The Year in Sex: Sluts Against Harper, Inspirational Threesomes, and the Future of VR Porn

Because the human brain is really only a monkey brain fully and completely preoccupied with sex, the topic has a way of… inserting itself into the news with great regularity. In Canada this year, women started empowering conversations around their sexuality: one woman used the negative attention that came her way after a public threesome to school the public on slut-shaming, and self-proclaimed sluts countrywide united to get Stephen Harper voted out. Some shitty things happened too: sex workers were tarred as victims across the board, while previously beloved porn stars turned out to be rapists. And then there are the freaky worlds of penis enlargement and virtual fucking. Here, folks, we have the good, bad, and the ugly of the past year in sex.

Ontario's sex ed curriculum was updated for the first time in 17 years. The new curriculum was unveiled in February, and some parents Lost. Their. Shit. Apparently, it was too much for them to imagine their kids calling their genitals by their proper names, or to learn that some people are just plain old gay and that's cool. Some parents protested and pulled their kids out of school entirely this spring, but premier Kathleen Wynne stuck to her guns and pushed the curriculum through anyway.

Young women across Canada erupted in protest in May because they were sick of being yanked out of class based on their "distracting" outfits. In Moncton, N.B., an 18-year-old woman was suspended after writing an open letter to her vice principal about dress codes. At Etobicoke School of the Arts, a young woman named Alexi Halket was roped into a 90-minute debate about her crop top. The internet responded in kind, and the end result was hundreds of young women and girls orchestrating a "crop top day," the point of which being that older people should not be sexualizing their young bodies.

It's still hard times in the Maritimes for uterus-bearing people who want to have sex without worrying about being forced to carry unwanted pregnancies to term. Abortions are still not available on Prince Edward Island despite the fact that in June, premier Wade MacLauchlan said he would improve access. His idea of improving access meant sending women on a two-hour journey to Moncton, instead of on a four-hour tour to Halifax. It's a similar state of affairs in New Brunswick, where a lack of access is prohibitive for rural people.

This summer, a Calgary woman was, unsurprisingly, shamed by the internet after doing what everyone wants to be doing during the Calgary Stampede: Getting kind of drunk and banging two people in public. Someone captured the whole thing on video and posted it online, but rather than hiding under a rock, the woman created fan pages for herself and made money off what could have been a debacle. And she let everyone know she doesn't regret it at all.

In July, philanderers had a collective panic attack after Ashley Madison, a site designed to orchestrate infidelities, was hacked. About 37,765,000 greasy dirtbags (yes, people cheat for some legit reasons and people make mistakes and forgiveness is a thing, but most cheaters= dirtbags, science says) in 46 countries had their privacy compromised by the attack, no doubt leading to a fuckton of awkward conversations. I'd like to say the exposure lead these covert horndogs to think twice before cheating, but it probably didn't.

In the weeks leading up to the federal election, it was pretty clear that Stephen Harper's Conservative party was locked in a death spiral and that Canada may finally be done with him. And many of who like sex and weed and the environment and all of the diverse people who live in this country amped up their efforts to oust him from office. Sluts especially hated Harper, and so it naturally follows that they would start a coalition called Sluts Against Harper, sending customized nude photos to anyone who could prove they had voted.

Surely you've heard of SlutWalk, the parade of people who take over the streets in cities worldwide to protest rape culture? Well it was born in Toronto, created by feminist activists Sonya Barnett and Heather Jarvis in response to a York Region cop saying women shouldn't dress like "sluts" if they want to avoid being sexuall assaulted. In October, Amber Rose, the leading ambassador of slut power, conducted her own SlutWalk in LA to raise awareness.

Noted porno stud James Deen, formerly beloved by women for his tender take on ferocious banging (and noted by some as a feminist performer) was accused by Stoya and other co-workers of rape and sexual assault in November. As a result, many porn companies pulled out of working with him.

There's been much in the way of debate and hefty ol' thinkpieces on whether or not it's even kosher to mention this, but Justin Trudeau was elected Canada's new Prime Minister in October, and he is also a total babe (although some of my colleagues have argued otherwise). So long as we mention the upsides and downsides of the work he puts in and keep an eye on whether he follows through on all his promises to us, it's OK, IMHO, to acknowledge the very obvious and not at all terrible fact of his being really ridiculously good looking. Anyway, keep on pretending you weren't just fantasizing about a Trudeau-Obama makeout session. As you were.

If you're (for some odd reason…) upset about having a tiny dick, fear not! More men opted to enlarge their dicks this year than ever before, and they're not afraid to talk about it. Take Richard Jones, for example. The English journalist had his dick lengthened by an inch and a half, and the girth enhanced by two inches—using fat from his stomach. Not sure how anyone could say no to that deal. If you're, uh, hungry for more, VICE made this doc about a super-dicked German dude this year.

As virtual reality technology continues to develop and the use of headsets like Oculus Rift increases, of course porn is coming into the equation. More and more companies this year launched VR porn experiences, many of them coupled with teledildonics. In other words, technology now exists that allows you to virtually fuck a porn star, or to have sex with a partner with a toy from afar. Creators of these games told VICE that this fantasy world will soon be indistinguishable from reality, and that it will change the way we have sex forever.

We all talked a lot about ghosting this year, and "celebs" seemed to do it quite often. For the uninitiated or those over 50, it simply means to never speak again to those with whom we have held intimate relations. In a truly brave and intrepid fashion, VICE's Alison Stevenson asked a bunch of dudes why they ghosted her, and the answer was basically "uh idk no reason?"

A company called Vasalgel is working to provide a new alternative to condoms so men can better control their reproductive future. Vasalgel works by injecting the vas deferens with a gel that makes it impossible for sperm to escape. The company did a study with baboons this year, and they copulated with lady baboons without any resulting pregnancies. The only catch is they don't yet know how reversible it is.

The old conservative sex-worker-as-victim narrative has fully seized the media. The government doesn't want to admit sex working people have agency and may be doing the work by choice, so it labels all sex workers as trafficked. Sex workers say police send migrant workers who are here to willingly work in the industry back to their countries of origin, or they jail them. Either way, the laws don't help anyone.

Personally, when men talk to me in bars I generally give them the stink eye or fully ignore them, because I'm really charming like that. Seems a lot of ladyfolk have the same issue if the proliferation of apps like Bumble is any indication. (Stop. You know your favourite hobby is sitting on the toilet whilst madly swiping through an endless array of neighbours and man-bunned baristas.)

And those are the standouts for 2015, everyone. What's on the horizon for 2016, you ask? Hopefully tons of sexworker-run, legal brothels will spring up, kids will start to benefit from their enhanced sexual literacy, and young women will be able to wear whatever they want to school without being perved on. But my crystal ball says it's more likely that people will choose, en masse, to hunker down in their houses and hump bits of plastic because we're all becoming too socially anxious to face the prospect of first dates. Stay tuned though and I'll keep you posted. Until next year!

Follow Sarah Ratchford on Twitter.