When we're quality sex educators; when we are or aim to be inclusive, forward-thinking and do sex education in ways that can or do serve diverse populations, we will tend to define sex very broadly, far more so than people who don't work in sex education often tend to, even if and when their experiences with sex and sexuality have been broad. Often, the longer we work as sexuality educators, and the longer we also just live and experience our own sexual lives, the more expansive the definition becomes. If we live and/or work on the margins, like if we or people we serve are queer, gender-variant, culturally diverse, have disabilities, the diversity in our definitions of what sex can be will become even greater. I'd say that for me, at this point, I'd love to be able to define sex by simply saying "Sex could earnestly be absolutely anything for a given person." While I think that's ultimately the most accurate way to define it, something like that is also not going to be very useful for people a lot of the time.
Human sexuality is incredibly diverse, so much more so than any one person's sex life as they experience it usually is. We can't miss that when we work as sex educators for a long time because we see and hear about so many people's varied sex lives and sexualities.
So, if we want to be as accurate as we can when we talk about sex, a wide, flexible definition is important, especially if and when we are only using that word. It's important to be inclusive and express the real diversity of human sexuality, and also to help people have a sexuality and a sex life that is not only authentic and unique, but which doesn't limit them or feel limiting because they're only seeing it or hearing about it within the bounds of a box far smaller than truly fits all sex and sexuality can be, or which is the wrong size or shape for them as people, for their sex life and sexuality.
Of course, sex educators won't often tend to use the word sex, all by itself, very often the way that people often tend to do in daily life. We usually are and have to be much more specific with our language. When any of us are talking about specific kinds of sex, we will tend to make that clear: we may talk about genital sex versus non-genital, for instance. We'll use specific terms for certain kinds of sex so that, for example, when we're talking about penis-in-vagina intercourse, we'll say that, not "sex." People we counsel or talk with will often use "sex" as shorthand, and when they do, we usually have to ask them a lot of questions to find out what they're talking about. If they're asking about what kind of sexual healthcare they may need or what their health risks may have been, for instance, then knowing things like what KIND of sex they're talking about, what body parts and functions they have, what body parts and functions any partners may have is all vital information to answer questions correctly. If they're asking how to "have sex," we have to ask a lot of questions in order to answer that question with anything more than a glib, "However you want."
Often people we're providing education for want to talk about what "sex" is, and sometimes our broad definitions are problematic with their current conceptualizations of sex, their sexual ideals, religious beliefs, relationship borders or boundaries or in other areas. Obviously, some of those issues are not about a broad definition of sex being a problem, or even that person's personal views, but about a limited social or cultural definition or view being problematic. In other words, that's often about the world as a whole needing to keep changing and expanding how it views and presents sex and sexuality. But that doesn't mean we can just figure the world will catch up to us, because the people we educate live in and are influenced by that world. We need to work to try and strike a balance as best we can where we're accurate but where our language and terms also work well for people and the world they live in.
The fact of the matter is that it is sometimes, if not often, easier for those of us who are sex educators to use the term "sex" broadly in work than it is for people to use the term "sex" broadly in life. Most of us are already put on the margins just by virtue of our jobs, because a whole lot of people consider our jobs sexual deviance -- or the people who would do this job, sexual deviants -- already. We also often have more people in our lives, at work and outside work, who assume broad definitions of sex than people who don't work in sexuality. We usually are, as my friend Cory so often likes to say, non-representative of the general population.
I'm probably going to be stating the obvious, but one of the biggest issues with broad definitions of sex for many people is that socially, interpersonally, and in a lot of places, culturally, who has "had sex" and who has not "had sex" matters. Often, it matters a whole lot and can be seriously loaded. How it matters varies, but for example, someone who says they "had sex" and means that they engaged in clothed frottage (dry humping) or masturbation, and has someone else interpret that as them having had anal intercourse, can wind up with consequences like being accused of lying, being accused of cheating, being made to worry about health risks they likely didn't even have, or having gossip spread about their sexual status to many people that isn't true and can result in social stigmas or even, in some areas or situations, in violence.
By all means, I'm always going to be a fan of using more specific terms, and using more specific terms would be helpful for everyone to do so I always want to encourage people to do that and help by using specific terms as often as possible so they can have them to use for themselves. Understanding how broad sex is can help people understand why being more specific is often so important. For instance, if someone makes an agreement with a partner about not "having sex with" other people, they're going to want to talk specifics lest one or both of them wind up breaking agreements they didn't even realize they made, and causing strife in their lives and relationships they likely could have avoided. Does "having sex" that mean only genital sex? Only physical sex: what about cybersex or phone sex? Only sex with someone of a given gender? Does that include masturbation or pornography use? Defining what sex is and is not is also major when it comes to defining the difference between sex and sexual abuse. Defining all of what sex and healthy sexuality can be well also plays a big part in acceptance and tolerance for people whose sexuality or consensual sex life is or has been marginalized, viewed or treated as hypersexual, dysfunctional or "frigid," "perverse" or "deviant," categorizations which are often radically inaccurate with what we know about the diversity of sex, or based in bigotry or bias.
Defining sex and sexuality well is vital not just to sexual inclusion, tolerance and visibility but to inclusion, tolerance and visibility -- and compassion -- in general.
But in plenty of situations in life and especially with sexuality, people will use shorthand -- especially when it comes to privacy -- something we have to make and leave room for.
We've heard sometimes from readers and users who have been frustrated with the fact that our broad definition doesn't always work with their own specific one. Now, often, this is about having limited sexual or even general life experience and conceptualization, or limited exposure to all of what sex can be for people, something that will often change with time and more experience and exposure, but, we also want to always be refining what we do to explore ways that we can define sex and use that word in a way that is as inclusive as possible but which is also as useful as possible for diverse people.
I think it's entirely possible there is middle ground between the way educators like us define sex very broadly and the way some folks do so in a more limited way that we aren't seeing or haven't yet thought of yet, despite that fact that we tend to talk about this as educators all the time, and talk or think about this in some ways every day in what we do with the people we serve. Sometimes, a very targeted conversation can do things more general thinking or talking mostly with colleagues cannot, so I'm asking all of you to take part in that with us here.
I don't have the answers, nor would I suggest I know what the absolute "right" ones are. What I have is constant questioning, and I'd love to hear what you think about this and just read and listen to what you have to say to help advance and further inform my own thinking about it.
I'd love to hear about the ways you think defining sex broadly is helpful, but also the ways you think it can or may be problematic. I'd love to hear about your ideas of ways to bridge some of these gaps, and define sex in ways that are accurate, diverse and inclusive, but which also take into account the fact that most people live in a world where who has "had sex" and hasn't matters, and where it can be easier or more comfortable to just say "sex" in some situations. All of this is often especially weighty for groups like young people, people abstaining from certain kinds of sex, people in sexually exclusive relationships and agreements and people who are in cultures or members of cultural groups where having "had sex" in certain situations can carry serious social consequences. I'd love to hear from our teen and young adult readers, but also from our older adult allies.
Per usual, I just ask that everyone be mindful about making statements that may or do define other people, their sexualities or their sex lives, or make judgments about others. For instance saying "Sex is only intercourse, of course!" is not only not helpful, and not true for many people, it can also make folks who feel differently feel locked out of the conversation or made invisible. Saying "I have only defined sex as intercourse because..." is a lot more useful and also leaves room for people who have different experiences, conceptualizations and definitions. Talking about how someone else's definition doesn't work for you is okay, but please do so in a way that's respectful and kind and that can further conversation, rather than stopping it.
Because most of the discussions we have at Scarleteen happen on our message boards, rather than on the blog, there's a copy of this piece, and likely some discussion on it soon, posted there, if you have a preference in where you like to talk.
Thanks in advance for your important feedback, input and help!
This is a guest entry from Shanna Katz, M.Ed, as part of the month-long blogathon to help support Scarleteen!
When I was 10 or so, I discovered the wonders of the internet. It was back in the mid-90s, before most people had access, but my father was a computer scientist, and I was rocking out on Mosaic, way before IE or Eathlink or Netscape or AOL made their brands so popular. I didn’t use it for much, as there wasn’t that much info out there pertaining to me, but I did have an email, and learned how to search.
Around the late 90s, I was in my “oh em gee, want to learn everything possible about puberty and sex” and after my parents exhausted the info available at the local library, I was lucky enough to discover Scarleteen.
It was still quite young back then, but it was knowledge, and that was something I was desperately hungry for. More importantly, it was more than just information; it was interactive. I could learn from older teens, from educators, from people my age. I became obsessive about checking the forums every day. It was a way for me to connect, to get information, to teach myself about sexuality, to have my questions answered, and to get to know my body.
I didn’t really get any sort of sex education from school until I was a Junior in High School (age 14), and accidentally ended up in a Parenting and Child Development class (amusing, since I definitely didn’t want and don’t want children). In that class, we spent a good week or two on birth control and contraception. I got 100% on every assignment, and impressed the teacher, as I already had learned most of this info from Scarleteen.
High school was hard for me. I graduated at 16, so I was always about 2-3 years younger than most of my peers, and that caused endless taunting and worse, being ignored. I had my inner circle of friends, of course, but more importantly, I had the knowledge that on Scarleteen, I was equal. My questions and answers were just as valid as a popular cheerleader, or another braniac. To me, sex education was my great equalizer. I might not be cool, or popular, or the social ideal of beautiful, but because I had information that no one else had, I was still interesting. I might get teased, but people still wanted what I had (knowledge) and so I wasn’t the brunt of as much hate as I might have been.
Sex education made me a better person. I understood my body more, and I chose to respect myself more. Not in the “I’m going to wait till marriage” kind of way, but in the “I’m going to do what I want to when I’m ready, and not when everyone else is” kind of way. I was sexually assaulted when I was 17, and my knowledge of sex education, paired with what I was learning in my Human Sexual Behavior class, and then compile all that with my info and ability to talk to others on Scarleteen, and I made it through. It was so easy to just curl up and want to die, but my knowledge of sexuality made me want to live again.
I wanted to learn more, and to teach others in order to help them know more, and love themselves more. I joined the sexual assault prevention and hotline group, V.A.T. I trained on how to talk about sex with others. I drove friends up to Denver to buy their first vibrators. I bought book after book, searching for more knowledge. I experimented a bit on my own, and wrote a lot about virginity — what was it, why the hell did it exist, what did it mean to “lose” it and so on. Because of all of my background in sex education, by the time I chose to have intercourse (what many people define as “sex”), I had just turned 20, and although I later realized I wasn’t really interested in men, it was actually quite a good experience. It didn’t hurt very much, we used lube (as I had learned to do) and pillows to prop up my hips. I went in really WANTING to have sex, with knowledge about how to protect myself from STI transmission and pregnancy, and tips on how to make it as comfortable of an experience as it could be. I have met few people that had such a communicative and fairly enjoyable first time. While that friend with benefits didn’t last long, I’m forever grateful to my sex education (and his willingness to cooperate) for helping to create such a positive experience.
Sex education made me feel powerful. Knowledge IS power, and even more so when it is about your own body, choices, options, etc. Sex education made me feel as though I belonged, as though I was just as good as everyone else. Scarleteen made my life so much better than it could be. It made me more confident, it helped me to know myself and respect myself more, and to make the healthiest decisions for ME about myself and my sexuality.
I actually did my thesis on sex education in middle and high schools, and how it helped college women to view their bodies. Not shockingly (back in 2005, although I doubt much has changed), the more information on sex education that the subjects I interviewed received in their teens, the more confident they were about themselves and their bodies, and of course, their sexuality. It is proven, and not just by my tiny study, that sex education is crucial to our society. People with sex education are armed with the power to make the best decisions for themselves — whether that is waiting to start sexual activity, providing protection for their own activity, education their friends, and exploring their sexual identities. Without sex education, we leave youth without the tools for good decision making, and take their agency away.
Sex education should be available for everyone. Scarleteen is such a place where EVERYONE can learn, can share, can ask questions, and can be an equal. Scarleteen saved me from some dark places, and I know it has helped countless others as well.
So please, if you can spare something, ANYTHING, please keep Scarleteen going. Even $5 or $10 can help to create change. I donated what I could. It wasn’t a lot…but if it means not eating another cupcake until 2011, it was worth it to support such a great site. And if you can’t afford anything, then please, spread the word about this amazing and FREE resource we have in our community.
What Scarleteen Needs: Last year, Scarleteen needed increased donations in order to get through the end of 2009 and into 2010, in large part because private donations for a few years previous had been so low and left us in a very financially precarious position. We increased our financial goals to reflect the need for a minimum annual operating budget of $70,000. Thanks to generous contributions from our supporters in response to that appeal, while we were not able to reach that level, we were able to raise what we needed to not only get through 2009, but were able to use the funds wisely to sustain the organization through 2010. Our goal now is to continue to work toward that annual operating budget. Ideally, we would like to see a minimum of $20,000 in individual donations each year to combine with funding from private grants. In order for that to happen, we need for current donors to keep giving, and we also also need to cultivate new donors.
This minimum budget is exceptionally cost-effective for the level of service we provide, especially compared to other organizations and initiatives whose budgets are far higher, including those which do not match our reach and our level of direct-service. If you would like more details about our budget and expenses, just contact us via email and we’ll gladly share that information with you.
Unlike many other organizations often in a bind because they are solely or highly reliant on foundation or public funding, Scarleteen has always been primarily supported by generous individuals like yourself and small community groups. While this requires we operate at a far smaller budget than other similar organizations, it also allows for a high level of freedom and autonomy and the ability to best provide young people with what they want, rather than seeking to create or adapt content and services primarily to suit what funders want. This approach to funding also allows our staff to put nearly all of our time, energy and money into directly serving youth, rather than into grant seeking, writing, schmoozing and administrating.
We’re asking for your help in either giving a donation of your own or encouraging your readers, colleagues, friends and family to donate. Given our visibility, tenure and traffic, with your help, meeting our goal should not be particularly challenging. A $100 donation can pay half of our server bill for a month, or half the monthly cost of the text-in 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 very much appreciate donations at any level.
We’d be grateful if you’d share our appeal with your own networks to broaden ours, and let the people who care about you know why you care so much about us. We’d love it if you’d Tweet about your post, share it via Facebook or add a link to your emails. Please feel free to quote from this email or from information given in the links below.
This is a guest post from Wendy Blackheart, at Heart Full of Black, for the Scarleteen blogathon. Want to take part? Toss us an email and we'll get you in touch with Laura, our blogathon organizer!
Ah, Scarleteen. I can actually remember a time before Scarleteen – they started up in 1998, when I was in 8th grade. See, I went to a school where 99.9% of our sexual health information was from an abstinence only program.
The school sex ed actually started out okay – in grades 3 and 5 we had health classes where we learned about the human body and how it works. In 5th grade, we separated out into groups of just boys and just girls, and got some of the details of puberty and what would happen to our bodies. We learned where babies came from and all that before the abstinence-only programs were started.
By high school, however, we were not getting much in the way of good information. We didn’t learn about birth control at all – it wasn’t even mentioned, not even in a negative way. We saw lots of photos of what STD’s can do to your body. But nothing I would consider really useful. Very little mention of alternative sexualites. Very little information on how to deal with interpersonal relationships. I can remember the anger from teachers, some of whom I had as teachers in my past sex-ed and health classes, at not being allowed to teach properly. I’m pretty sure that one of the teachers, who continued to push the envelope, was fired or quit, as she disappeared shortly after.
Hell, my younger sister went through the same program right behind me, and she didn’t even know that blue balls wasn’t a real thing that she needed to be concerned about. She gave many an unwanted and unnecessary blow job before one of her boyfriends set her straight.
People argue that schools shouldn’t be involved in sex education, and that it should rest on the parents of children to teach them instead, but this has problems too. When I, at a young age, found a copy of an age-appropriate book on where babies came from and started to read it. I read *everything* at that age. (I think I was about 6. I started to read quite early.) My mother found me reading it, took it away, and slapped me. My later maternal sex education included gems like “You don’t need to go to the gynecologist, you don’t need to go until you are married” (At the time, I was 2 weeks into my first period, which would last for another 2 weeks. I probably should have seen a doctor). At 22, she told me that I shouldn’t do something until I was married (she made weird hand gestures explaining this). Generally, all sexual health questions were answered vaguely, incorrectly, and with anger.
However, I, even as a youngin’, tended to be extremely pro-active about things I wanted to know about. I rode my bike to the library, and got whatever the current new edition of the Teenage Body Book, and other sexual health text books. I had been given an adult access library card since I had already read my way though most of the age appropriate fiction and had moved on to adult fiction by then. Thankfully, my mom was tired of having to go to the library to check stuff out for me on her card and got me my own.
So, I have always been a big fan of outside research for sex education. If it wasn’t for that, I wouldn’t know half the shit I know today, nor have the skills to find them out.
Scarleteen was the only site I found on the internet at the time that I trusted. They gave honest, accurate information in a relatable, understandable non-judgmental way. By the time I was checking the site regularly, most of the information was already known to me, but it became, for me, the gold standard of websites.
When people came to me for information, I sent them to Scarleteen. When they had a question I didn’t know the answer to, I sent them to Scarleteen. When I needed to give someone information about something, I sent them a link from Scarleteen. All of my youngest sister’s friends used Scarleteen, because part of my drive-by sexual advice (I used to wander by and drop a tidbit off ‘Never use oil based lube with latex condoms!’ ‘Some antibiotics make birth control pills less effective!’) was a link to their website. Because no matter how cool of an older sister I was, there were still things they didn’t want to ask me yet.
To me, the idea that we had to go looking for this information was so sad. I sincerely wish that schools were all required to have honest, comprehensive sexual health information. This is information we all NEED, to be healthy, effective adults. That fact that we don’t have this is a sad thing – but thankfully, there are resources like Scarleteen available to kids and teens today to get them the information they need.
I’ve noticed, at least in my own little bubble, differences between the kids who have access to this information and those who didn’t – my sister and her friends are much more pro-active now about maintaining their sexual health, and dealing with issues with their partners. So far, none of them have had an unwanted pregnancy, which is not something I can say about my graduating class. They are willing to talk, and ask, and question in ways my generation wasn’t quite ready to to yet – and this is only an age difference of seven years.
What also is important to me is the fact that many of these children are LGBT, Queer, or questioning, and they have a fabulous resource available to them while they figure themselves out, again, something my generation was only just starting to have.
Scarleteen was an important stepping stone in my sexual education. Because of them, I was able to go into my early sexual experiences with knowledge and agency. I was able to make good decisions, and I was happy with the decisions I made. Actually, I waited quite a while before I finally had sex, and again, was able to go into this experience physically and emotionally prepared. These are Good Things. All kids should have that opportunity. (The Sex Readiness Checklist was a great resource for that, BTW. I think it should be given to anyone who ever may have sex, ever.)
We’ve made leaps and bounds in a remarkably short amount of time in non-standard, alternative sexual education and information, and the accessibility for those who need it to find that information, and that is a beautiful thing.
However, unsurprisingly, this takes money. Scarleteen does not have any federal, state, or local funding. The majority of their funding comes from private donors, and to continue to provide such outstanding service, they need donations! Scarleteen has always managed to provide outstanding information and outstanding services on a tight budget, and I can only imagine what they could do with more. They’ve done such good work for so many, and I for one want to see them continue to do this work!
So, if you can, I encourage you to donate to Scarleteen! They do so much good for so many kids and teens who need it. That’s all I can say – donate if you can. Hell, in a few more generations, we might even be able to get good sexual health information back into the schools, if we can educate enough of the kids today who will turn into the administrators of tomorrow!
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. :)
I sent this in response to the New York Times piece published last week regarding abstinence-only education. Alas, I didn't hear back from them, so I offer it up here instead. I feel it's important to get as much informed commentary out there on this issue as possible right now, especially considering the recent continuance and increases given to abstinence-only funding.
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