A few weeks ago, I took my seat in the huge auditorium of my East Coast college preparatory boarding school for Proctor Training. The week-long event involved a series of workshops and lectures that t...
Ok, I’ll admit to watching an episode or two (or six) of The Bachelorette this season. For those who haven't watched, the show focuses on one woman's quest to find a perfect match among a group of mal...
Growing up, I was neither educated nor had positive conversations about sex. It was a taboo topic in my family. My mother especially refused to discuss it (even when I brought it up) and my father com...
On March 30th, 33-year-old Purvi Patel was sentenced to 20 years in prison. She is the first woman in the United States convicted of feticide. But there is far more to this case than that fact alone r...
Today is the 3rd National Youth HIV and AIDS Awareness Day — a meaningful day for us as an adolescent health educator and feminist youth worker. But we weren't always as aware or passionate about educ...
I am the proud graduate of an all-girls high school. While some of my peers sought boys out, spending time at our brother school down the road, I ended up having limited contact with the opposite sex,...
If you haven't already heard of Laci Green, your life is about to change. The 25-year-old sex positivity educator and vlogger is the awesome, feminist big sister you’ve always wanted. And all of her c...
Access to education is a fundamental right. But are all American students learning everything they need to know? The use of abstinence-only education in schools is archaic and absurd, and yet it’s a c...
Like many (if not most) teens across the country, my high school health textbook had almost no practical sex ed information. It had a abstinence contract, pages and pages on why we should wait and one...
I went to a weird elementary school. It was a hybrid between co-educational and single sex classrooms. The idea was that as children grow older, the differences between the ways boys and girls learned...
Once considered niche performers, YouTube vloggers are increasingly jumping off our computer screens and becoming celebrities in the real-world sense. They play concerts around the world, have clothin...
One Friday evening this spring, I stood in the courtyard outside my dorm with a friend. The sun was setting and students were performing their pre-party rituals around us. It was the first temperate d...
Warning: This piece contains material about sexual assault that may be upsetting to some readers.
Sexual assault wasn’t a problem on my radar until it happened to me. But two and a half years ago, I ...
It started with a Facebook post. Last summer, a Facebook friend posed the question: "If you would teach your daughter about protection, then why wouldn't you teach your son about respect?"After I read...
What is with this unnecessary need to shame, bully, and stereotype teen mothers in an attempt to decrease teen pregnancy? Teen pregnancy prevention campaigns DO NOT have to be at the expense of a teen...
Masturbation. Up until I was 17 years old, the word alone sent shivers down my spine – and not the fun type. I was petrified of my body and the pleasure I knew it could bring me. I saw touching onesel...
I think that most people can agree that being a mother is one of the most important jobs in the world. Mothers shape future generations and thus the future failures and successes of humanity. Being a ...
Teach Safe Touch advocates for the health and dignity of all by challenging the current Minnesota sex education curriculum to include masturbation as a safe-sex alternative.
We created Teach Safe Tou...
I lost my virginity at sixteen to a boy who was just a friend. I was blessed to have friends who where very open minded and accepted that fact. I know from experience that some people would not take t...
What issue is ever quite as controversial as sex? How to have it, why to have it, who’s having it, who shouldn’t be, what should happen afterwards. Sex is always divisive to begin with; it’s one of th...
Over the past few weeks, there has been an influx of accepted students on Barnard's campus. I've tried to talk to as many as possible, successfully resisting the urge to desperately grab them and urge...
Feminism is a huge part of my life; it is as core to who I am as my hazel eyes or the heart-shaped birthmark on my calf. As such, I believe strongly in feminist sex education – sex ed that teaches stu...
The International Women’s Rights Collective (IWRC) went to the third annual Women in the World Summit last weekend. The Summit, as I expected, was built on post-imperialistic rhetoric where women from...
Is it a widespread tendency of conservative politicians to both promote abstinence-only sex education, which research shows contributes significantly to increasing teen pregnancy rates, and be anti-ab...