Scarleteen

Hello everyone!

I am 30 year old male. For the majority of my life I have been struggling with very dogmatic cultural views on relationships, gender and sex. Views like that only "real" sex is penetrative sex, very rigid stereotypical gender roles and so on. Sometimes in the past I was able to trust myself and be myself, sometimes the cultural pressure to comform to toxic stereotypes felt too big. Scarleteen helped me a lot with all of this and pushed me towards being a better person.

I have two questions.
1. Should I be reading Scarleteen as a 30 year old or is this website for teenagers and young aduls only? There are times when I read Scarleteen and feel inadequate because of my age. At the same time I know how much your content is helping me.

2. Could you guys recommend me some books or authors that talk about how western culture negatively influences our relationships and sexuality?

Thank you all so much here at Scarleteen for doing what you are doing!

Hey Joyful Hugs!

It's so lovely to have people who used Scarleteen when younger come back. I have been here since I was 17 and I never left, and now I'm 30 too! Although of course, I'm here as a staff member even if I happen to continue to learn.

I know many people of all ages read the website, because honestly our sexual culture is kinda wonky and there are things we can learn at all ages.

Our direct services like the message boards are much more focused on young people, and we differ from resources who work in adult sex ed in a bunch of ways, mostly because there are specific issues that come with being a younger person exploring sexuality. We occasionally have people past their twenties here but we do ask that they respect that we prioritise younger people.

Book recommendations: I haven't read all of it myself but Unscrewed by Jaclyn Friedman, as I understand it, does a broad exploration of addressing the issues in western sexual culture, it could be worth a try!

Our own Impurity Culture series from Emily Joy and Hannah Boning could be helpful too, depending on what cultural issues you are thinking of.