Funding comprehensive & queer sex ed and getting a chance new NK stuff you can't even buy yet?

Yeah, that's a double win.

The new Classic Backpack in Gilbert Baker Splatter Wave & the new waterproof travel bag in Progress Pride Lemurs are part of this week's Scarleteen raffle! Click here to pick up raffle tickets for these and other amazing prizes. :D

NerdyKeppie is proud to sponsor queer, inclusive sex ed. 💗

Hey, I thought the anon regarding attraction to fat people would find this helpful. It's about disability, but I think the theory is applicable. Also, it might be helpful to disabled trauma survivors as well!

An excerpt: "...having someone attracted to you solely on the basis of an identity trait outside your control — like race or disability — usually feels deeply dehumanizing. Just like it will often feel gross to hear people talk about wanting to date a person because they have big breasts, or make explicit comments about Black men's penises, it will usually feel gross to have someone attracted to you only or primarily because you walk with a cane."

In the 25 years we’ve existed for, we’re served close to 90,000,000 (that’s ninety million!) people. And our work is more essential now than ever. We’ve been experiencing a growing wave of legislation designed to cut young people off from vital and wanted information, support and community, especially young queer and trans people. In the last several years, we’ve also seen many sources of independent, feminist and queer, media shutter or give up their independence, some at the cost of their ingenuity or integrity. 

Scarleteen is and has always been fully independent, feminist, queer media. We don’t de-fang our content in order to appeal to advertisers or other sponsors. The kind of sex ed we offer – unapologetically queer, pro-abortion, feminist, justice-minded and pleasure-forward –  means that what paltry government funding there is for comprehensive sex education wouldn’t be within our reach without us…well, not being us. And it’s precisely who we are and how we do sex ed that served all the people we have over the years so well.

We center young people in our work, and believe they’re entitled to the kind of education and support they can access through our site and services for free. But even if we didn't, most of them don't have the ability to pitch in financially anyway. Yet if just 10% of adults in the lives of the young people who use Scarleteen in just one day became recurring donors, we'd be on track to sustain our site and its services for years to come.

There's a lot of scary stuff going on right now. Halloween is coming up, so some of it is the fun, silly kind.  We also happen to live in a particular kind of hellscape at the moment, so some of it is literally horrifying and all too real.  But despite how its opponents deceptively frame it, there's nothing scary about quality, inclusive, accessible sex ed. What's scary is having to go *without* it, especially in these times.

We're back to celebrate our fave holiday while also asking folks if they might be able to help sustain us in a few different ways, whether that's about donations, taking part in our raffle (so many cool things!), helping get the word out about these and our other fun stuff afoot this week to others, or helping us find some new members to join our volunteer team.

do you have sexuality or relationship questions? are you looking for really, really good sex ed that is actually comprehensive, inclusive, and judgment-free? you're looking for scarleteen.

scarleteen has been providing safe, fact-based sex ed and relationship info for over twenty years. their founder, heather corinna, is a champion for inclusivity and getting information into the hands of those who need it, and has written several books on topics like gender inclusive menopause and sex ed.

if you're in the sort of place where you can donate money to a great organization that does incredible work, consider making them your choice.

im still writing that damned article bout right wing moral panics and for some reason i ended up in scarleteen and WOW that website was truly everything to me. i feel like it has faded from popularity and i rly wish it hadn’t bc it is the best resource for teenagers coming into sexuality. i have so much love and affection for scarleteen honestly

Reminder that friendship is not inherently a necessary part of life. Not everyone requires friendships to be emotionally fulfilled. Nonfriending and plato averse and/or repulsed people exist and we are very cool!

(Exclus dni, don't derail to talk about how important friendship is, "concern" over our mental health for being nonfriending is NOT welcome here)

hey do they make sexy gay regency novels that don’t ever sanctimoniously lay out the author’s social justice opinions

as an aroace person with limited sexual experience, no interest in watching porn, and poor sex ed as a teen, there IS something simultaneously funny and vaguely tragic about being 28 adult years old and realising how extremely tiny your frame of reference is for genitalia and deciding you should expand this to better understand bodies (yours and others). and then you're just there like "okay so what the fuck do I even google right now, anyway"

VALIDATION LEVEL 1000: spoke with an actual sex therapist who agreed with me that Scarleteen is really confusingly organized and it’s hard to find things on there.

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It’s our 25th birthday! We’ve been doing all we do for a quarter century, for somewhere in the neighborhood of 90 million people in total.

You heard us right: 25 years of actually groundbreaking, original, smart, brave, pleasure-forward, caring, inclusive, shame-free, body-loving, learner-led, holistic, progressive, feminist, wholly independent and for-real and FOR FREE comprehensive queer sex ed for around 90,000,000 people around the world and counting under our belt now. That's a helluva thing for a scrappy grassroots sex education resource that started completely from scratch.

Our work is as essential now as ever. We’ve been experiencing a growing wave of legislation designed to cut young people off from vital and wanted information, support and community, especially young queer and trans people. In the last several years, we’ve also seen many sources of independent, feminist and queer, media shutter or give up their independence, some at the cost of their ingenuity or integrity. Scarleteen is and has always been fully independent, feminist, queer media. We don’t de-fang our content in order to appeal to advertisers or other sponsors. We offer unapologetically queer, pro-abortion, feminist, justice-minded and pleasure-forward sex education, and we have since we were a 🦄 in all that.

To help sustain Scarleteen through 2024 and the coming years, we need about 750 new people to sign up as recurring donors (you can see our progress towards that goal in the second graphic on this post). If we were there for you when you were younger; if you use us in your class, your curriculum, your counseling or healthcare office; if you refer young people to us; if you share our content on your social media, pass it to friends, or as a resource for your own research or writing; if our work has helped or does helps you in any way? We hope that if you're able, you'll consider becoming a recurring donor today, and will let others know about both the value of our resource, and our need for some help to keep on doing everything we do. 💗 🎉

Check out a 25 year timeline of our work and learn how to help with a donation or by hosting an online fundraiser

"So much of the current anti-trans rhetoric hides behind language of “concern.” If you’re a parent or other supportive adult who is earnestly concerned about a young person, that language can make you feel like seeking support that may or does include gender-affirming care for a trans youth isn’t a wise or caring decision. This is the exact reason that language is being used.

Think back to anti-abortion rhetoric, for example, to the bills that force waiting periods (waiting periods we know only make things more difficult for those seeking abortion) deceptively stating they are out⁠ of “concern” that the people seeking abortions are rushing their decision. It’s the same thing with trans care; “concern” is used to introduce a (often poorly disguised) barrier to care, in hopes of eventually making that care inaccessible.

I’m going to go over some of the clues that a resource or person’s only concern is directing people away from trans-affirming care and towards harmful, anti-trans spaces or approaches.

I’ll get to the list in a second, but my biggest piece of advice is: If a resource, person, or service presents being trans as the result of trauma⁠, social contagion, peer pressure or of literally anything other than one of the many ways humans experience gender, do not pass go."

Everyone repeat after me:

Misoprostol

4 doses of 200 mg under the tongue

30 minutes

Swallow

2 hours of wait

Repeat as necessary

Memorize it in case it's ever illegal to spread or speak of.

Did yall know about scarleteen.com as a teen ? I did. It's still around. It's interesting to contrast with others claiming that it's become more taboo esp over the past five years to have honest discussions about teenage sexuality. It talks about trans and intersex issues, sexual health of all bodies, abuse, etc.