Daniel Copulsky

University of California, Santa Cruz | UCSC · Department of Psychology

With its emphasis on practices like social distancing and periods of intermittent isolation, the COVID-19 pandemic likely presented unique challenges for individuals who engage in consensual nonmonogamy (CNM). Interviews with 16 practitioners of CNM in the United States conducted in May-July, 2021 revealed five themes about how COVID-19 impacted th...

As identities within the ace spectrum gain greater visibility in describing those who experience limited or no sexual attraction, it is vital to understand points of commonality and distinction among individuals who identify as asexual, graysexual, and demisexual. Among respondents to the Ace Community Survey, a large international sample of indivi...

Over the past two decades, a broad community has come together around the asexual identity. While asexuality generally describes a sexual orientation in which a person does not experience sexual attraction toward anyone, specific experiences of asexual people vary considerably, and related identities are often considered part of the asexual spectru...

While research into motivations for obtaining a genital piercing has often shown sexual pleasure to be a key reason that persons get such piercings, research has typically overlooked the diverse ways that sexual pleasure is conceived of amid the context of genital piercings. In this article, we use examples from a study of self-reported genital pie...

People have practiced some form of non-monogamy for as long as humans have existed, with non-monogamous relationships structured a multitude of different ways from then until now. Only in the past thirty years, however, was the term polyamory coined and a community formed around this particular identity. Likewise, humans have always had a wide vari...

This study examined how gender shapes sexual interactions and pleasure outcomes. We highlight varying expectations people have in regard to sex by combining questions about orgasm frequency and sexual pleasure. Our analysis was driven from a sample of 907 survey responses from cis women, cis men, trans women, trans men, non-binary, and intersex mil...

In this first-person account, we describe the changes we made to align our graduate student-level community psychology class with a healing justice model. We undertook this intervention because the class started in March, at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic stay-at-home directive in our region. We describe the facets of a healing justice mode...

Under a neoliberal regime and a pandemic crisis, social toxicity is expected (Klein, 2007). Yet, social possibility and opportunities for cohesion and collectivism can occur. We discuss how social toxicity and possibility sit side by side during the COVID-19 pandemic, with an emphasis on the glimmerings of mutual aid for those who are undocumented...