On July 1, 2008, I became even more of a proud Canadian. This past Canada Day, Dr. Henry Morgentaler became one of several new inductees into the Order of Canada (our highest honour). I think it was long overdue.

Dr. Morgentaler has been one of the strongest voices for women’s right to choose for over 4 decades. He opened his first abortion clinic in 1969 and performed thousands of illegal procedures. His clinics were raided very often, he was arrested several times, and one clinic in Toronto was even firebombed. In 1988 however, Dr. Morgentaler won his case, and the abortion law was struck down. Here is a news article with more details about his appointment, and here is another article detailing various reactions (including Dr. Morgentaler’s).

Of course, his appointment to the Order has led to a lot of controversy. A priest in the province of British Columbia is even returning his Order of Canada in protest – not a loss at all in my honest opinion. Pro-life groups around the country have urged other Order of Canada recipients to return their medal in protest. So far, I don’t believe anyone other than the priest has done so.

Canada still has a long way to go in terms of providing abortions to every woman who wants one (some provincial governments contribute to these roadblocks), but I think Dr. Morgentaler’s appointment to our highest honour is a step in the right direction.

Congratulations Dr. Morgentaler!

*Happy dance*

• The teen booklet that Madeline and Suzanne over at Lunapdas have been working on for years with my help, as well as help and contributions from Inga Muscio, Sarah Mundy, Emira Mears and Dr. Jerilynn Prior is finally done, and is a gorgeous, fantastic, radical, groovy slice of awesome. Yay! You can order a copy of it or a PDF file here. I'm really excited that this is finally out, and think it's going to be a great thing for girls and young women to have for themselves.

• The Our Bodies, Ourselves blog yesterday reported on a disturbing piece in the New York Times about a "medical spa" in Manhattan described as the first facility "dedicated to strengthening and grooming a woman’s genital area." The facility's own website refers to its services as addressing "feminine fitness." The physician running the "spa" stated, "If you can vote and you have a vagina, you should do these. It’s the dental floss of feminine fitness.” To be clear, "feminine fitness" is a made-up phrase with no standard medical meaning, and the definition of physical fitness in general can be variable and subjective. Never mind that, though - I'm still hung up on "if you can vote and you have a vagina."

  Read more here.

• gURL's sed ex blog reports on a not-terribly-surprising but still creepy issue where "a Salt Lake City teacher with over 30 years experience under her belt, is currently on paid administrative leave and may be fired, or even charged with a crime, for answering students' questions. That's because the questions asked were about oral sex, masturbation and homosexuality." They add that, "Republican politician Carl Wimmer announced his intention to introduce legislation specifically making it a crime for a teacher to stray from state guidelines on sex education. Additionally, his law would prohibit, "promoting or encouraging sexual behavior. The bill also would create a registry to record the names of teachers who violate the law."

  Pretty scary stuff for those of us who are sex educators to think about. And speaking of educators in trouble for...well, doing their job, have a look at this bit of rubbish.

• Debra Haffner reviews The Secret Life of the American Teen. It's an understatement to say that she wasn't impressed.

  "I think I've just watched the WORST television show on adolescent sexuality that I've ever seen. Broadcast for the first time on the ABC Family Network, the "Secret Life of the American Teen" has every bad stereotype of teenagers dealing with their sexuality that I think I have ever seen in a single hour. Every one of the boys is obsessed with having sexual intercourse. The boy with the multiple partners is the victim of repeated and implied violent incest by a father. The girls are either portrayed as sluts, down to revealing clothes and too much eye make up, or as clean scrubbed virtuous innocents, including the heroine who gets pregnant after one night at band camp which sounds almost like a rape situation. The possibility of abortion is dismissed out of hand. The portrayal of the one explicitly Christian family, with the girl with the purity ring, was beyond offensive, as this beautiful blond in the tight cheerleader outfit throws her legs around her suffering boyfriend and tells him they will need to wait until she finishes medical school. The attitude of the other students towards this Christian girl is offensive beyond reality."

• Sarah Seltzer at RH Reality Check has some marvelous reminders about body image, women and where to look for more positive messages.

Today I received my third and final shot of Gardasil, the HPV vaccine.

A few weeks shy of my 23rd birthday, I am part of the first generation of women to receive this vaccine.

I have to be honest: as far as shots go, it's pretty vile. It hurt more than my tattoos did (of course, to be fair, the tattoos took much, much longer). However, (probably) being protected from four strains of HPV- the four that cause the majority of cervical cancer and genital warts- is worth it.

I say probably protected because I have been sexually active for several years: while I have practiced safer sex, there is no guarantee that I am HPV-free. However, it's highly unlikely that I have all four of the strains that the vaccine protects against.

Today also happens to be about a month or so after discovering that one of my friends- an intelligent, funny, and all-around-wonderful woman- has cervical cancer. If she was ten years younger, she could have gotten the vaccine that would most likely prevented this. My heart goes out to her.

I urge young women to consider getting this vaccine, and for parents to consider it for their daughters (and, hopefully one day, sons). We have a vaccine against cancer- and it's not a second too soon.

For more information, take a look at The HPV Vaccine FAQ.

As reported at Time Magazine this week, most of the United States has started to wise up about the ineffectiveness and bias of abstinence-only (which differs from abstinence-plus or comprehensive sex education, both of which contain accurate and in-depth information on sex and sexual health, but which usually also make clear that forestalling sex or certain kinds of sex is often most safe) sex education pushed by the Bush administration, and which is funded by billions of taxpayer dollars to date, and $50 million more has been given to the programs this year.

To provide some perspective, up to this year, our tax dollars have provided over 1.5 billion for abstinence-only sex education. Title X, on the other hand, which provides actual family planning services such as birth control, pre-natal care, STI testing and community education (the real kind), has continued to get a considerably lower budget.

Since the end of 1996, as we've been reporting throughout, states who want federal funding for their sex education have been forced to choose programs which contain vast amounts of purposeful misinformation, often do not include sound, accurate information on birth control and safer sex, and which inform teens that any kind of sex before or without (heterosexual) marriage is physically and psychologically harmful.

But recently, many states have made the laudable decision to refuse the funding and the programs to assure that they are educating their youth, not indoctrinating them or providing misinformation to scare or coerce them into sexual decisions that are more about the agendas of others than the real best interest of teens and young adults. Hooray! 26 states remain who are still are accepting and plan to continue to accept the money and those programs. Boo!

The states remaining which still use abstinence only programs and who have not stated an intent to refuse the programs and funding past the end of this fiscal year are, with the amounts they have received to date this year according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services:

Alabama, $716,369
Arkansas, $440,640
Florida, $1.9 million
Georgia, $1.1 million
Hawaii, $122,091
Illinois, $1.4 million
Indiana, $565,556
Kansas, $252,832
Kentucky, $612,974
Louisiana, 962,673
Maryland, $427,257
Michigan, $1.1 million
Mississippi, $621,716
Missouri, $664,196
Nebraska, $164,055
Nevada, $210,130
New Hampshire, $71,177
North Carolina, $936,723
North Dakota, $66,744
Oklahoma, $517,756
Oregon, $365,772
South Carolina, $563,972
South Dakota, $102,285
Texas, $3.6 million
Utah, $216,117
West Virginia, $289,389

Every year there are new student trends or patterns in schools and teachers may understand or may be left scratching their heads in wonder of what’s to come. Trends may be in types of clothing, hairstyles, a different set of words, even what classes will be deemed interesting for that year. A troubling trend began not too many years back with school shootings, making teaching a less safe career choice than it used to be.

Most recently a pact purportedly began in Massachusetts for teenage girls to become pregnant and have their babies to raise together.

A sudden rise in positive pregnancy tests at the health clinic in Gloucester, Massachusetts, left nurses and clinicians suspicious and looking for a reason – they traced tests back to a group of students at the local High School. Apparently, about half of the girls pregnant were a part of this pact made. Although there's yet no definite proof to this information, I've thought a lot about the story.

A troubling part for the nurses delivering the news of the pregnancy for these young girls was seeing their reactions. Nurses said that some of the girls were more excited about the positive pregnancy tests than were with the negative – also a sign that something was happening that wasn’t yet known. Some of the fathers were boys in the school, but one specific case was a 24 year old homeless man that a teenage girl stated she sought out.

I am left with quite a few questions after reading and further researching this story. First and foremost, do these girls understand the commitment that they are signing unto? Having and caring for a child is a major responsibility. Kids cost a lot of money – how are these young women planning to pay for food, clothing, hospital and doctor bills if the kids become ill, medicines if any of these children have a need to take them? Are any of the fathers going to be responsible for payments for these children and their needs? Going to high school and possibly having a part time job doesn’t much allow for the kind of money that raising a child requires.

Second, there is much discussion right now about the legal matters of these teenagers having become pregnant in the first place. In Massachusetts, the law clearly states that it is illegal to have sex with anyone under the age of sixteen. There is not only a legal matter in what the city could charge the boys involved with, but also in what charges the girl’s families could pursue because of the age factor.

Many of the boys involved were students at the high school. If the sex was consensual there could be serious trouble awaiting the boys and major changes to their futures. The mayor has suggested that the boys involved be arrested for statutory rape charges. While the boys fates are still under discussion, it’s not looking good for the 24 year old homeless man whose age is well above that of the other boys.

Additionally, according to the article, The National Center for Health Statistics stated in December that teenage birth rates between the ages of 15 and 17 have risen 3 percent in 2006. If teenage birthrates are on the rise, it’s a good question to ask what exactly has happened to make this rise occur. As always, the media is being thrown a large part of the blame. For instance, one major person in question that the media has followed closely was the young 17-year-old Jamie Lynn Spears (Sister of Britney Spears). If these well-known teens are having a baby, and the media follows this fact so closely, is it showing younger generations that this is realistic and workable?

Do the popular movies that show teenagers having babies suggest that pregnancy or raising children is easy? Another question being asked is if the school’s policy to withhold contraceptives without parental consent is impacting the number of births. This rule led to the school’s doctor and nurse’s resignation from the district as a protest in May, but if this is truly a case of the girls wanting to become pregnant and having a pact to do so, how much would a change in this rule have helped?

Finally, as a personal note, it worries me to think that as a future teacher this is a problem that I may as well face someday. Exactly what would I say to these students and what their decision may mean for their futures? As a professional and a member of the school community, what exactly would I even be allowed to say, if anything, to these students?

Because this school has a nursery to allow students to continue school if the have children, many are questioning whether or not this is a sign for students that it’s sound to plan to become pregnant while in school. The school district has stated that it does not say that to students, but rather points out that even though they have children ,school is important and offers them the opportunity to continue and graduate. While I agree that all students should have the opportunity to finish school I have also had the privilege of working in a nursery and understand that it’s a very limited view of the children and what it takes to care for a child. Working with children and seeing them for a small amount of time is extremely different than having a child and them being your responsibility full time.

Being a teen mom comes with a lot to handle -- for mother and child alike -- as the teenage years are a tumultuous time to continue growing and learning, a time for fun and living (and stress of its own) before moving onto college, a job, etc. When you have a child everything becomes about him or her, and you give up a lot to care for them. Being a teenager can be a hard enough time in and of itself without having to worry about being fully responsible for someone else's life as well.

A recent study was released which shows that European teens are using alcohol and recreational drugs with the intentional aim of improving their sex lives.

Teenagers and young adults across Europe drink and take drugs as part of deliberate sexual strategies. New findings reveal that a third of 16-35 year old males and a quarter of females surveyed are drinking alcohol to increase their chances of sex, while cocaine, ecstasy and cannabis are intentionally used to enhance sexual arousal or prolong sex.

The study was conducted by researchers in public health and social sciences from across Europe. More than 1300 people aged between 16 and 35 and who routinely socialise in nightlife settings completed anonymous questionnaires.

Virtually all of the survey participants had drunk alcohol with most having had their first drink when 14 or 15 years old. Three quarters of the respondents had tried or used cannabis, while around 30 percent had at least tried ecstasy or cocaine. Overall, alcohol was most likely to be used to facilitate a sexual encounter, while cocaine and cannabis were more likely to be utilised to enhance sexual sensations and arousal.

This likely comes as a surprise to few of us, and most of us also know that this is not just an issue in Europe.

Here's the thing: alcohol and most drugs have the opposite effects when it comes to sex that those using them to try and improve sex are seeking. Booze, coke, X and many other recreational drugs actually inhibit sexual desire -- even though they can make you feel mentally like you want it more, your body feels differently -- and sexual response. They tend to decrease female arousal and vaginal lubrication (making it more likely for condoms used during heterosex drunk to break), make it less likely to get or sustain an erection, and less likely to have an orgasm or the kind of sex that's worth writing home about. While it can be easy to mentally feel more aroused or excited about sex when you're drinking or doing drugs, the effects of those substances make it very difficult for your body to agree with you and respond in kind. Alcohol and most recreational drugs will also make you feel nauseated and out-of-sorts, and having sex when nauseous and dizzy is a lot like being on a boat and seasick: it's not usually pleasant. Having a sex partner throw up all over you is not usually interpreted as sexy by most people, either.

There's also some extra not-at-all-benefits when it comes to sex, booze and drugs. Drinking and drugging is something we know, with a lot of data over a long time to back it up, presents higher risks of negative consequences from sex for users, as well as higher risks of being sexually assaulted.

When a person is partying, they're far more likely to take risks -- or forget about reducing them them -- they wouldn't otherwise. Safer sex or birth control use is often blown off or used improperly (and with the extra vaginal dryness, without lube, condoms will be more likely to break). People consent to sex in situations or with partners where they wouldn't otherwise. People who are unsafe are more easily misperceived as safe, because our judgment and perceptions are chemically altered. The idea that booze is more likely to "make sex happen," means that often, someone is relying on someone else not being clear in their choices or able to give real consent. If sex is more likely to happen because someone is drunk, there's a point at which we're not talking about sex at all, but about rape. Initiating or continuing sex with someone who can't see straight or who is blacking out means you're doing that with someone who is not in a position, practically or legally, to give consent: it means you're raping or being raped, not having sex. At least once every couple of weeks, we get an advice question here at Scarleteen from someone who went to a party, got blitzed, fell asleep on a couch or bed and woke up to find someone on top of them attempting to rape them or raping them. People who sexually assault other people tend to look for easy opportunities, and this is one it can be very easy for those folks to find.

Just so you understand the place I'm coming from here, and so this is all above board, while I may have a lot of great health habits myself -- I'm vegan, I stay pretty active, I bike and walk rather than driving, my spiritual practice is very conducive to managing stress -- I also started smoking at 11 and only quit successfully for a nine-month period once in my life. I remain a person very annoyingly addicted to cigarettes 27 years after I had that "harmless" first one. I do drink, and while I didn't much in high school or college, I did use some recreational drugs (though not to enhance sex: the idea sex is enhanced when you're dry as a bone and someone's face looks like it's melting is something I figured out pretty quickly didn't make a lot of sense). Legal and other risk issues aside, I'm not going to be dishonest and say I regret that use, because I did often have a good time. Doesn't mean I'd recommend it, mind you, especially given that I had some protective factors with that a lot of youth don't have. Point is, I'm not about to finger-wag anyone experimenting with drugs and alcohol: my talking about the downsides of these isn't about value judgments, but about making sound choices in alignment with your health, safety, the goals for your life and having a sex life that really is a good one.

As usual, these are your choices to make, we just want to be sure you make them with as much information and thought as possible. Just be aware that if you're using to try and make sex more likely to happen, that you're taking risks of rape or raping, not sex. If you're using to try and make sex better, you are, in fact, using substances which will usually have the opposite effect, for you, your partner or both of you. And even if, because your brain is all mushy, it seems like it feels better at the time, or okay at the time, you might not feel the same way the morning or month afterwards when what you're left with from the experience is minimal or no memory of the event, but have a pregnancy, sexually transmitted infection, social drama, injury or assault that'll be what you remember most. You make a habit of this stuff and you've got a substance abuse problem to deal with on top of everything else in life you have to juggle, as well as ongoing health problems, continually elevated sexual risks and dysfunction. Alcohol and many recreational drugs -- and even cigarettes, as I figured out late in the game -- can create serious, hard-to-break addictions more easily then you think, and those addictions tend to creep up on you: you don't tend to know you have them as bad as you do until you're struggling to crawl your way out.

It's no party.

By virtue of counseling youth about sex for a decade, we know that a lot of the times, sex doesn't meet your expectations or happen as often as some might like it to. But more times than not, the problem is really about unrealistic expectations, rather than actual sexual problems or a greater lack of opportunity for sex than other people have. If the sex you're having hasn't been so hot, try and tackle the things that really will improve your experiences, like choosing partners who really are invested in shared pleasure, better communication with partners, more time spent exploring each other's bodies and minds before leaping into activities you feel obligated to do, and step away from activities you just know you aren't enjoying, even if you feel like you should. Do what you can to deal with relationship problems, body image issues, sexual orientation and gender identity conflicts or parental or cultural control out of bed, not in it. And if you find that you feel inhibited when it comes to initiating or having sex, trust your instincts: if you don't want to do it or don't feel comfortable doing it sober, rather than trying to chemically erase those feelings, take a look at where they're coming from, why you have them, and trust your own mind's no until you're in a situation or a headspace where it's a great big YES.

We also have to acknowledge that being a young person, especially today, can be really stressful, and we know that teens and young adults at this point in time are often managing increasingly elevating stressloads. Looking to drugs and booze to relieve or escape from stress isn't at all surprising, and all kinds of people do it and have always done it all of the time: even when we're not talking about illegal substances, certain legal, daily foods and drinks people like to mainline -- like meat, dairy, caffeine, salt and sugar -- are often used to deal with stress, even though they tend to physically increase it.

Trouble with drinks and drugs as coping tools is that they're not really coping tools at all, and don't actually reduce stress: they tend to just create one more source of it, and the feeling of momentary escape from stresses, which actually isn't coping at all. The stresses are still there, and you still need to manage them, the morning after, the month after, 18 years after.

So, if you're feeling like you need a great escape, and your stressload has just gotten really outer limits, I'd encourage you to do what you can to develop a few healthy ways of managing and reducing your stresses which are actually effective and which don't out your health or well-being at risk: you're going to need them through your whole life. Some healthy ways of doing that include meditation, exercise, extra sleep, talk therapy or massage therapy, doing the hobbies and activities you enjoy, hanging out with friends, taking a weekend off from everything, taking a long shower or bath, writing in your journal, walking the dog, taking a nap in the yard on a sunny day. If you're feeling stressed to the gills, you'll also want to look at the sources of that stress and see what you can do to get rid of some of them. Things like a dead-end relationship, more classes at school than you really need, one too many extracurricular activities, conflict or drama at home, eating poorly (and that includes dieting), rushing to get into college when you'd rather take a year off, trying to manage too large a social network, or sex when it just pits too much on your plate or you don't feel ready are all sources of stress you can manage or work to reduce by making different choices in alignment with what you need to deal.

And know what? Sex that you and your partner really do want -- or masturbation you want all by yourself -- and both feel ready for when your head is clear is one of those healthy stressbusters. Orgasm physiologically helps chill you out... but again, having one, or a really good one, when you're blitzed out of your head isn't likely. Even if you do get off when you're drunk or high, the risks are so much higher than they need to be that it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to do it wasted when you could do it sober.

If you need some extra information on booze or certain recreational drugs to make your own choices or to help your friends or partners with theirs, do your homework. The Center for Substance Abuse Research at the University of Maryland has excellent straightforward and in-depth informational pages about pretty much any substance you could think of, including alcohol, X, meth, cocaine, and weed. If you or are friend are going to experiment, know your risks -- physical, psychological and legal, long-term and short-term -- and at the very least, be moderate and choose a safe space with others you know, without a doubt, are safe to you, understanding that their behavior still isn't a guarantee since substances do often cause a person to behave differently. And if you're looking for a fantastic way to get or have sex, just know that booze and drugs are very unlikely to do anything but stand in the way of that.

Joanna Connors has written an incredible article about her 1984 rape and its aftermath. While some parts of her story are triggering, it is well worth reading.

Colleges over the years have made many changes that to younger generations are seen as ‘keeping with the times’ while older generations looking back are finding themselves in a situation of slight culture shock. One of the newest decisions being made about the dormitories in the past few years have been that more and more colleges are allowing – believe it or not – coed dorm rooms.

If you asked someone living in the fifties about dormitories, members of the opposite sex were restricted from even entering one another’s buildings. A change in this decision was made during the seventies when many colleges began allowing students to live in coed dorms. Now the decision for many colleges has become an allowance for students if they choose to room with persons of the opposite sex.

Some parents are having a difficult time believing that the rooming choices are not about sex as often as they are about simply finding a friend that you’re close with and feel you’d be compatible as roommates. The number of students living in coed dorm rooms that are couples actually are outweighed by the number of students simply wishing to live with a friend that happens not to be of the same sex. As some students have explained, it’s really not about trying to prove a point to anyone or some type of a rebellion against parents to try and upset them. It’s honestly about what’s most functional.

Some of the parents questioned about the decision at schools where their children attend classes made comments about the lack of rational thought about living with a member of the opposite sex and not having a level of sexual tension present. Student responses turned up the fact that trust, compatibility and practicality all lent to this decision being one that if chosen can prove to work well. While some deans are more willing to side with students in this decision, others fight the decision that rather than being practical it raises some concerns about both what is practical and what is moral.

Where should the line be drawn? Well that answer honestly depends upon who you talk to. Many in the younger generations (whether they personally choose to room with a member of the opposite sex or not) tend to agree that it should be an option. Can some of the problems with roommate be solved if students were able to pick their closest friend of the opposite sex rather than rooming with their closest friends of the same sex? Many college students today believe that it very well could be the solution that’s been hiding all along. I tend to agree that it should be a decision made by the students that will be living in the dorms. College is a time of experience and learning, and learning happens best in an environment that one is comfortable in.

One of the things that has a great influence in both how I enact sexuality education and how I conceptualized my approach from the get-go is my background with teaching in the Montessori Method.

Overall, the primary way Montessori works is this: as educators, we observe our students, and based on our observations of what their self-directed interests, skills and questions are -- basically, what they're drawn to in terms of what activities they choose for themselves and what activities and areas they express interest in -- we choose what materials to make or find and to present to them. In doing this, we're also trying to help students learn to be observers, as well as working to empower them when it comes to trusting their own interests and instincts and to be self-motivated and self-directed, rather than reliant on -- or vulnerable to -- others to give them directives. Montessori teachers see ourselves more as helpers, as guides, than as directors or founts of knowledge. We see our students as the real directors, not us: it's our job to follow their cues, not teach them to obediently follow ours. The underlying principles of Montessori are all about independence, liberty and freedom, without which one cannot achieve, develop or experience self-discipline or learning. Montessori wrote that, "Discipline must come through liberty. . . . We do not consider an individual disciplined only when he has been rendered as artificially silent as a mute and as immovable as a paralytic. He is an individual annihilated, not disciplined."

Particular areas of what we call absorbency -- times during which a person is most able to learn something and can most easily and enthusiastically absorb information -- is also something we pay close attention to and bear in mind. The big deal that identifies a time of absorbency is when a person is both expressing a strong interest in a subject or area of development and is just starting to use and hone those skills: ages 1-3, for instance, as children are learning to speak and are fascinated with language, is usually the time of the greatest absorbency for language. If we help children be exposed to and learn language then, not only is their mastery best, they usually can also learn more than one language, more easily and ably than they will be able to during other times in life.

It doesn't take someone with Montessori training or keen observational talents to identify the fact that when it comes to human sexuality and sexual attitudes, the minds of adolescents and pre-adolescents are greatly absorbent. Because part of identifying what and when to present certain things has to do with when a person is starting to use what they learn, we can easily spot adolescence as a great time for sex education. In working with young adults, while I'm not really getting in on the ground floor since so many sexual attitudes are learned in childhood, I'm still in early enough so that our readers can get help forming healthy habits and attitudes at a dawn in their sexuality and during a time when they are very absorbent. I'm not just working with them just so that they can use this information and these skills now -- after all, some of them want the information now, but don't intend to, or are not, putting all of it to practical use, while others are becoming or already sexually active -- but so that they can have them early, available to them for the whole of their lives.

Young adult sex education isn't just about young adult sexual activity, just like young adult education in mathematics, social studies, physical education or language isn't just about their use of those skills now. We teach these things with the understanding and expectation that they will be useful and needed now and later or now or later.

Most teens have an expressed interest in sexuality, and feel and express a need to find out about it now, which makes now the best time to teach it. When children and young people ask us or each other questions about sexual anatomy, sex, and sexual relationships, when they are starting to consider how sexuality will be part of their lives and what they want from it, they are communicating clearly to us that they feel a strong need and desire to learn and want our help. Even if you're not a Montessori-enthusiast like myself, this idea is woven throughout nearly any educational approach you can think of.

For the life of me, I cannot figure out why or how people can selectively forget that what we learn about sexuality is information most of us will need for the whole of our lives. When we learn about sexuality, we're not just learning for what we need and will use right at the moment we are learning, and no matter when or in what context we have a solo or shared sexual life, that activity itself cannot teach us all we need and want to know, nor can learning only through sexual activity later tend to result in sound sexual, physical and emotional health.

I confess, I quietly slipped out the back door years ago when it came to doing adult sex education, because I often found it deeply depressing and frustrating. We all know it's hard to teach an old dog new tricks, and it is often just as hard for adults who have firmly established certain sexual attitudes and behaviors to change them after ten, twenty or forty years of thinking and/or doing things differently. I heard so much "But my husband just won't listen when I say this doesn't feel good for me: I've told him a thousand times," or "My wife just won't believe that how I feel is normal and common," or, "But we've never used birth control so he can't understand why I need to now and just won't do it," some days -- so many firmly cemented attitudes and practices making so many people unhappy and unhealthy that I felt helpless to counter -- that I just had to step back from it in order to preserve any sense of sexual optimism about the world at large.

In my job at a women's clinic, where part of my counseling is to try and help my clients who want them to find and use sound birth control methods and safer sex practices, and to have sexual lives which are truly beneficial and safe for them, I hit the wall of this daily, both with them and with their partner's compliance. With some women, we have to have a conversation as to how she is going to convince -- not request, and know that request is all she needs make -- her partner that he is not entitled to sex with her at any time and will, indeed, need to withhold from sex with her for two weeks after her abortion to prevent her from getting an infection or complication. Plenty of those clients will express a strong feeling of hopelessness, or a history of failed attempts at changing established norms of behavior, when it comes to their ability or the ability and willingness of their partners to change those habits and attitudes. I know, plainly, that had many of my clients and their partners learned these behaviors, in terms of their physical health and their social relationships -- and with women, particularly, we often see the most devastating results of not being supported in independence and liberty and how that plays out for many women sexually -- and started out with inclusive, factual and compassionate sex education earlier that these situations would be far more rare.

Those clients are lucky to even have an opportunity to get some sex education later in their lives: there are not many avenues for older adults to become sexually educated (which explains why we see some of them come to Scarleteen for help in their twenties, thirties, even in their sixties). When I hear those who protest young adult sex education in high school and college, I'm often left wondering where, exactly -- if indeed, as many express, young people will all just elect not to have any kind of sex until they are older -- they think older adults are going to get that education. Last I checked, major corporations aren't giving sex education seminars to their employees, and many general doctors, like many people period, remain uneducated on, and uncomfortable discussing, sexuality.

That isn't to say educating older adults is an impossible task, but it seems a needless challenge when we have the opportunity, as educators, as a culture, as communities, to teach sexuality and sexual health way before that time, when absorbency is far greater, and when a person is either in the dawn of their attitudes and practices, or is able to start learning them before they'll apply them at all. What we establish early as norms, and hear pervasively as norms, is incredibly sticky. We know that when someone learns to do something incorrectly or incompletely, that the longer they go doing that thing that way, the tougher it becomes over time for them to learn differently or to add on additional steps and skills. This is true with sex as much as it is with anything else.

The practical application of all of this aside, I'm never going to be able to let go of the idea that without liberty, real learning -- learning, not indoctrinating -- can't happen. If in any of the ways I educate, I seek to hinder or protest that essential liberty, I'm not only hindering learning, but the quality of life of my students, and it is my job to very carefully consider how I educate through that lens. It is not my place to tell my students or clients when to have sex, how to define their own sexuality, to tell them they are good or bad people based on their sexual desires or choices, or to tell them that they do not need to know the very things they are asking me to inform them about. I cannot ever call myself an educator if I purposefully slam the door of knowledge in my student's faces because I, not they, feel that it's for their own good.

Rather, it is my place to observe be responsive to the cues they give me in terms of what they need and want from me to help them learn about sexuality and sexual health, and to give them as wide an array of factually accurate and inclusive information, resources and discussions as I am able so they can create lives where their sexuality is part of their liberty; where the attitudes and practices they develop are in as best an alignment as possible with their and their partner's unique set of needs and wants. It is my place to share with them as much of what I learn and know as I possibly can when they invite me to. This is part of why I feel so blessed to be able to educate in environments which are completely drop-in and also very one-on-one -- or without my intervention at all, unless it is asked for -- where even the onset of the education I provide isn't determined by me, but by my students or clients themselves, and where every person I interact with is able to expressly ask me or my co-workers for exactly what they feel they need, rather than what I or others determine is right for them.

It is my place to allow and encourage the opportunity for them to draw their own conclusions, and to provide an environment for them where they feel they have the inarguable right to use that information however they please without my value judgments. It is my place to make clear to them that questioning my authority is always acceptable, that while I do my best to be as educated on these issues as possible, I am not infallible, without my own biases which inevitably will occasionally leak through, or somehow representative of one universal truth, and when they have questions or doubts, it is my place to direct them to other sources of information besides my own.

Every now and then, when doing an interview or a press piece, I'm asked why I give the information I do with the approach that I do, and if I'd ever consider doing it differently. And every time, I make clear that I walk into each day ready to do it differently, because if my students and clients -- through my observations of them and their direct requests -- asked me to, felt another approach would be more helpful, or showed me that the way I am doing things is not helpful for them, and is not what they needed, I would be obligated to adjust my approach based on my own educational ethics. Were I shown that, say, my students and clients were all made happier and healthier in the whole of their lives by only ever having sex within heterosexual marriage, only having sex for the purposes of procreating, or in going without sexual healthcare and birth control, even if that conflicted with what I have found keeps me happy and healthy, by all means, I'd have to seriously consider that. But again, I'm a trained observer, I observe daily, and that's not something they express or I see. I do not tend to hear that knowing how to use a condom, how the sexual response cycle works, how to negotiate sex with a partner, how varied human sexuality is or how to prevent unwanted pregnancy at any age has done a person emotional or physical harm: I, do, however, hear and see the inverse daily. I do what I do the way that I do it because I do my level best to base it on mindful observation with the aim of being a partner in the learning of others, not a director or a dictator.

Like much of my father's family, Montessori was an Italian Catholic, and designed her educational model during a historical time when sex education wasn't an issue on the table. The only sex theorist she even had to draw from was Freud, whose ideas on infant and child sexuality -- sensibly so -- she rejected. She did however address that sexuality was a particular issue for adolescents, and one which can be so encompassing and distracting for them that adaptations may need to be made in their education -- such as allowing them more physical activity during the day. I can't know, ultimately, what Montessori would have felt about sex education as it is today overall, save that it does seem to me to be part of Practical Life (the area of the classroom and materials in Montessori that focus on care of oneself, others and the environment) for older students. We can glean some ideas based on how she felt about education for ages 12 - 18 (see From Childhood to Adolescence for more on that). She felt it vitally important to recognize those ages as a passage into adulthood -- not an extended childhood -- to help students of those ages to feel capable and able. She emphasized adolescents' need to separate from adults, rather than to be dependent on us or exploited by our determination of what is right for them based on our ideas-in-hindsight of what would have been right for us. She protested the notion that we need to save them from themselves, and worse still, try to do so in a way which is purposefully misleading and a barrier to freedom, motivated by the idea that the ends, however deceptive and controlling, justify the means. Fascism is incompatible with learning and liberty: this is why Montessori left her home country in the 1930's.

She would have been very much opposed to any kind of education -- sexual or otherwise -- which denied what we observed in our students, denied the needs our students express and demonstrate to us; which was based in ideas of controlling their behavior by making them fearful of life and others rather than providing them with the information and tools they need in order to exercise their liberty to make their own choices and to follow their own interests and development.

Uncannily enough, Montessori once wrote something else which seems a sound representation of our current conundrum with approaches to sex education in the States. It was this: “The task of the educator lies in seeing that the child does not confound good with immobility and evil with activity.”

The inverse of that statement defines abstinence-only approaches to the letter. While good and evil is not a dichotomy which particularly speaks to me -- few dichotomies or binaries do -- ideas of good and evil, rather than ideas about liberty and learning, are foundational in abstinence-only education approaches and arguments against honest, factual, inclusive and comprehensive sex education. That simple sentence can tell us much about the flaws in a lack of sex education or abstinence-only sex education and the idea that the only way we can help protect people from activities which can carry risks is to keep them from them, teach them that they have no real means of managing them, or to urge them to be inactive -- in both how they behave sexually and how we educate them sexually.

It shows up the red herring in the proposition that abstinence-only "sex education" is sex education at all, due to the approaches it takes, the purposeful misinformation or incomplete information it provides, and the place of control and withholding -- a place with no allowance or respect for liberty -- it's all really coming from. It demonstrates an awful lot about if denying young people free and factual information and real opportunities for learning is really about health and well-being or really about being "good."

For years student at different high schools around the country have participated in Prom Promise (founded and organized by Nationwide) where they sign a card stating,

I promise not to use alcohol or other drugs. This is a promise I take seriously. It's one I intend to keep, for my sake and the sake of my friends and family.

Recently a school district has decided to take part in the sexual health protection of their prom-attending students as well.

As common tradition, many schools give out small gifts or gift bags to the students attending prom. This year, The Bisbee School District in Arizona voted four to one that included in their gift bags this year would be balloons, candies, picture frames, and you guessed it – two condoms.

It’s amazing to see that school officials are taking a mature and understanding approach to the topic of sex. Some parents were actually outraged by the addition to the gift bags, and that’s an age-old problem that we run into quite often every day. The school is not telling students that by giving them condoms they have to choose to have sex (just the same as quality sexual education programs doesn’t tell students to have sex), but rather offers them the tools they need to be safe with their own decisions of what is right and wrong for them at any given time.

Many adults have a difficult time seeing teens as people that do indeed experience the same feelings that adults do – and being ready for sex is something that can happen or not happen at any age with any partner. I think it’s great that the school district is helping the students to think responsibly about their decisions – and offering them condoms to use if they choose to have sex.

At the message boards, there’s been a lot of discussion about different programs that schools offer as their sexual education curriculum. Many users agree that their curriculum could have been better (assuming that they had a sexual education curriculum at all). This school is making a large step in the right direction in beginning to take a hands on approach to encouraging students to make safe decisions about their sexual health. Wouldn’t it be amazing to someday see some type of safety cards or condom cards on the walls with the Prom Promise cards where students will not only promise not to drink or do drugs – but also to make safe decisions about sex. I definitely think this decision is one other school districts should adopt.