Virgo Season

All you need to know about Virgo season: queering sex and astrology

Virgo season (23 August to 23 September) turns with wattle and jasmine and the light hanging on a few minutes longer. Nothing out there is being shy about it.

You have already pictured it. The bed made properly. The candles, the playlist sequenced like a seduction, the text workshopped for an hour so it would read as casual. Just picturing it does something to you, it always has.

Earthly and mercurial, this season reminds us that preparation is the arousal. The yearning is the devotion, and you have been meticulous about it.

Villain era: Venus enters Scorpio (10 September), square Pluto in Aquarius (16 September) 

When they talk about a villain era, this is the transit they mean. Venus in Scorpio is magnetic and intimidating in the way that makes you ask whether you are turned on or deeply afraid. Venus sits in detriment here: guarded, with a gaze that does not just see people but penetrates them.

Then the crossing. Venus squares Pluto, and the tension keeps everyone on their toes.

Wanting at this depth is not a soft thing. It asks what you want, how much of it, and from whom. Fear skips the asking and reaches for control it never negotiated.

Obsession can feel like passion. Jealousy can feel like being wanted. The difference is whether you chose it. Your boundaries are valid and so is your appetite. If they cannot meet you there, that tells you what you need to know.

This might land loudly or barely at all. If you are in a relationship, a partnership, a collaboration, it is a powerful time to heal and transform through your unions.

Venus and Pluto have circled each other all year, and this is the last square before Venus turns retrograde next month.

Whatever the intensity, you set the terms. That is the villain era worth having.

Virgo and your body: sharing it and caring for it 

Virgo rules the gut, digestion, intestines and the nervous system. The belly brain, as some call it. Your minds loudest rival.

You know the feeling. The floor of your stomach dropping out when they look at you a second too long. Head says look away, do not embarrass yourself. Gut says hold that glance, a second longer, I dare you. The gut is rarely wrong about this.

Different day, different worry, same voice… “Omg WTF is that smell, can other people smell that? I can’t see them tonight like this! What if I have to explain…”  Silence, head. Time for some mythbusting.

If you have a vagina or a front hole, you may have noticed a shift in discharge, or a fishy smell. That can be bacterial vaginosis (BV), an imbalance in the bacteria that live there, and often no symptoms at all. Common, and no reflection on your hygiene or your practices.

We know that now for a reason. The recently updated STI guidelines have the receipts: BV is now described as sexually transmissible.

Penises do not get it, though they can pass it on, so we are all in this together, whatever practices and parts you play with. Which is why PACT is recruiting queer couples right now to see whether treating both people ends the cycle.

Get tested, and ask for a BV test by name, because a standard STI screen skips it. And if you have a partner to tell, or to talk it through with, we wrote you the words for it.

Overthinking is not preparation. Doing it is.