Sexploration
We’ve all been there. Giggling with our friends and pushing ourselves into a sex shop for the very first time. You enter through the iridescent bead curtain and are confronted with a whole new world: dildos of all sizes, vibrators of many colours, lube in each and every flavour, and lingerie in a range of lace and frills. There are fleshlights and buttplugs, handcuffs (fluffy and industrial), and mysterious rope and chains. You are shocked by the number of vessels, toys, and trinkets you don’t even have a name for.
In our adolescence and young adulthood, we are thrusted into the world of sex and sexuality. There’s a shitload to learn. Through experimentation and awkward encounters, we eventually learn what we like and want out of sex. We learn what toys work for us and how to nail that weird position just right. It might start as nervous pre-teen whispers, but it can bloom into something empowering.
Our individual relationship to sex is ever changing and definitely not linear. But that’s okay. The madonna-whore complex has a chokehold over society, making us feel like we have to be all in or all out. It’s okay to shuffle around in the middle or make your own stomping ground all together.
Experimentation is exciting, but can be vulnerable. Stigmas, pressures, and power dynamics in sex can cause distress and real harm. A lack of good (or any) sex-education is a huge culprit here. Most of our generation learnt about sex online, through porn or advice sites, and through conversations with friends and partners.
Sex ed is improving. Last year, new guidelines were released by the Ministry of Education around the teaching of relationships, gender diversity, consent, and porn. Consent is starting to make its way into sex education. But it’s something that many of us have had to learn ourselves: free, informed, and enthusiastic. For queer people, figuring out what sex looks like outside heteronormative bounds—without the distortions of how it’s represented in media—is a different journey altogether.
Not everyone chooses to engage in sex, and most of us have explicit boundaries about how and when we choose to have sex. This is part and parcel of learning what your sexual identity is. This issue, an annual feature of Salient’s calendar, aims to break down taboos about sex and help students find new ways to enjoy it. Sex is not easy, but it can be beautiful. We want you to reach a point where you feel empowered by sex—however you choose to engage in it, if at all.
In this issue, Zeynep takes us back in time to the days of stone and jade dildos, looking at how masturbation has always been a part of being human. Phoebe reflects on her own sex-ploration through university, crossing queer sex, kink, and polyamory. Delilah addresses her Tinder-tummy ache. To save you a failed attempt at a new sex position, we’ve got a listicle ranking the best from worst and the Salient team pitches in to review our favourite sex toys.
We hope you learn something new in these 40 pages, and that at some point, you find empowerment in sex. Be safe, get tested, get consent, and get sexy.