ON SEX

Daphne Merkin

On Not Becoming a Lesbian

Although I have preferred the company of my own sex to that of men for as far back as I can remember, I've never had a lesbian...

Everyday detrius

Musing about death and the self Contemporary life, ever thrusting forward, straining for the next new thing, seems to leave little room...

Sex and the Cinema: How Hollywood Shaped Desire

Who doesn’t love movies? When my mother was gravely ill, there was nothing she wanted more than to watch the screeners of new films I...

Between Love and Madness

It was a summer of love—no, make that sex, the exquisitely passionate kind that taught Daphne Merkin the thrill of obsession Girls in...

My Boy Friend: I love him but I'm not in love with him

He's gay, I love him, but I'm not in love with him. Get over it. Daphne Merkin puts a bullet in the fag hag I am standing at water's edge...

When Sex Becomes Unsexy

Girls,Grey, sexting, porn—in this erotically charged moment, Daphne Merkin wonders: Whatever happened to great sex? A group of young...

Are Single Women the World's True Romantics?

I am sitting with my sister-in-law, a contented wife and mother of four, in the garden of her summer house on a balmy afternoon. We are...

What, Exactly, is the Future of Sex?

It is a mid-July weekend, and in my little rented house in Bridgehampton, New York, I am glued to the TV, indifferent to the fact that it...

Publicly, We Say #MeToo. Privately, We Have Misgivings

All those years, all that money, all that unrequited love. It began way back when I was a child, an anxiety-riddled 10-year-old who...

Writings & Reviews