Me and my boyfriend have been together for 9 months. I'm 17 and he's 22. Everything is going great! We never really fight and my family likes him, too, which is rare. Only problem is he travels a lot for work, he will be gone for 2 weeks at at time. I don't mind, but he asked me to help make his trip better...he wanted me to take nude pictures of myself. I said I would but only because I do love and care about him a lot and thought it would be good for the both of us. But I HATE pictures as it is...I tried to take them for him but I HATE every picture I take and it makes me feel even more self-conscious than I do already. I would rather walk around naked for him all day then take pictures of myself. I know it sounds stupid, but it's just really hard for me. I trust him and know he wouldn't do anything with those pictures but it's hard explaining to him why I don't like pictures, he doesn't get it...should I just suck it up and take em?
This is an entry from Arianna at Fearfree, one of the many wonderful guest posts in the month-long blog carnival to help support Scarleteen!
I throw around the words “fear” and “silence” often when it comes to sex ed. They’re loaded terms, perhaps, but these words best describe my experiences with sex education: my emotional reaction and everyone else’s approach, respectively. These words describe what I feel is not often expressed in the sex education debate.
True, it’s hard to use the “Little Mary Sue is scared” argument to a bunch of adult policymakers who believe that a child will “get over” whatever scare tactics they might use in sex education. I have indeed heard it argued that it is okay to use fear in sex education because, well, incurable STIs are out there right now. You can see the logic: if children grow out of believing in the boogeyman, then certainly they will grow out of being told that condoms have pores that let HIV through, right? At least by the time that they are married, they’ll grow out of it, right?
The problem with this is that these particular things are not so easy to simply grow out of. The boogeyman is irrational. HIV/AIDS and pregnancy are legitimately real, which is why contraception and latex exists. At the same time, we know that this issue has to do with more than just teen pregnancy and some HPV outbreaks. We can’t ignore sexual shaming. When this shaming happens, fear follows. When people are not just a little apprehensive, but downright afraid or misinformed, they have to go through a lot of unnecessary suffering to get to a sexually healthy place.
At this point in my life, I am much better off than many of my friends, who have been sexually assaulted or engaged in sexual activity of questionable consent because the idea that they could negotiate what they wanted was never expressed to them. I didn’t have to deal with pregnancy scares or STI issues in high school. I’ve never had to deal with an STI, period. I haven’t had many relationships, but I have had no major crises within them, just a lot of learning and personal growth with truly good people. Yet with all that good fortune, all that crisis averted, I still struggled because of silent shaming. My struggle, as I describe here, was incredibly lonely and painful–there was just no one to turn to.
I found Scarleteen around 2007, at a time in my life when I was asking a lot of questions about the rights and wrongs of my own sexuality, doubting myself, seeing my drive as an evil and angry thing. I felt like I had a monster inside me, telling me what was supposedly “right” while also bringing me a lot of self-loathing. Arousal meant having to get rid of something, as opposed to doing something that might bring me some joy.
Sex education, as I have said before, seems to be either an abstinence-fest or a condom giveaway. I admit that my view may be skewed, but I don’t have to guess to know that sex in its most comprehensive sense isn’t discussed among us, as a general rule. To me, withholding information, not facing the issues, and saying as little as possible about something, is the same thing as silence.
Seriously! Let’s face the issues. Let’s talk about the difficulties and yes, the pleasures of sexuality. Let’s have real talk, not just the talk we assume those between the ages of 13 and 17 can handle. I say this as a person who is still young, still hanging on. I beg, I plead to older adults, please listen! Please don’t shame us! Please find good, real answers to our questions, at a place like Scarleteen, or a place in your hearts, or another place that accentuates the sex positive!
I can’t know whether anyone has had quite my experience, trembling in fear, confusion, and distress about sexual matters, even without involvement in anything resembling partnered sexuality. But I know that I couldn’t possibly be alone in my old fears. Who is out there? What youth is there who has suffered like me? I haven’t yet “grown out” of my old fears and self-hatred, but think–that self-hatred never had to happen.
Scarleteen steps in to answer my pleas. Scarleteen is sex-positive, open-minded, truly comprehensive. Scarleteen isn’t there to make young people with questions and apprehensions phobic, like I have been. I have asked tough questions on the message boards, read columns, searched for permanent articles, and I have been welcomed, recognized, as a normal and good person.
Thank you, Scarleteen. You have supported a young woman in overcoming her fears, her phobia. In all my grappling, you were there to let me know that there was someone in the world who was not assuming that she would not, could not, could never be a sexual being. Even when my fear kept me from asking questions, you were that presence, that comforting hand, letting it be okay to be myself.
It has been incredibly important and valuable to me, and I know I can’t be the only one who feels that way.
Speaking of Scarleteen, this post is a part of the Scarleteen Blog Carnival, supporting its annual fundraising drive efforts! Scarleteen is a truly invaluable sex education resource for teens and young adults, and it has managed to stay afloat for years with the help of charitable donations from individuals and small organizations. Every little bit helps, so if you want to support and sustain sex-positive sex ed, I definitely recommend making a donation. Do it here!
I want to know what the government considers sex. When they say age of consent what kind of sex are they talking about?
I cannot stand this show. No sense in being shy about it, because this is a bias I cannot hide, as will be apparent in nanoseconds.
If I had anything even remotely decent or interesting to say about it, I would have blogged it before now. But every single blog post I have even started to think about writing in the past about it had the same title every single time, one composed entirely of profanity except for the articles of speech linking all my four-letter words together.
Summaries and commentaries that read like these do not balanced critical commentary make:
Alas, that's the only kind of commentary I usually have. So, I have kept it from the page, saving it for rant sessions I have alone in my office, where I can yell as loudly as I like without worry of traumatizing anyone. Except my pug. She sometimes looks scared. But mostly confused, which is how she usually looks whether I'm yelling or not.
I hate to watch it at all, but this is the kind of thing I should try to keep up with. None of our users have really talked about it -- potentially because they're holding in the same potty-mouthed critiques I am myself -- but because of it's subject matter, I should know the scoop. Shows or films like these also almost always result in questions from users pertaining to the misinformation in them about sexual response, bodies, birth control, safer sex or pregnancy, so it helps to be warned in advance. Would that I'd known that when American Pie came out. It would have saved me many nights of scratching my head while pointlessly asking the office wall, "Where are they getting this stuff?"
The only scoop I usually get while watching this show is a pooper-scooper, mind, but now and then it's not always just torture. Sometimes it's bad enough that it's funny-bad like MST3K, or instead of just hurling bitter invective, I first laugh, then huff, then spit, then sigh, and THEN hurl bitter invective while also channeling the spirit of Dorothy Parker, which I don't have to do alone because everyone seems to find it very entertaining.
But. It's not a big but, but it's not a teeny one either.
But.
The last episode ("She Went That A'way") showed something I found very truthful and real about abortion and support with abortion and reproductive choices. The character choosing to have an abortion (which you knew was never going to happen: if you become pregnant on this show, you will be having babies, missy) already had excellent support from her mother, whose talk with her daughter was pretty darn righteous itself.
What I find myself quite surprised to be giving a high-five to is an ad-hoc counseling session that occurs in the lobby of the clinic between the character there for a termination and the mother of her ex-boyfriend. What made that such a good representation of support and counseling with abortion is that almost nothing said in it was prescriptive (that bit about "some choices" that you can't undo that seemed to be about abortion was prescriptive, since you can't undo a birth, either). What was said could have empowered and supported any choice well, not just the one the character made to remain pregnant. It was a loving, sage and compassionate talk.
That exact kind conversation can, for the record -- and often does -- result in a woman choosing to have an abortion (especially when she comes into the clinic already very sure about terminating) and feeling good about it. Just so's you know, because you're sure as hell not going to see it in this show.
Back to my props: not only was the counsel and support, and the way it was given, excellent, it also didn't come from a clinic counselor. Instead, it came from a connection made in the waiting room with someone who was not clinic staff.
Counseling and other staff from clinics certainly can and do provide great options and general counseling and support: it's something I have done and do myself. I'm not saying counsel or support is automatically better when not coming from clinic staff. The point is that sometimes in clinics what goes on in the waiting room, either with patients and other patients, or with patients and other people's support people, can be pretty radical. Some powerful, intense connections can happen between women in abortion clinics. Women who don't even know each other can wind up being supportive of each other in an instant and with great strength. It's something we see and love working in clinics, and that some of us have experienced ourselves as patients in clinics, but rarely, if ever, is shown in media. So, a good and real waiting room scene -- which is so much more than I can say for Juno -- and a really good supportive talk around choice? Both in a place I least expected to find them.
Of course, there is something else that's real about Secret Life as a whole.
At first I was going to say that what's real in it is that it's an excellent presentation of the way many adults conceptualize, imagine and treat teens and teen sexuality.
But I think it's actually one step beyond: I think it presents not only the way many adults think about and treat teens and teen sexuality, but also purposefully puts that conceptualization in such a light so it looks like The Very Right, Wise Grownup Way of Thinking. Well, to anyone watching at home who isn't who isn't laughing or swearing at it, anyway. Young people didn't write this. Older adults are writing this, about young people and without, no doubt very intentionally, the perspectives of young people like they're writing about.
This is one of the reasons why this show makes me want to gouge my own eyes out, and why I find a film like Thirteen (youth-written) or a show like the UK's Skins, written about young people but also BY young people (they have a mixed-age writing team), to be such a horses of a different color. Certainly both of those are representing slightly different populations, but not really. The difference between Skins and Thirteen and Secret Life aren't about the differences in the teenagers being portrayed, but about how the teenage portrayals in them are so different. Both have their own flaws or character issues, but I'll take flaws or shortcomings coming from young people in how they see and conceptualize themselves and their peers any day over flaws and failing of older adults trying to send teens moral messaging who should remember how crappy it was when adults presented you in certain ways to further their own morality fables. Apparently Brenda Hampton, the creator of Secret Life (as well as of the socially and politically conservative 7th Heaven), allows her young actors to give input on conversational lines, but that's it. It shows.
What I watched today does not redeem the show in my eyes. The Mad Max trilogy cannot redeem Mel Gibson, and a couple brief bright spots cannot light the deep, black hole that this show and the cloying, obvious propaganda it is. Even the way the whole episode played out was predictable, with an anticipated over-simplicity on their part, an anticipated annoyance on mine and one more baby en route. What followed after the good stuff almost undid the good stuff all by itself.
But not quite. When anyone in media does a decent job with or around abortion, and I happen to see it, I'd feel remiss not giving a nod of respect and thanks. I appreciate it, quite a lot. And when a writer or director's agenda is pretty darn crystal, and what they wrote is real, not myopic, and potentially even challenges that agenda, I appreciate it a little more, even if I choke a little saying so. And so does my little dog, who is happily snoring away, enjoying a night blissfully free of the usual tirade I'd be on about this show by now.
You probably already know I'm the founder and executive director of Scarleteen. (If not, hello! Lovely meeting you.) You might not know that on Sunday I'm turning 40.
I don't normally ask the internet for birthday prezzies, but 40 is a big freaking birthday. When I was the age of most of the young people I counsel now, I had it in my head I wouldn't live past 36. I've become the adult I didn't even think I would be around to be. When someone asked me what I wanted last week for my birthday, what I felt I really wanted, in my heart of hearts, was the kind of world I'd truly prefer to live in and want for young people, particularly around sexuality, their bodies and their relationships. I want the world I've been working very hard to try and create. Big birthdays deserve big gifts, right?
Of course, no one can just snap their fingers and give that to me. But there is something small each of you can do to plant some seeds for it, and I'm going to go ahead and be a noodge and ask you for it.
Here's what I'd like you to do: whether you're an older adult or a younger person, I want you to identify one person in their teens or early twenties in your orbit that you care for. Maybe they're a nephew or niece, a sibling, a student, someone you mentor, a co-worker, a neighbor, a friend's kid or even your own.
Then I'd like you to email them a link to Scarleteen or a copy of my book (or both!), but not just a link or a book. I'd also like you to add a letter from the heart that explains why you're sharing the link with them, and then identifies you as someone gladly willing and able to be there for them to talk to. Let them know that you know this time of life can be seriously overwhelming and can also feel really isolating. Let them know that you support them in their own journeys and explorations and their own fun. Let them know that you are available to listen without judgment or projection; to give any information, feedback or input they want with bald honesty and no preaching; to be a source of support they have in their corner should they ever need one, no matter what, and even if you don't agree with them, even if they think they did something awful, or even if it's 3 in the morning and you have to get up for work at 5. Let them know that whether they have any kind of sex or choose not to have any kind of sex, you're in their corner and support what that they want that feels real and right for them.
Writing that letter will probably only take you a few minutes. Honoring that commitment to them, on the other hand, is a far larger present. But again, big birthday, big gift.
And that, fine denizens of the Internet, is just not the kind of world I want to live in or want young people to have to live in.
My teens and twenties rarely resembled those of much of the generation I meet online right now in a whole lot of ways. When I'm doing outreach at the teen shelter, I more often meet youth who are a lot more like I was, who are grappling with more of the kinds of things I was, than many of the young people I come into contact with via Scarleteen.
However, even with the young people who don't have the struggles I did, there are always common threads. Feeling isolated and like I had no one to turn to who I knew, without question, would accept and support me without judgment or punishment, without trying to tramp on the freedoms I did have that were sustaining me: that's one big place I find common ground with young people now. I really wish I didn't.
I spent several years in my early teens keeping my sexual assaults a secret locked inside and eating away at me because I couldn't identify an adult to talk to about them I knew was safe and knew wanted to be available to me. There initially wasn't a safe adult I could identify to talk to about being queer, either. Even when hospitalized for a suicide attempt, I still didn't tell anyone anything that was going on with me. I wound up doing really well in my later teens and after that when it came to sex, relationships, following my dreams, working towards my life goals, connecting with friends, but that's only because eventually, a couple of those adults did identify themselves to me clearly and openly. A parent, a teacher, a therapist, the parent of a friend: the support and help they gave me made a world of difference, but a difference of incredible magnitude was made in just the moment those people told me the kinds of things I'm asking you to tell a young person who you know.
I'm concerned about the young people out there right now who had the issues I did to grapple with. I'm concerned about the young people I work with sometimes at the shelter who have grown up moving from foster home to foster home, whose parents have literally thrown them to the wolves. I'm concerned about other abuse and assault survivors. But I am almost more troubled by how many young people there are out there right now who should be doing okay because their primary needs have been met and are still being met, and they do have access to many resources, they don't have those kinds of challenges, but they still aren't doing okay. Plenty of them aren't even in sexual relationships and yet have stress and anxiety about sex and relationships they aren't even having. Millions of them are rife with (and medicated for) anxiety. More and more of them are finding themselves involved in emotionally abusive relationships. When a lot of them say their friends will judge them, they aren't being dramatic. I often feel like this generation is held to standards mine wasn't: they often express feeling like they're not allowed to make mistakes, their level of achievement is expected to be higher than anyone else's (even with economic and social issues making it tougher in many ways for them to achieve anything), they're not allowed to have fun, and they're supposed to be seen (including on billboards to capitally benefit adults), but not heard. They read and listen to the ways older adults talk trash or untruths about younger people, and I have to read and hear it too, and I see and hear far more of that -- as do they -- than I see and hear support and faith in them. I agree with the assessments of young people about how it is for them. I also agree with them that it really sucks.
In terms of sex, a lot of them who are sexually active also aren't doing so on their own terms. It's politically and culturally provocative right now, and has been for a while, to suggest it's not only okay young people are sexual, but that if they're going to have sex and enact their sexuality, they should be very much enjoying themselves, but per usual, I'm saying it anyway (and also per usual, I won't lie and say that the notion there's something provocative about that statement is anything but ludicrous and about wanting to control). When the parts of life that are supposed to be about pleasure stop offering people pleasure, of any age, I think that's pretty freaking scary. If the word pleasure makes you itchy, replace it with the word joy, because that's what real pleasure is. No matter our age, life can be hard enough that we deeply need its simple joys: without them, life is little more than slogging through. Especially with all the awful stuff I had to deal with growing up, I can't imagine how I would have gotten through it without also having a damn good time now and then, in bed, in the mosh pit or anywhere else I found respite, celebration, freedom and a place to discover and embrace the person I was and would become.
The conventional thinking is that strife and massive amounts of stress are "normal" during the teen years, that it's normal for young people to "have problems," but that's an idea many young adult therapists and other advocates have repeatedly argued is false, and I'm in agreement. While this is a challenging time in life, I'm of the mind that much of the hardest struggling all kinds of young people do could mostly be avoided if they were just better supported, better cared for, better respected and seen by the rest of us and afforded more trust and freedom. Even if I'm wrong, it may still help and certainly won't hurt.
For the record, I know that sometimes it's not easy to talk about the things they want and need to talk about, and to listen and give feedback without judgment or unsolicited prescription. In order to do that, we may even have to address things in ourselves, including from our own teens and twenties, that we'd rather have just left to gather dust. We often have to examine inclinations we may not have even known we had, like the desire to repress, conduct or control, desires which can be particularly hard for progressive people to even know we may have. But in my experience, while young people are the central beneficiaries of our making these efforts, we benefit, too. Advocating for young people the way I have, supporting young people the way I have, has been a real gift for me, perhaps one of the biggest of my four decades in this life. Doing this for them has been a practice, just like a practice of sitting and breathing each day, that has absolutely been a major player in my own growth and personal development, in my own understanding of myself and the world around me, even when it's been tiring, hard or stressful or has forced me to recognize that age alone doesn't always give us wisdom, and sometimes has even meant the loss of certain kinds of wisdom young people have but we forgot. I expect that you do or will experience the same benefits yourself.
If you're reading this here, I know you want the world that I want for them, too. By building a resource like Scarleteen over the last 12 years, I've got much of the information piece already covered for you to give them, as well as a secondary outlet of support. All I'm asking of you is to direct even just one young person to the information and then to make yourself available to that person as a far better avenue of support than I could possibly be, especially for the millions of teens and twentysomethings I'll never meet in person. So, wish me a happy birthday by writing and sending that letter or that email, will you? I thank you, my increasingly grey hair thanks you, the young person I was (and you perhaps were, too) thanks you, and the young people you make yourself openly available to will usually thank you for it someday, too.
P.S. If you're a teenager reading this? If you want to give me this kind of gift, I can present two equally valid options to you. You can offer yourself up in this way to someone younger than you or to a same-age friend. Even if it's someone the same age, I don't have to tell you that you guys often judge the crap out of each other, so making a big effort not to and being there for someone in this way is major. But you can also hear me in this saying that there ARE usually people out there for you ready, willing and able to provide the same for you, even if they haven't outrightly said it. If they haven't, then another way you can give me this gift is to go ahead and ask this of someone you suspect might be that person for you, advocating for yourself in this. I know all too well that it's hard and it's scary, and it'd be so much better if they were the ones who came to you, but like I said up there, getting older doesn't always make us more wise. However, a whole lot of us are awfully good at rising to the occasion when we realize we've been daft.
This is one of a long line of common phrases in sex education and sexuality messaging people, including people I think of us allies, use that I deeply dislike, like "preventing teen pregnancy." Let me explain why, working backwards.
That's usually followed by "then you should have sex using safer sex and contraception." Or -- and usually addressing both those things -- "then you should at least be responsible."
In some respect, that's fine. Now, not everyone needs contraception, either because they don't have a partner with a radically different reproductive system than them or they're not having the kinds of sex that can create a pregnancy, so that doesn't always make sense. But for people choosing to have any kind of sex, we're 100% on board with the sentiment that all of us -- no matter our age -- should be engaging in sexual practices supportive of safeguarding everyone's best health, and in alignment with whether we do or don't want or are or are not ready for a pregnancy. This statement often tacitly or inadvertently defining all sex as opposite-sexed or as intercourse isn't okay, but overall, on the safer sex and contraception bit? I'm right there with you.
The "if you can't?" Not cool. We all can elect not to have any kind of consensual sex, sparing masturbation we may unknowingly do in our sleep, something that happens sometimes. Some people also do have earnest impulse control disorders, but those are disorders, and do not occur in the vast majority of people of any age.
If we have consensual sex it is completely within our control, whether we're 13, 26 or 63. There is no "can't wait" when it comes to consensual sex. To suggest there is is not only incorrect, as we have free will, it can also be rape enabling. It backs up those who excuse rape by saying they (or rapists) couldn't control themselves, that just they couldn't help it, that when they feel sexual they cannot stop themselves and every kind of garbage of that ilk that is an absolute, and highly convenient, fiction. People always can hold off on sex or decline sex unless someone is being sexually assaulted or abused, in which case the person doing the abusing is in control of what is happening, but the person being victimized is not because the other person or group has also taken control of that person in some way. If we are choosing to have sex, that choice in and of itself is one of responsibility, and if we're bearing our own and our partner's consent in mind, one is already being responsible.
Some folks say "don't" instead of can't. That's far better. There most certainly is a "don't want to wait," but there isn't a can't. Nearly everyone can. It's just that not everyone always wants to. Not only is that a more truthful framing, it's one which makes clear that active consent and decision-making, and owning your choices, is of great import.
This "can't" stuff also plays into the way people often misrepresent teen sexuality: something out of one's control or will, as about "raging hormones" (hormones with apparent superpowers that can compel the body to move against one's own will); as a burly, untamable, and usually masculine beastie that picks young folks up by the feet and shakes them until they don't have two pennies of sense left to rub together. I'm not about to argue that when sexual feelings first start to develop and flourish that they don't often feel heady, even unwieldy: they sure can. But that doesn't make them unmanageable or make any actions one may take stemming from them out of a person's control.
I will also argue this is somewhat situational -- not about people only of a given age, gender or marital status -- and that we know older adults also experience strong sexual feelings. In addition, I hear from a lot of young people worried something is wrong with them because their sexual feelings are not at the mega-hormone-madness level people say teenage sexual feelings are. Heck, maybe it's both a misrepresentation of young adult sexuality AND older adult sexuality. All the same, young people are capable managing their sexuality well, and also tend to do a better job with it in cultures that don't present teen sexuality like this. And if young people hear adults suggesting or implying that sexual feelings are not something in everyone's control, they also are more likely to a) fall for partners who coerce them by suggesting as much, and b) won't recognize or report sexual abuse when that's what's going on.
There's another big flaw with the general message here: "You should wait for sex, but if you can't, be responsible." Huh? If there's something we should do, and we're not doing it, we're probably not being responsible already: by definition and context, the term "should" here implies an obligation. If we are NOT making and owning our own active sexual choices, or if we "can't" have the ability to own our choices at all, and thus, are irresponsible by default, we are absolutely not being responsible. So, "If you can't be responsible... be responsible?" That's -1 + 1, which equals zero. It's null.
...until? Until you're married? Until you're in a committed relationship? Until you're older? How much older? By whose standards or what criteria? And why: what will one, three, five or ten years automatically provide just by having a birthday each year? (Or "until I can or want to deal with you being sexual, because I'd just rather not?")
Many people do have down that the "until you're married" part isn't sound. Not all of us have the legal right to get married to people we love, at any age. Some of us don't want to get married, or don't want to enter into marriages without a sense of whether or not we have a compatible sexual relationship with a given person first. Some of us are in all of those camps. Too, marriage does not mean a lack of STIs, a lack of unwanted pregnancies, a healthy relationship or a stellar sex life (even far-right folks even know this part, they just vociferously avoid admitting it). It never has. It doesn't still. And as we mentioned just the other day, through history, even for those who did/do marry, most people have had sex before marriage, especially if of people who marry, both were not very young teens when they did. Saving sex for marriage was never a realistic standard for most young adults, nor a common practice.
Long-term committed relationships have more positive outcomes for some people. Some people also have positive outcomes in casual or shorter-term relationships. For most of us, it's not a simple either/or, because it depends on the specific relationship or scenario and on what that person wants and feels best about at a given time in their lives.
Wait until you're older? How much older? Until it's legal? Think whatever we do about age of consent laws, that's pretty sound. But even in states where the age of consent is, say, 16 or 18, there are almost always allowances for same-age sexual relationships for those under that age. If it's not about the law, at what age does everyone, unilaterally, acquire the skills, resources and the right relationships and scenarios to assure, or at least strongly suggest, sex will be either devoid of unwanted outcomes or bear less risk of them, or be a positive? If, in reading this, you're not silent and have that one magical age handy for me, I need to assure you that I can't think of one single age, talking to people of many ages about sex, I have not had people report negative or unwanted outcomes with. I also have never seen evidence or data via study to show such an age exists.
We have do sound study that tells us things like that younger teens' expectations of sex often are very unrealistic, and that the youngest teens also report unwanted outcomes from sex or unhappy experiences more frequently than older teens do. We also have good data that shows us that for the youngest teens, sex more often is not consensual sex, but is rape, via either force or coercion. Data like that is critically important, and is good to share with young people when we're talking with them about sex, especially if they seem to specifically fit the picture of any of that data. However, there will always be exceptions, and often those exceptions are not about a few teens, but about a few million. Age-in-years also isn't all that's going on in those pictures.
Here's where both I, and Scarleteen as an organization, stand on this.
What we want is for everyone to only have any kind of sex -- be it intercourse or any other physically enacted expression of sexuality with oneself or a partner -- when it is what everyone involved in a sexual scenario: strongly wants, can and does actively consent to, feels prepared for and has the knowledge and capacity to have sex in a way that is physically and emotionally safe. We want this for everyone the first time they have any kind of sex, and then every time thereafter.
If "you should wait" means until all of THAT, then you betcha, we're on board. This is our goal for people of every age, and we don't think it's fair or reasonable to hold young people to different standards on this than we hold, or anyone else holds, older people (especially if you're going to say young people are less capable of meeting the standard than older people, but older people don't need to meet it once they are capable).
The kinds of things we know ARE likely to create positive sexual outcomes -- areas we can clearly see are where those positive outcomes most often occur -- are things like having an earnest and shared desire for sex with the person you're having it with, having knowledge about and access to sexual healthcare, safer sex tools and contraception; having the full legal right to and a sense of ownership of your own body (be that about the right to give nonconsent and consent or reproductive rights), having emotional support and acceptance from your community and culture, not feeling shame or fear about sex or sexuality; having a strong sense of self as well as a real care for others and feeling prepared for and at least somewhat skilled with the kinds of things sex requires, like communication, vulnerability, creativity, compassion, discovery and boundary-setting. There are people who are teens and who have all of those things sometimes: there are plenty who do not. There are people who are 20, 30 or 50 who do not: there are also plenty who do. While age and life experience can absolutely hone any and all of those things, a) it clearly doesn't for all people (if only) and b) some of those things can sometimes be easier for younger people than older people, especially if they haven't unlearned any of their intuitive skills with them yet
I know that there is no one broad group which people can be a member of that guarantees unilaterally positive sexual experiences or relationships with either unilaterally positive outcomes, or a lack of any negative outcomes. Everyone who works in sexuality knows this. Marriage doesn't do that, and it never has. Being of a certain gender doesn't do that, nor of a certain race or economic class. Being of a certain age doesn't do that, either, and also never has. Setting aside both the implicit falsehood of these kinds of statements, and the audacity of making them to members of a group which we are not members of ourselves, if we give young people the idea that getting married, having a partner for X-months or X-years or reaching some magical-age-or-other will immediately imbue them with all of the above resources, skills or scenarios, we aren't helping them any. At best, we potentially set them up for disappointment, but at worst, we may put them right in harm's way -- since those things alone do NOT protect them -- the very thing I think most people do want to prevent.
The other thing "wait until" can say as a message, intentionally or not, is that once anyone chooses to have sex, it's a Pandora's Box they have opened and can't shut evermore. Sexual choices are not just important or meaningful the first time we make them: those choices are always meaningful, we consider if sex is something that is right for us every time we do or don't choose to engage in it, and we all always have the right to change our minds and decline sex, even if we had it before. But a lot of young people don't know or feel that, especially with the other messages they get about how their valuation as people changes based on whether or not they have had sex or do have sex. I know, for certain, our allies don't want to enable that message to young people, but I worry some do because this messaging dovetails with that kind all too easily.
Shoulds are tricky when we're talking about sexuality, especially when making opening or general statements, rather than responding to someone's specifically expressed wants and/or needs. Given a rare few of us have been reared without pervasive shoulds when it comes to sex, or have been totally uninfluenced by a world which is rife with them, it's really easy to slip into saying "should" and we all usually have to work hard to avoid it. But I think we need to try.
When it comes to things like what kind of sex someone enjoys or wants, or to when sex will most likely be right for them (especially in a given situation when you don't even know what their unique situation is), "you should" usually means something more like, "I wouldn't," "I didn't," "I don't think you should because I didn't like that," "That didn't work out so well for me, so it probably won't for you" "I'd prefer if you didn't because what I want is..." "My personal values dictate..." or "Some person or idea who has more authority than you do says no."
This is a particularly problematic issue when adults are talking to young people, and all the more so when they're saying "shoulds" about nothing but age-in-years and personal projections. So often, adults have the idea that because they were once a young person of 13 or 19 or 22, they know all of how it is for young people of that same age. Even adults who once knew how full of baloney that was when they were teens.
For sure, those of us who are older were once younger. We were, however, our own younger selves, not the younger person we are talking with and about right now. We were also not our younger selves in the same time they are their younger selves. While some parts of a given experience they had may be much like one we had, they may experience that thing very differently, or have different outcomes than we did. For sure, age and hindsight gives us perspectives, and those truly are often valuable, especially if we're mindful people. But the idea that we know so much more than a younger person about their experiences, or what may be their experiences, just because of our experiences or our age isn't kosher. It is, in fact, is one of the ways that adults are often adultist. On top of that, we have adults who DID wait past X-age to be sexual with partners, and felt that was best for them: but not having had the other experience, they can't know what that would have been like for them. Then we have adults who had sex younger than they feel would have been best for them: they have a bit more information than the former group, but still can't know what starting sex at a different age would have been like. Having experience with something doesn't give us experience with not-something-else.
Nearly of my own consensual sexual experiences and relationships as a teen, including those when I was a young teen, were positive, enjoyable and loving and I didn't have the unwanted outcomes we've always heard will fall upon the heads of teens who have sex (likely because I did very well with safer sex and contraception when it was needed), save a broken heart a few times. No more achy-breaky than heartbreak I experienced from nonsexual relationships, though (actually, I think those heartbreaks were sometimes worse for me). I've heard from more than my fair share of adults my age or older who both don't manage their sex lives NOW as well as I did as a teenager and who are less pleased with their sex lives as adults than I was with mine as a teen. However, because my experience was like that at a given age does not mean I'm going to assume every other 15-year-old female-bodied person out there, at this point in time or any other, will have or will have had the same experiences I did. I think most people, including people whose politics are radically different than mine, would agree it would be grossly irresponsible for me to project my own experiences and outcomes unto any other young person just because they're the same age I was, doing the same things. And if that's so, those folks should also agree the same would be true had I had very negative experiences and unwanted outcomes.
My own experiences, like yours, may provide me perspectives (and also potential biases) I may not have had I had very different experiences. But it's my job to manage them and put them in greater perspective, to recognize they are individual, not universal, to avoid projecting and to figure that for any given teen out there who might have been just like me, there's one out there who is radically different, and for whom my choices at a given age would be a terrible fit, with very different outcomes.
If being older really makes us wiser, why do adults have such a hard time seeing when we're projecting this stuff unto young people, or recognizing it's often disrespectful? Many times that "should" comes from the I-did-this-I had-bad-things-happen place. I completely understand adults -- especially those who are parents or are mentors, teachers or other allies, rather than folks who don't have any real emotional investment in a teen or teens lives -- wanting to do what they can, within reason and with care, to help young people avoid harm or hurt. I think that's laudable and loving. However, a negative outcome happening from something we do at one age doesn't mean it'll happen to all people that age doing that same thing. We all need to think more deeply than this and present teens with thoughts of more depth.
I took a one-block walk to the park to play when I was seven, climbed on what looked like a jungle gym in an alley to me (it so wasn't) and I wound up slicing off half my hand, which left me with a permanent disability. Does that mean that it's a bad idea for seven-year-olds to go take a walk, and we can be sure of that because of what happened to me when I was seven? If I have had both positive and negatives with both serious and casual relationships, does that mean all must be good for everyone...or that none are?
Maybe you had intercourse with your boyfriend when you were 15. You didn't use birth control and became unwantedly pregnant, or a condom wasn't used and you got an STI. You didn't come into the relationship with knowledge about either of these things, nor sound negotiation skills or a real sense of self-esteem. You hid your sexual activity because per your religion, you were breaking the rules and sinning. Your relationship was also crappy, and the guy wound up leaving you, on top of everything. So, if you had had intercourse at 20, but all those other conditions were exactly the same, do you think the outcome would have been different? Doubtful. Just like if that guy had a mustache, things would not have been different with all the same conditions at the same age with a partner sans mustache. The problem most likely was not being 15. It was all the conditions of that equation.
There's often some coulda-woulda-shoulda going on here, too. A lot of people come of age with ideas of what "perfect sex" or "perfect lover" or "perfect first time" is. Many people have the idea that if they had just done X-thing differently, they would have had that perfect first time instead of the less-than-stellar experience they had. Certainly, we don't always all make the best choices and some different choices very much may have resulted in different outcomes -- because no, someone who had no sex at all would not have become pregnant, and someone who didn't choose a sex partner they knew was a jerk would have been less likely to wind up with a jerk-in-bed. But as someone who hears a WHOLE lot about that "perfect first time," including from people who followed all the given "rules" about what promises to make that so? I gotta tell you: if you didn't have it, one reason why was that, in large part, that "perfect" first time isn't real. It, like perfect lovers and perfect sex, is a fable; a fantasy. That's why it's so sparkly and shiny. Too, we can't ever know what outcome switching up one thing differently would have had, or what THAT change may have created. We hear a similar tactic in reproductive justice a lot, when people who are antichoice and regret an abortion they had say that they should have done adoption, that would have been so much less painful. Not only do they have no way of knowing that, that ignores the endless scores of women who HAVE surrendered a child and found it very painful. Grass, greener, other side: you know this one.
"Should" is a word that also has something to do with control. When we say "should" to someone -- especially without context, such as where someone tells us they want to have sex without a pregnancy, so we say they should then consider using contraception -- we suggest someone is obligated to make a certain choice. That's not helpful messaging if some of our intent is truly to empower people to make their own best choices, rather than to try and get them to make the choices we want them to for our own benefit or personal agenda (which can certainly include trying to rewrite or correct our own sexual histories). The phraseology here also suggests that responsibility is more about someone doing their duty, being a good citizen or a "good person," than just caring for themselves and caring for others: it's the latter motivation that's more likely to help people create and nurture positive sexual lives and relationships. Plus, messages of duty and/or obligation in regard to sex are particularly noxious for women, for whom much of the whole cultural history of sexuality has been about sex as a duty and obligation.
I would be so delighted if we could start to broadly hear a change in this messaging, especially from individuals or organizations I know or think truly want what is best for young people, which certainly includes, ideally, a reduction of negative or unwanted outcomes from sex, and also -- pretty please? -- some address of consent; which I also hope includes nurturing positive, wanted outcomes, like feeling good about one's sexuality, having a satisfying, beneficial sexual life -- one that includes pleasure and fun, not just not-pregnancy or not-STIs -- like feeling able to express yourself and your feelings with someone else authentically, like feeling alive in your body and feeling capable and respected.
I don't think we can't present sex positively and treat young people as capable while still sending strong messages about health and public health: in fact, I think without the former the latter will often be ineffective or have its own set of negative consequences, like fear, shame or feeling disempowered. If the messages we send young people about sex don't treat them with respect, aren't honest, don't address consent or make it sound impossible or inconsequential, don't treat the individual as an individual and shortcut complex issues, expecting them to approach sexuality any differently seems a strange expectation, indeed.
Here a few different alternatives to try on for size:
Of course, my favorite approach is avoiding generalized statements like this at all and instead having conversations where I can simply first ASK (or be told) if someone does or does not want to have sex right now, then give more information, and ask more questions, then tailoring what I am saying to what they state their needs and wants to be: if we start there, and work from their answer, it's pretty easy to sidestep all of the problems with these kinds of phrasings. I think it also makes it easier for us to focus as much on what we should be doing as we're focusing on what teens should.
Originally written for The Guardian, condensed version can be seen there.
In 2008, over 5,000 UK women under the age of 20 had an abortion that was not their first. As was made clear by the alarmist headlines following the publication of those numbers, this is a big concern for the public.
A woman’s reproductive life often spans 30+ years. Around 1/2 of all pregnancies in the US and UK are unplanned. Contraception isn’t used or used properly. It fails sometimes even in perfect use. Female fertility peaks between the ages of 19 and 24: the reason we tend to see the most abortions (and pregnancies) in that group is because it is the most fertile group having the most sex. (Piccinino, LJ, Mosher, WD. Trends in contraceptive method use in the United States: 1982-1994. 1998. Family Planning Perspectives. Vol. 30(1): 4-10 & 6, Table 1) The UK teen pregnancy rate is the highest in Western Europe: six times higher than the Netherlands, nearly three times higher than France and more than twice the rate in Germany.
In 2008, nearly 33% of all UK terminations were not first-time procedures. Under 18’s had 1,452 “repeat” terminations. Women 18-24 had 21,443 terminations that were a second or third; those 20-29, 16,734 repeats, and for women over 30, 23,804. As it is in the US, the group with the highest rate of repeats is women over 30. As it is in the states, half those women are likely already mothers.
I don’t get the concern about abortions, specifically. No matter what choices we make with it, pregnancy has the capacity to radically change our health and life. Pregnancy itself is a potentially dangerous health event: 40% of all pregnant women have some sort of health risk. 15% of those risks are potentially life-threatening. The rate of risk and complication with delivery is 8-10 times higher (and higher still for the youngest women) than for legal, first-trimester abortion. The maternal mortality rate in New York state dropped 45% after abortion was legalized in the U.S. Safe, legal abortion isn’t the health issue: unintended pregnancy is.
We should all have women becoming unwantedly pregnant as our deepest concern, no matter how a pregnancy ends.
What most influences unplanned pregnancy? People shagging in ways that matchmake sperm and egg, which most do and historically will have done by the age of 19 or 20. Whether reliable contraception is used correctly and consistently. Poverty is a huge factor, as is the sense of reduced self that often results from poverty, like the sense or reality that motherhood is an attainable goal while other goals are not within reach. Rape and other sexual abuses and unhealthy relationships, also whoppers.
What can be done? The UK plans to respond to this in exactly some of the ways I'd suggest. Lucky Brits! When I think the U.S. government should respond a certain way, they have an uncanny habit of doing the opposite.
Provide better sex education, information about and access to contraception: The 2008/2009 Opinions Survey Report shows only 57% of UK women 16–19 using contraception, a lower rate than all other ages. Only 11% of young people in the Netherlands don’t use contraception: their rate of STIs and unwanted pregnancies is impressively low. 11% vs. 43%: that’s major.
Women need access to comprehensive, unbiased information about all contraceptive methods, addressing all as viable while making clear the differences in effectiveness and proper use. Women need that information at school, at home, in the media and from healthcare providers, including those providing care with pregnancy, whether it ends in abortion, miscarriage or birth. The youngest women use family planning services less than older women, and are often scared to ask for them. It’s vital they’re offered these services without finger-wagging. Women need information about and access to contraception before they need to use it, not after.
Many women won’t know about all options, how to use them properly, or which methods will suit them best without thorough information that puts an emphasis on them as individuals. For instance, young women nearly always ask for (or are rotely given by healthcare providers) the pill, but oral contraceptives are less effective for teen women than for older women: some data shows a failure rate as high as 20% for young women, with a risk of failure as much as 55% higher for those under 20 as those older. (LM Dinerman et al, Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Med, 149(9):967-72, Sept 1995. MD Hayward and J Yogi, "Contraceptive Failure Rate in the US: Estimates from the 1982 National Survey of Family Growth," Family Perspectives, Vol 18, No. 5, Sept/Oct 1986, p. 204; J Trussell, B Vaughan, Contraceptive Failure, Method-Related Discontinuation And Resumption of Use: Results from the 1995 National Survey of Family Growth, Family Planning Perspectives, 1999, 31)
We must work hard to provide marginalized women contraceptive information and overall support services: the poorest women, the youngest women, women of color, refugee women, homeless women, abused women. These women have a higher risk of unplanned pregnancy because they are the least well-served and the least visible.
Assure thorough information is provided during an abortion visit: Women who don’t want to become pregnant again should be offered an in-depth contraception consult during their abortion visit. Women can often start reversible long-acting methods – an injection, implant or IUD – before they leave the clinic. Providers should make clear women can easily become pregnant post-abortion and ask about the dynamics of their sexual relationships. IPV rates in the UK are high: women in abusive, controlling relationships, particularly the youngest women, have higher rates of repeat unwanted pregnancies.
Talk about combining methods: Combining two forms of contraception provides no less than 92% protection from pregnancy in typical use and no less than 98% in perfect use. If we want to cut the rate of sexually transmitted infections and unplanned pregnancy, we must make clear that consistently backing up any method with condoms radically reduces both STI and pregnancy risks.
Increase awareness about emergency contraception: Only 14% of UK women 16-19 reported using emergency contraception in 2008. Less than 1% of women knew it could be used up to 5 days after a risk; only 49% knew it could be used up to 72 hours. 6% of UK women thought one dose of EC could prevent pregnancy until the next menstrual period (it can’t). Many young women do not know they can get emergency contraception through the NHS, not just family planning clinics.
Men need accurate information on contraception, too. Partner contraceptive non-cooperation is a problem, particularly for the youngest women who are still working on their dump-that-chump-skills. Beyond the impact abusive or careless partners have, even caring men can inadvertently sabotage contraceptive efficacy or use. That Opinions Survey Report included a study on male knowledge that makes clear men need more contraceptive education. Only around 30% knew long-acting contraceptives were more effective than other methods.
UK men reported they always used a condom only 3% of the time. To be an effective sole or backup method, condoms must be used correctly and consistently. Make sure men know that they also are entitled to prevent pregnancies they do not want, and have methods they can use themselves to exercise their reproductive rights. We need to do a better job making sure boys and men understand they are as responsible for their sexual choices, including prevention of unwanted pregnancy, as women are. We don’t do women or men any favors by accepting or enabling double-standards to the contrary.
Think (and talk) differently about teen sexuality: Most young people will -- as they always have -- be sexual with partners. The approaches to teen sexuality with the best outcomes accept this rather than trying to deny or eradicate it.
When we give young people a message their sexuality is something shameful they need to fear or hide, they hear it. They become afraid and less inclined to ask questions or for help, to be honest about what they need and what’s really going on with them. In the Netherlands (last time, I promise): they don’t treat teen sexuality as we do in the UK and the US. They don’t present young people’s sexual partnerships as a terrifying if but as an acceptable when. When reared with a clear cultural expectation they will seek out sexual partnership and an equally clear expectation they will handle sexual partnership ably, young people often will, in fact, do just that.
Just like anything else, all of sexuality has a learning curve. As with, say, cooking, driving a car or writing pieces on huge topics in less than 1,000 words, few begin their sex lives savants. We can’t expect young people to magically be better at this than the rest of us, especially without our help and support. Should we want them to be better at it all than we were or are, we can’t keep doing the same things we know full well have always failed them.
You probably know Scarleteen has been the premier online sexuality resource for young people worldwide since 1998. We have consistently provided free inclusive, comprehensive and positive sex education, information and support to millions for longer than anyone else online. We built the online model for teen and young adult sex education and have remained online for nearly eleven years to sustain, refine and expand it.
What you might not know is that Scarleteen is the highest ranked online young adult sexuality resource but also the least funded and that the youth who need us most are also the least able to donate. You might not know that we have done all we have with a budget lower than the median annual household income in the U.S. You might not know we have provided the services we have to millions without any federal, state or local funding and that we are fully independent media which depends on public support to survive and grow.
You also might not know Scarleteen is primarily funded by people who care deeply about teens having this kind of vital and valuable service; individuals like you who want better for young people than what they get in schools, on the street or from initiatives whose aim is to intentionally use fearmongering, bias and misinformation about sexuality to try to scare or intimidate young people into serving their own personal, political or religious agendas.
To try and reach our goal, we're asking our supporters to consider a donation of $100 or greater. If that isn't possible for you, what you can give will still help and will still be strongly appreciated. To donate now, click on one of the links below. If you'd first like more information on why we're setting the goal we are, what Scarleteen has done in the last year and during the whole of our tenure, our plans for 2010, and what the scoop is with our budget and expenses, keep reading.
Had around 1 million overall hits to the site each day from an average of 25,000 unique users daily. Scarleteen has a very high page-load rate as compared to other websites: on average, our users load 3.5 pages each when visiting Scarleteen. Since 2006 alone, our site has had over one billion overall hits and nearly 70 million page loads.
Currently, Scarleteen is the #1 ranked site by Alexa for teen sexuality education/information and for general sexuality advice for users of all ages. It is ranked 27,823 of all websites internationally, and is ranked 11,210th in the United States (on 10/12/2009). Our core users are international, 15-24 and diverse in their race, gender and sexual orientation. To see some of our user testimonials, click here.
To find out more about our educational philosophies and model, you may want to read Scarleteen Is..., What Is Feminist Sex Education?, On Innovation and Inclusivity in Sex Education, A Calm View from the Eye of the Storm: Hysteria, Youth and Sexuality or look at our general about page. If you've never taken the time to just look around the site as a whole, please do!
Engaged in over 4,000 conversations with young people on our message boards, providing them factual and friendly answers on contraception, sexual anatomy, safer sex, sexual health, masturbation, interpersonal relationships and other related topics; helping them through struggles like pregnancy scares or unplanned pregnancies, STIs, sexual harassment, rape and intimate partner violence or abuse; talking them through relationships and breakups, family conflicts, gender, sexual identity or body image issues and their sexual decision-making; discussing political issues pertinent to sexuality and youth rights. Most posts at the boards are answered within a few hours, some within minutes. Many of our board users return to the boards again and again for more help, to engage in deeper discussions or to talk with or support other users.
In total our boards have over 43,000 registered users who have posted over 60,000 topics: all have been answered by one or more of Scarleteen's staff and volunteers. Our boards are fully moderated and a safe space for young people. To help protect our users from potential harassment, they may not share personal information like full names, e-mail addresses, messenger or social networking handles or personal webpages. Managing and moderating the message boards often requires the bulk of our staff and volunteer time.
Answered nearly 100 column-length young adult questions in our Sexpert Advice section, which is also syndicated weekly at RH Reality Check. There are around 900 Sexpert Advice columns in total published at the site. However, our advice queue typically has over 500 questions waiting for answers. In order to catch up with this backlog, we need the funds to acquire more staff to handle the high demand for the longer, in-depth answers our advice column provides and our users are seeking there.
Generated fresh static content. So far this year, we have posted 42 blog entries, half of which were penned by young adult volunteers, and have added more than ten new full articles to the site. Some of our most recent articles include Positively Informed: An HIV/AIDS Roundup, Boys Do Cry: How To Deal With a Breakup Like a Man, An Immodest Proposal, Chicken Soup for the Pregnancy Symptom Freakout's Soul, Let's Get Metaphysical: The Etiquette of Entry, Give'em Some Lip: Labia That Clearly Ain't Minor and Love Letter. We have also added several new youth-written articles this year, and updated several existing articles to be sure our information is accurate and timely.
Excluding the message boards (where there are tens of thousands of pages), Scarleteen currently contains around 1500 pages of content: articles, advice answers, blogs, external resource listings, polls and more. We are not able to pay authors for articles, though we often are queried by authors we'd love to hire who have great ideas. An increase in our budget would allow us to provide more new articles and to further diversify Scarleteen's editorial voice.
Received media coverage: In the last year, Scarleteen was mentioned by/in Salon, Glamour, BUST magazine, Medill Reports, TIME Magazine, City on a Hill Press, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The New York Times, Utne Reader, CBS News and other outlets. To see some of this and more media coverage for Scarleteen in previous years, click here.
Provided direct community education and outreach: In the last year, Scarleteen director Heather Corinna gave talks to sex education students, sex educators and sexologists, youth and/or their allies via presentations at or for the University of Texas (NSRC Regional Training), the sex::tech conference, the American Medical Students Association, Harvard College, the NARAL Youth Summit and Garfield High School directly reaching around 350 total participants. In addition, through the CONNECT program for Washington Corinna currently directs through Cedar River Clinics, direct to-youth sex education was provided on an ongoing basis both to Cedar River young adult clients and homeless teens in Seattle at Spruce Street SCRC, a secure residential shelter. In 2010, Scarleteen will inherit the CONNECT program and continue Seattle-based direct outreach. We also have plans to continue providing information and education both to youth and other educators via conferences, summits and other public outreach opportunities nationally. In addition, with the help of a student intern, Scarleteen is preparing four informative pamphlets for print and distribution to clinics, schools and other groups which serve young people on sexual readiness, consent, managing sexuality after rape or abuse and on how to be queer and trans friendly.
In 2009 we ran a pilot program to train young adult peer sex educators online. To find out about that program and see what trainees had to say about their experience click here. We want to provide two more sessions of the training for 60 trainees in 2010. We have also just debuted a new SMS service for young people to text sexuality, sexual health and relationship questions to us and have them answered on their mobile phones. For more information on the text-in service, click here. As with all of our services, both of these new services are provided at no cost to youth.
On top of continuing the existing services we provide, we would like to continue to grow, adding new sections, functions and levels of service.
What We've Got & What We Need: As of November 1st, 2009, Scarleteen has received approximately $42,000 in grants and donations, the bulk of which has come from a single private grant. Only around $8,000 of that total has come from individual donations, $3,000 of which was from a single donor. To meet our needs for 2009 and the start of 2010, we need $70,000 in total financial support. Our goal now is to raise at least $24,000 in the next two months to meet our needs and cover the costs of 2009, as well as to walk into 2010 on financially healthy footing.
Beginning next year, we will require a minimum annual operating budget of $75,000 and the revenue to support it. While that is a substantial increase from our existing budget, it is essential: our existing budget cannot adequately sustain our staff or the organization as a whole. That new minimum budget is also still incredibly low: it accounts for the site running at a total of around $200 a day to provide all of the services we do to all of the young people and their allies who use them.
75K is exceptionally cost-effective and reasonable for the level of service we provide, especially compared to other organizations and initiatives, including those which do not match our reach and our level of direct-service. To find out details about our budget and expenses, and to compare them to other budgets and expenses of both similar and opposing sex education initiatives, click here.
Please make a donation if you are able, and consider the value and level of the services we provide to young people in doing so. A $100 donation can pay a major chunk of our server bill for a month, or half the monthly cost of the SMS service, or, can fund any kind of use of the site, including one-on-one counsel and care, for around 10,000 of our daily users. However, we would very much appreciate your a donation at any level.
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