There has been an increasing level of organisation and activity in the UK from politicians and pressure groups who are against comprehensive sex education, even lobbying against the basics like teaching body parts to primary school children and ever more increasingly speaking about abstinence. The tactics are versions of what US sex educators have been battling against for a while.

This summer, Arianna, who is one of our readers, wrote and produced a play at her college about sexuality which also included a fundraising ask for Scarleteen.

This month, Marlena, another Scarleteen user, surprised us with this incredible video she made as part of Project for Awesome, to do what she could to help support what we do and express her experience of what Scarleteen can offer to young people, particularly in a world which is so often unsupportive not just of youth sexuality, but of youth as a whole.

You probably heard that Siri, the digital assistant on the iPhone 4S, could help someone find Viagra or a sexual escort, but not a family planning clinic, a local pharmacy to get a birth control prescription filled or an abortion provider

Some people sure paid a lot of money for a tool that didn’t serve them or others well. Scarleteen users get those services and much more for free. We give teens and young adults real people to talk with, for nearly 24 hours a day and 7 days a week, when the thousands of pages of in-depth, thoughtful information at Scarleteen don’t have all they want or need. While all of that is free to our users, providing it to them costs money.

Some of our staff and volunteer's fave links and reading from our Facebook and Twitter feeds this week: modesty doctrines and body hatred, "stealth", teen sex, and more.