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June is pride month but might as well be called “love is love” month. But… What about sex? The focus on love is strategic as we are still fighting for the rights of the LGBTQIA+ folks. The fear is that if we remind people that queers have sex, we might scare away the more conservative allies. This is the result of the sex-negative culture we live in and that we’ve been talking about lately.

Being sex positive means accepting a large spectrum of sexual behaviours, including sex for its own sake. But does having casual sex means no connection or intimacy? Not quite. Research points out that casual sex can be a source of both sexual and emotional satisfaction. In fact, in a study from the Canadian Journal of Human Sexuality , we found out that gay men reported gaining the most sexual and emotional satisfaction out of casual sex contexts, while lesbian women reported the least out of casual sexual contexts. Seems likely that gender roles influence these reports – as men are socialized to value sex in this context, and women to seek romantic partners –, nevertheless it does not seem that casual sex is necessarily less intimate or emotional. And to be fair, emotional responsibility should be a dimension of all sexual encounters.

Hook-ups, friends with benefits, or any other non-romantic arrangement, can be unpredictable. However, even though casual sex might involve higher emotional risk, vulnerability and surrender, it might account for higher excitement and pleasure according to research. This study suggests that pleasures of casual sex derive from its unpredictable, novel, transgressive nature, and not as much from the outcomes of sex, such as orgasm.

The interesting thing of vulnerability is that if it’s too much and makes you feel unsafe, whether physically or emotionally, it will ruin your sexual experience. This is why this month we will try equipping you with tools to better manage the emotional risks of casual sex to assure you have meaningful and positive encounters.

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