Blogs

I have a thing for Vincent Price.

I don't just mean that I enjoy his body of work. I mean I feel desire for his body.

You may be asking what, exactly, my feelings for a deceased horror icon have to do with the work we do at Scarleteen. The answer is that it gets me thinking about desire and how even those of us who consider ourselves enlightened can fall into old traps when it comes to attraction.

With our 17th birthday coming up next week,  I wanted to extend some deeply-deserved gratitude for our donors. 

Madison Kimrey is, in a word, amazing. You might know her from the letter she wrote to Phyllis Schlafly a few months ago, but that's not the only thing she's done that's so fantastic.

Just a brief request from us to the world-at-large, primarily with the aim of making our users lives a little easier. Secondarily, it'd also make the lives of those of us who work to help them daily in these areas easier, too, which would sure be nice.

Please do us and everyone else a favor and stop using certain words with very specific meanings as general shorthand.

I saw a young woman the other day who was in her late teens.

Today, like most days, our site has been up and running, including its tremendous archive; probably serving around 20,000 users by the end of the day. All of our direct services are live: our message boards, SMS service and live online chat. Myself and some of the volunteers are in the middle of creating new content, like one of our in-depth articles or advice columns. The daily and collective creative brainstorming, problem-solving, observing and reflecting that goes on behind the scenes amongst our staff and volunteers, and together with our users, can and will happen today.

Thanks so much to everyone who has been pitching in with our current fundraising drive. We're getting awfully close to our goal -- to the minimum we need to raise to avoid any shutdowns -- and we could not be more appreciative and excited. Thank you!

When it comes to financial support, we primarily look to, and need help from, older adults in the world who care about young people, who care about young people's free, unrestricted access to excellent sex education and who do have the economic autonomy and funds to give a little.

This can obviously be a bit tricky. Most of these folks have never used Scarleteen, so it's hard for them to understand its value and what it offers and gives our readers and users.

But! There's something that can help. Here's where you come in, current-Scarleteen-user or now-Scarleteen-alum.

You can tell them. Then they'll know.

As you may have read a few weeks ago, we are in dire straits when it comes to sustaining all that we do here at Scarleteen, and need more support to do so now.  Since we put out that call, we've raised around half of what we need to keep doing all we currently do, thanks to a few hundred generous individuals. Thanks so much to everyone who has given us your help so far!