While sex can mean so many different things to so many sexual subjects, and it does, its stickiness is arguably universal. Stickiness, as conceived by feminist and queer scholar Sara Ahmed, is “an effect of the histories of contact between bodies, objects, and signs”. Sex adheres to and has a hard time letting go of the many feelings, values, moods, and vibes that we feel so compelled to bring to it. In other words, sex is soaked by the affective residue of everyday existence. Thus, many definitions of sex get eclipsed by the feelings that are chronically associated with it. It’s no mystery that for many sexual subjects, sex is synonymous with discomfort, awkwardness, abuse, sin, frivolity, darkness, deviance, scandal, secrecy, shallowness, longing, and greed. While these conflations are not new, signs of growing erotophobia are easy to detect. It’s hard to talk about sex with many people, let alone find frank, honest, and intellectually measured discussions of it in mainstream media. Sexual subjects are increasingly finding themselves living within highly sexualized cultures in which stories of sex and sexuality are in circulation only as mechanisms for exposing predators, perverts, criminals, and other reprobates. Mainstream institutions continue to capitalize off of stories of sex and sexuality by using them to expose scandal, highlight harm, and instigate drama.

What of sexual pleasure? What of generative sexualities that sustain vital appetites and keep sexual subjects happy and healthy? What of productive sexual identities that keep subjects tethered together in caring communities of mutual aid? What of orgasms and erogenous zones? What of play? What of love, friendship, and mentorship? HARD COPY is an online compendium that aims to fill as many holes as it can, mainly ones left wide open by mainstream journalism’s subpar coverage of sex and sexuality. HARD COPY looks beyond the moralizing, fearmongering, and consumerist-sexist-racist-homophobic-transphobic-nationalist agendas, and aims to find and archive stories that focus on sex and sexuality for sex and sexuality’s sake. In a world where fascist politics seem to be blooming, sexual and gender democracy are some of the many freedoms at stake. Thus, as a journalistic endeavour, HARD COPY’S mission is to help inform subjects of the very real threats to their sexual agency.

On the 1^st and 15^th of every month HARD COPY curates a news load of all things sex for its readers. These underreported, buried, or otherwise ignored stories of sex and sexuality are then archived thematically on the HARD COPY site.

HARD COPY is managed by its editor-in-chief, Dr. Gary Lee Pelletier. Dr. Pelletier is a gender, feminist, and sexuality studies academic based in Toronto, Ontario. He teaches in the department of Historical Studies at the University of Toronto Mississauga and currently serves as vice chair and acting program coordinator of the Sexuality Studies Association.

The community contributions portal on the HARD COPY website is designed so that readers can share sex and sexuality stories of their own with HARD COPY or respond to stories that we have covered. The hope is that establishing such a direct line of communication between HARD COPY and its readers will encourage readers to submit experiences and testimonies that have yet to find an outlet in mainstream media. The portal allows for contributors to provide as little or as much identifying information as they wish. HARD COPY will review and acknowledge all submissions. If we are interested in hearing more from you regarding your submissions we will reach out. If we are interested in including your story in one of our future sex and sexuality news round-ups, we will ask you for your consent. Community contributions by no means commit anyone to being published on our website, and all submissions are treated confidentially and will only be read by the HARD COPY staff.

We gratefully acknowledge the William A. Percy Foundation for Social and Historical Studies for its generous funding of this project’s launch. The foundation’s mission is “to support scholarly research and public education that promotes better understanding and greater tolerance of human sexual diversity”.