gender

I'll Show You Mine: Diana

We're so very excited to kick off this series today which features some of the stories and photographs from "I'll Show You Mine", a book by Wrenna Robertson and photographer Katie Huisman, and by all of the women featured in the book, collectively.

When I was a very young child, I remember really, really loving my vagina. The smell and sight of it made me feel comfortable and at home, and I was very vocal about how proud I was to be a girl. When I was still young and cute enough for adults to find me benign and non-threatening, I'd boast at length about my genitalia, describing its structure in detail - even feeling it was far superior to the junk of the boys around me.

I worry that because I'm a man, I am going to sexually abuse someone.

aplanacanalpanama
asks:
My mom was a victim of incest as a girl and has used it to invalidate my emotions. I blame the incest, not my mom, but it still hurts. But I can't help but feel like I, as a man, am dirty to be sexual. I can't draw a line in my head between good sex and bad sex. I am a virgin because when I get close to sex, the girl will start reminding me of my mom or my sister....

What Makes Someone Good in Bed?

veganpop
asks:
I'm confused as to how a girl can be "good" in bed in a heterosexual relationship? What does it mean to be good at sex?...

Whoa, There! How to Slow Down When You're Moving Too Fast

Is your sex life or sexual relationship feeling like someone pressed the fast-forward button and now it's spinning out of control? Evaluate whether things are moving too fast for you or a partner, and then get some help on pulling back the reins and slowing things down to a more comfortable pace.

How can I talk about sex without pressuring her?

DaltonTopiary
asks:
I'm 17. I love my girlfriend. Really. Real love. Love as in "I want to marry you. I want to respect you. I want to commit my life to you." We brought up the topic of sex a few months ago, but it didn't go any farther than "How do you feel about it?" From that little talk we concluded that it was something we both wanted to do. That was nearly three months ago and I want to talk about it....

Some More Scarleteen Blog Carnival Highlights

We're just getting caught up with the myriad of fantastic blog entries that are part of the blog carnival that's been going on over the last three weeks as an effort to help cultivate support for Scarleteen. We've been reprinting some entries here at our blog, and will keep up with that, but here are a handful we can link right to for you to take a look at:

From Cory Silverberg at About.Com:

Sometimes, knowing is the whole battle.

This is a guest post from Dances With Engines as part of the month-long blogathon to help support Scarleteen!

Scarleteen is written for young people of all sexes and genders. That they manage to do so with so much consistency and dependability is amazing to me. As I become more conscious of my own binary and oppositional language (men do this, women do that, and only men and women), I get more impressed with Scarleteen.

When I recommend websites to my daughter, or to friends with growing children, I am always questioning—is the language and mission of this site going to be inclusive? Is anyone going to be left feeling like they don’t belong or that someone’s wrong with them? I felt like that, growing up. There were so many reasons I wasn’t human, wasn’t visible.

Sex Education Is A Political Act.

This guest post from Arvan at SexGenderBody is part of a blog carnival to raise awareness and funding for Scarleteen.

In terms of group politics - there are large groups of people who are fighting to prevent you from learning any facts about sex. Facts that can effect your health, income, present, future, career, happiness, ability to have or enjoy sex, choice of sex partners and even the ability to have sex.

People get elected by using sex to scare voters - queer sex, teen sex, unmarried sex, kinky sex, fun sex, sex of any kind. Cultural practices and commonly held beliefs about sex punish or shame people for even discussing sex, much less teaching it to a classroom.

Heather and Dan on How It Gets Better

In hindsight, I knew when I was around ten or eleven that I was queer: that I had and was experiencing growing sexual and romantic feelings for people of all genders, not just those of one of for those of a different sex or gender than me, feelings I'd continue to have throughout my teen years and my adult life to date. I didn't have the language for it then, though, even though there were queer adults in my orbit I could have gotten it from, adults I naturally gravitated towards without realizing a big part of why was because I saw myself in them and I really needed them.