Hot, Wet and Shaking: talking sex at King’s

Editors Note – This story contains sexual content.
By sharing a few of her cringe-worthy sex-related experiences with warmth and humour, Kaleigh Trace is on a mission to make sex a comfortable discussion.
She was in town Thursday at King’s to promote her recently published book, Hot, Wet, and Shaking: How I Learned to Talk About Sex, and she drew in an audience of women and men.
Trace is a blogger, sex educator, author and a Haligonian who is self-described as disabled, queer and a feminist.
“Being visibly disabled has barred me from ever really being quiet,” Trace said. She was in a car accident when she was a child, which left her with a disability.
“People are going to see me and make assumptions about me as soon as they see me. So that has instilled in me a certain confidence, or drive, to be loud.”
Her book intimately discloses the sometimes bumpy journey Trace faced towards embracing her body, sexual orientation and positive relationship with sex.
Chapters range from the hilarious, as she describes accidentally presenting a grocery store cashier with a giant dildo, to the informative, as she outlines the importance, and at times the challenge, of masturbation.
Though she’s well educated in the field of sex, Trace doesn’t feel she can or should provide university students with too much advice in navigating the sometime, strange world of young adult self-discovery.
“I made so many strange sexual choices in college that I would feel a bit hypocritical,” she said with a laugh.
Trace said there is one thing she now knows that she didn’t before – combine having sex with being desirable or valuable.
“I feel like I had a lot of funny experiences because I was unsure about myself so when somebody else seemed to like me that meant I was worth something,” she said.
“Now that I am older and a bit more self-assured I know that I’m really sexy regardless of who wants to have sex with me.”
In the end what’s Trace’s main recommendation about sex? Educate yourself.