Cory Silverberg's Blog

"It was a rebellion, it was an uprising, it was a civil rights disobedience -- it wasn't no damn riot."

- Stormé Delarverie

From the Bronx LGBTQ Center I learned of the passing of Stormé Delarverie, who was an icon of LGBT civil rights, a key participant in the Stonewall rebellion (by many accounts, Stormé threw one of the early punches at a police officer who was beating up a young man) and by many online accounts someone with a deep capacity for love, acceptance, and resista...

National Masturbation Month is almost over, and while the event is mostly a grown up celebration (probably because it was started by adult sex shops who aren't that focused on the youth market) it seems like a good excuse for parents and people with kids in their lives to think about about where masturbation does or doesn't fit into conversations about sex.

We should start by acknowledging that not all learning happens the same way, and those differences matter.

We learn how things work ofte...

Four years ago the FDA rejected an application by drug maker Boehringer for a little pink pill, called Flibanserin. Boehringer claimed that their drug could be used to treat women with low sexual desire. The FDA rejected the drug based on a lack of evidence regarding effectiveness and concerns about side effects.

The drug passed hands, and now Sprout Pharmaceuticals has brought the drug back to the FDA, armed with two new studies, and a new marketing technique. Their new argument for why the...

Feels on Wheels: Toronto's Rose Centre (The Grid)

A young couple in Toronto are trying to make the sexual change they want to see, one adorable and sexy profile at a time.

10 Things You Should Say to Someone with a Chronic Illness (Pins and Procrastination)

Not every one of these is going to really be great for every person, but I love the many simple points made in this companion piece to 15 Things Not to Say to Someone with a Chronic Illness.

Criptiques Explores the Provocative Side of Dis...

Parents anxiety about their kids sexuality isn't new. But there are a few particularly modern situations that parents today find themselves in. Several of them have to do with porn.

Porn isn't new either, but the ease with which anyone (with Internet access) can find it, and the level of explicitness it offers is. What's also new is that instead of just finding porn (as other parents once did tucked under the bed or in underwear drawers) now parents are stumbling over both the porn sites and...

Parents anxiety about their kids sexuality isn't new. But there are a few particularly modern situations that parents today find themselves in. Several of them have to do with porn.

Porn isn't new either, but the ease with which anyone (with Internet access) can find it, and the level of explicitness it offers is. What's also new is that instead of just finding porn (as other parents once did tucked under the bed or in underwear drawers) now parents are stumbling over both the porn sites and...

Masturbation in our society is something of a paradox. On the one hand, it's the most common sexual act globally and locally. It happens more than any other act and for most of us it's the sexual activity we'll do more than anything else in our lifetime. You'd think this would mean that of all the sex we have, masturbation would be the kind we have the most to say about.

But try asking someone what masturbation is. Not how they do it, but in general, what it is. Usually there will be a pause,...

National Masturbation Month turns 19 this year. Its popularity has waxed and waned, but I like to think of it as the holiday that won't quit. At least not until someone finally creates and markets a line of greeting cards.

A few years into the annual celebration, back when I was a member of a sex store worker co-operative, I wrote an article about my own relationship to masturbation for our local alternative weekly newspaper. Today I went back to read it. Aside from cringing at how I wrote 1...

It's hard to believe a year has passed since we last came together to celebrate National Masturbation Month. Of course one of the nice things about this month is that it isn't something we have to do together. Masturbation is primarily a solo activity, even though you might choose to invite someone in, or along, for the ride. And that's what I love about this month.

When people find out that I write and teach about sex for a living they expect me to be thinking and talking about people having...

After a few years of working in a sex store you stop being surprised by people and their desires. It doesn't take that long to reach the point where you understand on a basic level that we're all different and all a bit weird and that we're also all a bit ashamed of our weirdness and hide it from others.

But there were other things that were surprising. Realizations that have more to do with society than with individuals. One of them has to do with mother's day. Mother's Day wasn't the bigge...