Talking sex with your doctor isn’t always easy. Whether you are afraid she or he will judge you,  you just don’t feel comfortable sharing the intimate details of your life between the sheets, or you can’t think straight with a speculum between your legs, many people get tight lipped in the doctor’s office. But that doesn’t mean you don’t have questions.

We thought we’d help and every Thursday our friend Dr. Lissa Rankin will be answering your questions. The ones you couldn’t ask your doctor in person and didn’t really trust the Yahoo community to answer for you. Just leave your questions in the comments, or send em over to us. (We’ll keep it all anonymous for you.) Dr. Lissa will answer anything – really, anything – about sex and other lady things. Don’t be shy; she’s waiting for ya!

Q: I am not in a serious relationship, so I don’t have sex very often. When I do, though, it always hurts. Sometimes even more than the first time. Why is that? Is there something I can do so it doesn’t hurt anymore?

A: Oh, sweetie, I’m sorry! Sex is supposed to be fun, right? Isn’t sex always easy, painless, and orgasmic in the movies? Maybe so, but what you’re experiencing is not uncommon in real life.  In fact, I suffered from the same problem myself back when I was in my twenties.  Have you seen a gynecologist about this issue? There are a number of reasons you may be experiencing pain, and your doctor might be able to help you. Read More »

Trojan, Durex, Lifestyles…watch out!  A new study indicates that there is another method of birth control that may be almost as effective as condoms in preventing pregnancy.  The best part is, it doesn’t require any pill, patch, or plastic; doesn’t include side effects of weight gain or nausea; and there’s no wasted rip’n’roll time.

It’s withdrawing, or “pulling out” as it is often referred.

The study, by sex researcher Rachel K. Jones, indicates that “if the male partner withdraws before ejaculation every time a couple has vaginal intercourse, about 4 % of the couples will become pregnant over the course of a year.”  With an 18% failure rate, the pull-out method comes pretty close to matching up with that of the condom’s 17% failure rate.

Whaaaa?  Haven’t we been taught forever that pulling out is the worst method of birth control? Haven’t we been giving up on the pleasure of condomless sex because it’s almost guaranteed that pulling out will leave us preggers? And, sidenote, condoms have a 17% failure rate? Why did no one tell me?! Read More »

[The following post is courtesy of Vanessa Cullins, M.D., Vice President of Medical Affairs at Planned Parenthood. Upon speaking with Vanessa and asking for information on STDs we began discussing HIV/AIDS. Naively, I mentioned that college kids are safe and know to protect themselves against this deadly disease. Turns out, I was wrong, and thinking that way is incredibly dangerous.]

Once in a while, we get a variation of this question via e-mail: “I’m a woman in college, and I’m wondering if I still need to be worried about getting HIV. Isn’t it pretty much under control by now?”

HIV/AIDS is definitely still a threat — especially among young people and women. Today, women account for more than one-quarter of all new HIV/AIDS diagnoses, and women of color are especially affected by HIV infection and AIDS. The growing complacency about this deadly disease is alarming.  You cannot tell from looking at someone whether that person is infected with HIV or any other sexually transmitted disease (STD). That is why all sexually active people need to protect themselves against HIV. Read More »

Remember the days when a chaste woman wore a white wedding gown and saved herself for the honeymoon? Me neither. Times are changing, and so are society’s views on sex. Just look at prime-time television.

Gone are the days when the big Dawson’s Creek episode was the one that kept everyone glued to the screen trying to guess whether it was Joey and Jack, Pacey and Andy, or Dawson and Jen who finally took their relationship to the next level (remember that one?). Instead, we’ve got Blair and Chuck’s one night stand in the back of a limo (definitely remember that one!).

Outside of the small screen, relationships in the real world are dwindling. “Dating” is becoming a thing of the past, and casual sex is flourishing. The value of the once-prestigious “first time” isn’t such a big deal for many of us as it was for our mothers, aunts, or even our older sisters. Hell, my first time was not the stuff that teen romances are made of, but I walked away without any permanent emotional scars and afterwards, since it was out of the way, I was able to make better choices regarding who I chose to sleep with.

And yet, I couldn’t help but be surprised when my younger cousin proudly announced that sex was one of her favorite activities (albeit with a steady boyfriend, but still). Just a few years age difference, and there’s still a difference in our mindsets. Read More »

The world’s fattest man, Manuel Uribe, recently married his girlfriend of 2 years, Claudia Solis, in Mexico. This left many a women pondering “…and why am I still single?”

The answer is simple: You aren’t eating enough.

Studies show that overweight women have more sex than women of average weight. In fact, according to research done by the University of Hawaii and Oregon State, “Ninety-two percent of overweight women reported having a history of sexual intercourse with a man, as opposed to 87 percent of women with a normal body mass index.”

92%. N-I-N-E-T-Y-T-W-O.

That’s no small number…

Dr. Bliss Kaneshiro from the University of Hawaii’s School of Medicine said that “These results were unexpected and we don’t really know why this is the case.”

Maybe it’s because these women have a bit more to love; maybe they are self-confident without any crazy body issues; or maybe we are finally seeing that men are not attracted to super thin women, but rather to women with a more natural and curvy body.

Which would be great news for women everywhere. Especially me…as I sit here eating a bagel. So this Halloween, ladies, all I can say is: indulge in your favorite chocolatey treats!

It’ll up your chances of gettin laid!

[Editor's Note: New York Magazine does these Sex Diaries that are sometimes cool, sometimes lame. Sometimes they're interesting portrayals of every day life, and sometimes they make it seem like EVERYONE in New York City is having copious amounts of crazy sex -- which isn't always the case, btw. What would happen, I wondered, if some of CC's writers blogged about their sex life for a week? Would it be cooler? Funnier? More believable?

Let's see...]

DAY ONE

7:05 a.m. Boyfriend wakes me up to kiss me before he goes to work, like he does every morning. Like every morning, I feel guilty about my morning breath, but he doesn’t seem to mind.

3:45 Boyfriend comes home early and suggests a quickie.

3:46 Boyfriend catches my unenthusiastic response and tells me never mind. I feel awful, as I do every time I turn him down, but I’ve been cleaning all day without a shower and I had just finished an hour of wii fit so I was sore. I promise him that I’ll make it up to him later that night.

1:22 a.m. Come home from seeing a friend’s band play. Still too sore and tired for sex, so I offer him a blow job as soon as we get home. Read More »

He wants to do me.

He wants to do me not.

He wants to do me…

…Then never call again, do me, then tell all of his friends, do me, then flip out about my guy friends…the list goes on. If only the “He wants to do me” sentence could exist without the predictable post sex behavior, I would be living in a much more sexually satisfying world.

The problem with most guys who I have encountered is this: They really believe that if they have intercourse with a girl, she will flip out and suddenly be in love. Maybe all of the guys I know have simply given themselves too much credit because I’m always recycling the same kind of guy over and over again: Artsy and ARROGANT.

I suppose that, for me, there’s a degree of truth to this. But at the end of the day, I don’t want to be in love with anyone. Being in love is a shamefully painful experience to me, honestly. I’d rather be in the casual sex club…but the older I get..the harder it is to stay a member of that club. Read More »

Let’s face it; we’ve gotten to a point in time where “sex” comes into conversation more than last night’s game, politics, or the weather. Whether or not it’s being praised or shunned, it’s being talked about. After all, you guys see how often we talk about it here, don’t you? Sex is here, and I really doubt it’s going anywhere anytime soon.

That said, of course, there are still people who kind of linger on the edge. People who want to explore their sexual side, but are afraid of the way society will perceive them after the fact. People who really have no interest in actual intercourse, but still want to explore their “carnal” side, pardon the expression. For most girls and some guys, the quickie answer to this is usually some kind of sex toy.

There are TONS out there, some wonderful and some horrifying. And still, this is a bit too much for some people. What do you do if you fall into that category? No worries; there’s a whole line of products just for you. And I don’t mean vibrators that pretend to be ordinary items. I mean vibrators that actually legitimately think they’re ordinary items. Read More »

Occasionally during my down time at my “real person” job post college, I peruse my alma mater’s student newspaper online. I suppose it’s my way of living vicariously through the drama and events still going on at my beloved campus…which amazingly enough, still go on even without me. Today, I actually came across some surprising news that I was not aware of: College girls orgasm only HALF as much as college men. Sucks for us.

Now, I’m sure many things are running through your head right now as possible justifications for this statistic. I think we can all atest to the fact that most college hookups don’t exactly rock your world for a variety of reasons, (alcohol involved, inexperience, someone you don’t know extremely well, yada yada) so when you put it in perspective, it seems to make sense.

Apparently the survey was done by a professor at Stanford University. It questioned 4,000 students about their most recent hook-ups, which ranged from kissing to manual sex to oral sex to intercourse. The results showed that 44 percent of men had reached orgasm compared to 19 percent of women. More specifically, 70 percent of men climaxed during intercourse without oral sex beforehand, but only half the amount of females could do the same. Read More »

Looks like kids are still being weird about sex.

Researchers in Berkeley, California recently surveyed more than 900 middle school and high school students for a study in the Journal of Adolescent Health.

When presumably asked what constitutes keeping one’s virginity, “70 percent of kids 12 to 16 believe they’re virgins even if they’ve had oral sex – and 16 percent believe anal sex doesn’t count either.”

Look, once you start engaging in sexual activity, your virgin status goes hazy. Sure, you might not have done it, but if you’ve done everything under the sun except it, your technical virginity basically becomes a moot point. If you’re sexually experienced, you’re sexually experienced.

The “I’m still a virgin!” declaration after engaging in other sexual activities seems to be rooted in our society’s desperate fear of being labeled. Teenagers (especially girls) ultimately want to be “good”, but their hormones are pulling them in a completely different direction.

Doing everything except the big “penis into the vagina” thing allows someone to explore their sexuality while still remaining pure in the eyes of society.

Sex is a big thing. I don’t want to deny that. But the more pressure we put on teenagers about it, the more they’re going to do anything to make up excuses. Read More »