A few weeks ago I mentioned a great site for sex information for teens, Scarleteen. Directly on the heels of that I discovered that the site relies entirely on donations to "provide comprehensive, inclusive and original sex education for millions of young adults each year." No ads**, no sponsors, no obligations to anyone but the people they serve. For more information on what they need in order to serve their readers go here. Last Friday kicked off three weeks of fund raising via a "Blog Carnival" with bloggers writing about Scarleteen and all that it does for Sex Education.
One thing I regret about my earlier endorsement of Scarleteen is not having enough examples of how their work helps people. AAG has collected a list of links to all the posts that are part of the carnival. She's also been posting particularly important excerpts from posts and the more I read the more it's reinforced for me that we are kneecapping the children of the world by not doing everything we can to educate them about this vital and pervasive part of our lives. Here are just a couple of links to posts AAG has highlighted.
- An older sibling finds out that her younger brother has been given blatantly false contraception information in a sexual education class, probably as a perceived plug for abstinence.
- What would happen if we handled financial education the way we do sex education?
- Sometimes it's important for even the most progressive and open parents to have someone else who is trustworthy for their kids to talk to about sex.
You all know that I started this site in part because women were saying they had no one to talk to about questions, concerns and curiosities. If we have ever felt underinformed, isolated or confused regarding sex and sexuality doesn't it make sense that we should be the ones keeping our children from feeling the same way? Perhaps it could even help prevent them from repeating our missteps. There are no guarantees in life but what would we be if we didn't even try. We have to try. Even Lyle Lovett says so.
Scarleteen and its founder, Heather Corinna, work tirelessly to make sure that every young person who comes to them (and plenty of older people, too) gets honest, accurate, constructive answers. This week alone the Twitter stream reminded young men who don't want to be fathers that refusing to wear condoms was contradictory to that agenda and reinforced for all young people that we make mistakes and it's part of learning. The learning is the important part and Scarleteen needs our support to continue to teach this lessons. Will you please help?
** Just got a note from Heather Corinna via AAG to correct a mistake on my part. HC says, "We aren't ad-free. We do use Google ads when we don't have paying adverts, which is almost always, and we're very selective about advertisers, but yeah, we have ads." I apologize for the misinformation and thank the ladies for clearing up my gaffe.
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