(hell, yeah) Scarleteen

We get asked what sex is a lot, but we also ask our users what it is a lot, because (possibly just like you) we don’t always know what someone means when they talk about sex or having sex. People tend to use the word sex very differently or arbitrarily: what sex is or means for one person can be radically different than what it is or means to someone else.

It’s obviously important if you’re here for information about sex that you know what we mean when we say (and hear or read) “sex,” so we thought we’d make it crystal clear.

What do we mean when we say “sex?”

If we say sexuality, we mean the physical, chemical, emotional and intellectual properties and processes and the cultural and social influences and experiences that are how people experience and express themselves as sexual beings. Some aspects of all those things are very diverse and unique, others are very common or collective.

If we say someone is having sex, or doing something sexual, we mean they are acting from their own sexuality, looking to express it in action and/or to try and actively experience or explore a feeling of general or specific sexual desire, curiosity and/or satisfaction.

When we say “sex,” what we mean is any number of different things people freely choose to do to tangibly and actively express or enact their sexuality; what they identify or know to be their sexual feelings.

If “sex” was the answer, the questions would be things like “What am I doing to try and feel good sexually or to express feeling good sexually? What am I doing that feels sexual to me (or to me and a partner)? What am I doing that feels like a way to express my sexuality, or my sexual desires and/or feelings about myself or others?”

When some people say “sex” they only mean penis-in-vagina genital intercourse. The trouble is, there are a good many people who don’t or can’t have that kind of sex, or don’t have that kind of sex every time, but who still have active, fulfilling sex lives. Some other people use it to mean any kind of genital sex with someone else. That definition can have its flaws, though, too. When we mean those specific things, we’ll say that we’re talking about those specific things. When some people say “having sex” they mean something that can only happen in some specific kinds of partnership, but when we mean specific partnerships or relationships, we’ll be specific.

When we say “sex” we’re talking about a very big picture. That’s because what sex is or isn’t for any given person or partnership not only differs a whole lot from person-to-person, it also can differ a whole lot from day-to-day for any one person: the way they had sex yesterday may not be the way they’ll have sex next week. One person might consider that only intercourse or oral sex is sex, but someone else may both define sex differently and have what’s sex for them without doing either of those things. And defining what sex is just by a given activity or action, without talking about people’s motivations and desires really doesn’t work: after all, rape isn’t sex, even though things like intercourse or oral sex are forced in rapes.

What can “sex” be?

Read the rest here at Scarleteen!

Just below the Scarleteen 101 section on the left-hand sidebar over there, you should see something that looks like this:

Or, you’ll see an image that looks like that one, but which says it’s offline, and makes a sad-face because, as you know, someone not being online to help when you want is a bummer.

What’s that all about?

That’s our brand new, shiny, live site helpline. It’s a web-based, real-time chat system our visitors can now use to be able to connect with one of our staff or volunteers directly for quick help.

What kind of help? If you’re new to the site, and are having any trouble navigating, or have any kind of technical problem using the site, you can use it so one of us can help you with that right away when we’re online. If you need an answer to a question, or information on a given issue, but don’t know where to look for it, or are having trouble finding exactly what you need. Scarleteen is a big site that’s been around a long time, so there’s a lot here: we know it’s not always easy to find exactly what you need. This way we can give those of you who need it a fast helping hand.

Or maybe you’re not sure which of our direct services, like our message boards or text, are the right ones for you to use: we can help you figure that out, and can also help you with any issues you might have in using those services. Or maybe you need help finding in-person healthcare or help: we can help you learn to use our find-a-doc database, or work to find you a direct referral this way. Perhaps you have a suggestion you want to make to the site right there and then: if we’re online, you can use this new service to do that, if you like.

And just like with our SMS/text service, you can also use this new service to ask questions about your sexuality, sexual health or other related issues. We can’t get super in-depth with this, the boards are still the right service for those kinds of conversations, but we can get you started here on shorter questions and answers.

How do you use this?

Easy! You just click that graphic — again, it’s just to the left of this text, in the Scarleteen 101 section of the sidebar — and it’ll open a window for you. If someone is online to help, you’ll go right into the live site help chat. If no one is available, a form will pop up where you can leave a message for us that goes to our email, so we can get back to you that way. Or, you can skip leaving a message and just try again later.

If you go into chat, you’ll see this looks just like any other kind of customer service or other basic chat. You’ll show up as a visitor, but can change your name if you like, by clicking your name in the chat window on the top right. You’ll come in, we’ll ask what you need help with, and take it from there! When you’re done getting what you needed, all you need to do is close the window, and you’re done. And if you realize that didn’t quite get you covered, or you need help with something else later, you can always come back.

Scarleteen is one of the world’s most respected and valued resources for sexuality education, both online and offline. We play a very important role in the lives of young people.

In 2012, as is typical for us most years, we served more than five million people internationally, most between the ages of 16 and 21.

We helped them navigate emotions, desires and pressures they faced. We helped them have better sex and healthier relationships. We helped them prevent unintended pregnancies. We helped them heal from assault and abuse. We helped them to better understand their bodies, their hearts and their minds, and helped them to better care for all of those parts of who they are. We helped them come out to parents and friends, and to better communicate with many different people in their lives about sex and sexuality. We helped them get through hard times, and helped them become even more amazing than they already are. We helped them through their adolescence and emerging adulthood, particularly around one of those most complex parts of both: their sexuality.

We were here for them, and want to remain here for them. But to make that happen, we need you to be here for us.

We served those five million young people last year, in all of those ways and more, on a budget of $45,000. Not four and a half million dollars. Not four hundred and fifty thousand. Just forty-five thousand dollars.

For every dollar we had to work with, we helped more than a hundred people. Most accessed the thousands of pieces of accessible, original, progressive content in our archives.  Some talked with us directly, asking one question and getting one, sometimes life-changing, answer. Others engaged with us in conversations, based on their expressed needs, for days, weeks or months. (Some we’ve been talking with for years.) Some used our message boards or other channels to get peer support, having conversations about sensitive subjects in a safe space. Some use our growing database to find in-person services, or got a personal referral to in-person services they needed from us via our direct services. Some benefit from the face-to-face outreach we do. Some use what we offer on our social media channels to interact and expand their sexuality education, or to find other credible, reliable places to explore these topics. We’re sure many will now also use our new live service to connect with us for help in 2013.

We also served fellow educators, healthcare providers, parents and other youth allies and advocates with information and support they needed to work with and support youth themselves. Scarleteen remains, as it has been since we first started in the late nineties, a widely acclaimed example of ongoing excellence in sex education.

And we did all of that at a total cost of less than a penny for each person we served. That’s an incredible feat, and we’re pretty proud of ourselves for doing it, particularly since it makes us the most cost-effective sexuality education and support service for young people — maybe for people of any age — there is.

As impressive as it is, we can’t go on this way forever. Our current budget doesn’t give us the stability we need to keep going at this level, and it certainly doesn’t give us the ability to grow in the ways that the young people we serve need us to.

That’s where you come in.

Click here to read the rest of this important fundraising appeal from us.

As we mention in the appeal, we not only know that most of our young users and readers don’t have the means to donate, we don’t think you should have to.  We feel essential health information like we offer should be free for young people.  But if you can give, we could use your help. If you can’t, just doing what you can to help get our appeal far and wide is a great way to pitch in for Scarleteen right now. Sliding this into the hands of an older adult or two — or more! — who you know cares about young people and their sexual well-being could wind up getting us exactly what we need, so you can keep getting what you need from us. Thanks! :)

And on ice! (No, not on ice, sorry. That’d sure be fun, though.) “Scarleteen Live” is something we think is pretty exciting, even without ice skates and kooky costumes, but probably isn’t quite as exciting as it sounds, either. There aren’t even any song and dance numbers. (Yet.)

Here’s what this is all about, for real.

Just below the Scarleteen 101 section on the left-hand sidebar over there, you should see something new today that looks like this:

Or, you’ll see an image that looks like that one, but which says it’s offline, and makes a sad-face because, as you know, someone not being online to help when you want is a bummer.

What’s that all about?

That’s our brand new, shiny, live site helpline. It’s a web-based, real-time chat system our visitors can now use to be able to connect with one of our staff or volunteers directly for quick help.

What kind of help? If you’re new to the site, and are having any trouble navigating, or have any kind of technical problem using the site, you can use it so one of us can help you with that right away when we’re online. If you need an answer to a question, or information on a given issue, but don’t know where to look for it, or are having trouble finding exactly what you need. Scarleteen is a big site that’s been around a long time, so there’s a lot here: we know it’s not always easy to find exactly what you need. This way we can give those of you who need it a fast helping hand.

Or maybe you’re not sure which of our direct services, like our message boards or text, are the right ones for you to use: we can help you figure that out, and can also help you with any issues you might have in using those services. Or maybe you need help finding in-person healthcare or help: we can help you learn to use our find-a-doc database, or work to find you a direct referral this way. Perhaps you have a suggestion you want to make to the site right there and then: if we’re online, you can use this new service to do that, if you like.

And just like with our SMS/text service, you can also use this new service to ask short or quick questions about your sexuality, sexual health or other related issues. We can’t get very in-depth with this, the boards are still the right service for those kinds of conversations, but we can get you started here on shorter or more basic questions and answers.

How do you use this?

Read the rest here at Scarleteen to find out!

My mother reads Dear Abby religiously. She’s done it for as long as I can remember, always picking out the “Lifestyle” section of our local daily paper and turning to page B2.

Some days growing up, my sister or father would abscond with the section before she got to it to do the crossword or read the comics, but she would keep her eye on it, calling dibs on the section next. As a kid, it didn’t occur to me to question her loyalty to the column, and in fact I blindly followed suit–reading Dear Abby, it seemed, was something one did if one was to be a Woman. I was never all that impressed by the advice “Abby” (Pauline Phillips was her real name, if I remember correctly) doled out, and eventually I got bored of her predictable responses and stopped reading. The act of stopping wasn’t all that memorable or all that conscious; it just sort of slipped away, superseded by more important things.

It wasn’t until I was in college, home from a break one year, that I thought to ask my mother why she liked Dear Abby so much. I was sitting at the breakfast table with her some late morning (summer? weekend?), watched her reach for Lifestyle and turn to B2, and was momentarily struck with mild curiosity.

“Mom,” I said, “why do you read Dear Abby every day?”

She looked up at me, stricken, and sighed. ”Well,” she said, “I guess there’s no reason not to tell you.”

When she was 11, she told me, she’d been assaulted by a friend of her parents’. At that age in 1964, she didn’t have the language to identify what specifically had happened, she just knew she’d been violated. And she was scared. She knew, vaguely, that babies were made by men “doing things” to women, unspeakable things, and she knew that something unspeakable had been done to her, because the man had told her so, admonishing her that it was their “secret.” She felt isolated, ashamed, and was afraid that it mean she would have a baby, too.

So, unable to talk to her parents and lacking knowledge or awareness of any other resources at her disposal, she wrote to Dear Abby. Asking if she was pregnant. So every day, 11 years old, she read Dear Abby, hoping for a response.

And she got one.

Read the rest of this blog from a couple years back here. A nod of respect to Pauline Phillips, who died today, and who did an excellent job with great care, including providing some needed sex education and support in the unlikliest of places.

If you’re someone who takes part in end-of-year giving, we’d like to ask you to consider giving to Scarleteen.

As you may already know, Scarleteen was one of the first online resources for young people about sex and sexuality, and remains the leading, most visited online resource expressly created and maintained for young people to get extensive and excellent sex and sexuality information, education and support.

We provide opt-in, youth-driven content and direct services every year through articles that don’t shortcut, but give young people the depth they ask for, advice columns done with the aim of support and education, not entertainment; a staffed SMS service and fully moderated message boards available seven days a week, 24 hours a day, where young people talk to real people with the skills to do so well, not templates, machines or some random yahoo on Yahoo; an ever-growing database of referrals to direct, in-person services and to other credible websites or organizations; in-person workshops and talks, both for young people and for adults who want to better serve them; engaged social media channels to help people of all ages stay abreast of news, data and trends in and about adolescent and young adult sexuality; mentorship and leadership opportunities for our fantastic young adult volunteers and more.

So far, in 2012, we’ve served nearly 5 million unique visitors online. Our SMS service has had distinct conversations with over 900 unique callers in 2012, with over 4,500 single text messages sent total. Nearly 1 million of our 10 million site pageviews in the last year have been at our message boards, where our staff and volunteers have personally and directly engaged with users — with real conversations of depth, sometimes over days, weeks or even months — in around 3,000 of their initiated questions or topics. (And this has been a slow year.)

We continue to do what we do without any foundational, state or federal funding, on an operating budget that typically is around or below the median annual income of a single family in the United States. We also do all of what we do with a much smaller staff and pool of resources than any other organization we know of who serves at the level and volume we do. We depend entirely on independent donors and supporters like yourself to keep our doors, literal and virtual, open.

When you ask sexuality professionals where they send young people online, they will usually say Scarleteen. We think that’s for good reason. We’re deeply committed and dedicated to doing what we do and to doing it well. And we’re committed to doing our best to keep on doing our best, no matter what, but money to do the things that cost money — like paying our server and development bills, and providing our staff a living wage — sure makes it a whole lot easier.

We, as so many of our users do, strongly feel we provide a pioneering, valuable service without peer when it comes to in-depth online resources specifically intended to provide  young people progressive, inclusive, accurate and accessible sex, sexuality and relationship education, information and support. And we think, as so many of our users do, that’s something young people continue to direly need even with — and most certainly without — school or home-based sex education. We think that supporting young people as best we can, particularly in areas like sex and sexuality in which so many are so unsupported, is one of the best possible uses of our time and energy. And because we think that, we also think that a gift to help support Scarleteen is an excellent way for everyone todo that.

As we enter into our 15th year, we’d like to keep providing all we do for young people, sustaining the quality, integrity and volume of our services, and we’d like to also keep growing. For 2013, we’ve new articles in the works, and also aim to make improvements to our mobile service. We would additionally like to add a live chat customer service line to Scarleteen to better help users find exactly what they want and need, at our own organization or website, or outside it, like by connecting them to in-person health and other care services, or other sources of information and support online. The point is, we’ve got plans and new things we want to do.  We’ve got the desire and the ability to do them, but we also need the funding.

When you support Scarleteen, you’re supporting young people in building healthier sexualities and sexual lives. When you support Scarleteen, you’re providing the support young people want and need in an area of their lives where support and sound information can be so hard to find, whether they’re looking for help understanding the realities of their bodies and their feelings, navigating sexual or dating relationships, caring for their sexual health and making reproductive choices, coming to terms with their sexual orientation, gender or sexual identity, surviving and healing from sexual violence or abuse, or any of the many other challenging issues we have always been there to help them with.

We’ll do our primary fundraising for 2013 in February, but if you’re someone who likes to do end-of-year donations or gifts, we’d be so grateful for any support you can give us today.

Maybe we’re not your #1 pick for an end-of-year donation. If not, we hope that if you’re in the position to give, you choose at least one other organization in need that specifically helps young people navigate sex and their sexuality. We have many allies we think are doing excellent work who we think would also be excellent recipients for your generosity. Right now, we’d like to make sure you know about the Native Youth Sexual Health Network, who are doing their end-of-year fundraising now, and who could also very much use your help and support. We think they’re one great example of an allied, grassroots organization doing fantastic work on a very low budget like we do. The NYSHN is youth-led by and for Indigenous/Native American young people whether in urban centers or in remote, rural, and northern territories. The work they do is fully inclusive, and incredibly passionate and thoughtful about delivering the sexuality and reproductive health, rights, and justice initiatives young people they work with want and need. 

In the event that you aren’t in the position to give any end-of-year financial gifts right now, we ask that you still find a way to strongly support the young people in your life this holiday season. For those who celebrate the winter holidays, this time of year can be perfect to reconnect with younger siblings, cousins, nieces, nephews, sons, daughters, young people you perhaps have taught, coached or otherwise mentored. It can be a great time to remind them that you’re here for them: ready to listen when they need a listener, have their back if they need someone to have it, and to provide or find information or feedback for them if they want it, including with sex, sexuality or their sexual or romantic relationships. If we know anything about young people from what we do, it’s that all too many of them have too few people in their lives who have offered that to them, and who are and will be there for them, no matter what, in those ways when they want and need them, specifically in this part of their lives.

We do this for them every day, but we’re never enough, and having someone already in their lives step up to that plate is a gift — one that costs nothing — we can safely say all of them will consider one of the most valuable they receive.

Our very best this holiday season to our supporters and donors, our allies and colleagues; to the adults who do their best to care for and about young people, and to all of the young people we consider invaluable, deeply cherished and highly valued members of our (very big!) family. We hope that those of you who celebrate the holidays have wonderful celebrations, and wish all of you joy and love, care and kindness, peace and pleasure in the coming year.

(Original blog post here.)

The French have a saying: “Si jeunesse savait, si vieillesse pouvait” which roughly translates as “If only youth knew, if only age could”. It’s a take on the world which is definitely on the side of “glass half-empty”. If I’ve translated it correctly, it’s saying that the young know nothing and the old can’t do anything, so we’re all doomed. Which is rubbish.

At the end of September, I enjoyed one of the most invigorating gatherings in my career at IPPF. Summits, conventions and conferences often offer participants little more than an extended near-death experience, but to my delight this was lively, dynamic, challenging, provocative, positive and full of hope.

It was staged by IPPF and its member association in Norway (Sex og Politikk) with support of the Norwegian government. It was titled the Emerging Leaders’ Summit and it brought together 40 people, all under 30.

Together, they set out the biggest challenges limiting the lives of young people in the 21st century. Together, they agreed on the action they would take and formulated a “Roadmap for the 21st Century”.

They weren’t focusing solely to a sexual and reproductive health and rights agenda. It’s long been IPPF’s contention that ensuring that young people are informed about sex and sexuality and have open access to the services they need is about far more than personal health.

Knowing about one’s body, understanding about one’s rights, learning about how relationships work, discovering that sex is about shared pleasure, and becoming aware that sex – in the profoundest way – is based on respect and tolerance. These lessons have ramifications far beyond any individual relationships. They are lessons which, once learned, turn young people into mature and active citizens.

Read the rest at The Guardian here.

“None of my friends want an implant because they’re scared of getting it cut out,” says Estelle, 18. “I don’t use the pill because a friend of mine did and it messed up her periods. The injection? Just … noooooo! My friend had it, and it was horrible – I hate needles. The coil? That’s just weird.”

Estelle relies on condoms for contraception. Although good for lowering the risk of contracting an STI (sexually transmitted infection), condoms are one of the least reliable contraceptive methods available. She’s been having sex for less than a year – has she ever had a conversations with a health professionals about how to avoid getting pregnant?

“I mainly just talk to my friends about it,” she says. Has she ever thought she might be pregnant? “Yes.”

So does she think condoms are safe? “Yes, because I’ve used them and I haven’t got pregnant” is the response.

Because she’s using condoms, Estelle believes she’s taking care and being responsible. She is, as far as she has the information to be. But health professionals say that young people are routinely let down by the education system, their teachers and wider society when it comes to easy access to good-quality contraceptive advice. It means that myths abound, and teenagers fall back on the limited and highly subjective experience of their peer group.

There are numerous problems facing teenagers when they find themselves needing contraceptive advice, not the least of which, says Hollie Kluczewski, national co-ordinator for Sexpression, is that nobody talks about young people having sex in a positive way.

“It’s all very mechanical. ‘Please pee in a pot for a chlamydia test and here’s a condom,’” she says. “If you always talk about sex as a frightening thing – ‘sex kills’ for instance – then you feel bad about having it, and then you’re not going to access services.”

Sexpression is a nationwide organisation of mostly medical students, supported by consultants in sexual health to offer peer support to young people on any sexual health or relationship-related topic. The students volunteer in schools, community centres and youth groups. Kluczewski says that creating an atmosphere where having sex is seen as normal, healthy and positive does not mean “plugging sex”, but being open and honest about the questions that arise.

Read the rest of this great piece at The Guardian here.