mentorship

Connecting with LGBTQ+ Elders

There’s this feeling of smallness - that your world is confined to secrets you tell in your diary, or to the few people you know in real life that are brave (or perhaps foolish) enough to come out - that I identify as a part of my theory on queer orphanhood. You spend so much time contemplating your identity that you don’t have time to wonder about people out there. There’s a kind of spiritual displacement in being queer and young.

I can make you a man, too, (Not) the Charles Atlas way.

The title above refers to a famous series of fitness and bodybuilding advertisements from the 1940's & 50's. The not so subtle suggestion in these ads, and many male-targeted ads and products since, is that masculine identity is primarily about being strong, about having power; often, masculinity is seen as something literally embodied. But that's not the case: masculine identity is so very much more than what can be seen, about so much more than expressions of power and dominance. And it cannot be bought from the back of a magazine.

From Us to You: Some Volunteer Aunties Talk Body Image

I know it's only so much consolation to you right now, but the older I get, the more I notice how much easier having a positive body image becomes. I know that's clearly not the case for all older women: after all, plenty of women my age and older are getting sliced, diced and Botoxed to within an inch of their lives. However, it's also not just me.

Want to be a peer sex educator?

In case it isn't obvious from the message boards and our peer-written content on the site, peer-based sex education and support is really important to and at Scarleteen. While I love my job as a sex educator who is an older adult, and think there's a lot of value in my doing this work, at the same time I feel like there's an extra power and a special kind of support with peer-to-peer education and interaction that I can't do.