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Welcome to NSFW Sunday!

There’s no one perfect way to have sex, but the pressure to “do it right” can be overwhelming, writes Fancy Feast on working in a sex shop and as a sex education:

“The excitement people felt buying their first-ever vibrator, a new lube, or a strap-on harness and dildo to use with a partner — that was contagious. But many of my customers were conditioned to believe that if they bought the right thing, they would suddenly have a hot sex life, or that they, alone, could do the heavy lifting for themselves and their partner.

That was a common thread running through my next job at the same company, as a sex educator running workshops on specialized topics, that took me to universities, to medical schools, to bachelorette parties. Participants expressed the hope that if they could just learn to give a perfect blow job, or figure out the magic words to say to their partner, they would be transformed into liberated, all-powerful, multiorgasmic beings with perfect relationships. But it’s never been that simple. Navigating sex will always also be a question of navigating the biases and traumas and fears and power imbalances that we and our culture are riddled with. And in some cases, for some people, there is a dark side to unrelenting (sex) positivity. The pressure around sex to feel that you’re doing it right, despite all those complications — and having a great time doing it — can inflict its own kind of damage.”

How do you know if you’ve had an orgasm, anyway? (And was that it?) At Allure, Vanessa Marin writes:

“Here’s the thing with orgasms: your first ones are typically pretty small. Sometimes they hardly feel like anything at all. A lot of the women I work with are disappointed by their first orgasms, so you’re definitely not alone; it’s simply because your body is getting used to what it needs to reach orgasm and what the orgasms themselves feel like. I know you’re feeling nervous now, but don’t lose hope. Over time, and with practice, your orgasms will get stronger and more pleasurable.”

Here’s what your astrological sign says about how you date online.

At Longreads, Chelsea G. Summers writes about rough sex and “rough sex” and how false progressives can use kink as a cover for abuse: “As a legal strategy, the ‘rough sex defense,’ legal scholars have noted, acts like a kinkified version of the ‘she asked for it’ rape defense. Whether or not it was rough sex, there’s no question that this is rough justice.”

At her blog, Stoya wrote about the Whorearchy — “the idea that sex workers and sex-adjacent workers can be ranked into a hierarchy, the least vulnerable and least judged at the top and the most vulnerable and most judged at the bottom” — and how it’s used to justify in-fighting among sex workers.

At Open Democracy, Chus Álvarex, a non-sex worker, writes about the importance of centring sex workers’ experiences.

“Realizing I’m bisexual helped me learn how to have the sex I wanted,” writes Krutika Mallikarjuna.

What counts as “sexual well-being” is one of the big unanswered questions in sex research.

Here’s how to edge.

At Oh Joy Sex Toy, Alyssa talks about physical and sexual healing.

Merging households? Make space for each other, literally and figuratively. Or just don’t live together.

The more conscientious you are, the better the sex you have.

At Vice, Dhanlissa Pringels wrote about trying shibari to find out why people like it.

In relationships, the best position to have on a problem is on the same side as your partner:

“It’s probably fair to assume that this only works if the relationship in question is a solid one — if you know and trust the other person well enough to assume by default that you do, in fact, have that point of commonality. But if you’re there, then no matter how gridlocked the conflict seems, no matter how at odds your viewpoints appear to be, there’s always, somewhere deep down, some mutual desire. At the very least, that desire is to stop arguing and resolve things — if you both want that, then hey, you’re both on the same side of the problem. And voilà, you’re now starting from a place of agreement.”

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