feminism

Spotlight on Scarleteen: Mary C.

Submitted by Lena on Tue, 11/17/2009 - 00:17.

If you're a regular reader of the Scarleteen blog, then you're probably already familiar with her fierce, fantastic, and, yes, frisky blog entries: Mary C. a.k.a. Mary Lingwall may be a relatively new arrival at Scarleteen, but she's already made quite a splash with some strong stories. Not afraid to push the envelope, Mary's posts are a mixture of fresh personal narrative, social commentary, and academic comparative that is tasty and easy to swallow-- just what the empowered sex-positive educator ordered!


Welcome to the 6th Feminist Carnival!

Submitted by Heather Corinna on Wed, 11/11/2009 - 19:25.

We're pleased to host the 6th edition (oops, make that the 8th!) of the newly reborn Feminist Carnival! In the spirit of rebirth, and in alignment with the readers and mission of Scarleteen, this round puts it's focus on young feminist bloggers and feminist issues particularly pertinent to younger women.

The F-Word & The Myth of the Invisible Young Feminist


It's Smart to Chart

Submitted by Heather Corinna on Fri, 09/18/2009 - 00:31.

What's charting? It's a woman taking and keeping notes about her menstrual and fertility cycles.


Sisters Are (or should be) Doin' It for Themselves.

Submitted by Heather Corinna on Wed, 09/09/2009 - 18:28.

I'm going to keep this short and sweet. (Well, short for me anyway.)

Why are so many of you kickass, take-charge gals leaving the buying, having and using of condoms only up to the men? I gotta tell you, it confounds my mind.


Feminism and Facials

Submitted by maryc on Fri, 08/28/2009 - 17:50.

In the past few weeks, the topic of facials (the act of one partner ejaculating in another partner's face, most commonly seen by mainstream audiences in the context of heterosexual pornography wherein the female is ejaculated on as a form of submission and/or humiliation) has popped up in posts around the feminist and sex positive blogosopheres.


Is something wrong with me because I like BDSM? Can I like it and still be a feminist?

alice42 asks:

For as long as I can remember, I have been turned on my imagining my own pain and humiliation. I am going out with someone for the first time now, and we've been together for almost eight months. Recently we've started experimenting with very mild SM-type things--tying each other up, biting, spanking. I love it, and so does he. But is this normal? Should I be worried that this turns me on more than anything else we've done together? Is there something wrong with me? (I've never been abused). And can I still be a feminist if I get off on being dominated by men?

Boys, Birth Control, and Nature

I swallowed my reservations about hormonal contraceptives, why can't the men?

Is intercourse a violence or a violation?

stullis asks:

I've been with my girlfriend for nearly six months now. I've always had a bit of a problem having sex with people (keeping it up) but this problem has never occurred between me and her. However, lately I've begun to feel very guilty about the physical action of having sex. The act of penetration is a great experience physically, but when I think about what I'm doing I feel like I'm stabbing her, or performing some kind of violent act on her. We haven't had sex yet since I started REALLY feeling like this (which was a little more than three weeks ago) but if we are making out and begin to have dry sex I often start to cry from the idea of what I am doing to her. She's very compassionate and understanding, and I have told her all of this, but I want it to stop. I need to know how to make myself stop feeling like I am abusing her when we have sex because considering the times we've had sex before I had this mindset, it's been an incredible experience of expressing our love to each other, and I'd really like to have that back.

Spotlight on Scarleteen: Two new articles!

Submitted by Lena on Sun, 02/08/2009 - 09:22.

An Immodest Proposal

Let’s just say – just because we can – that we, all women, in every sexual scenario imaginable, are already past both the no and the yes. Let’s say that nothing even starts without that yes, and that when it is issued, it is firmer, stronger and more exuberant than we may be able to presently imagine it could be. Let’s write a new ideal sexual initiation script. One that's a lot more interesting.

I feel like a hypocrite but I don't want my younger sister to have sex

Shell0523 asks:

Hey, so I'm a nineteen-year-old male who has been sexually active for the past three years. I've been with a few girls (I was only in a "real" relationship with one) since I lost my virginity at sixteen. The thing is that I have a sister who's fifteen and I just found out that she and her seventeen-year-old boyfriend have started having sex. I don't want her to be doing anything like that-at least not until she is living on her own. Am I being a hypocrite, considering I was about her age when I started having sex?

Bush, Hating on Women on the Way Out

Submitted by Heather Corinna on Thu, 12/18/2008 - 22:57.

Unfortunately -- albeit unsurprisingly -- President Bush, much in the way he entered the office, feels the need to leave it by spitting right in the face of women and our health.


How can women who sleep with women know when they have lost their virginity?

Anonymous asks:

I am bisexual and my girlfriend and I are planning on having sex for the first time. We both are virgins and want to lose it to each other but don't know how and how will we know that we lost it?

Why does male sexuality seem so repulsive to me? Am I just too feminist?

Anonymous asks:

This is more of a psychological issue, I think, than a physical one, and possibly unsolvable, but I'll ask your opinion anyway because this site seems pretty clued up and sensibly feminist and lovely.

I have recently become disgusted with the idea of male pleasure. It's like I'm... too feminist to function. I have had sexual partners in the past, but recently, the more I learn about male character (although that is a gross generalization, I know - there is no innate male or female "character"), the less reconciled I am to pleasing men. My rational mind knows that there are plenty of men who are not misogynist pigs, who don't objectify women, who aren't secretly rapists... yet when I fantasize about sex, and men getting pleasure from sex, I feel physically repulsed. Like, how dare they use my body, they're just like trying to get pleasure from me. I know that is MASSIVELY unjust because surely women are using men too, but I literally can't help it.

Get Out Her Vote

The Feminist Majority Foundation's massive Get Out HER Vote Campaign (GOHV) is the nation's only student voter education and registration initiative aimed at significantly increasing registration and voting by young women. GOHV legally targets young women and students of color because they are traditionally underrepresented .