Heather Corinna

Last April, Scott Bloch, appointed by President Bush after serving as associate director of the Office of Faith Based and Community Initiatives, ordered the removal of sexual orientation as a protected category on the office’s website as well as its removal from all training materials from his office. He announced that he was initiating a review of the legal underpinnings of the long standing policy while calling on his staff to catch up on the large backlog of other discrimination complaints not yet investigated by his office.

Need to check out what your sexually transmitted disease or infection risk might be in a jiffy?

If we look at our sexuality one way, it looks a million times simpler than it actually is. If we look at it another way, it appears a million times more complicated. While it’s important that we bear everything in mind we need to in terms of infection and disease, birth control, our relationships, our bodies and the whole works, now and then we need to remember the bare bones and the human element of the thing, and keep the essentials in the forefront of our minds.

There are instances in which condom use alone - or the use of dental dams and gloves – cannot offer the level of STI protection they can in other instances, with STIs which are transmitted not via fluid exchange, but by skin-to-skin contact: namely two of the most common STIs, HPV and Herpes.

Enough people don’t talk about abortion. Too many people don’t listen to those who do. I’m not talking about conceptually or hypothetically. I’m not talking about discussing this woman or that who you knew that aborted or did not. I’m talking about talking about abortion; intimately, personally. In public, not in secrecy.

Vaginal secretions are how the vagina cleanses and regulates itself — how amazing is that? — in the same sort of way that saliva helps keep your mouth clean.

We talk a lot about sexual safety and safer sex here at Scarleteen in terms of your physical health. But what about checking in to see if sex is safe for you and yours emotionally? Taking care of your emotions, looking out for risk factors in advance – not just when they become an existing crisis – and safeguarding yourself, your partners and those around you from needless hurt and harm is just as important as doing what you can to prevent STIs and unwanted pregnancies.

Everything I needed to know about body image I learned in a bathroom in the seventh grade. Well, almost everything.

Have you just come out of the closet, or are you peeking through the keyhole thinking about it? Is life on the outside starting to look inviting, shiny and new? (Yes, even you back there, hiding behind that box of moth balls and Aunt Ethel’s spectator pumps.)

When we look in the mirror as a culture, our tendency toward hysteria always seems to hover in our communal blind spot. We’re not very good at seeing when groups with a political or social agenda are manipulating us with fear, often the unreasonable, irrational fear of the taboo.