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Why We Need Scarleteen

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Submitted by Scarleteen Gues... on Fri, 2010-10-22 07:51

This is a guest post from sex educator Charlie Glickman, part of the month-long blogathon to help support Scarleteen!

Imagine, for a moment, what the world would be like if we took the same approach to money as we do to sex. Imagine trying to hide all evidence of money from children, telling them that it’s not something they should know about. Imagine shaming them for asking questions about it, for expressing an interest in it, and for wanting to experiment with it. Imagine that you never explained how budgets work, or how to balance a checkbook, or how to pay for anything. Then, imagine that when they turn 18, handing them a credit card and saying “good luck with that.”

In essence, that’s what we do with sex.

Would you be surprised if those young adults didn’t know how to responsibly handle money? Would you be shocked if they ended up in crisis because they didn’t have the skills to take care of themselves? Would you think that their parents and schools had done their job?

If you answered “no” to these questions, then maybe you can also ask yourself why it should be any different when it comes to sex. The worst thing that’s likely to happen in my imaginary scenario is someone’s credit rating plummets and they declare bankruptcy at 18. When it comes to sex, the risks are much worse.

Over and over, the research is clear. When we try to “protect” children by creating secrecy, silence and shame around sex, they’re at more risk for sexually transmitted infections, unintended pregnancy, and sexual assault. When we give them age-appropriate language and tools they need to understand sex, we keep them safer and we help them keep themselves safer.

Fortunately, Scarleteen does just that. Since 1998, it has been the go-to site for free, inclusive, comprehensive and positive sex education, information and one-on-one support for millions. They’ve also talked about the pleasures and benefits of sex, offered advice for young people without telling them what to do, and have never avoided the difficult topics.

They manage to do this without any federal, state or local funding and have a much smaller budget than many organizations that offer less support and fewer resources. Plus, Heather Corinna, the founder of the site, is a dedicated sex educator and she’s fantastic.

Since Scarleteen relies on donations rather than governmental funding, they’re able to offer accurate information without being swayed by the shifting political trends. This allows them to host blog posts, informational articles, and over 5000 one-on-one or group conversations on their message boards in an average year. As if that wasn’t enough, their goals for the next couple of years include creating a database of sex-positive medical professionals, offer stipends to their volunteers, improve their site, and create a fund for young people in need of reproductive health and other needed services.

To make all this happen, they need a minimum annual operating budget of $70,000 and the revenue to support it, including a minimum of $20,000 in private donations alone each year. That is an amazing value and I can’t think of another organization that does so much with so little. If you want to see better sex-positive information and support for youth, your donation to Scarleteen will do more than anything else you could do. Visit the site for more info on how to make it happen. And while you’re there, check out what they offer. You’ll be amazed.

Be a Scarleteen Superstar!

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Submitted by Heather Corinna on Fri, 2010-10-15 12:22

(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:

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


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