From SlutWalk Manchester by Man Alive!On Monday, I talked about some of my own life, and the central, very personal, issue which kept me from attending one of the SlutWalks, an issue which also central to the walks themselves. On Tuesday, I brought up what appears to be a clear misrepresentation by the media, especially visually, of the walks. In both pieces, I expressed unwavering support for the walks.

While I did not agree with a good deal of it, I appreciated Rebecca Traister writing in the New York Times magazine last week.

But at a moment when questions of sex and power, blame and credibility, and gender and justice are so ubiquitous and so urgent, I have mostly felt irritation that stripping down to skivvies and calling ourselves sluts is passing for keen retort.

To object to these ugly characterizations is right and righteous. But to do so while dressed in what look like sexy stewardess Halloween costumes seems less like victory than capitulation (linguistic and sartorial) to what society already expects of its young women. Scantily clad marching seems weirdly blind to the race, class and body-image issues that usually (rightly) obsess young feminists and seems inhospitable to scads of women who, for various reasons, might not feel it logical or comfortable to express their revulsion at victim-blaming by donning bustiers. So while the mission of SlutWalks is crucial, the package is confusing and leaves young feminists open to the very kinds of attacks they are battling.

The above is, from everything I can gather, not a critique of the walks, but of the way the walks have been represented, more by the media than by the organizers or the majority of attendees of any of the walks.

In fact, when she wrote, "The most sophisticated attempts elicit just as much derision and, frankly, receive a fraction of the attention," I thought she was going to address that what she was criticizing was the media representation. But then she didn't, which confounded me. It seemed like she became part of the media misrepresentation herself, and took part in solidifying that simplification and misrepresentation. I also wondered if she was asking the organizers or attendees to somehow control the media, something none of us have the capacity to do, and even when we try, our efforts are most typically in vain. We can respond to the media -- and I do think more response is something missing from this picture, a part of the movement that could stand some work -- but that's all we can really do is respond. Activists are not responsible for how the media chooses to portray them, especially when the media chooses to misrepresent. Are we even remotely surprised that a movement in which young women are making themselves visible around issues of sex, violence and appearance has gotten the kind of coverage it has? If we are, how can we possibly still be surprised by reactions that are such literal representations of exactly what the protests are about?

She calls these efforts clumsy (but also necessary: "while clumsy stabs at righting sexual-power imbalances may be frustrating, they remain necessary.") I'm not so sure that they are. Rather, I'm not so sure that they are any more clumsy than a great deal of activism tends to be and has always been. By all means, I think more advance and in-depth organizing with this could have been helpful, especially strategies around dealing with the highly predictable media response. At the same time, sometimes effective activism is about seizing a moment -- a moment like Sanguinetti's comments -- and moving as fast as you can. Taking more time to organize can be of real use, but it can also happen that in doing so, you lose essential momentum. It's a call that is easy to err with either way.

Traister also says, “I found myself again wishing that the young women doing the difficult work of reappropriation were more nuanced in how they made their grabs at authority, that they were better at anticipating and deflecting the resulting pile-on. But I also wondered if, perhaps, this worry makes me the Toronto cop who thought women should protect themselves by not dressing like sluts.” I appreciate her honesty and her introspection.

I do think there have been some possible missteps around the walks, though I don't think that's about how some attendees of the walk have chosen to dress. And like Traister posed in that last quote, if we start thinking that way, I do think we have to take a good look in the mirror, whatever we're wearing, and look for how much of the harmful and patently wrong-headed messaging about dress, "asking for it" and sexuality we've internalized.

Samhita brought the issues around the media up in the Feministing response to and roundtable of Traister's piece, and I agree with what she said there in saying that "Activism and social change are not as much about what you meant to do, but instead what you do do, and what is Slutwalk doing in the mainstream media? Are people rethinking the role victim-blaming plays in sexual assault or are people too caught up in the term “slut?” I am not really sure." Media pushbacks are important to assure your message doesn't get lost or you don't wind up letting the media rewrite your aims. This is something Courtney also brought up in her commentary at Feministing.

Maya also voiced something in that roundtable I really appreciated about the Traister piece when she said, "to some extent, it’s inevitable that a grassroots protest movement, organized entirely on the local level, and filtered through a mainstream media that latches on to the word “slut” and images of half-naked young women, will struggle with message control. (My own limited experience with protest organizing definitely reminded me why I, like Traister, embrace a medium like writing that allows for so much more precision.) I just wish Traister had acknowledged that inherent challenge more, instead of reinforcing the idea that SlutWalk is just about women “stripping down to skivvies and calling ourselves sluts” – when she clearly knows that it’s about more than that and, at most protests, the hoodies probably outnumber the skivvies."

There's the issue of if a "dress code" should have been suggested or enforced. I can see how, when we're working around the issue that "slutty" dress has zip to do with sexual assault,some being playful with that can be seen as sending a mixed message, or as reinforcing the message being protested. I do personally think that someone presenting like this creates a more powerful statement about dress and victim-blaming than someone showing up without a sign, who isn't a survivor, wearing the kind of clothing most often considered (in the west, anyway, and even though it's often an error) to signal indiscriminate sexual availability.

Yet, at the same time, suggesting or enforcing a dress code for the walks stands counter to the core aims, like making clear there is NO way of dressing or not dressing which will "get you raped" or protect you from rape, but also no way of dressing or not dressing in which someone cannot or will not perceive you as sexually available. As well, it's clear that some attendees who came to the walks in whatever their "slutwear" was experienced something powerful in doing so. We always have to remember that when a movement is made up of people it is also attempting to serve, that what experience the activists have is no less important that what impact it has on those who are not directly participating.

Again, people are sexually assaulted wearing everything, anything, and nothing a person can possibly wear, and there is no one way of dressing which makes rape a victim's fault or responsibility because there is NO way of dressing which makes rape a victim's fault or responsibility. If any way of dressing really, truly protected us from violence, don't you think we'd all have tried dressing that way already? We only need one victim's story about how the way they was dressed didn't make any difference for them. We have millions of these stories: they are all of our stories.

As a feminist and activist who works primarily with sexuality but also with sexual violence, I also know how tremendously challenging it can be to try and address both of these things at once, and the ways that they intersect, especially in a world and a culture which often does not recognize that -- and sometimes even purposefully blurs and obscures -- consensual sex and sexual violence may not be things we can completely separate from one another, but they are also incredibly different, usually for the perpetrators of this violence, and most certainly for victims. We are going to stumble, because it is rocky terrain. The only way to avoid that completely is to not take steps at all, which is just not an option if we want any kind of change. Could folks organizing have asked for more help with that tricky balance? Probably. Would the walks and SlutWalk as a movement have benefitted from that? I have no idea.

As another maybe-critique, I've heard people voice a wish that there was, for all of the walks and their various self-produced web media as a whole, a lack of shared, stated core values and aims. I, too, can see how that could be valuable. At the same time, I wonder if the lack of that was what allowed this to become such an international movement, with communities, cities and cultures feeling a flexibility to adapt the walks to suit who they were and what they wanted and needed to address. Unilateral core aims, especially if done without an exceptionally diverse group of people taking part, could have created very real barriers to that, barriers which have long been problematic within feminism and other social justice movements.

I keep saying possible missteps, because the fact that myself, or Traister or any number of people think errors have been or are being made, or that all of this could be done better or worse doesn't mean we're right. We could be. We could also be wrong. It could be that despite it seeming like this thing or this other way of doing or saying that would have been the better move, that doing a given thing differently would have less impact.

I've been part of activist efforts and movements myself that fizzled, crashed or burned, even one or two that blew up in my face; actions or movements which were planned to death, actions or movements which were very spontaneous. I experience activism as being an awful lot like working in chemistry with elements and formulas which are experimental, untested or not entirely understood. You can try mixing things via various formulas we already have, and sometimes that works. Sometimes it doesn't: it makes a huge mess of things or does nothing at all. Sometimes you try new formulas, with the same array of results. When we're working in and with activism, we are usually working with unstable, unpredictable elements.

Growing up in and around activism, being quite literally born out of it, watching it and taking part in it in various forms for four decades now, one thing I know is that effective activism tends to require a sort of perfect storm, an often, if not always, difficult to predict mix of timing and numbers and ideas and actions and people. Even the literal climate -- not just the social climate -- can matter sometimes, as trite as that can seem. My father engaged in one activist movement, the civil rights movement, that eventually seems to have had its perfect storm. Another he engaged in, dedicating years to, sacrificing liberties for, was the movement against the Vietnam War, which pretty much flopped per its ultimate goal. From all anyone can tell, the Vietnam war did not come to an end because of antiwar activist efforts. Even though both of these issues were vital and core human rights issues that highlighted incredible abuses of human rights, even though both involved the dedicated efforts of millions, they didn't have the same impacts, and I don't think that was just about the differences between the two movements and the two issues. I think a great deal of the why of those differences was outside the control of activists entirely.

Traister finished her piece with something I thought was intensely valuable:

Social progress is imperfect, full of half-truths and sloppy misrepresentations. After all, we celebrate the victories of a civil rights movement that was shot through with misogyny, and of a women’s movement riddled with racial, class and sexual resentments. Fighting for power is a complicated, messy process, especially for complicated, messy human beings. Often, the best we can hope for is that our efforts draw a spotlight. Which, I guess, is enough to make SlutWalkers of us all.

Something else I believe to be true about activism, and have found to be so during my life experiences with and around it, and my historical understanding of it more broadly, is that it is often very difficult to evaluate until we have considerable distance -- emotional distance, and the distance of time having passed -- away from it. Without that kind of space so we are better able to see the bigger picture of what progress (or not) or change (or not) and what kind of change it sparked, created or completed, making an earnestly accurate evaluation of an action or movement is precarious.

Frankly, I think those trying to evaluate the results of the walks are trying to do so much, much too soon and with far too small a scope.

Going back to the American Civil Rights Movement, some people will list that movement as being less than a decade long. We can also know that at any point during that movement, a given action was seen or felt as the central action, the apex at the time. But depending on your scope, what you know about, and what you're recognizing, the span of that movement could be more like 20 years, 50 years, a hundred years or longer. I tend to see it myself as spanning over 200 years. Before the March on Washington and the Montgomery Bus Boycott, for instance, there was the school desegregation movement, fifty years before that, the formation of the NAACP, before that the civil rights act of 1875, slave rebellions before that and on and on and on. That movement also was sparked and moved by more people than Rosa Parks and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Rosa Parks wasn't even the first to engage in her most historical action. In fact, she wasn't even the first to do it on that very bus line. There are so many activists who took part in actions that created the civil rights movement as a whole, people like Claudette Colvin, and like Octavius Catto, Gabriel Prosser, Bayard Rustin or Clara Luper, names few people know. There were people whose names we don't know or recognize and may never know. And for all we know, something one of those people did may have had more to do with the actions we recognize and the activists we know about. Trying to track a movement back isn't as easy or simple as it often seems, just like trying to evaluate what alchemy creates progress and change is not, and we are always going to see things differently depending on where we're at on the eventual (and often neverending) timeline.

This is some of what I mean when I talk about perfect activism storms and the scope of activism. When we're talking about activism around sexual violence towards women, already we have a timeline and a larger scope; we already have actions and activists and movements that reach back more then two centuries. Where do the Slutwalks fit on that timeline? What is their import in comparison to other activism around this issue? I don't think we can know that yet, nor do I think it's fair to ask that yet.

But I think that what we can know now, since people are asking, is that so far SlutWalk has been of value and has shown the potential to spark more than one kind of needed, important change.

Just a few relatively young feminists managed to spark numbers in-person, international activists movements largely made up of and led by young women all over the world. There have been alrgely attended walks, but there have also been so very many discussions, discussions and more discussions which have not been insular echo chambers, and where silences are being broken.

We have been able to hear, read and and be part of a real diversity of views, feelings and ideas. with a great deal of variance, many of which have involved a great deal of care, thought and positive intention. These discussions have generally been far more complex than simple yays or nays. These discussions are important, and often about more than either just sexual violence or just the right for women to be able to dress as they choose, and present or express their sexuality, when they do, as they choose without being held responsible for the violent actions of others when they do. From what I can gather, many of them have bounced off the issue of Slutwalks to get at some of the core issues that can create and have created divisions and exclusions in feminism and social justice that get in the way of women's rights and all human rights.

Even comments and discussions which illustrate some of the most ugly ignorance shows up exactly what people are trying to address with the walks is of value. It's tough to get a house clean if you can't see where all the dirt is, after all.

There are still discussions to be had here, issues that are part of the big picture to be addressed, like, for instance, that while blaming a victim -- or blaming someone who isn't even a victim yet -- based on her style of dress is largely, if not exclusively about women, male victims and survivors suffer a similar kind of victim-blaming around they way they present -- or are accused of not presenting -- their masculinity. There's the fact of the matter that, as with so many things, the world at large is often far more concerned, when it is at all, with the victimization of upper-middle-class white girls than with everyone (read: most people in the world) outside those groups. There's also the issue of how groups being presented as without their own sexuality, namely, those with disabilities, are often at the highest risk of, and have the highest rates of, sexual victimization, but also have the least freedom to engage in healthy, consensual and wanted sexual relationships and interactions. As someone who works primarily in human sexuality and hears about people's personal sex lives every day, there is also the incredibly sticky wicket of addressing how many people have sexual violence, exploitation, coercion and lack of real consent -- and not just women -- as part of their ongoing sexual relationships without the realization or recognition it is abuse and assault: who earnestly do not know and can often not even imagine, what healthy sexual relationships and interactions are like.

I think the walks and all of the discussion around them have given us a really great jolt in the arm to start having those conversations more and having them more widely.

The experiences attendees seem to be having vary, and it's clear the walks have offered a range of experiences. Survivors of assault have deeply connected with other survivors, or found a place where they felt able -- and for some of them, probably for the first time -- to feel safe in identifying as a survivor. Others have experienced a powerful and increased awareness about those of us who have survived sexual violence. I expect that someone in a hoodie and jeans walking next to someone in a bustier might have been able to see some common ground they did not before. For others still, the walks have provided an avenue to experience a lightening of the load so many of us have walked around with living in cultures which enable or excuse rape and which make many women feel afraid of expressing their own sexuality or enjoying their bodies. They have allowed women to deeply connect with other women, something which remains a huge challenge for many. I expect that for many participating in the walks, they brought them out to engage in in-person social justice activism for the very first time (something older feminists have been accusing younger feminists of having no interest in doing for a while now, mind you).

We know that how women dress or don't dress neither causes rape, nor can it protect against rape. We know that telling women to avoid dressing a certain way is not about protecting women, it's about controlling women or scaring women (and also about suggesting men need women to try to police or control their sexualities), something anyone who works in or around sexual violence or had education -- or should, like a police officer -- knows. We know that calling women names like "sluts" or otherwise arbitrarily applying perceptions of someone's sexual life or history to suggest someone's value as a person may be lesser is also about social control and can enable sexual violence. We know victims remain held responsible for their assaults far more often than perpetrators of those assaults. We know that calling these things out and stating and restating the truths they obscure is essential to reducing, and ideally, eradicating rape, and also crucial for an environment in which survivors of assault can heal and where people, whether they have been victimized by sexual violence or not, can truly see sexual violence for what it is and learn real ways to be safer.

All of these are aims of the walks; all of these aims are of great value and import, potential avenues to positive social change that could benefit everyone. And I do think that, so far, the walks have provided new inroads and outlets to cultivating these changes.

When thinking about how -- and if -- I was going to get involved with our local walk, I was reminded of Thomas Paine's words about revolutions, to "Lead, follow or get out of the way."

I knew I wasn't going to try to lead: this wasn't mine to lead, so far as I could tell. There were already leaders, and it's also seemed to me that much of Slutwalk as a whole is being led by younger people than myself, something I always want to support and never want to get in the way of. I wasn't going to follow. As I mentioned, there were a couple relatively minor issues with our local walk that kept me away, but also a far more core matter of my feeling that the most powerful way I could take part involved doing something I did not feel strong enough to do.

Which left me with the third option. To get out of the way. Which is what I chose to do and felt best about doing. But after I did that, I realized I wanted a bit of an addendum to that quote, because we can get out of the way without also being disengaged. We can be supportive from the sidelines, which is what I hope I have managed to do with these three pieces this week, and which is what I intend to do -- and hope others who don't feel they can or should earnestly lead or follow will do more of -- as this movement continues.

Earlier this week, in the context of another conversation, one of our users at Scarleteen mentioned that her feelings on abortion had changed to a negative when she learned that her mother's pregnancy had been unplanned, and that her mother considered abortion. She said that upset her, because she really liked existing. She did say she was still pro-choice, but her sentiment bothered me all the same. Some of why it bothered me was political, and also about the work that I do and have done. But in thinking about it, I came to the conclusion that the ways it bothered me most were intensely personal.

The truth is, I envy her. A lot. I envy she was able to have a discussion in which her mother made clear she had the right to choose and she chose to remain pregnant and parent her. She wasn't forced, she wasn't pressured, she didn't do what she did because it was the only thing she could do without risking her life, her health, being locked away or hidden or committing a crime. She chose. She had the freedom to choose. My mother did not.

It's a powerful thing, this choice, any choice; this freedom, any freedom.

I can't express how much I wish I was born under those circumstances myself. I wish I could've had that conversation with my own mother. I wish I had not grown up knowing my mother didn't have the right to choose, including a lack of access to contraception to choose to try and prevent becoming pregnant in the first place. I wish my own mother had not been denied the right and the freedom to make a choice so critical to her own life, first, and mine, secondarily. I wish that the relationship between my mother and I had not been, and will not always be, tainted and strained by the fact that I was effectively forced upon her and not a part of her life that she chose or, at the time, wanted. I can't express how much I wish the relationship between my mother and I had been elective for her.

I envy this user on my own behalf. I envy her clear, unquestioning knowledge that she was wanted and chosen; that her mother chose to be her mother. If she, unlike me, grew up without overhearing or knowing about conversations and comments family members had or made about her being a punishment, a consequence, a sin made only slightly less terrible by being born, then I envy her. If she, unlike me, grew up without seeing the ways not having that choice unraveled or stymied the lives of people she loved, or brought about pain, abuse or neglect in her own upbringing, I envy her.

Even more, I envy her mother on my mother's behalf. However difficult and painful so much of my relationship with my own mother has been, I love her ferociously. The fact that she was denied the right to such a massive choice hurts me tremendously, as would any basic human right denied to anyone I loved -- anyone at all -- would. That's not what I would want for my mother: for anyone's mother.

Now, I don't feel certain as this user does, and so many people seem to, that if my mother had the right to choose and had terminated that I'd not exist. I have no idea what the deal is with how and if any of us wind up here in life. I think it's possible that if I was meant to be on this earth, I'd be here no matter whose womb I came through, no matter who my biological mother was. But not only can I not know what would have happened in that respect, I find it irrelevant, because the fact of the matter is that my mother was a whole person before I was, one separate from me; my mother had a life before me and a life she wanted before and without me, and my mother's life and her dreams mattered then, matter now, and I know for a fact it would have been radically different for her, and better for her (and me), if she had had the freedom and right to choose for herself. I know her life would have been radically different even if she hadn't have had a choice to make but simply grew up with the knowledge and confidence that she had those choices and freedoms. I know because I talk to young women like she was then who do have those choices, but also to those who don't. They are markedly different, in ways impossible to ignore.

As the years go by, I increasingly realize how like so many young women in or just out of their teens my mother was. It ever staggers and upsets me to realize I'm counseling someone who is the age she was, who knows as little as she did, who is as overwhelmed and unsupported as she was, who still doesn't have the agency she also didn't have. I can't possibly think of myself first before her and young women like her. To do that, I'd have to stop listening, stop feeling, stop understanding. To do that, I'd have to ignore, dehumanize or objectify the person sitting right in front of me or writing to me, and focus instead on someone who may or may not ever exist, even if a given person chooses to remain pregnant. To do that, I'd have to deny the privilege I had and have that my mother didn't and some young women still don't. I also often talk to a young woman who, instead, is in a place my mother could have been if she'd had information, choice and agency she did not. While listening to and talking with the young woman my mother could have been is often far more pleasant and hopeful, in another respect, it is painful and bitter, because this is what I would have wanted for her. This is what anyone who loved her and respected her and who cared about the quality of anyone's life, especially hers, should have wanted for her. But didn't.

If it is so that my own agency must be at the expense of someone else, especially the person who was already here and whole before I was even an idea, let alone a person, the person had to labor to bring me into this world, no less, I have a hard time seeing that as any kind of gift at all, nor as any kind of agency for anyone, including me. If I could turn back the clock and give my mother the choices she should have had, and she had chosen to terminate and that did mean she got to have the life she wanted and I didn't get this one at all, I'm good with that. Better that than the alternative. I love my mother, and all women, too much, and know too much about the life of my mother, and the lives of all women, to enjoy the conceit that is thinking my life and my agency are more valuable or meaningful than hers or that of anyone else.

It's a powerful thing, this choice, any choice; this freedom, any freedom.

The older I get, the more I find reproductive rights, justice and choice run a million red, pulsing threads through my life and my heart. I have cared deeply about the right to choose for as far back as I can remember, and with every year that passes -- even as it becomes highly unlikely given my age that I will ever make another major reproductive choice myself -- I care more and more deeply. Even as reproductive choice becomes less about me personally and more about others, it impacts me and influences me deeply, and perhaps even more so because of that fact.

I cared from the get-go because of the circumstances of my own life and family. I cared early because of my own reproductive and sexual choices, including those I was denied myself, and those I witnessed around me, and because when I got to the point in my life where I had those choices to make, I was acutely aware I had access to a level of choice other women had not or did not. I cared early on because I cared about human rights; because I cared about people having power and agency in and for their own lives. Then I cared more because of working as a teacher, and seeing the diversity of the lives of children and young people; how much of an impact parents have, both for good and for ill. Then I cared some more because of working in sex education, sexual health and with young people just starting to try and navigate all of these choices, as well as all the other choices in their lives; I cared even more working with young people who didn't have all the same choices others do. Then I cared even more when working in abortion directly. I keep caring for all of those reasons, and my care continues to amplify, deepen, diversify and cement. So does my sadness and my anger; so does my awareness of all of what having real choices can mean and what not having them can mean, too.

When I was working at the clinic, sometimes we had to tell women they didn't have choices they wanted to have; they should have had. We had to tell them it took them too long to save up the money or get the support to terminate, that they were now past the time when they could. We had to tell them there was nothing we could do to help them access more money to pay for an abortion procedure, and tell them that knowing a woman without enough money to pay for an abortion doesn't have close to the resources she needs to raise a child, even if she wanted to. Sometimes providers have to tell them that even though they have more children than they can care for, because of money, timing or some other restriction that unless they can arrange an adoption, they're going to have to try and parent one more, even if they know they don't want to and can't serve a child well. Sometimes providers have to tell them that without someone else's permission, because of their age or other reduced status in the world, they are not allowed to make their own choices.

No one ever wanted to be the bearer of this news, including me. Sitting down with someone and opening a conversation by telling them they do not have a choice they should have is one of the worst things in my life I have ever had to do. Watching someone who feels trapped in something no one should ever be trapped in is soul-crushing. I had to once give that news to a 15-year-old girl who had come all the way from Canada. She had to go the long way back home knowing that once she got there, she was going to get kicked out with nowhere to go and I couldn't stop crying or picturing her so alone in the world for my two hour commute on the bus home. Even though it wasn't my fault she was in that spot, and there was nothing I could have done to change things for her, I cried all the more because I had to be part of denying someone something I would never, ever want to deny them.

At Scarleteen, particularly when talking to young women who live outside nations or areas where they have the right to choose or have full freedom in choosing, we've had to tell some women they don't have the legal right to make a choice, or counsel young women feeling suicidal because of a possible pregnancy because they already know that if they become pregnant, it will have to mean they remain pregnant which they do not want to be. We've had to talk young people out of trying to terminate their own pregnancies, talk them out of using things so many people don't realize some people even still think about or try: coat hangers, coke bottles, pencils, knitting needles, drug overdoses, getting in car accidents on purpose.

On the flip side, one of my favorite parts of the work I do has been providing all-options counseling and support for all reproductive choices. The days that I get to do that work, no matter how difficult it can be, how challenging for myself and the women involved, are always some of my best days. To be able to start a conversation by telling a person, especially a young person, that she has choices is powerful for both of us. Being able to tell a woman that she has these vital choices and freedoms, that you support any of them she feels is most right for her, and that you will do your best to provide support for those choices now and whenever else she should need it is one of the most wonderful statements to be able to make to someone else. Sadly, the reaction one often gets to a statement like that also so often makes it clear how rare it still is, how unusual an experience it is for many women to find themselves in the position of being unilaterally supported, particularly around their bodies and reproduction. It can also tell us how tenuous those rights still feel for so many women, mostly likely because they are.

These conversations, and these choices in life, period, no matter what choice a woman makes, often make way for many other powerful lightbulbs and choices. When you work with women around reproduction and have unconditionally supportive conversations at these crucial times you have to ask and talk about the whole of their lives, and the context of their lives is part of all of this. So you're often part of decisions like leaving unhealthy or abusive relationships, choosing to put more energy into pursuing life goals and dreams, changing family or community in a way to be surrounded by more people who are supportive, changing how any one woman sees and understands all other women, sometimes even the women she has the hardest time understanding or sympathizing with. And if and when someone is freely able to choose to be someone's parent, fully able to choose, you see a person going into that endeavor in a radically different way than someone who does not have a choice, and you know their life and the life of any of their children will always be all the better for it.

Without choice and freedom, we don't get to own and truly claim our lives; neither do our mothers, sisters, daughters, friends. Without them, we can't say we made a choice at all, nor can we, or others, get to take real pride in or responsibility for our choices. There's a critical difference between making the best of your circumstances when you didn't have a choice and making the circumstances yourself that are best for yourself. Both are laudable, and yet we can only take real ownership of the latter. I am proud of my mother for all that she was able to do and has done given her circumstances, and I know she is proud of herself, but I hate that my mother was denied the privilege to be as proud of herself as she could be had she been allowed to truly own and make her own choices; I hate that I have that power while my mother did not.

Without choice and freedom -- and without having to engage in any fantasy or speculation about whether I'd be here or not -- I know my life would not be like my life at all. It would have likely been more like some of the worst parts of my mother's life. With them, her life could have been a lot more like the very best parts of mine. People chose to deny her that freedom; people can and do still choose to deny or try to deny it to some people still. People chose to allow me that freedom and to allow and protect it for many of you; people can and do still choose to do their -- hopefully our -- damnedest to allow it to and protect it for all people.

It's a powerful thing, this choice, any choice; this freedom, any freedom.

This guest post is from Anita Wagner at Practical Polyamory, and is part of the month-long blogathon to help raise funds for Scarleteen!

When I was recently asked to write a blog post for the Scarleteen blogathon, I had no hesitation about agreeing. I had the pleasure of meeting and having lunch with Scarleteen founder and comprehensive teen sex ed resource Heather Corinna during a trip to the northwest in summer 2009. Let there be no doubt, Heather is one of my all time heroes for the work she does to make sure teens get comprehensive sex education information. I care about this subject very deeply, as the following story will illustrate.

I grew up in an area that is pretty much to this day an exceedingly conservative part of the United States. When I came of age, good parents zealously guarded their daughters' virtue by attempting to control the what, where, when, and most importantly, who, of their daughters' social lives. Sex ed, after a fashion, was taught in health and hygiene class in about the 7th grade, but this was largely limited to "the birds and the bees," i.e. reproductive system ed geared toward gender, with boys and girls taking separate classes. Certainly there was no mention of sexual anatomy or sexually transmitted infections, and information about birth control would be unthinkable, including how to use a condom.

But this was also the 1960s, and though I was too young and too well guarded to find my wait to the Haight, I knew what was going on around me on college campuses and that free love was very much in vogue. When I was about 15, I got the only information about sex that I would get from either of my parents, and that was when my dad said, "Anita Karen, some day some boy is going to try to put his hand in your pants, and you'd better not let him."

My parents and my strict religious upbringing were effective, at least to a point, as my virtue remained intact until the summer of my 17th year, when my older leading man in a community playhouse Neil Simon play swept me off my feet and into his bed.

A very few years later, my boyfriend and I quit college and got married to get out from under my mother's micromanaging my life. That's not a good reason to get married, as our divorce seven years later demonstrated, though one of the significant problems in that marriage had to do with my tendency to push my husband away when he wanted sex. Though I liked sex, I was always suspicious that all men were predators out to use me without any thought to love and real intimacy. Because of the early messaging from my dad, who was a wonderful dad otherwise and was surely doing what he thought was best, even in marriage my subconscious mind was still minding my virtue. It also effectively bifurcated love and sex so that I had no idea what it was like to truly make love. In my mind love and sex had nothing to do with each other.

A couple of years after the divorce, I met a wonderful guy, and we got married. At first we couldn't keep our hands off each other, but sure enough, after some time I started resenting his advances and pushing him away. The poor guy had to be totally confused, especially since he was raised in more liberal turf by open-minded nudist parents who were academics. Eventually that marriage bit the dust as well.

By this point I knew that I simply had to figure out what was happening in my head that caused me to react to my husbands' desire in such an unhealthy way, so I went into therapy and figured it all out. It took some time, and some work on body image issues, too. I am proud to say that I managed to cast off and heal all that old sex-negative conditioning. Today I am able to enjoy healthy relationships where I both love and make love in ways that enhance intimacy and the bonds of partnership. I also enjoy my sexuality at certain adult events, something I never, ever imagined I'd be doing. And most importantly, instead of seeing men as predators, I see them as healthy adults expressing themselves as nature intends and am enthusiastically in support of both male and female sexual expression in all its wonderful forms.

Today my male primary partner and I are both Unitarian Universalists, and he is proud to have raised two children who got their sex education via the Unitarian Universalist Association's highly successful Our Whole Lives ("OWL") sex ed program. They are well-adjusted, well-informed young adults who are amazingly comfortable talking with their parents about sex.

As far as I know, Scarleteen is the only real comprehensive sex education resource for teens other than the UU OWL program. Heather Corinna does an amazing job and has no doubt saved countless teens from the pain and turmoil and failed relationship scenarios I experienced. She deserves all our support. Please give as you can and help sustain Heather's work and Scarleteen, and let's all hope to see sex negativity eradicated and replaced with more healthy attitudes toward sex and sexuality, no matter what our age or cultural perspective.

(It's much more fun if you do your best Mary Catherine Gallagher moves when you say it.)

Today we're starting our yearly fundraising appeal -- the shiny marketing term for "beg for cash" -- for Scarleteen with some righteous month-long festivities and extras.

We aim to publish an in-depth advice column every single day from now through November 15th. Myself and Scarleteen's assistant director, CJ Turett, will be burning the midnight oil with answers, but we also have the help of some fantastically talented people to help this month, like Jaclyn Friedman, Kate Bornstein, Susie Bright, Zaedryn Meade, Cory Silverberg, Petra Boynton, Justin Bish, Amanda Marcotte, Carol Queen, s.e.smith, Nona Willis Aronowitz and more! You can get started with Jaclyn Friedman's guest advice on getting sexual assault awareness started in your college right here.

All across the 'net there's also a month-long blogathon for us starting today, and we will be reprinting most of the entries right here on our own blog for you to enjoy. You'll be able to read posts from writers and sexuality activists like Anne Semans, Maymay, Shanna Katz, Elizabeth Wood, Angie the Anti-Theist, Thomas Roche, I, Asshole, Figleaf, Violet Blue, Clarisse Thorn, Twanna Hines, Liz Lee and a dizzying array of other excellent and generous bloggers. You can start today with this entry on parent/teen communication from Tess, and keep up with all the rest by following our blog or by using our RSS feed.

There are only a small handful of sites online that expressly serve young people, nationally and internationally, with comprehensive sex education that focuses on all the issues, not just one, and that aim to serve the wide diversity of young people there are: not just straight youth, not just white youth, not just middle-class youth, not just youth who aren't sexually active and not just youth who are, not just youth of any one gender or sexual identity. Fewer still do so through a learner-directed educational model like we do.

Founded in 1998, Scarleteen has stubbornly stood a long test of time for tens of millions of young people at this point, some of whom now are parents of children and teens they have already referred here or who want to refer their kids to in the future. We made it through the Bush administration and its abstinence-only mandates (not with our sanity fully intact, but that's okay). Some important baby steps have been made to turn that around, but they're going to be very slow going. Hopefully, access to quality, medically-accurate and inclusive sexuality education will keep improving, but all around the world, including right here where we're located stateside, comprehensive sex education still isn't available to millions of young people, both those attending school and the millions of teenagers and twentysomethings in the United States alone who aren't currently enrolled in school. Even when it is available, it's often missing key components of sound, fully accessible sex education, like the full inclusion of young people who are queer or who are gender nonconforming, who have already become pregnant or contracted an STI, who are already sexually active and want to be so, or who have all the bare basics, but want to know about some of the more complex parts of their sexual health, sexual lives and interpersonal relationships.

We've got a tenure that's incredibly long for anything on the web, let alone for an independent organization providing young people progressive, comprehensive sex education. We fully intend to stick around for as long as we're needed and as long as there's coffee to guzzle, but our tenacity, workaholism and caffeine-powered intellectual steam engine alone aren't enough to make that happen. While we provide our services for free, it costs money to make that happen, money that our teen and young adult users rarely have; money we hate talking about just as much as the next guy, but which we have to talk about if we're going to be able to stick around, keep doing what we do, and keep growing and evolving to best suit the needs of young people.

If you already support Scarleteen with your wallet or your words, thanks! We can't tell you how much we appreciate you and how much what you give helps. If you don't donate to us, or haven't in a while, we hope you'll consider it.

To donate to Scarleteen, click here. To find out more about donating first, check out this link.

To find out more about what we do, why and how we do it, and why we think we're worth supporting, take a look at:

• About Scarleteens
• Scarleteen Is...
• What is Feminist Sex Education?s
• The Scarleteen Staff & Volunteers
• Who's been talking about sex education at Scarleteen?

Want to participate in the blogathon? We've got a great lineup so far, but more is always merrier! It would be particularly fabulous to hear from those of you in your teens and twenties, whose voices we all need hear more of, and who are the most impacted by all of the issues around sexuality education. To find out about how to take part, drop our coordinator, Laura, a line at: aagblog@gmail.com