Introducing Foreplay: A Collaborative, Anonymous Sex Column

Dear Cards,

Welcome to Foreplay, a new, anonymous sex column centered around students’ personal anecdotes and essays! My pen name is Kitty, which is absolutely a euphemism, and I will be contributing to Foreplay as a writer and facilitator of your anonymous submissions. The purpose of this column is to provide a space where students—femme-identifying students especially, but not exclusively—can submit questions, comments, and essays regarding their experiences with sex and their bodies.

Why should you trust me to know anything about sex? Great question, dear reader, and one I frequently ask myself as well. I am no sexpert by any means, and I, objectively, do not have as much experience as you would expect for someone writing a sex column. That said, I come from a long line of repressed Southern women who have inadvertently taught me the value of being physically and emotionally in-tune with myself. In other words, I’m horny.

Growing up, I detected within my family a sense of sexual shame, which confused me as I grew more and more interested in my changing body. My mom, who got her first period at the age of 10 and started taking birth control pills 4 years later, taught me to refer to my pubic region as “private parts” for longer than I would like to admit. There was also a stretch of time where I called it a “pagina” instead of a vagina, and I am still unsure if the alternative in my mind would have been a “venis.”

In my opinion, our generation’s issue does not lie in our failure to engage in sex, but rather how we approach it gracelessly. While we have all the tools to normalize the topic, I feel restrained with even my closest friends when we talk about sex, like I can’t admit that I enjoy it and think about it on a regular basis. In fact, I feel sordid acknowledging how prominent sex is in my life, which is ironic due to the fact that it gave me life in the first place!

I hope Foreplay provides a safe space for divulging anonymous sexual experiences and opinions that otherwise feel unspeakable. Consider me a close friend who you have to turn down your screen brightness to text or an older sister who suddenly reveals to you her entire sexual history over the course of a family vacation. Foreplay is a judgment-free zone where sex can be framed as liberating or degrading, hilarious or depressing, beautiful or gross, and everything in between and beyond. 

Thank you for your time, dear reader, and please consider submitting your essays, questions, comments, suggestions and more using the anonymous form below to be featured in a future article!

Stay safe and sexy,

Kitty