Ugg! I’ve got the worst cold today. And here I am writing an entry for the Scarleteen Sex-Ed Blog Carnival. Instead of feeling like an all-American male sexpert I feel roughly as sexy as room-temperature jello.

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But that’s actually a perfect hook for this post! When you’re sick a track coach or personal trainer might be able to give you some good advice but really the best person to talk to is a doctor. Similarly, when you’re trying to start a business it’s fascinating to talk to an accountant or patent lawyer. But you’ll get much better advice from your local Small Business Administration. Well, it’s the same thing with sexperts vs sex educators.

Why? Fitness experts and doctors, accountants and small-business consultants, sexperts and sex educators all have very different skill sets. One set is great when you’re already on your feet and ready to run, the other set is about getting you up on your feet in the first place. The first are great for helping you fine-tune the instrument you’re already playing, the second are best when you’re not even sure what instrument you want to play.

Enter Scarleteen. There’s actually a very good chance that founder Heather Corinna knows more about all the different ways one or more can enjoy sex than Dr. Kinsey and Dr. Ruth combined. But guess what? You’ll only find a fraction of all that information in the thousands of pages of Scarleteen. Why? Because what Heather and her staff of volunteers brings to Scarleteen is a deep and committed awareness of what it takes to get from the unformed stirrings of puberty to self discovery of what works for beginners. And pre-beginners.

Heather and I used to be nearly neighbors, and while she was finishing her book S.E.X. The All-You-Need-to-Know Progressive Sexuality Guide to Get You Through High School and College. And so I got to hear a lot about the various experts she first spoke to and her frustration with their emphasis on technique (“You gotta get ‘em started on bondage right away.” “Make sure they know about the logistics of multiple partners.” And “sex toys and lube, sex toys and lube!”) It’s not, she said, that those things aren’t interesting, important, or fun. It’s that almost by definition by the time you’re experienced to credibly call yourself an expert at sex you’ve… pretty much forgotten your very earliest sexual feelings. (Hint #1: For almost everyone by the first time you have sex nor even the first time you kiss you’ve been in sexual development for years.)

And one of the tricks about trying to jump straight to technique is that you’re leapfrogging a heck of a lot of other critical steps. Such as, oh, I don’t know, identifying your feelings and determining or at least confirming your primary orientations. There’s also learning to handle previously unfamiliar hormonal surges. And coming to grips with ongoing body changes. Then there’s coming to grips with personal and group identity formation. And how about worrying like crazy that your erections, or lubrication, or breasts, or hair patterns, or even just acne and voice changes are “normal” when they sure as heck weren’t there last year and they don’t feel normal to you now! Oh yeah, and how about negotiation, boundaries, deconstructing lockerroom, media, magazine, and porn chatter? How about physical and psychological integrity? How about safety? How about learning tolerance for others? How about learning to expect and demand tolerance for yourself?

What’s great about good sex education, and Scarleteen’s commitment in particular, is they’re focused on sexual development and not just the (very good) “good stuff” sexperts are able to offer once you’re ready. Sexperts are darn good at helping you stay healthy and whole while having a blast. Sex educators are darn good at helping you grow up for yourself.

The world would be a sorrier place without both sexperts and sex educators. But the world would also be a sorrier place if we confused the two.

That’s why I think the standard admonition on so many sex-oriented websites to “Visit Scarleteen if you’re under 18” is so great. It’s not just ass-covering. If you think about it even for a moment you realize it’s appropriate and even generous.

In fact, I’ve (finally!) added a link to Scarleteen at the top of the left sidebar.

Via Facebook Heather Corinna says: “@Scarleteen’s matching campaign this w/e we’ve $746 & only one day left: please help us get to $2,500 & I can STFU & leave you alone! :)”

They’ve actually got a couple hundred dollars more since she made the request but there’s still a long way to go. You can help. So if you’re interested in highly appropriate, non-gender-judgmentalsex education for a desperately underserved population (middle-school through college aged people) don’t stop, don’t think, click the Scarleteen donation page and donate anywhere from a couple of dollars (what they mostly get, mostly from kids who are digging deep) to the roughly $1,000 they need to snag the matching grant to, well, enough to properly endow a foundation to give the site, its founder, its scores of volunteers, and its countless (ok, 1,000,000,000+ a year) users the backing they deserve.

The place to click, again, is Help Support Scarleteen.

Speaking of which, one of my projects for the following year is to try and find some more stable, and serious, sources of funding for Scarleteen. More on that later.

For now, though, at the risk of sounding too much like an NPR host during pledge week, you can double the impact of your donation if you can do it today. So do it today right now: Help Support Scarleteen at Scarleteen.com.

Over on the wonderful sex-ed site Scarleteen.com authors CJ Turett and Heather Corinna have posted an in-depth, non-gender-specific article called “Let’s Get Metaphysical: The Etiquette of Entry.”

Vaginal intercourse, anal intercourse, placing fingers inside a vagina or anus, fellatio (blowjobs), in plenty of ways with cunnilingus (oral sex for women), and even kissing with your tongue are all some ways we might enter someone else’s body or have someone else enter our own.

All text quoted in this post are from here.

First of all it’s just so cool that they’re calling it “entry,” which locates things in the person entered instead of “penetration,” which tends to emphasize the person doing the entering. And with that in mind here’s a clip on the section about why they think it’s important to deconstruct entry in the first place.

• The person whose body is being entered is usually at a higher risk of injury or sexually transmitted infections, because it is their genital tissue which is most likely to wind up with small abrasions, fissures or micro-tears. For any partner involved, when there is bodily entry going on, the stakes are higher than they are with, say, dry sex, or rubbing someone’s breasts or penis.

• The person whose body is being entered is often the person more likely to experience any pain or discomfort, often due to things like nerves, inadequate arousal or lubrication, or an aggressive or over-eager partner.

• If we’re talking about an instance of sex and a combination of body and parts that could possibly result in pregnancy, it’s the person whose body is being entered who is at risk of pregnancy.

• Many people have had or do have trauma when it comes to others entering their bodies, whether due to the forced entry of rape, having experienced pain in the past with entry, medical abuses, childbirth experiences, or experiences with a previous partner who disrespected or disregarded limits, boundaries, or desire. Both the physical body and the mind remember pain, so previous pain — be that physical and/or emotional — can make entry scary for some people or trigger some challenging or painful emotions regarding previous traumatic experiences.

• We have a lot of cultural baggage that says only women get entered and only men do the entering, or that any kind of entry is a kind of violation or powerplay. For some men, a lot of homophobia can also be tied up into them being entered, as entrance has historically been constructed as a passive or more feminine role. Balancing our desire or interests with our community, family, or religious values—as well as what we’ve been taught from other places—is not always an easy task.

• Some people may have gender identity issues with either being entered or entering someone’s body. The ways we feel about our own bodies and body parts, and whether those align with what our partners may see about us or understand about our identities, can sometimes be confusing. Regardless of our gender, we may also have preferences about what kind of sexual roles we see as acceptable or desirable for ourselves.

• Some people also have shame tied up into the insides of their body, or the fluids or substances with which contact can be made, particularly when entry is involved.

And from a section on entry, personal space, and boundaries

This might sound a little hokey, but entrance into another body — whether you are inviting it for yourself or someone else is inviting you inside of them — is often a profound moment of connection. While all sexual activity, regardless of whether or not there is entry present, is an opportunity for this sort of connection, physically crossing into and entering into another body can be highly emotional for a lot of people. But it’s easy to forget or overlook that when you’re busy thinking about everything else, like how to physically go about it or how you’re performing or whether or not you’re “doing it right”.

And a historically-critical from a section called “A Vagina is Not a Sock, and Other Helpful Hints”

With any bodily orifice, we’re not talking about something that is passive or just lying around. Body parts exist within relationship to other body parts, within relationship to complex bodily systems, reactions, and interactions. The mouth is active and full of muscles. The vagina is a muscle. The anal sphincters, anus, and rectum are muscles. And with any of those parts, if we’re really paying attention rather than going into our own heads or focusing only on our own bodies, we can feel when they are really are opening up to us and when they are not.

And, a fairly big one, from the section on patriarchal, feminist, and heteronormative constructions of entry

Heterocentrism also makes it really easy to skew this conversation to only be about heterosexually-identified people who were assigned male at birth (and who still identify as male) with people who were assigned female at birth (and who still identify as female). Heterocentrism can mean that we often default to viewing penis-in-vagina sex as “real” sex, and anything else as somehow less or not valid even though they really are mighty similar and have some very important things in common.

On distinguishing between body signals, body language, and verbal consent

Lest we unintentionally send an inaccurate message, this is not to say that if the bodily signals are there (erection, lubrication, a flushed face or chest, increased swelling around the genitals, increased heart rate—all of which can be signals of arousal) then all systems are a go and you have complete liberty to do as you may with your partner. Nope. All of the signals need to be in alignment, and indicators of bodily readiness can only take on meaning in the presence of verbal consent. Consent is not simply the absence of NO; it’s an active statement of yes, and a freely given and enthusiastic YES at that.

And finally from a section on the language of entry itself

The wording and construct of “penetration” can imply that one person is pushing through or into another, often by overcoming resistance. In some contexts, that word can deny or make invisible the fact that while, indeed, sometimes that can be how an encounter goes – particularly when we’re talking about rape rather than consensual partnered sex – that’s not actually what is going on when sex is wanted by all partners, and everyone is emotionally present and bodies are fully engaged.

...

Instead of saying “receptive,” when we talk about the partner who is being entered, we might say that a partner and their body are welcoming, yielding, inviting, taking in, enfolding, embracing. Heck, even “entry” is a bit limited. We’re short of language for so much of what we’re talking about here in large part because for such a long time the ways that we’ve talked about sex were (and in many ways still are) all caught up in the politics of separateness, inequality, of conquering, and of power-over rather than power shared.

I’m sure it sounds like I’ve just quoted the whole thing. But Heather and CJ have put a lot of work into this. Oh, and incidentally, except for a few posts by people like Bitchy Jones, most of the work on… I dunno… call it the philosophy of entry/penetration was done back in the 1970s. And a lot has changed since then. Anyway, it’s good stuff and I highly recommend it.

Some time last Summer while I was getting excited about the genuinely great, and often hard-nosed advice the great sex-ed-for-young-people website Scarleteen.com, the anti-feminist author Wendy Shalit decided Scarleteen was sending all the wrong messages. (Meaning sending the wrong messages to young girls, of course, since in the world people like Shalit live in boys are evidently immune. Or expendable. But at any rate better left unreached because otherwise you couldn’t blame everything including their behavior on girls. But I digress….)

As her fellow anti-feminist Mona Charen columnist at the conservative Townhall.com put it in a review of Shalit’s Girls Gone Mild

Scarleteen offers a “sex readiness checklist” for young girls to help them gauge whether they should plunge into the fun. Among the items: “I see a doctor regularly,” and “I have a birth control budget of $50 per month.” The emotional readiness a girl should demonstrate is “I can separate love from sex.” Shalit notes, “Those who can separate love from sex are mature, like jaded adults. They are ready to embark on a lifetime of meaningless encounters.”

Charen said it here.

Here’s a link to the page in question: Ready or Not? The Scarleteen Sex Readiness Checklist. Let me know if you think Shalit, or Charen’s characterizations were accurate.

I know! Let’s make it a treasure hunt: How long does it take you to find those three bullet points on that page? And after you did find them would you consider them the most characteristic points on the page? Actually probably not.

In fact what you’d probably take away if, unlike Shalit or Charen, you’d read it would be that whereas Scareleteen is very non-judgmental about sex itself it’s actually pretty hard-assed about whether and when you’re ready to have it at all. Which, as we’ll see, is probably why Shalit didn’t pull somewhat different quotes instead.

How about:

Why do I want to do this?

If either of you wants to do it because you feel you must or should, because one of you is pressuring the other, you’re getting pressure from friends, or if you’re having troubles in your relationship and you think sex will fix it, stop right there; wake up and smell the double-latte. You’re completely off-base. Another thing to give you pause might be if you’re fantasizing about sex based on movies or television: remember how in Tom and Jerry cartoons, Tom could hit a wall and walk away from it just fine, and you knew that wouldn’t work in real life? Same goes with a lot of sex in movies and television; it isn’t often as it appears. Also, if you simply want to unburden yourself of your virginity with no one in particular, you might want to think again. In most studies, most women (and some men) who have handled it that way weren’t so jazzed about that choice later.

Op Cit. or some other fancy citation thingie.

Woah! Instead of telling girls “sex isn’t for you it’s for your husband” it tells boys and girls to question their motivations for having sex. (And, I might add, every word on that page just as valid after marriage as before! Since “a minister signed a piece of paper” doesn’t make you ready either if you weren’t ready before.)

And how about:

...there isn’t a statute of limitations on your sex life, and it doesn’t begin or end with intercourse. You can initiate any level of it at any time during your life, and change what you want to do as you go along, determining at any time what is best for you, and for your partner(s). If you haven’t checked almost all of the things on those lists, take a look at the ones you didn’t check and try and figure out what you need to do for yourself right now. There is no reason to set yourself up for a fall, or rush into something that won’t be enjoyable or rewarding, when it isn’t going to go away if you wait. Be honest with yourself, and above all else, do what is right for YOU.

Again, not telling girls not to let unworthy men take what’s rightfully their husbands, and therefore probably of zero interest to the “modesty” (a.k.a. pussy-bank trustee) obsessed Shalit. But, when you think about it, a far firmer exhortation to abstinence than conservatives are ever able to muster because for Scareleteen, and me (thus the blog title) virginity-ending intercourse inside or outside of marriage is just the beginning of what one should expect to be a long and enjoyable sex life.[*] Meanwhile conservatives, who see their job as sort of moral refrigerators struggling to keep “meat” from spoiling till it’s ready to be consumed, could give a flying fuck what happens to girls after they get lint on their lollypops (or, in conservative John Derbyshire’s case, hair.)

And another thing. Assuming they bothered to read it at all, the real clincher, the real red flag to conservatives and other anti-feminist women would be

Who do I want to do this for?

If it’s for you, and your partner as well as you, then that’s great. But if it is for someone else primarily, and not for yourself — or JUST for yourself — stop now. Other people, just like you, have hands and fingers. They know how to use them to get off, and you can rest assured they’ve been using them long before you came along. Sex with someone else shouldn’t be about self-gratification; that’s what masturbation is for. If your friends are saying you should, with no understanding of your relationship, or your own needs, they’re being crappy friends. Nine times out of ten, a lot of friends who pressure their friends to have sex do so because they don’t feel all that good about their own choices, and want to hide behind endorsing sex to make themselves feel better. Tell them to carry their own baggage, not try and pass it off on you.

Because with these people if you’re a woman there’s only one person you want to have sex for and that’s whatever man gets the contract. And because with these people if you’re a man then you don’t want to go thinking about anyone else’s feelings because then the system would fall apart.

And finally?

And not to grind it in or anything but let’s look at that one line both Shalit and Charen got all scandalized about: “I can separate love from sex.”

This is not an digression: You wanna know my favorite dirty joke? Ok, Question: what happened to the couple that couldn’t tell the difference between vaseline and window putty? Answer: Their windows fell out.

Now why do I love that joke? Because it’s only a dirty joke if you’ve got a dirty mind. And why is this not a digression? Because conservatives assumed Scarleteen meant can you avoid love and have sex anyway when it’s pretty clear from the context that the question instead is can you avoid confusing sex and love! Because, think about it, how many young people have included “but we’re in love…” when trying to explain what might have been an avoidable catastrophe to their parents? Again, for conservatives those catastrophes are important object lessons (just like recessions and depressions) and permit a sense of smug superiority to those who don’t get caught. So anyway, like my favorite joke, complaining about Scarleteen’s sex-vs.-love distinction indicates whether or not your mind’s in the gutter. (They might need a towel but don’t let them use your nice ones.)

Now there’s a reason I bring all this up, and that’s because around the time Shalit’s book came out I discovered that I’m practically neighbors with Heather Corinna, who runs Scarleteen. And because I was totally impressed with how hard Corinna works to make sure that young people grow up wisely and well so that they can have long, happy, non-fucked up adult sex lives I contacted her and we quickly became friends, fellow brainstormers, sympathizers, and weekly coffee buddies. Call that a disclaimer if you like, or a “full disclosure,” but just remember that it was her work that drew me to contact Corinna and not the other way around.

And anyway, because I was impressed with her work, and because from my background in instructional design for adults and curriculum design for children I know just how incredibly hard it really is to knit stuff like that together. And so when knuckleheads like Shalit go nutpicking minor points it ticks me off (just as it ticks me off when their counterparts go braying about how there’s too much emphasis on personal responsibility and too many warnings about predatory partners male or female.)

The bottom line, anyway, is that there’s more to real, responsible sex education than utterly ignoring one gender while exhorting the other to keep their knees together till their husband buys his license to pry them apart. No matter how terribly romantic that sounds to people with their minds in the gutter.

[*] Actually, of course, even for heterosexuals penis-in-vagina intercourse is only one of many sexual milestones. Millions of other perfectly sexual content people may never have it.