I'm sorry you're feeling like this, whytho, and I'm also sorry that you have to live with vaginismus. What I am getting is that what you're looking for from this is pleasure, above and beyond all else. I wonder: do other kinds of pleasure -- of feeling good -- feel accessible to you? How about kinds...

Hey there, moth. It feels to me like there are two things going on here: 1) You not having the privacy you need for your own masturbation/solo sexuality in your home, and 2) Your desire to be with a sexual partner. These are pretty different things, so let's come at them separately. In terms of the ...

Oh, wow. It is Sam's day off, but all of us who are here today are so glad to hear this good news for you.

I love your answer to the previous question. I think in part because for so long -- and for so many people still -- the idea was anything sexual was only genital, a lot of people absorbed the idea that so long as your genitals are okay and good to go, the rest of us should be. But you're right, and ...

You and I also have had our fair share of money struggles, and I feel like that's something that also often gets discounted as having an impact on our sexualities, relationships, overall health and sexual lives. What do you say we talk a little bit about some poverty hacks in these arenas?

These are great, thanks. Sofi, what can we pass on to readers managing chronic illness that we know from our work and our personal lives about how to best care for themselves while also wanting to engage in a sexual life?

Hey, everyone! Me again, Heather, the founder and one of the co-directors here at Scarleteen. I'm here again this time to moderate a conversation with Sofi! Sofi first came into Scarleteen as an intern in 2020 while studying Gender and Sexuality Studies in college, and has been a sex educator ever s...

Cool question! I'm not sure there is one of those, not universally, anyway, because we all don't need or want the same things (which is a big part of why we have such a vast amount of content at Scarleteen and why we offer direct services for people to bring their own questions and needs and get ans...

Oh gosh, you're welcome! I appreciate that thanks a lot. I'm so proud of the work we've all done here and its value to so many people, and I love hearing about the specific ways it's helped someone. This is a good question! Let me think quickly through it! I'm long-winded, so summaries can take more...

I love this question! I'm both lucky and unlucky in that for most of the years I have done this work, I have not only been my own boss, I have built a workplace from the ground up that was, in a lot of ways, custom-built for my brain. (There's a whole separate part of this conversation about how muc...

Only two of my own solo, but another with Isabella Rotman, and a pile of forewords and anthologies, for sure! Honestly I haven't written as many as I'd like because the publishing industry is such a SLOG. You know, one thing that is sadly still pretty relevant and often gets lost in the shuffle is a...

For Audra! Hey you! <3 You know, I honestly feel like I have been building most of those models myself throughout so much of my life, because so many of what's existed before me or even at the time just hasn't fit, but then, if we're really tailoring all of our relationships to fit us, won't that al...

Per imagraden's question: I love this question. It's hard for me to imagine how being queer DOESN'T impact my work here. I'm someone who knew I was when I was very, very young. While I didn't have any language for it then, by the time I was ten, I knew and it was part of some of my childhood feeling...

Oh gosh, there's little I DON'T do! But these days, most of my time and energy goes to our creative and educational direction, all of our editorial content -- I'm our lone editor! -- design, budgeting, accounting and fundraising, partnerships and PR, project management and I still take part in our d...

Thanks, Kier! And sure! For one, it's not every day that you even meet someone who has been a sex educator for over a quarter century without any lapses, let alone who has done the vast majority of it independently and pretty much daily. So, I'm so here for veteran sex educator questions. I also lov...

Thanks! I love these answers! Particular high-fives to bringing up the fat liberation and progressive sex ed intersection of bodily autonomy!

How about talking a little about your experience as an ace-spec person providing sex education?

One really wonderful fact about Scarleteen is that waaaaaaay back at the start of everything, the person who helps me most with it was the brilliant and wonderful fat activist (and one of my oldest friends) Hanne Blank. I love everything you've said here, and I know Hanne would, too. One of my favor...

I love all of that. I also envy you! In my era, the best we had for gender options was "androgynous" and that came with a very tacit expectation, almost a requirement, that you had to look that way in every aspect, a thing out of reach for anyone whose body had any kind of curve to it. I l...

As the person whose excited face you saw when you interviewed to volunteer, you know how happy I am that you did!

Can you say some more about your experience of both how it feels to find those safe spaces, and how it feels to provide them for people?

How about we start today by talking about how your own identities are part of the work that you do at Scarleteen, as well as part of what brought you to work with us in the first place?

Good morning, and happy Pride! I'm Heather, the founder of Scarleteen and one of our co-directors, and I'm here today to moderate a conversation with Ellie! Ellie is a fat, autistic, trans & non-binary queer person in Chicago, where I also live! Their pronouns are they/them and they identify wit...

Donnwannago, I just wanted to briefly poke my nose in to let you know that you aren't alone here as a rape survivor from assaults in your pre-teens and early teens. I'm also someone here who was assaulted in those ages, and I know what you mean when you say that people can tend to get particularly r...

Are you two using lots of lubricant, both before and during intercourse? Are you both also up to date with your sexual health screenings?

I don't know that I'd think of this as roulette, honestly. But for sure, if we want the methods of birth control or STI prevention we're using to be the most effective they can be, it's important we use them correctly. I do also want to add that it doesn't matter how much of the penis is inserted in...

So, unless your partner has had regular cycles for at least a few years and knows how to track her ovulation, there's really no point in trying to figure any of this out around that. That's just going to be so speculative as to be useless. Plus, if this is something that already happened, there's no...