Best of Women and Sex 2014

What a great year for being sexy! From social apps to lesbian porn to the most awesome sex toys ever created, 2014 has sizzled for the ladies. As you ease into a New Year, check out the best of last year's sex.

Form Follows Function: Sex Toys for Her: What's a woman to do when a retail industry that capitalizes on female sexuality falls short of the task at hand? Well, if your name is Alice Derock, you create your own product line and market it successfully to the world.

That's how, at the age of 35, the Parisian native, along with two friends, answered the simple question "Why, in this day and age, with all the products in the world, isn't there a sex toy designed specifically by and for lesbians?" -- she decided to create Wet For Her (WFH).

Officially launched in 2009 in the U.S., Wet For Her is a lesbian-owned and -operated brand that was founded with the intention of providing nonrealistic and designed novelties specifically crafted and packaged for lesbian consumers. At its very core, Wet For Her celebrates lesbian lovemaking with tools of love from the land of love: France.
Read more here.

Grnd Her? Wing Ma'am App Brings Social Networking to Lesbians: For too long, gay men have ruled the location based social networking scene with apps like Grndr, GROWLr and BoyAhoy. But now, Ariella Furman and Dana Custer are bringing lesbians together for fun, flirting and friendship via Wing Ma'am, a new social networking app for women.

"My best gay was using Grndr, and I asked him if there was such a thing for women. He said no," said Furman, Wing Ma'am's CEO. "That's sort of where the idea came from. I felt jealous that the guys had it better than us. I thought, it shouldn't be that way." Read more here.

Cleis Press Nominated for Three Goldie Awards: The progressive publisher Cleis Press has been nominated for three Golden Crown Awards, representing the best of lesbian literature, for titles including two lesbian erotic romance collections, and an LGBT mystery title.

"2014 has truly been a banner year for Cleis for nominations and awards," said Brenda Knight, publisher of Cleis Press. "I can't help but note that certain books are getting a lot of attention, simply because they are the best. Laura Antoniou's rare and wonderful mystery, 'The Killer Wore Leather' was nominated for both a Lammy and a Goldie, and we couldn't be more thrilled. The core character, Detective Rebecca Feldblum, is not just covering a case but falling in love, setting up the sequel very nicely."

"The Killer Wore Leather," was nominated for best Mystery/Thriller. This book has also already won a Rainbow Book Award, and is nominated for a Foreword Reviews Book of the Year Award, and a Lambda Literary Award.

Also nominated are "Best Lesbian Romance 2014," edited by Radclyffe, nominated for best Anthology/Collection (Fiction); and "Wild Girls, Wild Nights," edited by Sacchi Green, nominated for Best Erotica. Read more here.

Less Bangers, More Mash: 20% Rise in Brits Lesbian Encounters: The stats are in. And if the findings of a recent study are true, England could quite well be the most girl-on-girl friendly island since Lesbos.

The latest figures are in from the UK's National Survey of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles (Natsal) and they reveal that a full 20 percent of British women have had a sexual experience with another woman --- twice as many as 10 years ago. By contrast, the number of men having gay sex remained stable and stands at 4.8 percent, as published in the Lancet. Read more here.

The 'Buzz' Says the kGoal App Makes Kegel Exercises Fun and Rewarding: Concerned about your pelvic floor muscles? The creators of kGoal, a revolutionary new Kegel training system, are on the final week of their Kickstarter campaign to raise funds for its creation.

"These are generally involuntary, subconsciously controlled muscles. So when someone tells you to squeeze your pelvic floor muscles or crunch them, it's not intuitively obvious at first how to do that," Jon Thomas, the vice president of manufacturing for Minna, the sexual health products company that designed kGoal, told Fast Company. "Our product tells you how you're doing."

The body-safe silicone device tracks your progress and gives you feedback via iOS devices and Android, much like Fitbit or Jawbone UP. If you do the exercise correctly, kGoal gives you a little buzz. If you need incentive, you can turn the vibration up. If you don't like it, you can turn it off.
Read more here.