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I was watching a debate about sex education today, one rife with a lot of ludicrous statements, but the statement that quality sex education could not possibly help prevent sexual abuse stuck with me. It was all the more infuriating as someone who knows too well that a lack of knowledge about bodies and sex, and a lack of information about sexual consent and autonomy are some of the hugest reasons why sexual abuse is so prevalent.

Here’s a basic introduction and a shared conversation with adolescent therapist and author Dr. Lynn Ponton to clue you in on what to expect from the couch.

At age 17 during my senior year of highschool, I was at a crossroads. “Should I turn against my religious beliefs and how I was raised or should I listen to my heart and live the life that I want?” I chose to be a righteous Christian and a good daughter. Yet, I felt more disconnected with my Faith each time I prayed about my “ungodly” feelings.

I was thinking about all of you a lot last night, and was feeling something about you I realize I’ve never had the chance to share. When I’m working with you, while I always leave wishing for much better things for all of you, I also leave always feeling very inspired by you, and reminded of good things about myself when I was your age I often do forget and really shouldn’t, and which I also really didn’t know back then.

You should experiment and communicate with your partner and should do the things together and alone that feel uniquely good for both of you – not just one of you – at any given time. In all truth, the answer to situations like this really are that simple, and there’s not a whole lot more to it…

Are you at a point in your life and relationship where you’re considering moving in with a partner? We’ve got the scoop on some things to consider, talk through and get going in advance to be sure that if you make the move to shack up, it’s a good one.

High school has always provided great inspiration for movies and television. Grease, Popular, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The Breakfast Club, Freaks and Geeks….the list of high-school-based movies and TV shows is pretty extensive. And then there’s a new addition, Glee, set in a smallish town in the…

I’m going to tell you a few things you probably already know, but they might be good ways to explain to anyone who doesn’t already know them. Heterosexual people are usually only or primarily romantically and sexually attracted to people of a different sex or gender than they are. That means that…

It’s not news to anyone who does any kind of sexuality education that people have a mighty hard time agreeing on what “sex” means. It’s very common for someone to figure that what sex means for them, the way they have experienced or classified sex, is what it is and means, or should be and should…

Yesterday, I had my hair cut. As the stylist called my name, she asked if I would like a shampoo. I politely declined. She then noticed how thick my hair is and she said she was going to take me back to the sink to wet it. And being incredibly used to this, I readily agreed and followed. But just as…

Does your relationship need a basic checkup to be sure it’s healthy and well? Here’s a list for doing just that.

What’s it mean to be questioning, why would you or someone else identify that way, how do you deal in the process and how might you answer the question?

No one ever needs a reason to say no to anything, just like you don’t need a reason to say yes to something. It sounds to me like you have been very clear when it comes to what you do not want to do. You even put a very clear date on it, so since you said that it won’t happen until you’re at least…

Maybe you know what safer sex is. But do you also know what it isn’t? Take a minute and fact-check your ideas about what can protect you from STIs and what cannot.

As you may know, at Scarleteen we do not yet endorse suppressing menstruation/continuous birth control – using a hormonal method of birth control in order to skip withdrawal bleeds/periods – for women under 18, because there still is yet to be any study done or published with adolescent women to evaluate if it is safe or medically sound for those in that stage of physical development.

I want to first make a few things clear about any judgments you may be making about yourself or might assume will be made in my answer to you. I don’t like terms like “easy” when they carry derogatory judgments, for the same reason I don’t like terms like “prude” used or internalized that way. If…

Recently, I’ve been talking about men and feminism a fair bit, and not just in what I write, but in other places online and in real life. This is pretty normal for me, but what’s a bit interesting is that a lot of these conversations have been around the relationship of men to feminism and in particular, what role men can play in supporting feminism and women in general.

To: Stephen Harper (a.k.a. the Prime Minister of Canada, a.k.a. That Guy With the Questionable Judgment) From: Me (a.k.a. A Concerned Citizen, a.k.a. Someone Who Thinks You’re a Bit of a Twit) Dear Stephen, I have to confess, I am not, nor have I ever been, one of your biggest fans. I have never…

Here are some other questions we’ve had like this one recently: I’m a newly married man. I was suspecting my wife was a virgin but the result came opposite then what I was suspecting. When we had sex for the first time there was no bleeding and I did not feel the vagina is so tight. It means is my…

Condoms have been my BFFs. All the same, I know there are people who experience them as a drag. I was prepared to discover that walking into a change in my sex life where condoms absolutely were not needed, and also where I had a new birth control method that was as reliable as it gets and totally foolproof might give me some new insight on why some folks feel that way. I was prepared to be wrong: to find out that suddenly what I perceived as no interruption at all had been, in fact, more of an interruption than I realized. Bzzzzt. So far, that’s not what’s happened.

Let’s say I decide I want to learn to bake bread, so I decided to try and make bread every day. But what if in doing that, every day I had the oven set at the wrong temperature, was using the wrong measuring tools for my ingredients or kept using yeast which wasn’t active anymore? I could keep doing…

You probably hear the term “healthy relationship” a lot. But what does that mean, and how do you create – and keep building – one of those?

I tried several times to leave a comment at the National Campaign’s blog on this, but alas, it wouldn’t let me. I’m pretty savvy with web forms, so it’s probably just some kind of temporary technical snag over there. Since it wouldn’t let me do so there, I’m doing it here. After hearing complaints…

In case you haven’t already heard, the female condom (FC) has had a recent redesign. Yippee! (And how much do I love “put a ring on it” as a slogan for female condom use? I love it a whole lot.) I was able to catch up with Mary Ann Leeper, the Female Health Company’s Senior Strategic Advisor and…

You and your partner have talked about your sexual and relationship history, and it sounds like you’ve also both tried to be honest in voicing your wants and needs when it comes to sex. That means that you two understand how important communication and honesty are when it comes to having a healthy…