Sex From Scratch

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The second edition of Sex from Scratch: Making Your Own Relationship Rules is coming out this winter! Looking back through the first edition has been cringe-inducing—there’s so much I want to change, add, and improve. It’s certainly not a perfect book. But I’m glad it’s been a resource for so many people since it came out in 2014. Hopefully, second edition will make it relevant and accessible for years to come.  

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I have to keep reminding myself that there’s a lot of value in telling people, “No.” Drawing by Molly Schaeffer. 

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Dana Scully is always right. 

I was a big X-Files fan as a teenager and had a huge crush on Mulder. But rewatching the show, I’ve realized how much he talks over and condescends to Scully—she’s the one who’s a doctor, yet she’s constantly having to defend her knowledge. It turns out Mulder is a champion mansplainer! So I made this little comic to celebrate the brilliance of Scully. Don’t listen to him, Dana! 

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Great female-centric comics for older teens! 

I work with teenagers and sometimes get asked to recommend comics that they could get into. I have a hard time thinking of not-too-violent, not-too-sexual comics that center on women to recommend. So I put together this handy list! I included only comics on this list that you could find in most comic book shops or Barnes and Nobel stores—there are a ton of rad smaller press comics that take a bit more seeking out. These are all comics that I love today, so saying they’re for teens doesn’t mean they’re not for adults, too. 

These comics vary in violence, maturity, and sexual content, so I definitely recommend stopping by a comic book store and checking out these titles to see if they’re a good fit because you buy them for a younger kid. This list would have been great for me as a 16-year-old, but that’s just me! 

FUN, EPIC ADVENTURE STORIES 

Nimona by Noelle Stevenson

Lumberjanes by Noelle Stevenson and Grace Ellis

The Legend of Bold Riley by Leia Weathington 

Rat Queens by Kurtis J. Wiebe

Salamander Dream by Hope Larson 

UPBEAT FICTION

This One Summer by Jillian and Mariko Tamaki

How to Be Happy by Eleanor Davis

Smile by Raina Telgemeier

Sisters by Raina Telgemeier

Roller Girl by Victoria Jamieson

In Real Life by Cory Doctorow

The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl by Ryan North

MEMOIR 

Calling Dr. Laura by Nicole Georges 

We Can Fix It! by Jess Fink

Get Over It by Corinne Mucha 

Fun Home by Alison Bechdel 

Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi 

Tomboy by Liz Prince 

Between Gears by Natalie Nourigat

Museum of Mistakes by Julia Wertz

Over Easy by Mimi Pond

Dragon’s Breath by MariNaomi

One Hundred Demons by Lynda Barry

Awkward by Ariel Schrag

FUNNY RANDOM AWESOME STUFF

Hark! A Vagrant by Kate Beaton 

Super Mutant Magic Academy by Jillian Tamaki 

Cat Person by Seo Kim 

Unlovable by Esther Pearl Watson 

My Dirty Dumb Eyes by Lisa Hanawalt 

I Think I’m In Friend Love With You by Yumi Sakugawa

Love and Rockets by the Hernandez Brothers

RATHER SERIOUS AND DARK FICTIONAL STORIES 

Death: The High Cost of Living by Neal Gaiman

Pretty Deadly by Kelly Sue DeConnick

Anya’s Ghost by Vera Brosgoi

I Kill Giants by Joe Kelly

Mercury by Hope Larson 

Ivy by Sarah Oleksyk 

Through the Woods by Emily Carroll

Exit Wounds by Rutu Modan

The Wicked and the Divine by Kieron Gillen 

Black is the Color by Julia Gfrorer 

Morning Glories by Nick Spencer

SUPERHEROES 

Ms. Marvel by G. Willow Wilson 

Batgirl by Gail Simone

Elektra: Assassin by Frank Miller

Gotham Academy by Becky Cloonan

X-Men by Brian Wood (all female X-Men series, starting in 2013) 

Buffy the Vampire series by Joss Whedon 

She-Hulk by Charles Soule

CRIME-SOLVING AND NOIR 

Stumptown by Greg Rucka

Whiteout by Greg Rucka 

High Crimes by Christopher Sebela 

Lazarus by Greg Rucka

Velvet by Ed Brubaker 

Revival by Tim Seeley 

Strangers in Paradise by Terry Moore 

Rose and Isabel by Ted Mathot

COMICS THAT AREN’T ENTIRELY FEMALE-CENTRIC BUT ARE EXCELLENT AND HAVE GREAT FEMALE CHARACTERS 

Saga by Brian K. Vaughn (my personal favorite, most recommended comic!) 

Runaways by Brian K. Vaughn

Fables by Bill Willingham

Private Eye (currently online only) by Brian K. Vaughn 

Lowriders in Space by Cathy Camper

What did I miss? Feel free to make recommendations and I’ll add them to the list.

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Female-centric crime and noir comics. 

Last week, a teenager who loves noir asked if I could recommend some dark, moody comics about female detectives. I floundered on the spot, but asked some friends for ideas and eventually put together this list of comics about women who take names and solve crimes. 

Any more titles to add? 

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Yay! WBEZ’s Nerdette podcast had me on the show to talk about my nerdy approach to dating. The show hosts describe me as “the author of a self-help book that is actually good.” <3 <3

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Kids these days! We’re just not getting married like we used to. This interesting new research from the Pew Center shows how young people are much less likely to be married than our parents were—and women are more likely to be college grads.

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Sex from Scratch: Making Your Own Relationship Rules is now an audiobook!

You don't even have to READ the book—be lulled by the mellifluous sounds of professional actors reading life lessons aloud to you. 

The book from Blackstone Audio plays on phones and all other mobile devices. Check out the audiobook right here. 

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My favorite thing on the internet today is this archive of vintage LGBT political buttons. 

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Cute video from the New York Times Modern Love column. Read it here.

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I host this feminism and pop culture podcast for Bitch Media. This episode about science fiction was my favorite one to put together so far. Octavia Butler FTW.

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"I think non-monogamy and open relationships are a useful framework for thinking about what you want. I see it more as the approach I want to take to relationships, now and in the future—thinking honestly about desire and attraction and jealousy, and saying why we feel these things, like what’s going on there, basically. "

— there's a pretty funny interview with me in Street Roots. 

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For friends going through hard times, Ryan Alexander-Tanner and I created this break up action plan. It's based on the last chapter of my book, Sex from Scratch. Read the whole comic at The Nib. 

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Quick Hits of Relationship Advice

I was interviewed this week for Metro New York's dating column. Factoid: Since this interview happened over the phone at 7am my time, I was not wearing pants for the duration of the conversation. Here's the advice that wound up being printed in the paper: 

It’s your job to speak up

Too many times, we expect our partners to automatically know what we are thinking or what we like or find uncomfortable. Mirk says that she herself had to practice expressing her feelings out loud. “When I feel like I am getting upset about something, I tell myself that it’s my job in a relationship to say something. Because if I don’t, nothing will change.”

Breaking up can be courageous

Many couples sometimes stay in unhappy partnerships for months or years longer than they’d like to because they either fear being single or cannot imagine what their lives will look like outside of their longterm relationship. “Breaking up is a pretty brave thing to do,” notes Mirk. “It’s not a sign of failure.”

It’s also important to figure out why you want to end your relationship. Are there personal things that you need time to figure out on your own? “I think a lot of times people have a lot of deep, unhappy stuff,” says Mirk. “And instead of dealing with it, they would do something obviously bad – like cheating – and then say, ‘Well, if I cheated, I have to break up,’ instead of fixing the problem.”

Lean on your friends

It’s hard to have a breakup that isn’t painful. That’s why it’s so important to have a strong support system around you. “Your friends are going to be your superheroes,” says Mirk.

Remember, you can be happy

“A lot of people lose track of what a happy relationship is,” says Mirk. If you don’t see yourself being happy with the person you are with, it’s OK to move on. “Everyone deserves to be in a relationship that’s healthy,” says Mirk.

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My friend just sent me this photo from Dog Eared Books in the Mission! Good company.

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From "Difference Maker" in the New Yorker:

I came to see these years as the beginning of the second act of my adult life. If the first act—college through age thirty-four or so—had been mostly taken up by delirious career ambition and almost compulsive moving among houses and apartments and regions of the country, the second was mostly about appreciating the value of staying put. I’d bought a house in a city that was feeling more and more like home. And though I could well imagine being talked out of my single life and getting married if the right person and circumstances came along—in fact, I met my eventual husband around the time I was matched with Kaylee—one thing that seemed increasingly unlikely to budge was my lack of desire to have children. After more than a decade of being told that I’d wake up one morning at age thirty or thirty-three—or, God forbid, forty—to the ear-splitting peals of my biological clock, I would still look at a woman pushing a stroller and feel no envy at all, only relief that I wasn’t her.

I was willing to concede that I was possibly in denial. All the things people say to people like me were things I’d said to myself countless times. If I found the right partner, maybe I’d want a child because I’d want it with him. If I went to therapy to deal with whatever neuroses could be blamed on my own upbringing, maybe I’d trust myself not to repeat my childhood’s more negative aspects. If I understood that you don’t necessarily have to like other children in order to be devoted to your own (as it happens, this was my parents’ stock phrase: “We don’t like other children, we just like you”), I would stop taking my aversion to kids kicking airplane seats as a sign that I should never have any myself. After all, only a very small percentage of women genuinely feel that motherhood isn’t for them. Was I really that exceptional?

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Dan Savage invited me to be on his podcast today to talk about this great little radio show about feminist porn I put together for Bitch—hope you like it!