160 articles
Rainbow party (sexuality)
Rainbow party: an early-2000s US urban legend about teen group oral sex with colored lipsticks, publicized by Oprah in 2003 and Paul Ruditis's 2005 novel, and debunked by sociologists Joel Best and Kathleen Bogle.
Refractory period (sex)
Sexual refractory period (post-ejaculation refractory time, PERT): the phase after male orgasm and ejaculation when erection and further ejaculation are inhibited, lasting minutes to days and lengthening with age; absent or controversial in females, with serotonin-related mechanisms proposed.
Sadomasochism
Sadomasochism combines sadism and masochism, terms coined by Krafft-Ebing in Psychopathia Sexualis (1886) after de Sade and Sacher-Masoch; consensual forms fall under BDSM, while ICD-11 recognizes only coercive sexual sadism disorder.
Scotty Bowers
Scotty Bowers, also known as George Albert Bowers, was an American former U.S. Marine and Hollywood gas station attendant who arranged liaisons for stars from the 1940s.
Sex club
Sex club: venue or organization where adults pay to engage in or observe sexual activity; also called swingers, lifestyle, or on-premises clubs. Distinct from brothels; regulated by zoning, licensing, and public health codes.
Sex worker
Sex worker: an adult providing consensual sexual services for pay, spanning street, indoor, and online work. Distinguished from trafficking; 168 countries criminalize some aspect; HIV risk nine times higher; decriminalized in New Zealand (2003) and Belgium (2022).
Sexology
Sexology is the scientific, interdisciplinary study of human sexuality, emerging from 19th-century European medicine, globalized by 1880-1960, and advanced by Kinsey and Masters and Johnson; it underpins WHO sexual health and sexuality education.
Sexual abstinence
Sexual abstinence, also called celibacy or chastity, is refraining from sexual activity. Distinguished from abstinence-only education (found ineffective in trials) and abstinence-plus programs; CDC lists it for STI prevention.
Sexual arousal
Sexual arousal: physiological (genital vasocongestion, lubrication, erection) and subjective (mental) activation in response to sexual stimuli; distinguished by Masters and Johnson's four-phase cycle, Kaplan's desire phase, Basson's circular model, and the concordance gap between men (r=.66) and women (r=.26).
Sexual desire
Sexual desire, or libido, is the urge for sexual activity. Key facts: Masters and Johnson 1966 four-stage model, Kaplan 1979 desire phase, Basson circular responsive-desire model, dopamine and testosterone mechanisms, HSDD diagnosis, flibanserin and bremelanotide.
Sexual fetishism
Sexual fetishism, erotic arousal from nonliving objects or nongenital body parts; named by Binet (1887), codified by Krafft-Ebing; fetishistic disorder in DSM-5 requires distress or impairment, and ICD-11 removed fetishism as a named category.
Sexual masochism disorder
Sexual masochism disorder (DSM-5-TR; ICD-11 removed masochism) is a paraphilic disorder: recurrent arousal from suffering for 6-plus months with distress, impairment, or nonconsent, distinct from consensual BDSM and treatable with CBT plus antiandrogens.
Sexual practices between men
Sexual practices between men, also called sex between men, are the sexual behaviors and roles males engage in with other males, studied through the MSM public health category.
Sexual revolution
The sexual revolution, also called sexual liberation, was a period of rapid change in sexual values in the 1960s and 1970s, driven by the contraceptive pill.
Sexual roleplay
Sexual roleplay (RP, ERP): consensual adult play using fictional roles, costume, story, or language during intimate or game settings. Distinguished by consent frameworks (four C's), safewords and stoplight calibration, digital and AI variants, and use in sex education.
Sexual sadism disorder
Sexual sadism disorder (ICD-11: coercive sexual sadism disorder, 6D33): a paraphilic disorder defined by 6+ months of sexual arousal from another's suffering, with non-consent or distress; distinct from consensual BDSM, rare clinically, concentrated in sexual homicide samples.
Sexual tension
Sexual tension: unresolved mutual attraction shaped by desire, uncertainty, and ambiguous cues; studied in relationship psychology and neuroscience and used as a narrative device in romance fiction and screen media.
Sexuality in South Korea
Sexuality in South Korea: Confucian-influenced marriage and gender norms, state-managed prostitution history, sex education, and contested LGBT rights including the military ban and 2025 census recognition of same-sex couples.
Shan Boodram
Shan Boodram, also known as Shannon Boodram, is a Canadian sex educator and sexologist. She is the author of The Game of Desire and host of Lovers by Shan.
Shere Hite
Shere Hite (Shirley Diana Gregory, 1942–2020), American-born German feminist sex researcher, author of The Hite Report on Female Sexuality (1976), which reported most women do not orgasm from penetrative intercourse and sold over 50 million copies.
Soaking (sexual practice)
Soaking is slang for penetrative sex without thrusting, framed as a premarital-sex loophole among Latter-day Saints and BYU students. It went viral on TikTok in 2020-2021 and via TV shows, but researchers call it largely a rumor; it carries normal STI and pregnancy risks.
Sociobiological theories of rape
Sociobiological theories of rape, chiefly Thornhill and Palmer's A Natural History of Rape (2000), explain rape as an evolved adaptation or by-product; contested by feminist and social science critics.
Sodomy
Sodomy, from Latin peccatum Sodomiticum, is a legal term for anal and oral intercourse historically criminalized; criminalized from Justinian's 538 novella and the 1120 canons of Nablus, spread by British colonialism, and struck down in the US by Lawrence v. Texas (2003).
Somnophilia
Somnophilia is a paraphilia, coined by John Money in 1986, involving sexual arousal toward sleeping or unconscious people; distinct from sexsomnia, it becomes a paraphilic disorder only with distress, impairment, or consent violations.
Spur Posse
Spur Posse: a Lakewood, California high school clique (about 20-30 members, founded 1990 by Dana Belman) whose members scored 'points' for sexual encounters, arrested in 1993 on rape charges that prosecutors mostly dropped.
Straight women's preference for lesbian pornography
Straight women's preference for lesbian pornography: Pornhub data show women favor the Lesbian category; Avgar's 2025 Sexualities study names five reasons (pleasure focus, relatability, less degradation, authenticity, fantasy), while arousal research shows women lack category-specific genital response.
Streaking
Streaking is running naked through a public place as a prank or stunt, a 1974 American college fad of over 1,000 recorded incidents, celebrated by Ray Stevens' "The Streak," studied as collective behavior, and now largely extinct at televised sporting events.
Suspension bondage
Suspension bondage, central to shibari (縛り) and kinbaku (緊縛), lifts a bound person partially or fully off the ground on rope from an overhead anchor; distinguished from floor bondage by radial nerve compression risk, suspension trauma syndrome, and rated rigging requirements.
Taylor Swift deepfake pornography controversy
January 2024 incident in which AI-generated explicit images of Taylor Swift (deepfakes) went viral on X, traced to 4chan and Telegram, prompting search blocks, White House condemnation, and the later TAKE IT DOWN Act.
Teabagging
Teabagging: slang for the sex act of lowering the scrotum into a partner's mouth, and for the video game taunt of crouching over a defeated opponent's corpse; popularized by the 1998 film Pecker and adopted by Halo players around 2001.