Photo Courtesy of Kelsey Savage & John Woods, Real Talk On paper, Alison Klein is a serious academic with a master’s in interdisciplinary studies focused on adult education and disability. Meet her at one of the Real Talk’s free public events (affectionately known as “pizza parties”), and she’ll be the first to greet you as […] More »

Bill S-210 has an arresting title compared to the majority of those passing through the various levels of government in order to become law: “Protecting Young Persons from Exposure to Pornography Act.” “The title of the legislation sends a fairly powerful message. There is absolutely no doubt about that,” said Kevin Lamoureux, parliamentary secretary to […] More »

Isabella Calahoo-Zeller was attending eighth grade in Alberta when she received sex education for the first time. It consisted of a YouTube video about consent, and not much else. “We didn’t really get much on what a penis looks like, or what a vulva looks like,” Calahoo-Zeller says. “We never got the birth video that […] More »

As a child born in the early 1980s and raised by 1990s media, TV taught me one thing: cops are not to be trusted. While we are sold the idea of a hard-working and noble institution of policing through the lens of NYPD Blue, Cops, or even Homicide: Life on the Street, the news taught […] More »

I blame John Hughes for my great sleepover shutout of 1984. It was a Betamax copy of his teen romantic comedy Sixteen Candles that was my downfall. While my friends clapped their hands and cheered at the final scene that brings together Samantha Baker and Jake Ryan, I was silent. I just couldn’t buy it. […] More »

An average day for married couple Jeremie Saunders and Bryde MacLean might include dates with their respective partners, an interview with a camgirl, or conversations about orgasm scavenger hunts. Nothing’s off the table for the Halifax-based co-hosts of the Turn Me On podcast, a series on sex, in all its fun and messy forms. In […] More »

His hand slid underneath my sweater, then rested on my bare waist. We locked eyes and my breath caught. I was leaning up against the wall in the narrow hallway of my one-bedroom apartment. He was so close, with his other hand against the wall beside my head. Both my palms were pressed firmly against […] More »

“Do earrings count as clothing?” asked a brunette contestant, decked out in multiple sweaters. “They’re not on the list.” It was the very first Strip Spelling Bee I’d organized and we were already running into problems. “And,” she continued coyly, “if so, do they count as two items?” She tapped the dangling emerald drops, and the […] More »

SUNDAY, 8:01 P.M. For five days, I revisited—with rapidly increasing frequency— the WhatsApp “last-seen” status of a man I’d met on an online-dating app. I had taken note of it at first because it was, as timestamps go, significant: Sunday, 8:01 p.m. was the exact time our most recent date had begun. At first, I […] More »

Driving back and forth along Wellesley Street in Toronto, Iris looks for a sign that she belongs. It’s late at night and raining, and she’s been blown off by a date. The woman she met on the dating website Plenty of Fish lives in Niagara Falls, and Iris rented a car for the weekend to […] More »

Amy was sexually assaulted three years ago, and we matched on Tinder in June. Even though I’m a journalist and a stranger she met online, I’m one of the only people she’s ever told her story to. It started when Amy, who lives in Yellowknife, agreed to go for coffee with a man named Paul. […] More »