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In Lebanon (or at least, in Beirut) the joke is that it is equally likely to see a woman in a mini skirt as it is to see a woman in a hijab. In Lebanon (or at least, in Beirut), European tourists feel at ease that the Lebanese still speak a post-colonial French, and let Beirut be called the Paris of the Middle East. In Lebanon (or at least, in Beirut), tourists and Lebanese alike flock to the beaches and the nightclubs, openly drinking alcohol, smoking hookahs, and belly dancing to both popular western and Arabic music, creating a strange moment that many see as cultural influence, and many others see as cultural infiltration. Still—despite the post-colonial familiarity and acceptability of Lebanese culture—Lebanese women remain in many ways decorative objects, openly ignored, slighted or discriminated against in legislation.

As some of you may know, I experienced two different sexual assaults when I wasn’t yet in my teens within just one year of one another. The second time I was assaulted, my experience ticked all of the boxes there currently are in our culture for what is so often – now, anyway, easily considered a “real” or “bonafide” sexual assault, or what Whoopi Goldberg, to my great disappointment, would call “rape-rape.” The first time around was different.

Handwashing, seriously? Yep, handwashing. Seriously. (Well, mostly seriously.) Here’s how to do it and why it’s so important to do.

A sweeping social history of heterosexuality from its origins in nineteenth-century Germany to the sex-scandal headlines of today.

This empowering exercise guide is big on attitude, giving plus-size women the motivation and information they need to move their bodies and improve their health.

The big emotion that comes through what you’ve written here isn’t love or loyalty. It’s anger. Big, big anger, in giant waves, in what you’re saying and in how you’ve said it. There is so much here – far more, I think, than your boyfriend using porn, or what’s in the porn he’s looking at – that a…

Our volunteers are a huge part of Scarleteen, and I call them superstars with very good reason. They’re all incredible. They play a big part in providing our direct services at our message boards and through our text-in answer service. They are our invaluable collective editorial board: even when…

The term “sexuality” can be used a lot like the word “sex.” They’re both terms we say and hear a lot, but which often aren’t clearly defined. We take for granted everyone knows what sexuality means, a heck of an assumption to make with something that covers so many important things and can feel as murky as Lake Erie. So: what’s it all about?

I realized that I was uncomfortable associating myself with genital herpes. Will people think I have it? Why else would someone write about genital herpes and risk that association if they didn’t have it, right? So I pressed on, putting myself at the center of an itty-bitty social experiment that resulted in some pretty big stuff.

It was probably obvious yesterday that we earnestly thought the FDA might finally turn around a longtime decision, one largely against all advice, information and recommendations from sexual, reproductive and adolescent health and rights experts and advocates, when it came to unfounded restrictions long put on teen access to Plan B. I don’t think we can express enough how tremendously and deeply frustrated and infuriated we are here that our optimism was in vain and was so outrageously gutted.

You may have heard that the FDA may finally remove age restrictions for the morning-after emergency contraception pill in the United States. If you’ve heard that, you may have started to hear some panic or fear-factoring, not just gratitude and relief. Currently, in the United States, someone must…

We’ve been receiving and answering a lot of questions like yours lately, but I think it’s really important to keep talking about if people keep asking. Because we keep hearing girls asking questions like this about guys, it seems clear there are a lot of people who aren’t getting some things we…

My best advice is to just try and let yourself go there. I think the safest way to do that, emotionally, would be to first try that in whichever sexual situation you tend to feel safest in, whether that’s alone, in your masturbation, or during sexual activities with a partner. More people than not…

I don’t think making condoms available is “condoning” sex. If providing condoms, all by itself, sends any primary message, I think the message is that were he to engage in sex, you think preventing unwanted pregnancy and the transmission of sexually transmitted infections is really important. I don…

With proper use, condoms actually break very rarely. The common mythology that condoms are flimsy and break all the time is just that: mythology, not reality. Different studies on latex condom breakage tend to reflect a breakage rate of around .4%, or only 4 breaks in every 1,000 uses.

Have you been through a breakup? Maybe more than one? If you have, you know how awful it can be, and how incredibly rough, especially when you’re new to romantic or sexual relationships. Breakups between friends can be just as awful, too. You probably also know that learning to deal with and get…

You know, our gut feelings are usually very trustworthy. When we find we feel very scared and nervous, it’s usually because we have good reason to be. Those kinds of feelings are usually excellent cues for making our best choices. I’m not 15. I’m in my 40s. I’ve been engaging in sex for a very long…

Assuming that you’re engaging in manual sex – hands or fingers engaged with your genitals, fingering being one term for that – to express or explore your sexual feelings or desires, fingering IS sex. Just like intercourse can be sex, just like oral sex can be sex, just like full-body massage can…

I thought your question would be a great one to pose to Jaclyn Friedman, a Scarleteen colleague and supporter who is making the internet rounds with a blog book tour right now. I think you’ll find what she had to say and share around this very helpful, and I also think her book is one that would…

One of my big challenges in life has long been that I have a very hard time when I mess things up or I don’t do well, even though, intellectually, I know that’s bollocks, and that it’s okay to mess up sometimes. Growing up, one of my favorite things to do with my Dad was to go to Cubs games. Even though I left Chicago over a decade ago now, I remain, and always will, a diehard Cubs fan. If you assume I care at all about baseball, or even understand how the game is supposed to be played, you may be wondering why anyone would continue any fealty to the worst team in baseball. I have my reasons, but one of them is that the Cubs provided me — and provide me still — an amazing lesson in owning your suckitude.

More and more, new users come to Scarleteen reporting experiences of bullying and other forms of harassment online or in their offline lives. Often enough – and understandably – users new to the site will feel fearful and wary that they might experience that here, too, especially since we address…

I’m not concerned about you looking desperate by doing anything to try and convince your partner to have sex it seems he’s made clear he’s not comfortable having. What I am concerned about with any situation like this is, instead, your partner possibly not having his limits and boundaries respected…

Many men – and people of all genders – will not and do not wait until marriage to engage in various kinds of sex with partners. That’s as true now as it was 20 or 50 years ago. For at least the last 100 years in the west, most people do engage in some kind of genital sexual activities with…

The last section of our recent demographics survey (click here and here for data from the previous sections) was an optional, open section where we simply stated, “If you have any comments you’d like to add about this survey or Scarleteen as a whole, please feel free to add them here.” Of the 419…