This week I had an online chat with the founder, director and designer of the website Scarleteen.com which is a site that focuses on everything sex for teens and young adults. The website is really cool because it actually allows people to connect with a “sexpert” to ask any of your sex related questions.
It’s pretty awesome, you could ask the most disgusting and perverse question and I guarantee you they will talk to you with consideration (even if you're fucked!) and try to help you the best you can.
Questions that I saw on the website ranged from “I am becoming Christian, how do I reconcile my faith with sex?” and “Did rape ruin my vagina” all the way to “How can I help my trans partner with a medical transition”. So there is no way you could ask a question they haven’t heard or can’t handle.
I spoke online with Heather Corinna who is the founder, director and designer of the website. In addition to running the website she is currently a sexuality, contraception and abortion educator. She also is a counsellor at a women’s health center and the director of a teen outreach program.
Basically, my girl Heather has her shit together and knows sex.
I decided to ask her some questions on sexuality as well as some open-ended questions about being LGBTQ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgendered and Queer/Questioning... now you see why they just write lgbtq). Here is some of the Q&A I did with her.
What is Sexuality?
This is a very big question that doesn't lend itself to a simple answer. I mean, sexuality is, in essence interest in or concern with being or feeling sexual, but what sexuality is is made of a lot of things -- it's social, it's interpersonal, it's psychological, it's physical and physiological, it's biochemical, it's intellectual... -- and what sexuality is or is experienced as for one person can be radically different for the next.
How do you know if you’re gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered etc?
Gender identity and orientation are different, but you can know you're gay, lesbian or bisexual the same way you can know if you're straight. You can know you're trans or genderqueer the same way you can know that you're not. Which is to say that it varies. Some people have a clear sense of these things from a very young age, others discover later, and plenty -- in terms of orientation -- may also shift through life, particularly when they're actually having interpersonal relationships.
If you’re LGBTQ, how can you make sure you practice safe sex?
There's nothing different about safer sex practice for MSM or WSW than there is for MSW. We all still have the same parts and use barriers to cover them, we all get tested the same way.
*MSM= male seeking male, WSW=woman seeking woman and MSW=men seeking women
How will someone know if they’re not a heterosexual?
No orientation should ever need to be held as a secret: we are who we are. But because anything that's not-straight has been stigmatized, we wind up in the situation you're describing of people feeling insecure and scared of their sexuality. That's not the case for everyone, though: there are people for whom being queer was never something that was a secret held, with a coming out needed, because it's something that, like any orientation, just developed over time, with conversation throughout. Alas, that's not the experience of most queer people in the world yet. But it might be, someday.
Ultimately, there is no "default" orientation. There's a whole, wide spectrum, with very few people being 100% straight or 100% gay. There's no "normal" orientation: what's normal is that range and a world of variations.
It's also normal to be confused, because orientation is a process and something we find out overtime, rather than overnight. We find out what our orientation is not just by our intuitive feelings, but by observing and feeling out our attractions and our interpersonal relationships over time.
I hope that if any of you are having questions with your sexuality you stop giving a fuck what society around you tells you is right or wrong and you go with what you think is right. You’re the only one living your life, so why go through it in misery?
No comments:
Post a Comment