Some kids stayed up late to watch naughty movies. Some kids stayed up late to watch The Simpsons. When I was a kid, I’d stay up late in my room with earphones plugged into the TV and the lights off watching Talk Sex with Sue Johanson, a show my parents wouldn’t have approved of me watching. Oops.

Maybe it was the first sign that I was destined to be a sex columnist, but all I knew at that time was that I was fascinated with sex. I was young, so I had no desire to actually have sex, but the idea of it – he puts his penis where!? – was totally intriguing to me.  Years of absorbing all the information I could – thank you Loveline and Savage Love – I became the kid all the other kids came to with their sex questions. Not that I had any actual experience at that point, but having religiously listened to various old people talk about sex, I kinda knew what I was talking about.

Being from Canada, I was lucky enough to receive comprehensive sex education from my school from grade four to grade nine… even if sometimes my teachers didn’t know completely what they were talking about (seriously, grade nine gym teacher, it’s not called the prostrate gland). It makes me sad to know that abstinence-only sex ed is being taught at most schools in the US.

Reading the comments from my article last week, it became pretty clear to me that the basics of safe sex is a blurry area for some people because they just didn’t have anyone to teach them. So, here it is ladies and gents, a basic, honest guide to safe sex. Not from some old sexual health nurse or a creepy gym teacher, but from a sex columnist who still gets some on a semi-regular basis:

Oh, and because some of you missed out on this special day in sex ed, I feel you need to see this before reading on. It’s like a rite of passage — and the video I had to watch was even worse.
Anyways, some things to remember: Read More »

We talk a lot about birth control around here (a natural progression from our daily musings about sex). We think its ability to stop babies is pretty badass, but many of us aren’t sure if that is worth all the crappy side effects: headaches, bloat, moodiness, debilitating cramps….We seriously thought we had it pretty bad until we found out that all of our suffering was nothing compared to those unlucky ladies who opted for the birth control patch.

While it was marketed as every woman’s dream birth control option (“Lower estrogen! Lasts all month! No need to remember those pesky daily pills!”), it has recently become every woman’s worst nightmare.

“The patch actually delivered much higher doses of estrogen than the pill; Johnson & Johnson failed to reveal this to the public for six years. At least fifty deaths have been attributed to the patch because of this, with thousands more women reporting alarming symptoms.”

The people behind the patch have been dealing with major lawsuits from patch users who experienced blood clots, strokes and heart attacks! Read More »