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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…

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…