Heather Corinna

Time for another installment of Building Bridges, where we facilitate, then publish a conversation between two people in different life stages who have something with gender, sexuality and/or relationships in common. This time, our intergenerational pair is two women who have had their sexual orientation and identity shift for them during the course of their lives.

Not only have we seen this before, it’s something we see at Scarleteen often. At our message boards, at least once or twice a week a user comes to us feeling exactly like you are. I promise, it’s not just you. Over the years, I’ve looked and looked for some kind of study on pervasive pregnancy…

Many people who identify as heterosexual have had some kind of sexual or affectional feelings or interactions with someone of the same gender, especially in childhood or adolescence. When Alfred Kinsey’s data was published in the late 1940’s in Sexual Behavior in the Human Male, a cultural ruckus…

Hedo’s question continued: While I was working with her and experimenting with what she liked I got a lot of positive feedback and encouragement. It was very clear that she was enjoying what I was doing, which felt amazing for me, too. But after we finished and cleaned up she got withdrawn and…

Over the weekend, we linked to reports on the presentation of a study in our Twitter feed and on our Facebook about the effect of sex during adolescence on academics, such as college goals, grade point average, dropout, truancy and absentee rates. On Sunday and Monday, the piece got a whole lot of media and internet airplay, even though it was clear few, if any, reporting on it had yet looked at the study itself. It’s not news that mainstream media tends to do a poor job reporting on both science and sex, and a poorer job still when young people are involved. Here’s some of what has gone unreported or has been poorly reported:

Last night at dinner, my partner was telling me about a story on NPR that afternoon. I was sure I hadn’t heard it, yet it felt so terribly, completely familiar, as if I had not only heard it once before, but a million times. The NPR story was titled, ” Your Olive Oil May Not Be The Virgin It Claims.”

Fox’s question continued: From what I understand, when a woman gets sexually excited, she secretes some kind of lubrication in her vagina. I presume that for STDs, the virus / germ is present in that natural lubricant, and that the contact with that lubricant is what’s dangerous. But a condom covers…

If I had an award to give each day for great awareness and forward-thinking about potential partners and relationships, you’d get it today, hands-down. Actually, you should just take it for this whole month. Seriously, this is really sage thinking on your part, and so valid per both of your best…

The more young people are told - usually by adults who know from their own experience it’s not true – that sex outside of marriage, outside long-term, monogamous relationships, or with any more than one partner in a lifetime, will always do them terrible, irreparable harm and make them damaged goods forevermore, the more we get questions about oxytocin, one common staple in that messaging. So, around a year ago, I started excavating.

We hear a lot about generational divides. What we hear much less about are the bridges: how people of different generations can and do connect; how we can support and help one another and each offer the other things of great value.