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Starting in 2006, for NOW’s Love Your Body Day, our volunteers, staff and users have been creating haiku about body love and acceptance on our message boards. It’s resulted in some fantastically cool pieces over the years, so we figured we’d share a few of them today as it’s that fine day yet again…

Feeling like you didn’t “get anything in return” sounds very troubling to me. That strikes me as a huge deal, and like something that’s probably bigger and about more than sex being a first-time for you and not for him. Someone with partners before you isn’t limited in their ability to do their part…

I want to focus this entry on the second of the optional questions in the demographics survey. The question was this: Since using Scarleteen, which of any of the following has changed for you, and by how much? What we most wanted to see was not the areas where we may have done a good job or where our users already felt things were going very well for them, but areas where it would seem sound to say we currently are not having the impact we’d like to with positive changes. In other words, this question seemed likely to be most useful in identifying our potential weak spots, rather than our strengths, and could give us a clearer sense on how and where we should look most to improve our content and approaches.

Every day, around 20,000 to 30,000 people come to Scarleteen online. This summer, we created a new demographics survey as part of a potential partnership with a fellow organization, and to get an additional, fresh source of information for ourselves. There’s a lot to look at and talk about, so I’m going to share this information in three or four posts. Today, I’ll fill you in on some of the most basic demographics from the survey.

Intimacy is often awkward. And that isn’t a bad thing. In some ways, I’d even say it’s always awkward, in the sense that it’s never really something that’s exactly easy, especially when we’re just starting to get intimate with someone, rather than when we have been for a long time. Getting and being…

There are gay or bisexual men who love or like anal sex, it’s true. But there are also gay or bisexual men who don’t like it, or who just aren’t interested in it. There are heterosexual men who don’t like anal sex or aren’t interested in it, either. There are also heterosexual men who like or love…

Just because someone might want something from someone else doesn’t mean it’s right for that other person, either person, or that the time when they want it is the right time for it to happen. Few people in their early teens have a lot of what is needed in order to have healthy and satisfying sexual…

This is our final installment of stories and photographs from “I’ll Show You Mine”, a book by Wrenna Robertson and photographer Katie Huisman, and by all of the women featured in the book, collectively. Yes, the picture you are looking at is my vagina. When I look at this picture, I feel alienated. I will tell you why. Here is my story.

This is the seventh installment of stories and photographs from “I’ll Show You Mine”, a book by Wrenna Robertson and photographer Katie Huisman, and by all of the women featured in the book, collectively. I had never seen another woman’s vagina up close and personal and I had only used a mirror a few times to check out my own. I started to take a closer look at mine, comparing it to the only reference I had - porn - wondering how I should improve the appearance of my vagina.

antogone68’s question continued: I think this was probably for a number of reasons: being busy at university and perhaps having a naturally low sex drive after the honeymoon period of a relationship. However, I also think my sexual assault had something to do with it. I still find physical intimacy…

If you feel crampy and bloated, and you didn’t miss your last period, it’s more likely in terms of those symptoms and the timing of things that you’re experiencing PMS symptoms rather than pregnancy symptoms. However, if you’ve been having unprotected intercourse, pregnancy is a very real…

I’m so sorry that you’ve found yourself in what sounds like some big time bad-news dynamics. There are some things where not being in agreement isn’t a big deal, or is problematic, but not massive. However, having conflict about sex and reproduction like this, especially if one person refuses to…

This is our sixth installment of stories and photographs from “I’ll Show You Mine”, a book by Wrenna Robertson and photographer Katie Huisman, and by all of the women featured in the book, collectively. In casual conversation, it is my vag, or va-goo if I’m in a silly mood. If I’m feeling particularly Feministy or Earth Mother Birthing Goddessy, it is my Yoni. I tell a lover I would love to lick her pussy. Whatever it is called, one thing is certain: it is pretty freaking amazing.

These are excellent questions, and I don’t think it’s surprising at all that this all feels confusing. We unfortunately have a very, very long history of some profound misunderstandings of sexual anatomy and sexual response and a relatively short history of study and comprehensive education and…

This is our fifth installment of stories and photographs from “I’ll Show You Mine”, a book by Wrenna Robertson and photographer Katie Huisman, and by all of the women featured in the book, collectively. I knew at an early age that I had increased sensitivity all over my vulva, later discovering through an OB/GYN that my condition was called vulvar vestibulitis.

If by “normal” intercourse you mean vaginal intercourse, and both of these kinds of sex were unprotected, then yes, this is an easy way to potentially develop a vaginal bacterial infection. That’s why it’s advised that for couple who want to engage in both kinds of intercourse, they use condoms…

This is our fourth installment of stories and photographs from “I’ll Show You Mine”, a book by Wrenna Robertson and photographer Katie Huisman, and by all of the women featured in the book, collectively. My pussy is special to me because I didn’t always have one, because I have worked so hard to be able to have one. I always struggled with my gender identity and, in particular, having male genitalia, as it never felt right to me.

This is our third installment of stories and photographs from “I’ll Show You Mine”, a book by Wrenna Robertson and photographer Katie Huisman, and by all of the women featured in the book, collectively. My vagina history contains culture shock, a single father, religion and terrible experiences with men. It confused, sexualized and controlled most of my life.

(I’m going to assume that when you say female, you mean person-with-vulva, since it sounds like when you talk about men, you mean people-with-penises. If I went the wrong way with those assumptions, let me know and I’ll have a do-over with this one.) I think it’s not a great idea to try and do this…

There are a few things you mentioned here that I suspect you wanted to have addressed in depth, but I think it’s really important that for right now, I do what I can to help you with what seems the most critical. I think it’s crucial you get some help as quickly as you can, and I don’t want my words…

This is our second installment of some of the stories and photographs from “I’ll Show You Mine”, a book by Wrenna Robertson and photographer Katie Huisman, and by all of the women featured in the book, collectively. When you think of it, it’s a bit silly. Nothing to get excited about, right? A couple flaps of skin, a bunch of nerve endings and hair, all covering some inner bits that resemble a water slide I went down once as a child. But I love it.

The fact that myself, or Traister or any number of people think errors have been or are being made, or that all of this could be done better or worse doesn’t mean we’re right. We could be. We could also be wrong. It could be that despite it seeming like this thing or this other way of doing or saying that would have been the better move, that doing a given thing differently would have less impact.

You are not responsible for a parent having an idea about who you are that’s about who you have been as a child, who they seem like they might want you to be, or who they think you are but are not anymore, and may – and in this case, probably – never have been. I hear you expressing what sounds…

When someone says the term “battleground state,” Mississippi is not one that comes to mind. But in 2012, that’s exactly what Mississippi will be. The Republican-dominated state is the focus of Personhood USA’s next attack, and this time it’s about more than abortion.

Today I want to briefly address the way that the walks have been visually represented in the media and by many bloggers writing about them, especially those who have been nonsupportive or critical. In a word, they have frequently been represented by photographs which expressly stated or just implied they represent what people at the walks looked like as a whole, and have been anywhere from just incorrect to exceptionally dishonest in those assertions or implications. Because as far as I can tell, the images that keep getting picked aren’t those which are most representative of the protests as a whole, but which are most representative of what a given person either found most provocative or most interesting. Or, which best represent their reasons for nonsupport or mockery.