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If you’re a regular reader here, you’ve probably seen some posts about Scarleteen.com. That’s because it’s an amazing organization and it’s one of a very few sexuality resources for young people that offers accurate and direct information without judging or shaming them.
They’ve just launched a new database project and it’s going to be amazing. Here it is, in their own words:
One of the best ways to find quality sexual healthcare and other in-person help services is by asking people we know and trust for a recommendation. But that can be difficult, especially for young people: so many are either ashamed about sexual healthcare and other related services, or are afraid that disclosing they’ve gotten care will result in a breach of their
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Continue reading Announcing Scarleteen’s New Provider Database- Add Your Organization Now!
In all of the discussions, debates, and arguments about porn, one of the few things that most people can agree on is that most porn is terrible sex education. And this is even more important when we’re talking about how teens and young adults, who often lack access to accurate sex-positive information, end up copying porn.
Unfortunately, a lot of people are hesitant to open up a conversation with young people about porn. Maybe they don’t know how to start. Maybe they don’t feel confident in their abilities to talk about sex. Maybe they think that they don’t know enough about porn or that they don’t know how to talk about it without showing sexually explicit images. Maybe they have their own judgments about porn …
Continue reading Porn Planet: A New Resource For Talking With Youth About Porn
As you may have heard, the news is all worked up about a study showing that an abstinence-based sex education program is effective at encouraging teens to delay having sex. And, of course, the abstinence-only crowd is jumping on it, too. (Thanks to Feministing for the legwork on digging up the links!)
Of course, there’s a deeper story than most of these folks want you to hear. It’s true that this is the first study to show that an abstinence-only program had this effect, but there’s more than one way to create and implement these programs. According to the Guttmacher Institute, this program wouldn’t have been eligible for funding under the former guidelines for abstinence-only programs, which were:
- Have as its exclusive
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Continue reading The Shame of Abstinence-Only Sex Ed
The United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization has had a team working on an amazing document called the Review of Sex, Relationships and HIV Education in Schools for the last two years. The document was scheduled to be released this week, and unsurprisingly, it has been delayed due to sex-negative complaints.
So I decided to take a look at the draft, which is available as a pdf here. And I have to say that I’m quite impressed. Before talking about the current controversy, I want to mention some highlights.
First, this document is based on a really thorough analysis of the research. Section 4 (The Evidence Base for Sexuality Education) shows that many comprehensive sex education programs designed to reduce …
Continue reading The Fight over UNESCO’s Sex Ed Guidelines
Yesterday, I blogged about the The Sexual Health, Education and Pleasure Project in Toronto and some of Dr. Miriam Grossman’s backlash to accurate, pleasure-positive sex education. But there was one thing that she said that I want to come back to since it wasn’t quite on-topic yesterday.
Here’s the quote from the Macleans article about SHEPP that caught my eye:
“People are going to discover on their own what feels good,” [Dr. Grossman] says.
To me, this sounds like a re-hash of “just let nature take its course” and I think that’s one of the more insidiously sex & pleasure-negative stances we can take.
It’s a problem because sex isn’t actually all that intuitive. Yes, manypeople will discover some of the things that feel good …
Continue reading on “letting nature take its course”
You’d think that by now, I wouldn’t have to keep saying it. Well, ok, maybe not. I can dream, can’t I?
An article came out in Macleans yesterday about Good For Her, a fabulous sex toy store in Toronto and the amazing non-profit agency that they just launched, The Sexual Health, Education and Pleasure Project. SHEPP’s mission is:
to provide free pleasure based sexual health education workshops to youth and other marginalized communities
So first off, I think that’s really amazing. There’s not a lot of room for sex education for youth from a pleasure perspective. I know a lot about this because I run Good Vibrations’ Off-Site Sex Education program, which offers workshops and in-service trainings to college classes, residential halls, …
Continue reading scaring kids doesn’t stop them from having sex
Sometimes, it seems like every time I turn around, someone else is freaking out about “protecting children from sex” which usually translates into withholding information, lying about sex and safety, pretending that teens aren’t sexual beings, and projecting a “do what I say, not what I did” message. Ironically, as Judith Levine points out in her extensively researched book Harmful to Minors, all of these strategies actually increase the chances that youth and young adults will end up in the very situations that we really need to protect them from. STI and pregnancy rates go up and kids have se
x at younger ages when we hide the facts from them. The research shows it, even though lots of people refuse to accept that.…
Continue reading some new info about kids and the internet
Given that the Obama administration has stopped funding abstinence-only sex misinformation, I’m sure that lots of schools are scrambling to figure out what to do. Fortunately, Planned Parenthood just launched an amazing site which is full of resources, information and support. If you work with kids, or if you have kids, or if you know someone with kids, pass the link along. I’ve embedded it above, but here is is, so you can cut & paste it:
http://www.plannedparenthood.org/resources/index.htm
A big thanks to Planned Parenthood! (again)…
Continue reading Planned Parenthood has sex ed tools for you
It’s official! The White House has released the proposed 2010 federal budget and funding for abstinence-only education misinformation and propaganda masquerading as science is gone!!!! Community Based Abstinence Education funding is gone!!!! Title V abstinence-only funding is gone!!!! (scroll to page 39 of the pdf for the section on sex education)
True to his word, President Obama is proposing funding programs based on “evidence-based and promising models” to lower teen pregnancy rates that are based on science. You know- that system of developing models of how things work based on evidence, research and peer review, rather than lies. Pretty darn cool.
Of course, there are still some unanswered questions, such as what exactly “evidence-based and promising models” means. And the question of how funding for …
Continue reading the end of funding for abstinence-only miseducation
Here we go again. The Orange County Board of Supervisors has suspended Planned Parenthood’s funding, terminating a contract that PP had to provide health and sex education for thousands of teens because they also provide abortions.
Never mind the fact that this funding was for education programs and none of it was ever spent on abortion service. Never mind the fact that accurate, comprehensive sex education actually reduces the rate of teen pregnancy (and therefore, reduces the abortion rate). And never mind that Planned Parenthood has years of experience providing this education- experience that a newer organization simply can’t match. None of that counts because an ideology about abortion is more important than actually doing something about it.
It’s enough to make me scream. …
Continue reading Here we go again. Planned Parenthood has lost funding in SoCal
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