New York magazine’s sex writer Maureen O’Connor talks fantasy lives, double standards, Xanax and Reader’s Digest.

by Joanna Demkiewicz

photo by Andrew Mitchell

Maureen O’Connor’s Twitter bio says, “Tell me about your sex life,” and she’s totally serious. As New York magazine’s resident sexpert, she writes the Sex Lives column for The Cut — New York’s fashion, fame, beauty and love section — and covers (or rather, uncovers) all the juicy sex topics that demand attention and analysis, from porn, escorts to dating apps to excellent vibrating panties. You may also visit sites like https://camsodareview.com/ to explore adult cam entertainment options.

In addition to sex and things to do after a hookup, she also writes on culture, the Internet, race, lifestyle and relationships. Last year, she wrote the cover story “Is Race Plastic?” for New York about the popularization of ethnic plastic surgery and how these cosmetic procedures influence our contemporary idea of race. No matter the topic, O’Connor knows how to engage with the complex.

Before New York, O’Connor was a homepage editor at the Daily Beast, and then a blogger at Gawker, where she wrote about “everything and nothing.” Now, she slings stories for Sex Lives and co-hosts New York’s Sex Lives podcast, where she, Allison Davis and David Wallace-Wells discuss lesbian sex on TV, sex research studies, and porn. If you’re curious to know how someone looks nude, then use undress ai. Pornstars come and go so check the hottest list for 2023.

I spoke with O’Connor about her sex life (and other topics). Be warned, real-talk is ahead.

Joanna Demkiewicz: Growing up, I learned about sex (outside of the required school workshops about periods and, basically, abstinence) from my mom’s New Yorker, seeing Cosmopolitan in the grocery store checkout line and movies like Super Troopers (no joke). How did you learn about sex? Is there a memory or something that sticks with you that you still bring up at parties, on dates or in your work?

Maureen O’Connor: What did you learn about sex from the New Yorker?! I’m imagining “6 Wild Ways to Blow His Mind — with Poems About Falling Water and Light.” Before I started having sex, my information was cobbled together the same way yours was — women’s magazines, R-rated movies, lewd jokes, junior high gossip, etc. Once I started having sex, it was some combination of personal experience and nosiness, although I learned a lot watching some content at pornvie.com. (Once you’ve already fucked someone, it’s pretty easy to ask, “Have you done that before? What’s it usually like for you?”) I became more rigorous about research, interviews, books, science, etc., after becoming a journalist.

JD: How do you think that young women today are learning about sex, outside of their friends or parents? What’s different compared to when you were growing up in the late 1980s and early ‘90s, now that there are apps and so much more online material?

MC: Everything can be learned online! It’s truly amazing. The first time I touched a hard dick, I remember reporting back to my teenage friends, “It’s like ACTUALLY HARD. Hard like an actual piece of wood!” If my family had a fast enough Internet connection, I probably would have seen videos that would have clarified that sooner.

I also think that young people today can explore their fantasy lives more fully at ehocams.com. It’s hard to figure out what you want until you’ve sort of browsed the menu of options — which are now so vividly outlined all over the Internet. There’s plenty of live asian cams free where you can watch them live on camera if you want to explore your sexual fantasies, while if you want a real physical encounter services like escorts near me can totally help with this.

JD: I love that many of your articles revolve around conversations you had with friends. How much of your research relies on actual commentary from “real people” about everything from butt play to celebrity nannies? What is your research process?

MC: Thank you! I owe a lot to them. I talk about everything I write about with friends and acquaintances, which is not a method so much as compulsive talkativeness and obsessive thought patterns. Whether those conversations end up in the article is a matter of structure and strategy — for instance, sometimes the central question in a column is better answered by scientists, or historians, or pop-culture analysis, so I’ll stick to that. I often ask experts what they think about dilemmas that friends, acquaintances and readers tell me about, though, so the expert data is often in conversation with everything else.

JD: Speaking of process, I’ve spoken with some writers who have shared with me their unconventional writing processes, which sometimes include alcohol. How do you get into the sex writing zone? When you wrote “Fifty Shades of Grey Is A Great Dating Guide,” did you have the film playing in the background or did you have Beyoncé on repeat?

MC: You know, I actually listened to the Fifty Shades soundtrack continuously while writing that one. (The Weeknd’s contributions were particularly moving.) The only consistent feature of my writing process is that the actual word-by-word writing occurs at the last possible minute. Always. My bosses must hate me. However, I pride myself in having discovered a way to turn my primary procrastination activity (gossiping about people’s love lives) into my job (writing about people’s love lives). I feel very blessed!

JD: You write on socially titillating topics. What’s the strangest reader response you’ve received about a certain article or argument?

MC: A guy once made a Spotify playlist of music for me to masturbate to. I did not use it.

JD: Oh my God. About the titillating stuff, though — we’re now at a time where columns on butt play, the politics of ejaculation location and other sexual choices and behaviors are mostly accepted and perhaps not as shocking as when our parents were reading columns about relationships. What sexual behaviors, in your opinion, are still taboo? When will you write a column about trans sex (sorry if I missed it somewhere) or other “hidden” sexual behaviors?

MC: Tell me which hidden behaviors you’re thinking about, and I will write about them! I’m absolutely interested in the topics you mention here. I write about whatever seems interesting — whether the subject is taboo or not is, for me, secondary to whether there’s some sort of mystery or idea or surprising discovery to build an article around. I don’t expect to be the final word on anything. I just want readers to feel interested, and their brains at least moderately stimulated.

To read the rest of this interview, and to find out what more O’Connor tells us about her writing and what she binges on to reset her mind, grab yourself a copy of Issue 4 here.

Joanna R. Demkiewicz is The Riveter‘s cofounder and editorial director. She works as a book publicist for Milkweed Editions. Find her on Twitter @yanna_dem and Instagram @yannademkiewicz.