Sex has become a story told in fragments, through whispers and rumors, awkward lectures in sterile classrooms, shouted across political stages… and even told through silence. 

In 2023, when we started pulling on the loose threads of each of these disconnected narratives, we found a larger interconnected tapestry. And that tapestry, in spite of its frayed edges and haphazard patterning, was woven around a vital center: the Self. 

It is from this essential vantage point that we explore how sex affects us and our lives. It’s a story we all have a stake in. And it’s one worth telling together.

Tanya Ramnauth

I’m a counseling graduate student, researcher, and writer exploring selfhood and intimacy through the lens of emotional architecture, attachment, and storytelling. From academia to art, I connect a common theme: our relationship with ourselves–and the infinite ways we explore that connection–determines the quality of our lives. I believe sex is one of those sacred pathways. By sparking new conversations around sex, I aim to reconnect people to their inner compass, and ultimately, to the eternal fire of life within.

Steven M. Platek

I've been interested in the concept of the self since I was an undergraduate. Now, as a professor in higher education for over two decades, father to children aged 3 to 34, I've begun to explore the expanded self as it relates to development, the brain, and the interaction with others. I've come to believe that a strong, grounded self is what gives rise to the mature, healthy mind, inoculating individuals from the woes of modernity such as the comfort crisis.

I received my PhD in 2002 in biopsychology with an emphasis on comparative animal behavior/evolutionary science and cognitive neuroscience. My dissertation work explored the role of self-awareness in people with schizophrenia and schizophrenia-like traits. I've published over 100 peer-reviewed articles, half dozen peer-reviewed chapters, and have presented my work all over the world. One of my most cited papers used fMRI to localize the processing of the self in the healthy brain. In a follow-up, my team and I demonstrated that self-processing is not an all or nothing process, but on a spectrum as evidenced by variability in performance in families with schizophrenia. 

I continue this research on self-awareness today and strive to bridge the gap between what we know about self formation and how individuals can apply this knowledge meaningfully in their lives.