The last section of our recent demographics survey (click here and here for data from the previous sections) was an optional, open section where we simply stated, "If you have any comments you'd like to add about this survey or Scarleteen as a whole, please feel free to add them here."
Of the 419 participants who left comments in this section, most were about Scarleteen as a whole, rather than the survey. The few on the survey itself included a couple concerns about the previous section discussed here, a couple nods of appreciation for the inclusion in the education section of no schooling or alternative education, and two concerns (from people identifying as cisgender) that when we asked about gender, and provided fields for men, women and also trans gender, separately, we were suggesting trans people are neither men nor women. To clear that one up, the opposite was our intent. Our intention was to recognize and validate the many ways people who are not cisgender may and do identify. We used the options we did (as well as the additional options) because we know some trans gender people simply identify as men or women; others identify as trans, trans men or trans women. We figured -- and looking at the back end of the data, it does seem participants who were trans seemed to get that -- participants would know they could check however it is they identified, or choose the open-ended field if their gender identity was something outside all the options or they wanted to specify further.
The vast majority of responses in this section were about Scarleteen. Critical responses were few, but they included a couple suggestions to consider using gender-neutral pronouns throughout the site. That is something we have discussed often over the years, but have not reached any conclusions about, especially given how many of our readers do not have English as a first language, how many use translators to read the site, and for how many we are introducing so many new concepts and frameworks for, and don't want to overwhelm. It's always a challenge for us to try to best serve the wide diversity of our readership, and this remains one of the core challenges. Per usual, we're always up to discussing this with anyone who would like to in the comments or via email.
A few people voiced challenges with navigating the vast amount of content we have on the site. In the positive comments there were just as many statements of how easy it is to find everything here at the site. However, we do feel that navigation and organization improvements very much could and should be made, have been starting work on that already, and hope to raise the funds to implement and complete those improvements by by summer of 2012. A couple people also made requests for increased content for men, people with disability and about asexuality. You got it!
One participant voiced a desire for Scarleteen to only support one model of relationship or sexual interaction: that of marriage or long-term exclusive romantic relationships only. That isn't ever likely to happen. Not only is marriage not even an option for everyone, but our readership is diverse, and we know healthy relationships and healthy sexual interactions can and do occur outside that model and unhealthy relationships and sexual interactions can and do occur inside that model. We know that based on history, quite a lot of broad data and study and directly from our readers as well as our own lives.
One last critical comment expressed feeling our text-in service is a waste of money. This stands counter, however, to the many users of our text service who have voiced a deep appreciation for the service. As well, the text service is highly cost-effective: our server bills are higher than the cost of our text service, and the tools for running the text service allow staff and volunteers to manage the text service while doing other work. Should the text service ever be utilized less or should the cost massively increase, be sure we'll rethink it. Scarleteen is one of the most cost-effective and cost-efficient organizations of it's kind, so we always have a keen eye on things like this.
There were an awful lot of comments that were simply very gracious thank you's. And you're so welcome! Thank YOU!
We really appreciated all of the positive feedback, and so much of it was also really educational for us. It's so helpful to know what our users find of value here, and how what we do is or has been personally relevant to them, especially since, again, there is so much diversity among our userbase, so what one person finds here or gets from it can be very different from what another does. There were far too many of those comments to document all of them here, but please know they all were deeply appreciated. Here's a sampling:
Next up? I'll wind this down by talking about an overview of all the data, and where we're going to take things from here with what the data helped show us or make more clear for us. Again, our deepest thanks to everyone who took the time to give us such valuable information.
Starting in 2006, for NOW's Love Your Body Day, our volunteers, staff and users have been creating haiku about body love and acceptance on our message boards.
It's resulted in some fantastically cool pieces over the years, so we figured we'd share a few of them today as it's that fine day yet again!
dry mouth crooked teeth
smiling never stops despite
himself, filling doubt
- foraday
Fuller or thinner
My luxurious body
Rejoices to live
- Juniata
"Ew, don't wear tight stuff."
Said to me some years ago
Finally past it
- Hyancithe
Chopsticks might seem nice
But I walk on prized columns
So show some respect
- Insecure-Poetry
my eyes, almond-shaped
brown like the good earth, birthright.
china's descendant.
- winsome
my feet are too big?
mom, look at how I stand here
stable on this earth
- bluejumprope
Big tits, big round bum
but comes with a little tum,
it's proportional.
- Lady
skin hangs loose, with marks
from my belly, he emerged
tiny baby feet
- Alice
Dark as chocolate,
Warm and kind. With the eyes of
grandmother I see.
- James the Dark
thunder thighs alight!
muscle any obstacles
challenge those who dare
- Blue Koi
What I see, in fact
is not what you see at all.
You see a woman.
- Bun Bun
This post is part of the 2011 Love Your Body Day Blog Carnival. For more posts in the carnival, have a click on that link! Want to see the rest of these haiku or pen your own? Here's where they live on our boards.
Want to know more about Love Your Body Day? Here's NOW's letter about it this year:
Today, the National Organization for Women Foundation celebrates its 14th annual Love Your Body Day -- a day when women of all sizes, colors, ages and abilities come together to celebrate self-acceptance and to promote positive body image. Since the launch of Love Your Body Day in 1998, NOW Foundation has used the campaign to challenge the unrealistic beauty standards and gender stereotypes promoted by the media, Hollywood and the fashion, cosmetics and diet industries.
"It's time to start valuing women for the contents of their character rather than their appearance," said NOW Foundation Education Vice President Erin Matson. "We're fed up with unhealthy images and messages, and we want to encourage women and girls to celebrate themselves not only on Love Your Body Day, but every day."
Research show that the U.S. spends over $33 billion on weight-reduction programs, diet foods and beverages, and more than 50 percent of women say they would consider having plastic surgery. Statistics revealed in the new documentary "Miss Representation" are shocking: The number of cosmetic surgical procedures performed on patients 18 or younger more than tripled from 1997 to 2007. Among those 18 and younger, liposuctions nearly quadrupled between 1997 and 2007, and breast augmentations increased nearly six-fold in the same 10-year period.
This year, NOW Foundation is hosting its first ever Love Your Body Day Blog Carnival in which writers from all walks of life will share their thoughts about the effects of advertising and the media's influence on women and girls. Blog carnival topics will range from eating disorders to children's body image awareness.
NOW activists and women's advocates will host a variety of events across the U.S. to help raise awareness about body image and women's health issues. Hollywood NOW's events will include a panel discussion featuring body image experts and special host Meghan McCain. Other NOW chapters and groups are planning body-positive style workshops, programs offering free eating disorder screenings and much more.
Early this year, after a lot of struggling with the tech and funding, we rolled out Find-a-Doc, our database system to help young people find quality, in-person services like sexual and reproductive healthcare, counseling, and LGBT, youth and domestic violence crisis shelters and services. The database includes a rating system so that those who have used the services can add recommendations or comments to help other users choose services, or know things about services from a first-person perspective. As you probably know yourself, we all tend to feel a lot better about using a service someone else has personally recommended or vetted: that's why we set up Find-a-Doc, and did so the way that we did.
We also use the database as staff and volunteers when working one-on-one with a user to help them find in-person services they need. But since it's been slow-going to get the database packed, we still have to spend a good deal of time searching in other ways, which is far less efficient and useful. Having the database have many, many options doesn't just help our users, it helps our staff and volunteers in serving them best and in managing our time effectively, especially given our high traffic and heavy workload.
As of right now, we have close to 200 different listings from around the world. But we'd really like a whole lot more. So, we're asking for your help.
Many young people haven't yet used any of these services because they don't know where or how to find them, or aren't sure what's safe for and supportive of them. We know that from the work we do here every day
So, to make up for that, our staff and volunteers have worked hard to add listing from services we have used or already know of. However, there are only around ten of us, while we've millions of users and readers every year, some of whom live in areas none of us have ever visited or lived in ourselves.
What we'd like our readers and supporters to do is just take maybe a half an hour to an hour of your time to help us add some more listings. Could we get your help as a community?
Obviously, the easiest thing to do is to add a listing of a service you yourself have used -- or work for or with: this is about the best free advertising for a youth service you can get! -- even if you are not a young person anymore: if that service serves young people currently, that's all we need.
Alternately, if you haven't used any of these services, haven't used them in a while, or never found anything you've felt served well by, you can just pick an area, a kind of service you want young people to be able to access, open up a search engine and find a few to enter into the database. We vet all entries ourselves, so if there are things you're not sure of, that's okay, we'll double-check everything before making a listing live. If in doubt, we call these services to check listings with someone in person at the listed service. Before adding listings, you can insert the zip code where you're thinking of adding to see what's already there. And by all means, if something you were going to add is already listed, and you've used that service, it'd be great if you could add a review!
Filling out an entry is easy, and putting a few in might even take you just minutes. Our users and we as staff and volunteers would be incredibly grateful for your help. Some areas where we have few to no listings so far and have the biggest need for listings include: Malaysia, the Southern US, Mexico, (all of) South America, Italy, France, Spain, India, Poland and Russia.
If you know you're going to pick a given area and work on that, it'd be additionally awesome if you'd leave a note about that in the comments here. That way, we will focus our time on other areas when we're working as staff to add more listings.
Thanks so much for any help you can give!
Here in the hemisphere I live in, we're into the swing of summer. Ah, summer, my personal favorite season. I love the sun, the warmth, everything blooming, the energy, the spirit of the season. As an alternative educator all my life, though, I miss out on that thing where teachers get summers off (though I've also known few teachers in the public sector who could afford to take the summer off, anyway), and as the Executive Director and lead educator at Scarleteen, I really don't get downtime. Summer is and has always been our busiest season. Eh, so it goes.
It's also the time of year when we tend to see the most new users coming to us because they're in a crisis or a panic, or are just really, really feeling down in the dumps. I'm a lot more concerned about those of you in that space than I am about my feeling occasionally gypped out of a summer vacation. We know that the idea of summer as a happy, carefree time for all young people doesn't square with the reality that for plenty, it's not, whether that's about tough stuff happening, or about having experiences that aren't negative, but are just super-challenging.
With that in mind, here are a few tips and things to think about as you get into (or grapple with) your summer groove:
If you're doing any partying this summer, party safe. Potential legal issues aside, we all know that when we're partying, particularly if that involves any kind of drugs or alcohol, that it can be pretty easy to cross the line from letting go a little to things winding up really out of control, sometimes to the point where people get hurt in very serious ways, whether that's about alcohol poisoning or drug overdoses, injuries, or sexual or other assaults or abuses. Around sexual assault and other kinds of intimate partner violence specifically, it's important to be very aware than even when just booze is part of the picture, the rate of abuse or assault goes up exponentially. The US Bureau of Justice Statistics, Alcohol and Crime, documented (1998) that two-thirds of victims of intimate partner violence reported that alcohol was involved in the incident, and that perpetrators of violence had been drinking in an estimated 45 percent of cases and their victims had been drinking in 20 percent of cases. In 2002 alone, over 70,000 students between the ages of 18 and 24 were victims of alcohol-related sexual assault in the U.S. (Hingson, R., Heeren, T., et al. "Magnitude of alcohol-related mortality and morbidity among U.S. college students ages 18-24." Journal of Studies on Alcohol, 63)
When drugs or alcohol are on the scene, we've just got to know that while they may make us feel like we can be more relaxed, they're actually reasons we need to be more vigilant and mindful of our safety and the safety of others.
If you're hanging out with people you don't know well and trust -- it's pretty common to find oneself in or around new social circles when out of school -- bring someone with you who you do know and trust well, and you can look out for each other. Looking out for each other means helping each other to avoid being harmed, but also helping each other to avoid doing harm. Looking out for each other can also involve helping each other to stay moderate in your consumption of any substances, rather than binging or otherwise going overboard. Make a pact with whoever your party is that if either one of you seems like you're getting out of control or someone else seems to be aiming their out-of-control towards you, you'll help get both of you out of there, and to a safe space, ASAP. Don't forget that you, like everyone else, also always has the option to just opt out of parties where there's drinking or drugs, which can be a particularly smart choice if you don't feel confident about dealing with the tough stuff that can happen in those situations or don't have anyone you know will have your back, without question.
Avoid choosing to get sexual with someone when you're intoxicated in any way, especially someone you don't already have some kind of solid history with where you know you both can do a good job looking out for one another and have a good sense of each other's boundaries and nonverbal consent and nonconsent cues. If you're feeling the sexy vibes and want to pursue some kind of sex with someone in that situation, the better bet is to just trade numbers then, and connect again later when you're both sober. Not only does that help keep you safe, it also helps you avoid choosing to be sexual with someone who seems awesome and amazing when you're blitzed, but in the light of day, without the beer goggles, is the last person on earth you'd want to get down with.
Want extra tips on partying safely? Check out the following resources for some helps:
Summer can mean having more time where your parents or guardians aren't around, which can often mean more private time. For sex. It's great not to have any kind of sex in a five-minute rush or a back-of-the-mind panic around people coming home, but just because you might finally have the chance for some real lone time doesn't mean that's what you or a partner are ready for, or what's right right now, just because you have more space and place for it.
So, know what else you have extra time for? Opening your mouth. Communicating clearly, openly and well with current or potential sexual partners. Asking each other the big questions, and making sure that your sex life isn't just about feeling things out with your hands or other body parts, but also about feeling things out in hearts and minds, together. Take advantage of that extra space for talking more about sex instead of just having more sex. Not only does more communication tend to result in smarter choices and less STI, pregnancy and iffy emotional risks, it also tends to result in better sex that people enjoy a lot more. Part of talking more is about protecting each other from the crummy stuff, but it's also about nurturing the fun stuff, about communication that expresses what you've been enjoying, what you want to explore, and all the positive ways you're feeling. feeling tongue-tied? We can help.
Our users also often voice that during the school year, finding the time or space to get the sexual healthcare they need can be tough. So, how about taking advantage of the extra time during summer for that? If you're already sexually active make sure you make time this summer to get up-to-date with STI testing, other preventative care, and with your method of contraception if you need one. If you're not sexually active now, but think you might be soon, how about scheduling en educational visit with a sexual healthcare provider to find out ahead of time what you need to know to make your own best choices and be prepared to be sexual while still reducing your risks of unwanted or unhealthy outcomes? Need help finding a provider? We can help with that, either through our youth services database here, or can give you one-on-one help via our message boards or text service to find someone you can access and afford near you.
Remember, you also have some extra time to get the sex information and education that you need. So, that thing or issue you feel like you don't know that much about, or aren't sure you have the right information on? That occasional rainy day is a time when you can really take time going through a site and resource like this one.
Grand romance...stuffed into five minutes. If we do get involved in a summer romance (or lustmance, or both), especially if we're away from home, or the other person is, it can be easy to feel like we have to try and cram things that would part of a longer relationship into a very short time, or rush into things because we worry the opportunity we've got is the only one we have. It can feel sometimes like we need to have or create the Cliff's Notes version of a relationship.
By all means, if you feel good about being spontaneous, and you and whoever else is involved can have things move a little faster than usual while still feeling prepared, emotionally and practically, to deal with that and the outcomes, it's not like there has to be anything wrong with a taste of the whirlwind. Just be sure that you do try and check in with yourself and the other person often and thoughtfully, rather than getting too caught up in the flow. There's always time for talking and negotiating, and if and when there's not, that's often the signal of a bad-news scenario you'll probably regret, rather than the makings of a lovely, wistful summer memory. The really good stuff in life rarely is something that won't wait when we need to wait or feel like we or the other person would feel a lot better if we did, or like what we'd do in a hurry would be a lot more fun and beneficial if we slowed it all down some.
Need some help with that? We've got a piece that can help you out.
Sex couldn't possibly be more boring than this. Oh, sure it could.
You don't need me to tell you that sometimes life is boring, and that it's easier to get really, really bored if you're out of school and don't have anything, or enough, to do. Sometimes that winds up resulting in having sex because we're bored.
Often, that tends to be a pretty crummy motivation to have sex, no matter how old people are, and one that often results in sex that isn't that exciting, either, or which we wouldn't otherwise choose if we were not So. Very. Freaking. Bored. If and when we feel apathetic and super-whatever about life, we can also wind up taking some sexual risks we'd rather not, too.
This is just another place to check in with yourself and someone else. If you or they seem or feel like you're settling, just accepting sex because it's there and nothing else really is, or besides being sexual time spent together is a total yawner, find something ELSE to do that isn't so boring, something that engages you, that you earnestly feel passionate about. Once you do that, you can review a potential sexual situation through clearer eyes, eyes without the murky, milky haze of nothing to do. And then if you do choose to be sexual, still, chances are good it's not only going to be safer and sounder, but also a lot more interesting, rather than just one more thing to feel bored with.
Summer lovin'...when it's about everyone but you. Speaking of summer romances, maybe it's not you having one. Maybe it's your best friend. or a few of your friends, Or, good gawd, all of your friends. Except you. You might feel lousy about that, both because they seem to be having such an amazing experience, and because on top of that, you've wound up with less to do and experience yourself this summer with your friends all tied up in romances.
We're not going to say that can't suck, because it really can. But do try and keep it in perspective, and remember that falling in love or in list aren't the only great adventures out there or ways to have awesome life experiences in summer or at any other time. In fact, when those are our only great adventures, it makes for a pretty blah life, usually with pretty blah people.
Figure out ways you can also get immersed and engaged in something great that really makes you stretch this summer, whether it's some travel, a summer job or volunteer gig (if your folks are paying your rent, take advantage of a time in life when you can work for free and thus, do anything you want!), or starting or finishing a creative project you can give loads of time to, whether that's starting or joining a band, making a zine, building a website, taking a self-defense class, constructing the world's largest sand castles, or forging a new trail in some nearby wilderness. Even just getting outside, without any real purpose or great aim, sure beats the alternative of not doing anything else at all but feeling lonely. It can also make getting through next winter feel like less of a drag.
If you're looking to meet new people for potential relationships, many of those things are also way better ways to do that than being the perpetual third wheel of your best friend and her girlfriend or sitting in your room being bitter and pissed.
If you're looking for volunteer opportunities or internships, here are some organizations we really like, and some resources to help get you started (we also can always use volunteers, too!):
How did last year go for you as far as having the kind of support and community you need? Summer can be a good time to set yourself up now to be better supported for the summer and the coming school year, and a good time to get help if we're stuck with anything in life, or struggling with things that we just don't seem to be making any headway with on our own. So, if you know you felt like you didn't have squat when it came to, say, LGBTQ community and backup last year, use some spare time now to find out what's around for you that you can use. Did you grapple with depression or anxiety last year? Why not talk to your doctor or community center about counseling resources while you have some extra time so that you can better enjoy the rest of the summer, and walk into the school year feeling more able to deal with it right from day one. Not sure what your new college offers in terms of any kind of support resources? Do some research now, before you go, so you know what those resources are before you need them in a pinch. Summer can be a really great time to take care of ourselves and feel great about it.
Don't forget: we're always available to help you, and not just in crisis, but with ways to help prevent being in crisis in the first place. We're glad to help you think through sexual and relationship choices carefully and with some extra perspective. We can help you better communicate your wants, needs, limits and boundaries to new partners or potential partners. We can help you figure out if a given kind of relationship or sexual situation really fits who you are, where you're at right now in your life, and if it does or doesn't seem likely to really fit what you know you want and need. We can also help you tweak things a bit when those relationships or situations seem mostly good, but when you know or get the sense that you or a partner want or need something a little different or extra for everything to shift from good to great.
Happy summer!
This is a guest entry from The Gaytheist Gospel Hour as part of the blog carnival to support Scarleteen.
Preface: I was recently asked to participate in a blogathon to support Scarleteen, an online sex education forum for teens. I was flattered. I was humbled. I was a little queasy and had to breathe in a bag for a minute or 12. I decided to contribute the story of how I survived homophobic bullying thanks a single library book. I’m living proof that progressive sex education (no matter how small-scale) makes an enormous difference in the lives of the very young. It’s my hope that all who read my sarcastic, satirically-tinged autobiographical account will consider making an enormous difference by supporting Scarleteen.
"In this life, things are much harder than in the afterworld/ In this life, you’re on your own!" —Prince
High school is a laugh riot. It’s a jolly funhouse where the unpopular and the unusual are punished for their crimes against conformity with a topsy-turvy ridicule. Here, overweight boys have “due dates”, homely girls are proposed marriage by homecoming kings, underwear waistbands are wedgied into easy carrying handles for Special Ed students, and exchange students, (regardless of country of origin) are addressed in mock Chinese. In this swarming mosh pit of ha!rassment, powered by sweaty insecurity and raw, smelly fear, homophobia stands as the indisputable height of hilarity. At least that’s how I remember it.
“Gay” was the Golden God of Comedy at my Iowa high school back in 1985. It was the sun that shined down on an otherwise unfunny and frighteningly confusing world and made it all worthy of a ridicule most amusing. Anything could be “gay”, and therefore hilarious: a pack of Lit’l Smokies dog-piled on a cafeteria tray, “True” by Spandau Ballet, the color green and all who wore it on Thursday. Behaviors were “gay”, too: raising one’s hand in class, missing a foul shot during a gym class basket ball game, wearing one’s backpack over both shoulders as opposed to the heterosexually-mandated right shoulder. The entire marching band was apparently gay, and so were the Choir and the Drama Club. But they called themselves the Glee Club and The Thespians, so weren’t they just asking for it?
The Golden Gay God of Comedy was capricious. His ways were mysterious. Amazingly, not even heterosexuality provided an adequate defense against The Gay. Prince was a perfect example. Anyone who’d heard his Purple Rain album, (and only the Amish and the deaf hadn’t) had witnessed Prince’s very vigorous love of the ladies. Its most notorious track, “Darling Nikki”, was an epic ode to boy/girl frottage practically tailored to the heterosexual fumblings of the typical teenager, yet the man who had composed and performed it? Gay, gay, gay. It could be argued that, like the Glees and the Thespians, Prince had in his own way “asked for it.” He did, after all, wear high heels and make up, but so did Vince Neil of Motley Crue. Yet nobody called Vince Neil gay. And thus was the delightful cruelty of the Golden Gay God of Comedy.
When I moved from Ohio to this Iowa High School, I found myself a permanent inhabitant within the crosshairs of the Golden Gay God of Comedy. My favorite paisley shirt was gay. My red hair was gay. My glasses were gay. My inability to put a ball in a hoop was gay. I was president of the Student Librarians, a post I’d accepted with the purposeful solemnity worthy of the Gayest of the Gay. As fate would have it, I really was gay, which put a weirdly embarrassing spin on my relationship to the Golden Gay God of Comedy. How unfair, yet undeniably dead-on he was! He had called a duck a duck, and what could I do but quack “You got me there, bub!”?
I paid dearly for my hilarious gayness, and my own personal bill collector was comedian Chuck “Smith.” Who at my Iowa High School could deny his uproarious stylings? The spectacle of the redheaded new girl in the weird shirt with spit in her hair, getting groped by a “lezzie!”-squealing Chuck, filled the hallways with deafening laughter. Such rollicking high jinks!
Since the story I’m telling is sarcastic, satirically-tinged autobiography, I’m going to skip over the part where I cried when I got home and was afraid to go to school and hated the entire world for what had happened to me. In fact, I became physically ill while reliving 1985 in the writing the first draft of this story. Because there is no crying allowed in sarcastic, satirically-tinged autobiography, I’ll jump right over the abundantly obvious fact that what happened to me was very, very painful and will now mercifully deliver us all to the part where I decided to turn things around and fight hilarity with hilarity.
The fact of the matter was: I was much funnier than Chuck. Even though I was too inward and awkward at the time to let anyone else know it, I knew it. It galled me to be on the outside of the joke, looking in at its heart and soul, which was ironically enough, my own victimization. The Golden Gay God of Comedy may have ruled the school with his nonsensical and pitiless jurisprudence, but it was plain to me that he had a very sub-par servant in Chuck “Smith”. I mean, really: calling a lesbian a lesbian? It was the most uninspired put-down, ever. The personal disappointment was bad enough, but how was I expected to hold my head up amongst the pregnant fat boys or the portable special ed students?
Which brings me to the book One Teenager in Ten: Writings by Gay and Lesbian Youth. Published in 1983 by Alyson Press and edited by Ann Heron, the book was packed to bursting with the testimonies of people like me. One Teenager In Ten had unceremoniously arrived at the Library of my Iowa High School one spring day, innocuously packed in a cardboard box along with over a dozen paperbacks of sundry and disparate subject matter. As was my duty as the President of the Student Librarians and the Gayest of the Gay, I had glued the pocket in the front cover myself, and never dared to ask where it came from or who had ordered it. I snuck it home without committing my name to the check-out card and read it in one night.
The very existence of this book was an enormous comfort, because it was tangible proof that even though I was by myself in my Iowa High School, I was by no means alone. The book also gave me a sense of perspective. As bad as I had it, there were others who had it even worse. They would escape their own Chuck “Smiths” at the end of a school day, only to be harassed by their own families and members of their churches. Some had been institutionalized. Others had attempted suicide. For the first time in my life, I counted myself lucky to be the beloved daughter of 2 unrepentant hell-bound atheists for reasons other than not having to wear a dress for Easter. But as valuable as a source of solace One Teenager In Ten was, the book actually turned out to be an even better blunt instrument of pure comedy vengeance.
On the night that I had temporarily stolen One Teenager In Ten from the library, the Golden Gay God of Comedy came to me in a dream. He took the form of a paisley-clad Prince, tottering in the sauciest pair of F Me Pumps I had ever seen in my life. He wagged a sassy, lace-encased finger at me. “You’ve abused your post as The Gayest of the Gay,” he scolded in a surprisingly deep voice, “A crime most uncool and worst of all–unfunny.” He regarded me with those Bambi eyes ablaze within their Mabelline confines, so I knew he meant business. “Someone needs that book much more than you do,” Prince admonished me, and punctuated his disapproval with a nut-cracker split on the foggy floor below us. He sprung up before me, did a cyclone-spin, swept the curtain of curls out of his right eye, and said, “Someone named Chuck ‘Smith’!” He departed into the clouds with a chirping little shriek. I believe it went something like this: “Owwww—ahh!” which I took to mean “Don’t get caught!”
So the next day, I kept the book and returned the card to the library. I’d never seen Chuck’s handwriting, so the Golden Gay God of Comedy had guided my hand in the forgery of his signature: the plodding jumble of widely-spaced upper and lowercase letters you might find on a “No Girls Allowed” sign. I stamped the due date on the card and filed it away accordingly. And I waited.
Which brings me to Study Hall. Located at the left corner of the right-hand serif perched at the top of the U-style-layout of my Iowa High School, the Study Hall was ensconced in the end-of-the-line Gay Ghetto also inhabited by the Library and the Band Room. The white ceramic bricks that comprised the entire school were never whiter or shinier than in the Study Hall. Like teeth. Were we trapped inside the mouth of the school, I would often wonder. We were made to sit at desks set in skittish rows, and expected to ignore the lumpy loudness of the biggest hits of last year emanating from the Band Room next door while we ostensibly caught up on our studies. The clock on the wall was perpetually set on Anchorage time, and every minute was a shiny white eternity. It was the perfect setting in which to contemplate suicide. And receive overdue notices.
They were delivered from the Library next door, every Wednesday, and handed out to the offenders trapped in the Study Hall. The overdue notices looked harmless enough: innocent white pieces of paper, lovingly cut into slips. But the dot matrix derision they harbored left a stinging welt. “You have betrayed the trust invested in you by the Library, as well as the entire intellectual community of this Iowa High School,” the notices announced, “and therefore all will know your shame!” That was how I took it, anyway. Nobody else seemed to mind much. I had Study Hall with Chuck (naturally) and I would sit in the back of the room, watch as he writhed in boredom over his unopened books, and instead of suicide, I would think about One Teenager In Ten. And I would quake with suppressed laughter. It was an excruciatingly delicious wait for Wednesday. No matter what happened to me in the hallway or what would be thrown at me in Study Hall, I had something to laugh at and something to live for: Wednesday.
The only thing that trumped waiting for Wednesday was, well, Wednesday itself. The look of utter bafflement on Chuck’s face upon being presented with that first overdue notice is perhaps the most cherished memory of my youth. A cow confronted with a curling iron, a chimp with a chess set, a trout with Tommy Tune tickets– none of them had anything on Chuck’s goggle-eyed bewilderment. Stunned, he hesitated for a moment before accepting the notice. He blinked as if to shake it off, and regarded the slip of paper with the puzzled disgust one might exhibit upon being bestowed with a piece of freshly-wiped toilet paper.
The notice in and of itself was clearly an effrontery. Chuck would never do anything as gay as set foot in the Library, let alone check out an actual book. That stuff was strictly for fags. He protested loudly to no one in particular but to everyone all at once: “This is STUPID! I don’t go to the stupid Library!” He let out a gasp of exasperation and rolled his eyes.
And then he read it.
A funny thing happened next. No, make that a fucking hilarious thing: Chuck lept from his seat with such violence, I had to look twice to make sure it was still just a desk, and not the lap of Liberace. As his empty desk spun into the next row, nearly hitting a cheerleader, the Band Fags next door presciently pumped out a cumbersome cover of Prince’s “Let’s Go Crazy.” The Study Hall monitor shouted his name over the blaring tuba breakdown and demanded he return to his seat, but there was no stopping Chuck from storming the Library to defend his heterosexuality. But it was all in vain, as his name was clearly committed to the checkout card, in all its childish glory.
And thus, the Golden Gay God of Comedy was at last properly served. For several weeks afterward, I basked in a sunlight that rendered an otherwise unfunny, and frighteningly confusing world somehow worthy of a ridicule most amusing.
Afterword: I’ve grown up to inhabit a world that is in many ways both better and worse than the one in which I grew up. It’s a world in which same sex couples can wed (coming to a state near you!) and gay soldiers can serve their country with their heads held high (at least for now!). It’s a world in which, a gay-centric show like “Glee” not only exists, but thrives commercially, a world where an out lesbian is poised to take the daytime talk throne currently held by Oprah Winfrey. All of these things were just unthinkable back in 1985. Yet it’s also a world in which young gay people commit suicide to escape homophobic bullying. I survived 1985 thanks to One Teenager In Ten and a mean streak. The mean streak I was born with, but One Teenager In Ten came courtesy of my Iowa High School. It was just one book, one miniscule instance of forward thought and inclusion on the part of my school board, but the difference it made in my life cannot be understated. It afforded me the strength to stand up for myself and survive to adulthood. I can’t help but wonder how many lives could have been saved if that one miniscule instance of forward-thought and inclusion had mushroomed beyond that book in that tiny Iowa high school. I’m of the belief that the inclusion of the gay perspective in sex education would help eliminate the confusion and irrational fear experienced by both gay and straight students. Homophobic bullying and its tragic aftermath are the results of a fearful and narrow-minded educational culture. I truly believe the Chuck “Smith”s of the world would be better served by a book like One Teenager In Ten instead of overdue notices, which in a way, they have been receiving pretty much all along.
American educational reform, it seems, is powered by an arthritic hamster running on a primitive wheel made of third-world wicker. Thanks to the machinations of the Religious Right, it will very likely be a cold day in Satan’s codpiece before we’ll see true reform in our lifetimes. In the meantime, there is Scarleteen. Scarleteen is an online sexuality resource for young people, providing free, inclusive, comprehensive and positive sex education, information and one-on-one support to millions. Running strictly on private donations, Scarleteen does so much for so many with so little. It may have even saved a few lives along the way.
Please consider supporting this amazing resource with your donation.
Time for another installment of Building Bridges, where we facilitate, then publish a conversation between two people in different life stages who have something with gender, sexuality and/or relationships in common. This time, our intergenerational pair is two women who have had their sexual orientation and identity shift for them during the course of their lives.
Amy, 24: I came out as a lesbian at 14 and was, as I call it, "a Professional Gay" for a long time. I interned for activist organizations, ran the GSA at my high school, got a scholarship from a local LGBT organization for my activism and went on to a women's college where I eventually became co-chair of the LGBT organization on campus. I was, as a friend once said "her definition of gay."
Looking back, I struggled with liking guys for a long time, which sounds so backwards in the way that people think of sexual orientation transitions. I felt a strong connection and loyalty to the LGBT community that I basically grew up in and was afraid that by liking guys I was betraying them. Eventually I started to wonder - if I was okay with dating people who identified as male, why was I not okay with all people who identified as male? I started "experimenting" with people-with-penises when I was 21 and started actively dating them when I graduated college at 22. I'm currently involved with a person-with-a-penis and we've been dating for almost a year now.
Candice, 39: I have been in a continuous committed relationship with the same (cis)man since I was 16. We've been legally married for something like 15 years (it all runs together at this point) and have an 8 year old son. Despite my first sexual experiences being with girls and the crushes I had on female friends, until I was in my early 20s I very strongly identified as straight. I think that the when & where of my childhood had a lot to do with that. Growing up in the 70s and 80s in a very Baptist city in the deep south meant that until I was in high school, I honestly wasn't even aware that people had anything other than hetero relationships. Even when I learned about homosexuality, I never considered identifying as gay, partly because I was strongly attracted to boys but also because to do so wouldn't have been safe, socially or physically. The only openly gay student at my high school was beaten up and bullied out of the school - talk about a powerful lesson in staying silent.
My sophomore year in college I started hanging out with a group of people that included most of the non-hetero students at the school. They were generally considered the "freaks" on campus, but they felt like home to me. For the first time I felt able to think of myself as something other than straight but I wasn't sure what exactly I WAS. I loved my boyfriend, I was attracted to girls...I started thinking I was bisexual because that seemed to fit best. Unfortunately, the lesbians I knew (and the gay men, to a lesser extent) were painfully scornful of bisexuality and although I privately identified as bi I was publicly silent on my exact orientation and simply presented myself as being in a relationship with a man.
Who I'm attracted to has changed several times in my adult life...I've had times where I was intensely interested in women and not at all in men (THAT makes a committed relationship with a man a challenge, let me tell you!) and times when I've been very into men and not particularly noticed women. My relationship with my husband has both affected and been affected by this in complicated ways. Currently, I am very much enjoying sex with a man while also "not-dating" a woman I consider my "not-girlfriend" and being very frustrated by the sex we are not having. (And yes, my husband knows this. Like I said, it gets complicated). At this point in my life I'm most comfortable identifying as queer - it's the only orientation that seems to offer enough room for the different ways I feel at different times and it has less personal baggage for me than "bisexual".
Amy: My social group is very hmm "non traditional" (aka not any different from anyone else, just more open about it) in regards to sexuality - kinky people, swingers, polyamorous, queer... the kind of people who go to sex education events for fun and lust a little after Tristan Taormino (whose book, Opening Up, is a fantastic one on open relationships. Minus the attempt at history in the introduction. My background's in history and that intro made me want to scream for proper citations.) I'm also in a non-monogamous relationship, but I know from talking to married folk that nonmonogamy is a different ball game when marriage and children are involved.
You noted your not-girlfriend and ongoing attractions outside of your marriage. Have you and your husband considered any of the various forms of non-monogamy?
Candice: Yes, absolutely. I'd say that at this point, we are tentatively poly...it is a long, tricky process renegotiating some of the most basic terms of such a long relationship. I have a much easier time with the idea of nonmonogamy, perhaps because there is no way that any one person can be both male & female & satisfy everything I want. I've also never thought that sex and love were necessarily always bound together...that idea never made sense to me. My husband is naturally monogamous so it's been a real challenge for him. I am incredibly grateful that he is willing to be flexible and work towards ways for both of us to have our needs met.
The not-girlfriend bit is because, although they are a poly couple, her husband isn't comfortable with her starting another relationship right now. Oh, ironic Universe, I shake my fist at you!
I wonder how it feels for you, Amy, to have access now to "heterosexual privilege." I know there are many times when it makes life less superficially complicated for me, even when I feel guilty about sliding through peoples' perceptions because of it. Does it make you mad when that happens? Does it sometimes feel like a relief (even if you don't think it should)? How has having a male partner affected how you move through everyday life?
Amy: On my OkCupid profile, one of the things I note is that I spent a good chunk of my life immersed in the queer community. That's part of my history and it's shaped how I approach relationships and life in general. I do not think I could date someone who did not have some form of "alternative sexuality literacy." Male, female or somewhere in between, they need to have had some interaction with the queer community and they need to be comfortable with their sexuality.
In my daily life, heterosexual privilege doesn't really come up - as noted, I tend to surround myself with people where sexuality is a very fluid thing and more tied up with actions than identities. I have noticed that because I no longer actively present as a soft-butch lesbian and because I am presenting as more femme, that the way other people interact with me - from bartenders to people at happy hours to men who hold the doors for me outside of office buildings - is different. Also, I haven't been sir'd in years. But that's more of a presenting thing than a who I'm dating thing. (I think I can provide an entertaining contrast picture somewhere, along with Venn diagrams. THERE COULD BE A FLASH PRESENTATION... only I'm not that motivated).
However, with family, I have embraced the heterosexual privilege of being open about my love life. My grandparents, who never met any of my girlfriends, will be meeting my boyfriend this fall. Being able to talk casually about someone who is such a large part of my life without having to filter them out or call them "my friend" is such a relief. It doesn't make me angry, it just makes me sad.
Do you think that you would have been out as bisexual if the members of the queer community you were exposed to had been more accepting of bisexuals?
Candice: I've thought about this question a LOT. I wish that I could say "Well, of COURSE," because that is who I want to have been. The honest answer, which I like a lot less, is "probably not."
I was painfully uncomfortable with myself on so many fronts back then...I don't think I could have overcome my own fear of being identified as "wrong" or "different" and been open about my sexuality. That said, I think that I would probably have worked through my issues with sexuality a lot faster if I'd been in a more supportive and accepting community. As it was, the community I was in certainly reinforced my belief that it was not safe to fully express who I was.
The first question I had reading your introduction post was how the LGBT community you were originally a part of reacted to you coming out as bisexual. You said that you were afraid that you would be betraying them by dating guys...did they see it that way as well, or was that more your own imagining?
Amy: I think that a lot of it was my own imagining, but it wasn't unjustified imagining. The group of lesbians that I used to hang out with in college and I have more or less fallen out of friendship - whether that's because of the natural order of growing up or because we didn't have anything in common besides liking women, I don't know.
I think I've actually had more trouble with the LGBT community about being bisexual and poly. I think that if I was bisexual but dating a woman, I'd still feel more... accepted, than the fact that I'm about to hit the year mark with a man and still open to dating women.
One of the largest fights I've ever gotten into (and this is including the dinner time arguments with my father, who thinks Rush Limbaugh is a liberal) was with a lesbian who informed me that she didn't think poly people should raise children. Her arguments were such that you could take out "poly" and replace it with "lesbian" and it would be the exact damned argument that is made against gay people raising children. The hypocrisy of her (and two other lesbians that chimed in) made me unspeakably angry.
How has growing up in a conservative Christian environment influenced your own relationship with religion?
Candice: My own family is very Christian (I swear every other relative I have is a minister) but also quite liberal so even though I was surrounded by churches that condemned anyone different, I was raised in Christianity that was loving and tolerant, if not always affirming. Although I'm not a Christian myself, I have great respect for the teachings of Christ and for the people who follow and live his teachings.
Which isn't to say that I don't carry scars from and bitterness towards the many many people who call themselves "Christian" but practice intolerance and hatred. I choose to think that most do so out of ignorance and indoctrination rather than informed choice (that's cheerier than thinking that so many people are just hateful), but I still avoid them. I try hard not to pre-judge people, but anyone calling themselves a Christian has some proving to do before I really trust them.
One of the things that is most difficult for me right now as I try to forge more connections in my local queer community is how many people make assumptions about my sexuality based solely on the fact that I am holding a man's hand or (more rarely, but it happens) the fact that I am fairly femme and wearing very traditional engagement & wedding rings. I often feel that if I were alone, or with female friends, or if I were more butch, I might be treated more as "one of us" from the outset, rather than having to explicitly say "I'm-married-to-a-man-but-that-doesn't-mean-I'm-straight" (it's kind of a one breath phrase for me now).
Do you find yourself having to work a little harder to be accepted as a part of the community now that you are partnered with a person-with-a-penis?
Amy: To be honest, I haven't been as active with the mainstream LGBT community so I can't really say that I have to work harder. The more general sex-positive community has been where I've focused things of late - and there's significant overlap with the queer community and the sex positive community. But because I'm not coming at it from a different angle I think that the queer community I interact with has different expectations of me which makes it so much easier for me to be partnered with a person-with-a-penis.
I had a hard time coming to terms with being bisexual - from the gays and lesbians who said that bisexuals were cheating, as it were - they they had it easy - to my own mother who seemed to be (relatively) okay with me being a lesbian but several times said things about bisexuals like, "Why can't they just choose?!"
On a different note, where'd you go to college? Do you think that if you had gone to a different college your sexuality would have been influenced? I went to a small Southern women's college - Hollins University in Roanoke, VA - that was a little bubble of liberal in a large sea of red. Having been out as a lesbian during the application process, I would not have gone to a particularly conservative institution, but I wonder sometimes if I would have ended up differently if I hadn't attended a liberal women's college.
Candice: I went to Transylvania University in Kentucky. It's a great school, academically, and I had an scholarship I couldn't say no to. When I was there, the student body was overwhelmingly white and upper/upper-middle class; over 80% of students pledged greek. A lot of my experiences there were great (I don't want to sound like I'm dissing the school) but as a whole it wasn't very tolerant of diversity.
I feel certain that a different school would have influenced my sexuality, or at least my expression of it. I desperately wanted to go to Oberlin University, which is radically liberal, and I have no doubt that had been able to afford it my experience would have been very different, if only because there would have been more than 10 openly queer people on campus.
I love the phrase "Professional Gay!" I know exactly what you mean by that. I'm wondering how you felt your role changed when you changed how you identified yourself. Did your focus in the various activist organizations change (i.e. did bi issues become more apparent or important to you once you identified as bi)? I imagine that if you saw yourself as "Professional Gay" you might have felt a bit lost when you let go of identifying as gay...did you? Or did you feel like letting that identity go freed you up to explore other ways of being in and presenting to the world?
Amy: I think that letting go of that identity freed me up to be more multi-faceted in how I present myself to the world. As I noted, I'm still active with the "sex positive" community (I do things like go to feminist conferences called Sex 2.0, which is an unconference in its third year that covers social media, feminism, and sex positive stuff), though I'm not really an activist any more. When I say that I mean... I am not in my face about it anymore. I just am who I am and I'm open about it, which is often its own form of activism because that's periodically a very difficult thing to do. Trying to actively change people's minds is too exhausting and generally ineffective. I used to say when I was a leader in the LGBT organization that the most effective form of activism that you can do is to be out and honest about yourself, whomever that is. The more people who know that you're queer [or whatever] the more they make the connection between "this cool person I know who happens to be queer" and LGBT/queer rights. It personalizes the issue for them, so it's more "If I vote against LGBT rights, that means that my friend Susie can't marry her partner of ten years, Mary" and less of an abstract "other."
Anyway, what I am saying is that I didn't lose anything. I was scared to let go of that identity, but I think that my personal activism just shifted a bit and I got to become a more interesting human being as a result. Because people who are Just Gay or Just Mormon or Just Goth or Just [insert any identity] are kind of boring.
As a queer parent in a heterosexual(ish) relationship, how do you think you'll handle your son's sexuality when he gets older?
Candice: My son and I already have amazingly open discussions about lots of aspects of sexuality. My mother and I still can't talk about sex, and I was determined not to repeat that dynamic with him, so I've talked to him about bodies & sex (at an age-appropriate level, of course) from the beginning. It seems perfectly logical to him that some people like the opposite sex and some like the same and he's very indignant that gay marriage isn't legal (it's adorable to hear him rant about it). He knows that he can ask me anything, and so far is comfortable doing so.
As for my own sexuality, it hasn't come up yet, but I'm sure that at some point it will. I doubt he will explicitly ask me, so sometime in the next couple of years I'll drop it into a conversation. I'm sure he'll have some questions about how it fits into my relationship with his dad, and I'll explain as far as I think is appropriate. I'm a little nervous about coming out to him but honestly I don't think it will be that big a deal to him.
We hear a lot about generational divides. What we hear less about are the bridges: how people of different generations can and do connect; how we can support and help one another and each offer the other things of great value. Just as often as a given experience, or even life as a whole, is different for people of one generation and those of another, there are also some things that are or have been the same, and all have our own wisdom to share, whatever our age may be.
People of different generations are not incapable of connecting or understanding each other, despite the way so much media can often make it sound that way, or the despite day-to-day frustrations and challenges we have probably all experienced with one another when trying to connect. To find out more about the series, or to volunteer to pair up, click here. To see other pieces in the series, click here.
I'm thrilled to announce that beginning in May, Scarleteen will be welcoming CJ Turett as our part-time assistant director. We've never had an official assistant director before, but have wanted one for quite some time, and I can't conceive of a better person for the job. I am particularly delighted to bring someone into a position of leadership here who is a younger activist: part of serving younger people well involves making them an integral part of the organizations who serve them, which absolutely should include positions of leadership.
CJ is a has a master's degree in human sexuality education from Widener University and is currently pursuing an Ed.D. He has worked previously as a community educator at a domestic violence and sexual assault survivor service organization, as an HIV/AIDS and LGBT case manager for the Mazzoni Center, and most recently as the education coordinator for Answer and their Sex, Etc. website. He has lectured on numerous LGBT health and well-being issues over the last five years. CJ is a student member of the American Association of Sexuality Educators, Counselors, and Therapists (AASECT) and the Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality (SSSS).
Because we're an open, personal bunch here, I want to share what I love about CJ and working with him, and why I think he'll be such a fantastic asset to our organization. CJ is not only intensely passionate about sex education, but about the kind of sex education we like to provide: inclusive, holistic, forward-thinking and humanistic. His idea of sex education is our idea of sex education. He's a strongly active and enthusiastic supporter of Scarleteen: CJ thinks the aims, goals and approach of Scarleteen are as great as I and millions of our users think they are. CJ implicitly understands that sexuality education should involve risk-management and issues of sexual and reproductive health, but that it also needs to equally address identity, pleasure and emotional and interpersonal well-being. CJ cares deeply about young people and other marginalized populations, and is a big-picture thinker; creative, energetic and deeply compassionate. He's got an overdeveloped sense of humor, which is a serious job requirement here. CJ also seems to understand my own creative process (which is amazing, since I'm not sure I understand it myself). Like myself, CJ never runs out of things to say or do.
CJ asks a lot of questions: with anything we have worked on together in the past couple of years, the level of discussion around articles or answers has been sophisticated and insightful. While in many ways we think similarly, CJ always has something to bring to the table I either wouldn't have thought about at all, or wouldn't have seen that way. Like myself, CJ is queer, feminist, progressive in his politics and has a longtime dedication to providing sex education. CJ brings a strong first-person understanding of the needs of trans people, younger people, access to certain kinds of healthcare and models of providing that care as well as organizational operations. I find the differences CJ brings to this partnership personally, intellectually and professionally a fantastic balance to my own personality, history and ethos.
Additionally, whereas I'm now on the west coast, CJ is on the east coast. This will allow us to do wider in-person lecturing, teaching-the-teacher/educator trainings and other outreach than we have been able to do in the past.
For the first couple of years I ran Scarleteen, I didn't get paid at all. What that meant was that I couldn't do Scarleteen full-time, but as time and my own resources allowed. This position will run much in the same way: CJ will only be working around 10 hours a week to start, as at this time, that is the most our budget can handle. We will, however, be applying for several grants this year, and our appeals to grantors will include funding for staffing. Ideally, to have Scarleteen run as well and efficiently as possible, the assistant director should be a full-time position, and my own position should not have to exceed the 40 hours a week it always does. That is one of our current long-term goals.
So, I'm also doing a bit of a fundraising nudge to help support this new position and CJ. My hope is that between grants and private donations we can eventually get to the point where CJs position is full-time and where both of us can make a living wage running the organization as a team. Two people managing an organization that serves just shy of a million young people each month is no less amazing in my book than one person doing it, but to do our best, we need to have our organization become better and more consistently financially supported.
Last year's fundraising went very well, which is why I can offer this position to CJ at all. If you didn't give last year, or did but can give again now, I'd very much appreciate your support, especially at this exciting turning point. If you'd like information on creating a private grant, either to help with staff salaries or to specifically fund certain content, please email me and I'd love to talk with you about that.
Heather Corinna
Founder & Executive Director, Scarleteen.com
Director, CONNECT sex education outreach, Washington
This year, we'd like to invest some extra energy in being sure we're doing our level best to serve our readers of color well.
By all means, a lot what we do here is applicable to everyone and can serve everyone, and there are a lot of parts of sexuality and relationships that are fairly universal. At the same time, we know -- either firsthand or by proxy -- there are some issues or aspects of sexuality, sexual life and relationships and sexual health which are different for people or communities of color, or where there are additional barriers or complexities.
For example, being gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender often poses additional challenges when you're of color. Access to sexual and/or reproductive health services is often more limited. How the media treats the sexualities of people of color is sometimes radically different than the sexualities of white people are treated. Body image issues in white communities can be very different than in communities of color. Compound oppressions or marginalization -- like being of color and female, or like being of color and in poverty -- also can make any given issue, and addressing it comprehensively and inclusively, far more complex.
Suffice it to say, ethnic or racial bias and bigotry also still looms large in a lot of people's ideas about sexuality. We just had a reader write in last week who had a partner tell her that her vagina as a woman of color, because she was a woman of color, was radically different internally than the vaginas of white women and that he preferred how white women's vaginas felt, blaming her for his inability to reach orgasm because of the "race" of her vagina. I really wish I were kidding.
The idea that the topography of the vagina or vulva (not talking about color differences, here) is radically different between white women and women of color is absolutely false, and something which study has shown to be false (and which any practicing OB/GYN with a racially diverse group of patients can also tell you is false). But this reader didn't know that. So, it was a lot harder for her to deal with what that (now ex, thank goodness) partner said, because she didn't immediately write it off as clearly racist. I probably also don't have to tell you that there are a lot of sexual stereotypes out there around race, whether it's about how a given person's body or genitals look or function, or ideas of what one race does or doesn't do sexually or is or isn't like sexually, not as individuals, but as people of a given race considered to be or look a given way sexually solely because of their race. People of color are also still often tokenized or fetishized both in sexual media and entertainment as well as in a lot of people's heads.
So, like we do things around here overall, I'm asking you what you feel you need and want so we can work to provide exactly that. We can self-identify some issues, for sure, but in my experience, it works a whole lot better to simply ask people what they need.
How can we best serve you? What sexuality issues from and/or addressing POC perspectives do you want or need to see addressed here at Scarleteen? What existing articles that you've read here do you feel need adjustments when it comes to people of color? Can you tell us what you think those adjustments are? What has come up for you when it comes to sexuality and race that you'd like to see us bring up?
If you could leave your comments here, that'd be fantastic, and be as in-depth as you want to be. If your thoughts feel murky or unclear, that's okay: go ahead and share them anyway. We all know it can be hard for any of us sometimes to articulate what we need in sexual information, after all. (And just in case, please don't worry about offending us. We know and experience that sometimes conversations about these issues can be awkward or tense, and that's okay. We are talking about sex here every day, after all, so we're more than used to awkward.)
We're also glad to engage in a conversation in the comments about this to work together in figuring out how we can be sure that POC feel as VIP at Scarleteen as we want every reader to feel.
P.S. If you want to write something for us, please let us know! The Sexuality in Color section of the blog always needs more guest writers, and we also are always up for more articles or In Your Own Words pieces. Scarleteen's budget is such that we are rarely able to pay any of our writers, unfortunately, so paid pieces are rare, but we can offer a big mess of viewers for our writers, as well as the opportunity to get your voice out there saying what others need to see and hear. At least, that's what I've told myself with the pieces I have written here over the years, which most of the time, I haven't gotten paid for, either. :)
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