With the latest events surrounding Planned Parenthood, I’ve been thinking a lot about how much it costs to be responsibly sexually active. Birth control, condoms, PAP smears, STI tests, and Plan B — it adds up fast!

The first time I ever watched porn was completely by accident. I think I watched a movie, fell asleep, and woke up to people doin’ it. I was curious, but mostly disinterested, so I just turned it off and walked away. Since then, my experiences with porn have varied. There’s been a lot of nights sitting around drinking with friends and watching the weirdest videos we can find, but there have also been times when I’ve used porn as a tool.

Relationships can be great — always having someone to cuddle with, vent to, and share your favorite things with, but unfortunately things don’t always go as smoothly as planned. Sometimes once you get to know a person — once you spend more than a few month’s worth of sexy nights with them — you realize that maybe things aren’t all they’re cracked up to be.

The thing with sex is that you can’t always tell when it’s just a rut or when you’re sexually incompatible. I mean, at first glance they both look similar — lack of sex, frustration, etc. — but there are a few differences.

Sexual activity is anything but black and white. Hooking up, making out, and fooling around all mean different things to different people; I told my mom when I was about 15 that I had been making out with a boy, and had to spend the following 20 minutes explaining to her that making out was just French kissing. Apparently back in her day “making out” meant having sex — which is certainly different than my innocent round of tonsil hockey.

As a lady whose had a curiosity about sex education since childhood, I think it’s safe to say that I lost my sh*t when I found out that sex expert Sue Johanson, of Talk Sex with Sue fame, was stopping at my school as part of her speaking tour.

I think it’s safe to assume that after a few years of sexual activity, most people have a few “oh god” stories of bedroom disasters. These are the ones that make it into the “it doesn’t count” category. You know, when something happens that, you know, just shouldn’t have happened.

Searching the internet for a new and exciting topic for this week’s Sexy Time, I became increasingly more disappointed when I realized that the latest “news” hits for sex studies are really and truly nothing new.

For all of you MTV junkies out there, I’m sure you’re more than aware of the Skins US premiere. The show surprised viewers not only because it was actually decent, but because it apparently caused quite an uproar — turns out teenagers having sex, drinking, and doing drugs doesn’t sit too well with some adult viewers.

Between my new-found love for feminism, my interest in volunteering at a local rape crisis center, and the incredibly offensive non-consent debacle on Jezebel, the idea and principle of consent has been in my head a lot lately. It turns out it’s not quite as easy as that “no means no” sheet they hand out in health class – there’s more to giving consent than just not saying no.