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Young women today have it so much better when it comes to sex than we did… right?

My teenage years were filled with “evangelical sex education.” I remember the heavy use of punctuation in my True Love Waits book and wondering what sex was really like. At the time, I assumed marriage was the future of my sexuality. This was a bit upsetting considering sex felt like an unknown planet where I was unwelcome. In order to change history I started researching sexuality education programs. I was angry about my limited education and felt confident that there must be at least one curriculum in the US with gumption and accurate information for teens.

There is no one sexual activity which we can know brings everyone to orgasm or even almost everyone. Even though plenty of people certainly enjoy oral sex, not everyone reaches orgasm that way, nor from any other one activity. Your ideas about that aren’t accurate, though I can certainly understand…

The best rule of thumb when considering risk for pregnancy - always assume unless you’re using a reliable method of birth control that pregnancy can happen. The process that takes place in person who can become pregnant is called the menstrual cycle because it’s a full process that takes place, not…

Whether a person is having issues with trust due to sexual abuse or any other reason under the sun, I really like how Staci Haines, in The Survivor’s Guide to Sex, concisely outlines three basic factors for trust. She talks about competency, consistency over time, and congruency between words and…

A baby isn’t a bargaining chip. A baby is a very small, but very whole, person. Just like me, just like you. And a child deserves to be considered as a whole, actual person, not as an object to possibly get you what you want for yourself. What I hear you saying is that you are now feeling a very…

Just last Tuesday, right down the street from you, or perhaps even right where you live, two teenagers had sex for the very first time, and it was exactly as we all wish those first experiences to be. Or was it?

Anna, I’m sorry to hear that you’re in this tough situation right now. You really like having your friend as just a friend and want to keep it that way whereas she would prefer a more sexual relationship. You don’t want to hurt her feelings but you also don’t want to keep having sex! While we…

You sure can. When a person who menstruates has their first period, it’s because they also first ovulated. In other words, first ovulation happens before your first period, so when you get your period for the first time, that means you will have also been able to become pregnant in at least the one…

Hello Shell, You bring up a good point here, something that most people with siblings deal with in some way or another. I am going to answer your question based on my background and experience as an older sister, sociologist, and online sex educator here at Scarleteen. Concerned older brother or…

From the Kaiser Health Disparities Report: A Weekly Look At Race, Ethnicity And Health: Blacks were disproportionately affected by sexually transmitted infection rates in 2007, including chlamydia rates that reached a record high and syphilis rates that increased for the seventh consecutive year, according to a CDC report released on Tuesday, Reuters Health reports (Dunham, Reuters Health, 1/13).

To answer your question, I find myself wanting to give a little bit of background information and talk about the language I’m going to use, just so we’re all on the same page and you can best understand where I’m coming from! Hopefully you can bear with me for a minute while we talk about that, and…

From both our personal experiences of our own varied sex lives, and in our work in sexuality with many other people, it seems pretty clear that really letting someone into an internal space in your body, or going into someone else’s insides – which we know might sound a little gross, but that is what’s going on with this stuff – is a fairly big deal for many people. So, what might make sexual entry different from other sexual activities?

I think the easiest way for the two of you to get out of the cycle about arguing about this is to take it off the table for right now. Here’s what I hear: • I hear that he is feeling conflicted about whether or not he is ready, in many ways. However, it sounds like most of what he is saying is that…

Before I say anything else, I want to be sure to connect you with a couple of avenues for help because I am very concerned about the state you’re in right now. Clearly – and it’s really common for this to happen – seeing your rapist has triggered a lot for you and clearly, you are in a state of…

I hear you that this is a tough situation to be in, turbo! It certainly may seem like the reverse of what most people face when they are questioning their sexual orientation. However, I assure you that it is actually much more common than one might think. For all the great resources there are about…

Dear Scarleteener, congratulations on being such an active participant in your own health care, and for doing your best to take care of both your physical and emotional well-being. That can be hard to do, particularly when life and school get crazy (as they tend to). I’m hoping that the gynecologist…

From the leading bloggers in the fat-acceptance movement comes an empowering guide to body image- no matter what the scales say.

I will start by saying that, as confusing as this situation may seem right now, you have a really good head on your shoulders: You know who you are and what you’re interested in, and seem OK with it. That right there is fantastic, because it’s something that many people of all ages continue to…

You two always talk about joke around in class, brightening each others’ school day. You laugh at each others’ jokes, which is always special and not to be underrated! Although there may be some differences in your physical appearances, you have very many deeper things in common- and that’s what’s…

He may be older but he’s not wiser, and he’s not acting like a grownup. He doesn’t want to grow up, which is part of why he’s dating people he perceives as not grownup themselves. He also doesn’t have the bad stuff that happens to you because of him happen to him to make him want to change: if he was in your shoes, he’d ditch him in a heartbeat.

Unfortunately – albeit unsurprisingly – President Bush, much in the way he entered the office, feels the need to leave it by spitting right in the face of women and our health.

Without hormones, our bodies would not be able to function! Hormones are essentially chemical messengers that deliver the memo to cells that they are supposed to change up what they’re doing. Not all hormones are sex hormones; there are lots of kinds! Many hormones are produced by our endocrine…

A dildo – or any other sex toy – is not likely to do anything to the nerve endings within your vagina. In fact, it’s completely likely there isn’t a single thing wrong with you, and that nothing whatsoever has happened to your vagina to result in you feeling this way. As we’ve explained many times…

I’d like to focus this on the three primary issues you brought up here: your need for basic physical affection, your problem with upholding your own boundaries, and your ideas about how without intercourse, the sex you or anyone else are having cannot possibly satisfy either of you. On all of those…