Heather is the executive director of and lead educator at Scarleteen.com, the inclusive online resource for teen and young adult sex education and information which she founded in 1998. She is the author of S.E.X.: The All-You-Need-to-Know Progressive Sexuality Guide to Get You Through High School and College; a founder of the All Girl Army; director of the CONNECT teen sexual health outreach program for King County through the Cedar River Clinics/Feminist Women's Health Center, and a sexual health consultant for the young women's site orb28. She is also a member of the editorial advisory board for the American Journal of Sexuality Education and a contributor to the forthcoming 2011 edition of Our Bodies, Ourselves.
Her fiction and nonfiction have been published in online and print publictions including the anthologies Yes Means Yes: Visions of Female Sexual Power and A World Without Rape, Viscera, Aqua Erotica, Zaftig: Well-Rounded Erotica, The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica 1 & 2, Shameless: An Intimate Erotica and in the forthcoming anthology Breakthrough Bleeding: Essays on The Thing Women Spend A Quarter Of Their Time Doing, But No One's Supposed To Talk About, and her photographic work has been shown in several gallery shows and publications.
She was the founder of Scarletletters.com in the nineties, the first online sexuality and arts hub for women online, and has the either laudable or embarrassing reputation of having one of the longest running personal journals online. Also a lead plantiff for the ACLU in the case against COPA, in 2007, she was recognized for her activist work in sexuality and sexual health by the National Sexuality Resource Center with a Champions of Sexual Literacy Award. In 2009 she was awarded the Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality, Western Region's Public Service Award and an Our Bodies, Ourselves' Women's Health Heroes Award. Previous to her work in sexuality, Heather was a Montessori and alternative classroom educator for several years. A Chicago native, she now lives and works in Seattle, Washington.
How can you tell Mom you’ve become a sexual adult without disappointing her? How can you ask her for birth control? How can you disclose being sexually active? And is it okay to use her sex toy eithout asking?
Do you have to worry that simply by virtue of being a male person with a sexuality, you’ll abuse someone? No. Being a certain sex, having a certain gender or having a sexuality does not mean a person has any kind of innate predilection to abuse.
How can you become a virgin again? Can you become a virgin again? Why keep using that term at all, and keep trying to make sense out of a freamework we know often just isn’t sensible?
What’s the difference between flirting and harassment? How does a person recognize and deal with harassment? How do we make sure we’re not harassing anyone unintentionally?
Depending on your view, the answer to that question might seem really obvious or very tricky and hazy. However, it’s a phrase and concept that’s bandied about a lot, yet is rarely explained. A group of Australian researchers finally defined it clearly and holistically.
Is anal sex really sex? What risk of pregnancy does it pose? And how do you assure consent for it from a partner and enagage in it in ways they’re most likely to enjoy?
Part Two of the reveiw of the documentary, Let’s Talk About Sex, has some of the advice parents might need to at least begin conversations about sex with their children and teens.
Or: How Good Consent & Communication is the Answer to (Almost) Everything for Everyone.
Is one reliable method of contraception okay, or do you need two? There’s no rule for everyone, just what level and kind of protection you want and what you feel best about.
The new film Let’s Talk About Sex was created with the intention of sparking public dialogue about and family communication on teen sex and sexuality issues. Here’s my take on whether the film is giving the right message to the right audiences.
