Blogs

Scarleteen will soon be doing video questions and answers on our Instagram!

I've been saving this very wonderful birthday-card-of-sorts from the also-very-wonderful Liz for almost a year now, looking for just the right time to post it.  Seeing as we're two days away from the end of this 20th year and our next (our 21st!) birthday, it certainly feels like a good time.

A few weeks ago, I had the chance to attend an inaugural sex education policy convening in Washington, D.C.

I know you'll be flooded this week with people asking for money from you. If your inbox has been anything like mine, you've already suffered through a solid week of targeted marketing landmines and nonstop sparkly coercions to spend money buying everything and anything on earth, no less.

Many trans or gender non-conforming youth come to us looking for support they're having difficulty finding, or don't feel safe looking for elsewhere. We know from talking with these users that one of the biggest factors in their overall well-being -- and how hard or easy all of this is on them -- is how supported and safe they feel in their identities when around their families.

This piece is created with an eye towards how can you support them while dealing with any emotions you might have.

At long last, Merriam-Webster has added they and them, as singular nonbinary pronouns, specifically, to the dictionary.

Those of us who are nonbinary, who use these pronouns, or both, didn't need a dictionary to validate our identities, or the pronouns we use.  Anyone and everyone's identities and pronouns are valid, whether the dictionary or other cultural institutions acknowledge them or not.

Over the years, we’ve had many Scarleteen fans -- especially older siblings, aunts and uncles, cousins, camp counselors, babysitters or other folks who’ve loved Scarleteen for themselves and wanted to pass its goodness on to the younger people in their lives -- ask if they should refer preteens to our site.

From Heather Corinna, founder and director of Scarleteen.com, and Isabella Rotman, cartoonist, sex educator and Scarleteen artist-in-residence, comes a new graphic novel guide -- and activity book! -- that covers essential topics for preteens and young teens about their changing bodies and feelings. Find out all about it, and sneak preview one of our fave sections, here!

I know how important it is for brown and Black young people to see characters who look like them, and I know how much I longed for someone who looked like me and had a not-so-perfect home life to tell the rest of the world what it can actually like to be a biracial teenage girl.

Caster Semenya is a gold-medal-winning Olympic athlete from South Africa. She's an incredibly talented runner who's won dozens of gold medals at competitions worldwide. But instead of having her athletic performance attributed to natural talent and hard work, it has been scrutinized and coupled with assertions that she can’t possibly have accomplished what she has without cheating.

Who is to blame for this, you might ask? Just the usual suspects: sexism, cissexism, and white supremacy.