If you ask people where they learned the most about sex, chances are that most of them won’t say “school.” The only thing many of us learned about sex in school, is not to have it. (If we were lucky, we might have learned how to put a condom on a banana.) Fortunately, when it comes to sex ed, the internet has picked up where school left off.
There's all kinds of information you can find on the internet, though, and a lot of it is more like misinformation. Relying on mainstream porn for sex ed is not the best idea, since that might lead you to believe that all genitals are clean-shaven, everyone loves blow jobs, and all women orgasm through intercourse (all false). “The issue is not porn,” Make Love Not Porn creator Cindy Gallup tells Bustle. “The issue is this total absence in our society of an open honest healthy conversation around sex in the real world, which if it were had, people would then bring a real-world mind set when they view what is essentially artificial entertainment.”
Since we’re not getting that education from most mainstream porn or the real world, here are some sites where you can find accurate, helpful answers to your burning sex questions.
1O.School
Launching soon, O.School provides online sex courses on every topic from polyamory to BDSM. Anyone can access them, and pay is via tips. If you've wished you could retake sex ed as an adult, this is your chance.
2Scarleteen
Scarleteen calls itself a source of “inclusive, comprehensive, supportive sexuality and relationships info for teens and emerging adults,” but I’m still learning from it in my 20s. The information is not just enlightening but also inclusive, with pages on sex and disability, polyamory, and myths about the hymen.
3Go Ask Alice
Not to be confused with the dark book about drug abuse, Columbia University’s health education site features a Q&A including many common but infrequently asked sex questions, like “I wore the condom inside-out: What are our chances of pregnancy?” and “Am I coming or going?: Distinguishing between orgasm and urination” (hey, it happens!).
4BWell
Brown University also has a solid health site, with a “sexual health” section that includes Q&As on porn, sex toys, orgasm, and communication in the bedroom. For the sake of inclusivity, it’s all written using gender-neutral terms like “people with vulvas.”
5Tabu
This app and website includes a forum where users can get answers to all their sex questions from experts. It’s also got pages on consent, periods, lube, and a ton of other topics related to sexuality and sexual health.
6Wild Flower
Amy Boyajian, a former dominatrix, created the online sexual wellness boutique Wild Flower after seeing how exclusionary and oppressive the sex industry could be. To combat sexism, racism, and beauty standards, Wildflower uses completely gender-neutral language, and the toys it lists don’t resemble body parts, use racialized marketing, or get categorized by gender.
7/r/sex
Say what you want about Reddit, but its sex forum is actually really informative. Yes, you get a few creeps and misogynists, but people are usually pretty quick to shut them down. If you use the search function, you’ll find that pretty much every question you might have has been answered there. And if it hasn’t, you can ask it yourself.
The exciting thing, though, is that no matter how many websites you visit, there's still a wealth of sex-related knowledge left to be discovered — which is what talking to your friends is for.
