriously and encourages intelligent discourse, one that entertains with funny, uncensored and brutally honest conversation and content and one that also provides photos of hot girls.
Sure, but where’s the sex stuff? Follow this link. There’s a huge range of blog posts that not only cover queer lady sex, but an awful lot of important information about women’s bodies, pleasure, and inclusive of racially diverse, trans, kink, and disabled voices.
There’s gonna be stuff here that isn’t for you- but there’s bound to be something that IS and it’s almost guaranteed to be something that deepens your understanding of yourself and anyone you’re sharing a bed with.
3) Luke Warm Sex
(TV series)
Luke Warm Sex is a surprisingly gentle and personal journey by awkward Australian comic Luke McGregor. Luke is a cis gendered straight male in his 30’s and suffers from some pretty major visits of anxiety. He is a virgin but this show is not a journey about ‘getting laid’. It is instead about being better at sex. What a revelation- a bloke on the telly seeking to understand himself and women so he can share pleasure and deepen connection!
He finds everything about bodies and sex extremely uncomfortable, but he discovers his own sexual self via some surprisingly sweet moments, a number of which Cyndi Darnell helps him along with: like sleeping naked in fancy sheets; learning about the vulva; and exploring fantasies.
This show is for anyone who’s struggling with ideas of how to ‘do’ intimacy (if you can handle the awks). It can usually be found livestreaming on Netflix or ABC TV iview.
Ps: This show changed Luke’s life and relationship struggles. Turns out being vulnerable on TV has it’s benefits!
Pps: Coincidentally, I appear very briefly in an episode of Luke Warm Sex because I was in the same audience seeing a sex revolutionary talk: Cindy Gallop…
4) Make Love Not Porn
(Ethical pornography channel or, the preferred name, ‘real world sex’)
In my opinion, businesswoman Cindy Gallop is a straight-up legend. She talks about sex and consent and loving yourself and others direct from personal experience, and she’s grown something exceptional from that place. Make Love Not Porn TV is a subscriber-based ‘pornography’ channel in which the ‘stars’ are fully consenting couples, singles and groups of all orientations and genders. You can communicate with these folks, and their stories are part of the experience.
It has to be said that Cindy does not mince words and if you don’t like swears or unfiltered sex talk then she is not for you (even her infamous Ted Talk- which is how I discovered her- starts out guns blazing).
But don’t let a bit of smut talk fool you. Cindy is not messing around when it comes to consent and ethical pleasurable sex. The categories on her channel are named by the ‘receiver’ rather than the ‘giver’ for example.
You might be surprised to learn how many types of people want and need her help. In my own email exchange with Cindy, I discovered that she is contacted by parents daily wanting to know how to talk with their kids about sex, and young people wanting to understand how to give and receive pleasure instead of performing. So much so that she’s trying to expand her empire into educational tools (no mean feat in a world terrified of sex).
And the number one reason people unsubscribe from her channel? Because it’s too loving. Too intimate. Yep. We live in a world where fake sex, completely staged, often violent, is more comfortable than watching two people going at it who treat each other with deep loving kindness. Check out the ‘how this works’ page which has NO IMAGES if you’re curious.
5) Fukability: Disability and Sexuality
(Queer and disability rights creative blog)
Jax Jacki-Brown no longer updates this blog (you can instead follow her broader disability activism on Facebook here) but it was one of my favourites. There’s poetry, stories, videos and articles all of which will expand your mind about your own body and what should be possible in the world of sex if we lived in a society that genuinely focused on equality and fair access for all (and also: beautiful bold words sounding good together = sexy).
But who is Jax (other than an Aussie legend)? “Jax Jacki Brown is a disability & queer rights activist, public speaker, writer, spoken-word performer and disability sex educator. Disability is not a personal tragedy but a sociopolitical question.”
Check out this spoken word piece “I want to go down” to get the vibes.
Ps: Jax and her partner became parents fairly recently, so you can follow that journey on Facebook if you want, which includes such topics as IVF in the context of queer and disabled politics.
6) The One a Day Project
(Resources and workshops for adults and parents)
“Preventing the sexual assault of one young person every single day”.
Brought to you from yet another Australian babe doing amazing things. Lily Isobella lives in my hood, and offers loads of professional, creative, inspired, important (vital) and just bloody brave stuff on the topic of sex.
Talking about consent appropriately with a 3 year old? Check. Growing your ability to love and connect with yourself and/or a partner sexually and emotionally? Check. Talking openly and honestly about the hardest stuff (but also admitting when you’ve royally fucked up and owning it)? Check.
Have a squiz at ‘the one a day project’, and get yourself to a Lily Isobella-shaped workshop when she’s in your home town.
7) Let’s Talk About Real Sex
(Instagram account)
This social media feed deserves a bunch more love than it currently gets (or maybe followers are just uncomfortable ‘liking’ stories about real-life sex). Basically, the creator of this feed invites folks to email her and be interviewed about anything to do with sexual identities and experiences. The polaroids you can see in the image above, screenshot, can be as anonymous or identifying as the people choose.
This enables people to tell the story THEY want to, and there’s a vast range of them. What is this thing we call a ‘sex life’? What happens to this sex life when you get cancer? When you’re going through gender transition? When your life partner cheats on you? When you masturbate for the first time? When you work as a dominatrix? When you ‘open up’ your marriage? When your fantasy is to shag Harry Potter? When you’re impacted by violence? When you’re fat-shamed in bed? When you really deeply love someone? When you grew up internalising a ‘sex is dirty’ story?
Sometimes the stories and the matching images are surprising: if nothing else, it’s a great way to check in with your unconscious bias. But I think it’s a lot more than that.
We really need these stories to tell us about the REAL world we occupy. Understand the genuine impacts of actions we take as well as discover that- mostly- we’re ok people, no matter how ‘freaky’ we feel.
What did you think of this list? If you have others to add, please do in the comments!
If you’re looking for a sex-positive and sensitive counsellor, don’t hesitate to get in touch with me here. Or just sign up for the free blog here.
Main Image: Image by atlantis0815 on Pixabay. Image from Fukability: "Jax Jacki Brown's legs in rainbow stockings draped over the wheel of her wheelchair, wearing black Doc's with red laces." Image from 'one a day' project: by 3643825 on Pixabay
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