Undersage Sex? It's Not a Big Problem | Guardian {featured read}

In response to new research on the number of youth who have sex in England comes this refreshing commentary about the situation of sex among youth there, presenting an uplifting contrast to the negative situation of underage sex in the US as portrayed in Dirty Little Secrets.

Excerpt:
It is true that underage sexual activity in girls is rising at a higher rate than in boys, but I don't believe underage sex is an inherent problem; the age of consent is largely arbitrary. If a girl has safe consensual sex with another girl or boy at 15, both are happy and there are no significant power-imbalances – that's fine. [...]

Like [shadow health minister Diane] Abbott, I am concerned about pornification, the way in which much mainstream porn presents women. I'm concerned that young women believe there is one right way to look during sex, and about the persistent tendency of mainstream media to present sexual activity between women as titillation for male viewers.

However, girls don't just have sex because they view themselves as "sex objects": teenage and even pre-teenage girls have sexual desires of their own. Sex isn't necessarily something that is done to girls, because they view themselves as sexual objects; it can be initiated and enjoyed by them. Indeed, the reason underage sex among girls is rising could be due to female sexuality becoming less taboo.
Read More at the Guaridan >>

Scarlet Road {featured film}

Scarlet Road Video from Paradigm Pictures on Vimeo.

Scarlet Road follows the work of Australian sex worker Rachel Wotton who specializes in a long over-looked clientele: people with disability.

Impassioned about freedom of sexual expression, Australian sex worker Rachel Wotton has become highly specialized in working with clients with disability. Rachel’s philosophy, that human touch and sexual intimacy can be some of the most therapeutic aspects to our existence, is making a dramatic impact on the lives of her clients ... While Rachel’s clients give a glimpse into their sexual self-discovery, Scarlet Road follows Rachel as she strives to increase awareness and access to sexual expression for people with disability. Rachel is also an active campaigner for both policy makers and the general public to recognise that sex work is work. She has been a part of an international movement to try to gain rights for sex workers and to end the social stigma and discriminatory practices that surround their occupation.

Dirty Little Secrets: The Flip Side of Denying Girls Pleasure {featured book}

Based on interviews with young women and solid research, Dirty Little Secrets: Breaking the Silence on Teenage Girls and Promiscuity (2011) unpacks, despite its title, not simply the subject of promiscuous girls, but in general how young women in our culture are denied the opportunity to develop a sexual identity on their own terms. Instead girls (and many women) see their identities as tied up with how boys (/men) view them, never quite measuring up. Above all, it shows how girls, taught not to be sexual, often have sex not for the sake of their own sexual pleasure, but to be accepted, seen, and, ironically, rescued from their belief that they are not good enough as they are.

The author, Kerry Cohen, is a practicing psychotherapist and once a "loose girl" herself; many will know her as the author of Loose Girl: A Memoir of Promiscuity (2008). As Cohen shows, the perpetuation of a "cultural narrative" that teaches young girls that "boys are horny, but girls are not, and so girls must do what they can to keep boys and their out-of-control hormones at bay," doesn't keep girls "safe" at all. Because "when you deny a group of people an essential part of who they are, a part they have full right to, they often wind up using it in a self-destructive manner rather than a natural part of their development." Moreover, telling girls to be "sexy but not sexual" greatly outweighs any attention to what might be "a natural, authentic sense of their sexual identity."

The Purity Myth {featured film}

The Purity Myth Trailer from Media Education Foundation on Vimeo.

The Purity Myth: The Virginity Movement's War Against Women is a video adaptation of pioneering feminist blogger Jessica Valenti's bestselling book.

[The film] trains her sights on "the virginity movement" -- an unholy alliance of evangelical Christians, right-wing politicians, and conservative policy intellectuals who have been exploiting irrational fears about women's sexuality to roll back women's rights. From dad-and-daughter "purity balls," taxpayer-funded abstinence-only curricula, and political attacks on Planned Parenthood, to recent attempts by legislators to de-fund women's reproductive health care and narrow the legal definition of rape, Valenti identifies a single, unifying assumption: the myth that the worth of a woman depends on what she does -- or does not do -- sexually. In the end, Valenti argues that the health and well-being of women are too important to be left to ideologues bent on vilifying feminism and undermining women's autonomy.

 Find out more about Valenti and her film here.