(Content Note - NSFW pictures)

Penises are everywhere. Scratched into exam desks, scrawled on a sleeping friend’s arm in marker, sold in jelly and balloon form for hen parties. If asked to draw a penis, most people could come up with a cartoon rendering. I wonder how many could do the same for a clitoris.

I began to write this piece shortly before the Guardian launched their ‘Vagina Dispatches’. As I took their ‘Vagina 101’ quiz, I wasn’t really surprised at the low percentages of users correctly identifying the inner labia or vaginal opening. If we know this little about the external vulva, what do we know about the internal clitoris?

I suspect that the answer to that is that a lot of people, even those of us with vagina-based genitals, don’t know much about the extent of the clitoris inside us. Even if we’ve discovered our own or our partner’s, we might not know that the visible part is just the tip of the iceberg. After all, its full anatomy was only mapped in 1998. The clitoris is actually about the same size as the penis – it’s just mostly tucked away inside you. If this was covered in my sex education classes at all, it was skimmed over quickly enough that I don’t remember it.

People do not have these gaps in their knowledge because they are ignorant; it is because education worldwide fails to give us this fundamental understanding of our bodies. In France, Odile Fillod has come up with a solution. Fillod, a socio-medical researcher, has developed a computer modelled clitoris that can be 3D-printed. She’s made it open-source, meaning the file can be freely distributed so that any educator with access to a 3D printer – which are becoming more common additions to the Design and Technology departments of schools – can have their own accurate, tangible teaching aid.

Of course, there’s more to it than that. A computer file is not going to revolutionise cliteracy overnight. There’s the shame around female sexual pleasure and the fact that in the UK, the only compulsory aspect of sex education is reproductive biology, so aspects of sex not deemed ‘relevant’ to this can be ignored. But teachers admit that a lack of knowledge and training is one of the barriers to effective sex education, and easily-accessed teaching tools like Fillod’s model are something they can add to their resources, hopefully making them more confident.

Most of us don’t have access to a 3D printer at home but I’ve made a version that can be old-fashioned 2D printed. If you teach sex ed, feel free to use it in your lessons. Or, you can jump on the colouring trend and colour it in yourself – after all, a 3D printed model might be anatomically accurate but your body is more than the sum of its physical parts. I’ve coloured one with the external anatomy over the top so you can see how it fits into the bigger picture. I don’t advise starting to vandalise toilet doors with the clitoris but I do advise getting to know how it looks and what it does.

By Emmy

(TW - this article discusses rape and sexual assault)

Male…female, its all the same if someone says no it means no.

Some facts for you:

• Approximately 85,000 women and 12,000 men are raped in England and Wales alone every year; that’s roughly 11 rapes (of adults alone) every hour

• Nearly half a million adults are sexually assaulted in England and Wales each year

• In 2012-13, 22,654 sexual offences against under-18s were reported to police in England and Wales with four out of five cases involving girls (NSPCC, 2014)

statistics from http://rapecrisis.org.uk/statistics.php

The number of rapes and sexual assaults reported is increasing, with more victims coming forward.

Yes, if you are a woman unfortunately you are at higher risk of rape. However if you are male it can happen to you no matter how big or manly you consider yourself to be. It can happen to any of us.

By HelpIsHere

Bisexuals are greedy. We must want threesomes. We cannot be satisfied with only one partner, and are thus more likely to cheat.

The hypersexualisation of bi women directly contributes to violence against us. This year alone, when Amber Heard accused Johnny Depp of domestic violence, several prominent newspapers were quick to respond with headlines describing how Depp was ‘driven mad’ by the fear that his wife was cheating on him with another woman. As if that would ever justify abuse.

I came out as bisexual when I was a teenager, but the bullying and continual erasure of my identity by those around me managed to convince me that I was straight until my final year of University. I had only had boyfriends, and I wasn’t romantically attracted to women, so I couldn’t be bi, right?

Wrong. (Turns out bisexual and biromantic are different things – and you don’t have to be one to be the other! I really wish someone had been there to tell me that when I was younger, it would have saved a lot of time and confusion.)

High school bullying is just one of the reasons that, as one study by The Open University found, ‘of all the larger sexual identity groups, bisexual people have the worst mental health problems’ - including higher than average rates of self-harm, depression and anxiety.

Even after beginning to use the terms bi and bisexual to describe myself once again, I still couldn’t shake this feeling that I had something to prove. That maybe I should define as heteroflexible or another identity under the bi umbrella. One that would be harder for people to dismiss. Even now, I’m still working to unpack that mentality.

With the many stereotypes aimed towards bisexual people, particularly bisexual youth, it’s no wonder why the immediate reaction to such stereotypes is often simply to dismiss them outright. ‘Not all bisexual people want threesomes!’

And of course, this is true.

But what this argument fails to acknowledge is the link between the systemic denial of bisexuality, and the pressure to live up to such stereotypes in order to ‘prove’ yourself as bi. For many, the desire to participate in a threesome is derived from the persistent erasure of our identity from those closest to us. We are perceived as straight (or possibly gay) until we possess evidence to the contrary.

This erasure is accentuated in mainstream media. In Netflix’s popular show Orange is the New Black, Piper’s bisexuality is never described as such. She is referred to as the ‘straight girl’ by her girlfriend Alex, and as an ‘ex-lesbian’ by her fiancée Larry.

Of course, nobody should feel pressured into sex. The pressure for young people to be sexually active before they feel ready is deplorable – but remains worse for young people who feel obligated to prove their sexuality to cement their own sense of self. Bi youth need more complex role models in film and television to alleviate some of this pressure.

There’s nothing wrong with bi people who do want threesomes, and there’s nothing wrong with those who don’t, or are unsure, or indifferent.

Challenging stereotypes can be an integral part of addressing biphobia. But until we begin to unpack the harmful roots and impacts of these stereotypes, and start to build a more nuanced conversation around them, we are only further alienating members of our own community.

By Rachael Melhuish

(CW - this blog discusses rape and sexual violence)

Hello everyone,

So today I went onto Facebook and was appalled to see a photo of four girls laughing and joking about ‘a man at gun point raped’

First off I would like to say that no one should ever have to deal with being a victim of rape.

Second I would like to say that it is hard enough to deal with what has happened to you without other people laughing and joking all over social media about a terrible horrible crime such as rape.

It is absolutely disgusting that someone would think that something that serious and traumatising is it to be laughed about!

Men suffer from being victims of abuse as well as women! Think about that…

It is not funny to feel humiliated, out of control or vulnerable Please remember that sexual abuse can happen to anyone.

By

HelpIsHere

If I had £1 for every time I have been tapped on the shoulder followed by “excuse me mate” I would have a small fortune.

Women all over the world are embracing the buzz cut and it is something truly beautiful.

Banished are days when women with a Number 1 shave were tomboys, in the army, suffering from hair loss, cancer or just straight up LESBIANS. This is 2016 people and scalp is all the rage! No matter how you have come to join the “Hair free zone”, EMBRACE IT with all your being.

We have some beautiful, powerful women that rock the chop. Grace Jones, Megan Fox, Demi Moore, Willow Smith and my personal fav and complete inspiration, Amber Rose. All inspirational, independent, positive women of all different shapes, sizes, races and ages.

As women we are judged on our appearance almost every single day, by men, employers, strangers and sadly by our fellow women. We need to start lifting each other up instead of tearing each other down. Our looks are not a measurement of our character, mind or soul. It’s either something we have no control over or something we use to enhance what we are already blessed with.

Social media puts so much pressure on us to live up to this unrealistic ideology of beauty and perfection. Beauty is a personal preference; it cannot be measured or compared.

Shaving your hair off is a liberating and powerful act because it is not considered ideal beauty.  So a round of applause for all the beautiful bald headed females out there!

By Rebecca Ann Rose

TW: abortion, rape, sexual violence 

I suppose I should probably start by explaining what I mean by “Pro-choice = pro-life”, before you condemn me as an uneducated idiot. Pro-choice is the school of thought that says that the decision to have, or not have, an abortion is the decision of the individual pregnant woman in question, and pro-life is the idea that any fertilised egg counts as a human life and to have an abortion is equivalent to murder.

“So how can you say they are the same thing?” I hear you say. By removing a woman’s right to choose, you are often condemning her to a life she does not want. I am by no means suggesting that a woman who continues with an unplanned or unwanted pregnancy will despise her child, because often she won’t. But she will live a life that she did not want, which isn’t exactly pro-life, is it? So maybe we can start to use pro-life to mean pro-female life, a stance which seeks to value women’s lives and choices.

We are lucky in the UK to live in a country where attitudes to abortion are comparatively modern. It is legal and free for a woman to have an abortion (yay). This doesn’t mean that everyone is pro-choice, and there are still plenty of barriers to this choice (you can read more about this here), but compared to the 74 countries (yes, 74!) where abortion is illegal, except in extreme circumstances, we are pretty lucky.

These countries are:

RED COUNTRIES ON THE MAP: ABORTION ILLEGAL IN ALL CIRCUMSTANCES OR PERMITTED ONLY TO SAVE A WOMAN’S LIFE.

South America:Brazil, Colombia, Chile, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Gustamala, Haiti, Honduras, Mexico, Nigaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Venezuela,

Sub-Saharan Africa:Angola, Benin, Central African Rep.Chad, Congo, Côte d'Ivoire, Dem. Rep. of Congo, Gabon, Guinea- Bissau, Kenya, Lesotho, Madagascar, Mali, Mauretania, Mauritius, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Somalia, Tanzania, Togo, Uganda.

Middle East and North Africa:Afghanistan, Egypt, Iran, Lebanon, Libya, Oman, Sudan ®, Syria, United Arab Emirates, Yemen.

Asia and Pacific:Bangladesh, Indonesia, Laos, Myanmar, Papua New Guinea, Philippines, Sri Lanka.

Europe:Ireland, Malta.

ORANGE COUNTRIES ON THE MAP: ABORTION LEGALLY PERMITTED ONLY TO SAVE A WOMAN’S LIFE OR PROTECT HER PHYSICAL HEALTH.

The Americas and the Caribbean:Argentina, Bolivia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Peru,

Sub-Saharan Africa:Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Guinea, Malawi, Mozambique, Zimbabwe

Middle East and North Africa:Kuwait, Morocco, Saudi Arabi

Asia and Pacific:Pakistan, South Korea, Thailand

Europe:Poland

El Salvador has one of the highest teen pregnancy rates in the world, partially due to the fact that 67% of sexual violence victims are under the age of 17. The men who commit these crimes can be sentenced to 6-10 years in prison. The victims who choose to seek out illegal abortions to liberate themselves from some of the consequences of these crimes could be sentenced to up to 50 years in prison, five times the punishment of the man who forced her into the situation, if new legislation is passed.

Before you stop me and say “but she chose to get rid of her baby, she could have just kept it, so she’s just as bad”, many of these women are too young to care for a baby and/or not in a position where they could financially care for a baby. Few women, few people, would choose to bring a child into a world where they know that that child will go to bed hungry every night, won’t have clean water to drink, and will never have the chance to go to school, if they knew there was another way.

By introducing these increased penalties, not only women who choose to have abortions, but also the innocent victims of obstetric emergencies, will be punished. Women have already been imprisoned for allegedly attempting to have abortions, when actually their babies were still-born. Perhaps one of the most painful experiences a woman could have, topped off with a jail sentence. As if she hadn’t suffered enough?

If you’d like to try to block this new legislation in El Salvador, and support a woman’s right to choose, please sign this petition, and show you’re pro-(female) life.

PT

Lemonade touches on a lot of important issues, many of these (in my opinion) a lot more important than whether or not Jay Z is cheating and who Becky is. However, infidelity is one of the main themes of the album. This has lead to 100000000000 tweets along the lines of ‘well, if Beyoncé can’t keep her man then how is anyone supposed to?’. I will admit that I had a similar reaction when I first heard it, I wondered who could possibly be better than Beyoncé?

This was until a friend of mine pointed out to me that cheating has nothing to do with how attractive someone is perceived as being. It struck me that my first reaction to the album was contributing to a wider, hurtful idea. This idea comes from an attitude of blaming the person who has been cheated on (the cheatee if you like) for the actions of their partner. As if they weren’t pretty enough, or funny enough or sexy enough. This leads feelings of guilt and encourages the cheatee to blame themselves for what happened. They will often feel that if they were different, the situation may have been different. A feeling that is described in the interlude between the first two songs on the album

-‘ I tried to change. Closed my mouth more, tried to be softer, prettier, less awake. Fasted for 60 days, wore white, abstained from mirrors, abstained from sex, slowly did not speak another word. In that time, my hair, I grew past my ankles. I slept on a mat on the floor. I swallowed a sword. I levitated.’-

Here we see this attitude manifest in a very extreme way, the poem paints a picture of the cheatee (Beyoncé) going above and beyond to punish herself mentally and physically as if this will reverse the harm that has been done.

The more time I spent thinking about it, the more I found this part of the album really upsetting. Hearing such a powerful expression of the pain that so many people go through is hard, it made me sad to see so many people relating to it. Cheating happens for a thousand reasons, but the one reason that it always comes down to is lack of communication. The inability of partners to talk through their issues or, as the case may be, to end the relationship. I know that cheating is often blamed on the state of the relationship; if a relationship is unhappy a partner may cheat. So the blame is spread equally between the partners, or even placed more heavily on the cheatee , especially if they are seen as the ‘cause’ of the cheating. However, what we need to remember is that no partner has ever directly caused someone to cheat, it all leads back to these same communication issues.

We can’t let other people determine our own self worth. They didn’t cheat because you were ugly, or annoying, or you wouldn’t sleep with them or because you’d slept with too many people. They cheated because they weren’t adult enough and didn’t respect you enough to communicate.

By Mai

When I first started to want to sleep with people, I decided to shave all of my pubic hair. It was absolutely the done thing at the time. I remember hearing my male friends laugh about it and talk about finding pubic hair ‘disgusting’. I felt a sort of blind panic at the idea that someone might laugh about my pubes with their friends. The whole experience was horrendous. My pubic hair was quite long at the time and removing it was very tricky, granted if i’d done a bit of research beforehand it could all have gone a lot more smoothly - literally. As it was, there was definitely some blood, a lot of itching and a generally unpleasant aesthetic.

Afterwards I thought I would feel sleek and sexy, but in reality I just felt exposed and uncomfortable. The only real benefit to having no pubic hair was that it eased the anxiety of what someone might say about it. This was enough for me to carry on doing it for quite a while. I did eventually get better at it (thankfully), but even then the itching was unbearable and being honest, I didn’t really trust myself having something so sharp next to something so important.

I can’t lie and say that part of the reason I don’t like shaving isn’t pure laziness. As if I have time to regularly shave my whole vulva? But it is more than that. I can’t help but remember how proud I was when I first grew pubic hair (albeit a little bit embarrassed), and how disappointed young me would have been to see me get rid of it. I like the way it looks but it’s not just aesthetic. It makes me feel comforted in a way that’s really hard to explain; I like the way it feels.

I’ve had partners in the past that have said they prefer shaved pubic hair. And while I respect that they have preferences, they don’t have to live in my body. I won’t be expected to regularly do something that makes me unhappy, just to pander to their ‘preference’. I exist outside of my sex life, and it’s my preference to feel comfortable. In hindsight, I feel that if a partner is pressuring me to change my pubic hair for them, then they’re not the type of person i want to be having sex with.

On the flip side of this I know people who love to shave / wax / remove some or all of their pubic hair. It’s how they feel more comfortable, they might feel more sexy or love the way that it looks. While I shouldn’t be pressured to shave my pubic hair, people who prefer to be bald shouldn’t feel any pressure to grow theirs out.

There are lot’s of benefits to having pubic hair. I’ve linked an article below that lists some of them, but the bottom line is that your pubic hair is yours. Wear it how you want.

•Benefits of pubic hair: http://www.thesexmd.com/your-bush-loves-you-back/

•Pubic hair trends over time: http://www.bustle.com/articles/48042-pubic-hair-trends-over-time-from-tweezer-happy-ancient-greece-to-your-last-painful-wax

•Safe pubic hair removal: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4RAf0tzDbbA

By Mai

Our school has always been very forward thinking and it was especially prominent that in our year, we wanted change. There was a divide between the pupils; one group had an understanding about what gender and sexuality was, they are outspoken individuals and often quick to educate those who didn’t know about the LGBTQ+ community, then there are those who had never heard about any difference in gender and sexuality apart from heterosexual and your biological gender. Quick warning - most of these people ARE NOT discriminatory towards the LGBTQ+ community, they just simply haven’t been taught about anything other than the traditional sex education that is provided at school or within the home.

This was a gap in education that we wanted to focus on that we felt couldn’t be over looked.

I enrolled into the Pride Group because I am proud of my identity and also the identity of my friends. At the start of Year 11, where many young people are developing their sexualities and understanding their gender- one of my best friends started to identify openly as agender; a term which I was aware of, but I watched as my friend struggled to explain what this meant to other friends, teachers and parents. We decided as a group to use our school as a start to spread education locally, we created a PowerPoint and presented it in assemblies; we worked with a group called FIXERS to get stickers so that the community could recognise areas that are LGBTQ+ safe zones and we spread the message in conversation, meetings and with our friends. Our goal was not to enforce a message or preference but to spread learning and acceptance between our peers and in the community that we live in.

Pride is a group with a desire to close the divide within our school and then within our rural community. By trying to create areas of safety and tolerance, even though there may still be a definite divide in education, we hoped it would be a start to getting a mix between ideas and levels of understanding. We hope in the future that this tolerance may lead to more people wanting education and understanding and then finally more acceptance; Pride is a group that hopes to provide a foundation of discussion and understanding for all sexualities while still wanting to acknowledge the struggle that of LGBTQ+ individuals often face.

There is still so much that needs to be done for people to know more about people LGBQT+ and it feels like schools are sometimes anxious to take a more proactive approach to discussion because of the history behind Section 28 and the consent laws between gay partners, which are still seen as taboo subjects. But it’s a start in the right direction in promoting wider acceptance of people and beliefs.

Whatever sexuality or gender you are you should be able to feel Pride.

By Martha

If you want more information about LGBTQ+ history visit:

http://lgbthistorymonth.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/1384014531S28Background.pdf

http://www.youngstonewall.org.uk/lgbtq-info/legal-equality

It’s here.

The season of bare chested men.

It happened just the other day, Sunday. That blisteringly hot Sunday, the 8th of May, when we had our first glimpse of summer after our long, long winter. Wasn’t it wonderful?

See, I was at work, actually. It wasn’t too bad. I walked to work in the sun, had lunch in the sun, and walked home in the sun. I saw the sun. I even had the next day off, and I grabbed that with both hands. But it’s the Sunday I’m here to talk about.

I was in full uniform: my polo shirt, my long black trousers, my (Christmas) socks, and my sensible black shoes. I was a bit on the warm side, definitely. But, you know, propriety in the work place and all that.

Then it walks this guy and his family. He’s dressed for the weather. Or not dressed. In he walked to my place of work wearing shorts, sandals, and nothing else. Absolutely nada.

Now, I have no problem with showing skin. Show it, or don’t, that is absolutely fine with me. Your body, your rules. I may not particularly want to see a fifty-something hairy man’s chest, but I’m going to leave him to it and give him kudos for being bold enough in his own skin to do that. Wish I was.

But yes, that’s the thing. I would absolutely love to go topless in the heat. Every time I see a topless man enjoying the sun in a public place, my brain shouts “SAME, BRO”

Except, of course, I can’t. Because apparently my topless self would be public indecency. My breasts, really not much bigger than this man’s pair on Sunday, are indecent. Wearing them bare would cause outrage, covering the offending appendages just enough to keep cool is sexual.

I just want to cool down. And to have equal rights to my own body, whatever.

Also, maybe if I have to cover my breasts, maybe that guy should have covered that topless pin-up-girl tattoo? Because that just doesn’t seem fair.

By Jessica