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| I think I was about nine, if memory serves me. It started with
something like: "A man and a woman lie very close together..."
By the end of the first sentence, I was white-knuckling the sides of my chair, HORRIFIED to imagine that a male was equipped with a hose-like, telescopic, and most likely COILED sexual appendage that could unfurl at will and actually REACH a female lying by his side in bed. I went deaf and mute from fear. Months later, confused, shy, and still reeling from the new "information," I looked to my school to shed light on the sexual fog now growing in my head. "So, You Want To Be A Woman?" the blue sex-ed class pamphlet enticed, promising page after page of cheek-reddening, breast-heaving, hair-covered answers, or so I hoped. Instead, I discovered page after page of approximately four hundred and one ways to so extensively clean yourself, you could perform surgery in your crotch. Sigh. Where was Heather Corinna when I needed her? Probably sitting next to me in sex-ed class, silently lifting a curled fist into the air and vowing, Norma Rae-like, to someday make a difference. And so she has. Heather is the founder and force behind Scarlet Teen (www.scarleteen.com), one of a cluster of new Internet resource websites offering answers to curious and often confused kids with questions about everything from their changing bodies and their first gynecological appointment, to their relationships, abuse, and all things related to s-s-s-sex. Undoubtedly there are parents out there who do not approve of young people having unmonitored access, or access at all, to this sort of information. This opinion is respected. But whether you approve of it or not, or are aware of it or not, your kids might be included in the group searching for enlightenment. Lucky for them, Heather and her staff of sex education experts are out there, devoting time and energy to empowering young surfers with accurate, useful, and possibly lifesaving information, all via the Information Superhighway. "I wanted to create a place," Heather said in a recent chat, "for young people to glean vital sexual information in a way which did not feel judgmental or preachy, but instead comfortable and human." Heather succeeded. The atmosphere of Scarlet Teen is a casual, funky, welcoming oasis in a topic that often suffers from a bad case of squeaky, white-tiled Clinical-osis. Split into two main sections -- Pink Slip for girls, Boyfriend! for guys -- Scarlet Teen offers informative articles on a variety of topics as well as Q&A advice columns for respective genders. Heather herself pens the answers for the Ask Mizz Scarlet column featured in Pink Slip. So what age are these surfin' kids we're talking about, anyway? Sixteen? Seventeen? Nope. "The youngest reader I've received a letter from was nine," Heather says, "and the eldest twenty-one. It's a pretty good range. Sadly, it hasn't been unusual for an eighteen-year-old to have the same level (or lack, really) of knowledge about basic human sexuality and anatomy as many of the twelve-year-olds." And what questions do you think hip, so-unlike-us-when-we-were-young, Internet-savvy millennium kids are asking these days? According to Heather, pretty much the same ones you wondered about when you were a kid. "Questions about technique are big," Heather continues, "though, most often, I can't answer those questions legally -- and even if I could, I probably would not. What I try to instill is that the right people to ask are themselves and their partners, and that communicating openly is really the only way in which everyone enjoys themselves. "It isn't unusual for those readers to write back and say they or their partners aren't comfortable talking about sex, to which my general response is that if we can't talk about something, we probably aren't ready to do it." Amen, Sister. "Other frequent questions include pregnancy scares. I wish as many of them that worry about pregnancy were worried about STDs, but they don't appear to be. Sexual body issues are another biggie. Worries about labia that are too long, an overabundance or lack of body hair, penis size, and so forth, appear with regularity. "Another big bunch are sexual 'myths' that peers and partners perpetuate, and teens write in for clarification (for example: that STDs cannot be contracted orally, that anal sex happens as often as vaginal sex, that men can tell when women are virgins, etc.)." What does an Internet resource offer a young person that is different from the sexual information resources of our generation? "With the anonymity the Internet affords," Heather explains, "readers seem more apt to ask questions they might not in the presence of someone who they feel might judge them, or be personally affected by their choices and thoughts. Also, many of the sexual resources available to them (in their school libraries or through sex-ed programs) are often outdated and do not have the most recent and accurate information. "A sad example of this is a young girl whose mother had recently died, and she had just gotten her first menses. Too embarrassed to ask her father for help, she wrote me because she could not find the 'belt' in the package of pads she had bought. Talk about outdated." Are there downsides to young people surfing the Internet for this sort of information? "It is highly difficult to do a search in most search engines for 'sexual information,' or 'sexual education,' and get an accurate result. More often than not, most of the engines will pull up sexual entertainment sites or pornography using those keywords, to try and bring in more traffic." What sort of feedback have you received regarding Scarlet Teen? Have any parents written to you? "The feedback has really been wonderful, which frankly, surprised me. I expected to get a good deal of negative feedback, but to date, I've received less than a handful of negative letters form parents, teens, or other readers. The few that I did mainly had trouble with the site's pro-choice stance, and the one other I can recall was from a wonderful parent who simply didn't understand that many parents were not as open and honest as he was with his kids about sex. Teens also write in incessantly, and they are generally very grateful and express that gratitude beautifully." Thanks, Heather! TM & © Copyright 1999, 2000 Oxygen Media. All rights reserved. |
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