Gang rape, pulling a train, gang bang, serial sex.  These painful words that hurt, following or preceding or completely apart and separate from the acts they describe.
And then that one word that looms so large: SLUT.
And the smaller ones words that follow: she wanted it, she asked for it, dresses like a whore, I knew [...]

A new book hit the bookstores on Friday, and it is very well worth the trip to buy it. Laid is a collection of first person accounts of sexual experiences written by teenagers and young adults. The book tells real stories of real people. There are stories that are essentially good, bad, and mixed. [...]

Dear Students,
When you want to talk about some of the more delicate issues in your own sexuality or your children’s sexuality, it is fine for you to say that these issues actually belong to your friends or your friends’ children.  I’m really fine talking in those terms.  I will go out of my way to [...]

There has been a lot of talk recently about how Toronto teenagers want more sex education.  They’re asking for it all over the place, apparently, given the number of excited newspapers and blogs who are going on at length about it.  And don’t get me wrong - I am so glad that adults are listening [...]

Some weeks ago, I wrote a little post where I outlined three topics I wanted to revisit in longer posts, but didn’t have the time at that exact moment to write about.  This weekend, someone called me on it and demanded that I write about sexual harassment in middle schools.  (Okay, demanded is extremely harsh [...]

Many Middle School students - okay, let’s face it, many Americans - have a hard time holding a serious conversation about sex using correct terminology.  Even among adult, many conversations about sex include a lot of insinuations, a lot of suggestive and knowing glances and meaningless phrases like “Well, he … you know … and [...]

Last week my attention was mostly elsewhere.  Some of that attention was on writing a piece for RH Reality Check about creating and implementing effective sex education programs about sexual assault and rape.  A recent New York Times piece mulling over whether it is more appropriate to target education in gender-specific ways (i.e., for men [...]

My Ph.D. is in Educational Psychology.  My time in graduate school was relatively evenly split between researching, reading, and talking about (1) how teenagers grow and develop, particularly around issues of sex and sexuality, and (2) how people learn, and how to support their learning in the most effective ways possible.  This prepared me pretty [...]

On of the activities I do with my middle school students is have them role-play saying “No” to sexual advances and requests for a date.  I do this not because I think they are in the thick of needing to say no to would-be-suitors and would-be-sexual partners, but because they will eventually be in the [...]

The parents.
I want to make it very, very clear that I strongly believe that the parents are the first and primary sex educators for their children, and in an ideal world would continue to be the primary sexuality educators through adolescence.  Most of what I do is help parents learn how to be open and [...]