So let’s examine the bad sex. Women deserve sex that’s not only free of obvious evils, but full of what is good: communication, agency, and pleasure. You’re reading the first installation of The Bed Post, a series that will explore what holds us back from loving and fucking whom, when, where, how, and why we want. Many of these obstacles seem obvious. We’re rolling into another year of a national war on healthy sex lives, and it is not looking pretty. The terrifyingly misogynistic rhetoric that has characterized the Republican presidential race — in which all candidates support overturning Roe v. Wade and five of them oppose abortion access for victims of rape or incest — will only ramp up from here until November 8. Planned Parenthood remains under fire, and sex ed in this country remains paltry, with just 23% of schools in a recent CDC study reporting that they teach students how to put on a condom. All the while, every 107 seconds , another American experiences sexual assault. Let’s talk about this — the barriers that we face to sex lives free of rape, STIs, and unwanted pregnancy — and then talk more. Let's discuss the gender dynamics that place a higher premium on men’s pleasure than on women’s; the exhortations to modesty that contort into fear of our own bodies; the stigma placed on sex that doesn’t look like it could be in either a Hollywood movie or a mainstream porno.I’ve been having, thinking, and writing about sex for a while. I’m better now than I was at 19 at choosing partners who respect how I feel and what I want — and who want to find out what that is in the first place — but I am, like anyone, still figuring it all out. I know that yes means yes, protection is a must, and my IUD is 99% effective. I’m not sure how to navigate the sometimes-murky parameters of an open relationship, or how much to rely on vibrators for pleasure, or how to stop evaluating my sexual experiences based on partner's orgasms. (Bad habit, I know.) Here, I’ll tell my stories and those of others as we parse what makes sex good or bad, anxious or relaxed, lackluster or orgasmic — because nothing buttresses the status quo like shame and silence, and few things threaten it more than discussion.