I’m posting most of the text of the lecture I just gave at UT last week, because a bunch of people asked for it, and because it was a great experience (and how awesome was it to be in a room full of current and potential sex educators?  VERY).  So much of what I said really sums up where I’m at with work right now and have been going.  I say “most of,” because some of the text here were points I knew I’d riff on some more casually, which I did, but this is still the meat of the thing.  My riffs are where I tend to be funnier, so my apologies for not remembering what the hell else I said.  I’ve gotten a lot better with my comfort level with more formal public speaking over the last year or two, but am still uncomfortable enough that when I’m done, I feel like I’ve just come out of some kind of hypnotic trance.

You might also notice that some of this lecture borrows some bits from a couple other pieces I’ve written recently, namely this one.

My name is Heather. I’m turning 39 this spring, and I’m a full-time sex educator.

I was asked to come talk to you to about how to be both innovative and inclusive with sex education.

In many ways, sex education often seems to get stuck in two big places.  Plenty of people seem to think that if you’re talking about sex to young people at all — no matter how you’re talking about it, no matter why you’re talking about it — that’s progressive enough, and for some, that in and of itself is too progressive.  Despite Americans having over 100 years to get used to sex education at this point, for many it still seems an innovation, and not a particularly welcome one.  Hopefully I don’t need to tell this group too much about how so many ideas about inclusivity in young adult sex education — when the notion exists at all — often come from a place more concerned with political correctness than real equity.

We infrequently seem to even address either of these issues, in part because American sex education seems to be stuck at the world’s longest red light: the discussion about it starts and ends with if abstinence-based sex education is best or comprehensive sex education is.  Progressive sex educators will always — validly –  tend to strongly voice that comprehensive sex education is best and that’s what needs to be provided.  For sure, medically-accurate, secular sex education is vital.  However, I think all too often progressives don’t realize how little difference there can be between the two, and how limited so much current sex ed of all types is.

To get us all started on the same foot, I want to address what those three terms usually mean.

Abstinence-only sex education is no kind of sex education at all, ultimately: it’s about why NOT to have sex until (heterosexual) marriage, and based around unwanted pregnancy, STIs, and ideology about how sex before or without marriage is bad news.  Most of it makes no effort to be medically accurate — quite the opposite — but instead relies on fear tactics like the notion that condoms have microscopically-small holes which sperm and infections can swim right through, or that people who have more than one sexual partner lose the ability to emotionally bond with others.  That education does not usually give instructions on using birth control methods or safer sex — it often furthers that any of this education would encourage sex (and that these things are not needed in marriages), though I can’t help but wonder sometimes if that also isn’t just about the fact that many abstinence educators also just don’t know how to use these things themselves.  It focuses almost entirely on refusals of sex, if it teaches any usable skills at all. Abstinence-based sex education also is by nature heterosexist and not merely gendernormative, but relies strongly on binary and traditional notions of gender and sexuality.

Abstinence-plus education does tend to include practical information, and much of it is medically-accurate, and may also be evidence-based, however its supposition is still that it is best for teens not to be sexually active or sexual in any way. It, too, also tends to be very gendernormative and not very inclusive.

Comprehensive sex education is medically-accurate, does (or is supposed to) include instruction on birth control and safer sex and may also include address of topics like anatomy, sexual orientation, masturbation, relationships, sexual abuses, pregnancy options and more, and should come from a place where no one set of sexual choices is privileged as best or right.

But in a recent study of comprehensive sex education in the state of Illinois, of 17 possible topics, emergency contraception was mentioned least, taught by only 30 percent of teachers. Only 32 percent of teachers brought up homosexuality or sexual orientation, 34 percent taught how to use condoms, 37 percent taught how to use other forms of birth control, 39 percent discussed abortion and 47 percent taught students where to access contraception and sexual-health services.  So, even when sex education is comprehensive…well, it’s often not comprehensive at all.

Most of the sex education available to young people right now is either abstinence-only OR abstinence-plus.  Very few curricula or programs are without some kind of abstinence ideology.

Despite thousands of years of young adults being sexual people in any number of ways, and every evidence possible that this is totally natural to them, many adults and sex educators  — even plenty we’d think of as progressive — have in some sense become apologists for sexuality, particularly that of young people.  We’ll talk about it because we have to, because many are going to try “it” and be sexual, but more and more, in sex ed, sex is discussed a lot like the common cold: fairly inevitable, but something you’d probably be best to avoid, which is a pretty wacky way to talk about something that is primarily about pleasure.

The vast majority of sex education available today is also centered around reduction or management of risks of unwanted to negative outcomes, giving the message that the best sex has to offer is nothing bad happening to you because of it.

I had a wake-up call a little while back when I spent some time reviewing some of the top comprehensive sex education curricula.  I, too — when it came to sex ed provided in schools — had made a lot of presumptions about the comprehensive curricula.  I knew they were medically-accurate and often also evidence-based, but I had made a bunch of other assumptions.  I assumed most, if not all, would have detailed address of sexual and whole-body anatomy, that they’d discuss or even masturbation, that they were inclusive — when it came to sexual orientation and gender identity, to race, to class, to relationship models and a variety of sexual choices –  I expected at least some address, though perhaps minimal or watered-down, of desire, of pleasure, of the sexual response cycle.

Yet most of those curricula have little to none of those things.  In fact, at a meeting to review a few of them, sure that I had merely overlooked or wasn’t seeing inclusion, in four of these curricula, I asked where the inclusion of gay, lesbian and bisexual youth was and was told that one of the curricula had a scenario listed in which both teens in the story where named Joe.

Hopefully, I don’t have to tell you that inclusion is a lot bigger than two people named Joe  — which doesn’t even assure those two people are the same gender or sex in the first place — on one page.  Nor do I likely have to tell you that sex is about a whole lot more than merely avoiding — or winding up with — unwanted or negative outcomes: if we get pregnant or don’t, get a sexually transmitted infection or don’t, are or are not sexually assaulted.

There are a few reasons all of this is the case.  A lock on funding for comprehensive sex ed since the end of the Clinton administration, and hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars pumped into abstinence-only through the Bush administration is certainly is one of them.  A general discomfort with sexuality as a whole among teachers, school administrators, parents, healthcare providers — and, by proxy, teens themselves — is obviously another. It’s no newsflash that we continue to have big problems — far bigger than many people like to admit — with sexism, racism, homophobia, classism, ableism, ageism, xenophobia, sizeism.  And all of these issues have certainly impacted sexology as a whole, a field of study which has always been highly male-dominated, very white, very heteronormative and gendernormative.  Sexology has certainly been becoming more diverse over the last twenty years or so, but it still has a long way to go.

So, what informs sex education?  These cultural attitudes, the limits of what has been studied when it comes to sexuality, which is also often informed by these cultural attitudes and blind spots.  The medicalization of sex is also a factor, as is the fact that America is far less sexually liberated than she likes to think.  Toss in an age-old fear of young adult sexuality — hell, a fear of teens and young people, period — then try and stuff it all into formats which can fit into mainstream models of public education, pass a parent and a school board, work in the often toxic social environment of high schools and junior highs and you get an idea of what we wind up with, and how, even if medically-accurate, even if it’s comprehensive, most sex ed is still woefully substandard.

I haven’t chosen to try and provide sex education in schools, but instead, have done so through an online medium to a widely diverse, international userbase for just over ten years, as well as with some in-person outreach and through print publication.  I don’t have to write a curriculum that passes anyone’s muster but that of the young people who choose to utlilize it, and I don’t do any sex ed that isn’t 100% opt-in on the part of young people.  I’m an anarchist by nature, an alternative educator by trade, and that is the way that I do sex ed.  As a young person, I was massively helped by alternative education environments — it’s even safe to say my experimental arts high school saved my life, and certainly my sanity and sense of self –  and before I worked in sex education, I spent several years as a Montessori teacher, a model which informs a lot of how I have done things right from the start with Scarleteen.

To give you a little history in a nutshell, in 1997, I was still teaching in Montessori, but had never stopped writing.  (A lot of my background is in the creative and performing arts, and I started publishing early, in my teens.) Much of my written and artistic work always had a whole lot to do with sexuality and sensuality, and other than bruising my head any more from banging it against the walls and doors of what existed in terms of publishing opportunities for that work, in 1998 — when the web was still very new and all of our web design skills were atrocious –  I rolled out a website called Scarlet Letters, which was the ‘nets first site which focused on female sexuality and eroticism.  Why the net?  Because it was dirt cheap, mostly, and because something about the newness of it: the pioneering nature of being on there seemed a great fit for pioneering ideas.

Within just a matter of months, I began to find letters in my inbox from younger people — Scarlet Letters was intended for adults — with questions about sexuality, stating they just didn’t know where else to go.  My first impulse was to look for somewhere for them to go, and when I did, I — as they clearly had — found nothing.  So, for a little while, I’d just answer the questions in email.  Most of them were pretty rudimentary — Am I pregnant?  Am I gay?  Where the hell is my clitoris and why do I care? — and as the go-to girl for sex in high school and college, the daughter of a public health nurse and and activist and, well…someone who liked sex a whole lot and had done more than her share of field research, they were relatively easy to answer.

And they kept on coming.

By the end of that year, I added a section of pages  of these questions and answers to Scarlet Letters which would later become Scarleteen. I hadn’t kept up with young adult sex education since I had it, I was only aware of how it played out in the ECE and elementary environments I’d taught in.  Naively, I had figured that sex ed had pushed off from many of the progressive efforts of the seventies and early eighties and must — I thought — be pretty okay by that point.  It didn’t take more than a few big batches on the constant influx of letters for me to do some research and find out how completely mistaken I was.

Let me fill you in a little on the Montessori model: Maria Montessori is a fantastic example of  being an innovator.  The first female doctor in Italy, during the first World War she was assigned to care for children in the ghettos.  Those children were intensely independent, used to caring as much for their families and self-care as their parents, and traditional notions of containing children, having them sit in neat rows and be directed by an adult just didn’t suit them.  So, Montessori, very organically, and based on the unique needs and stages of her students, developed her own method.

The primary way Montessori works is this: as educators, we are primarily observers.  Based on our observations of our students self-directed interests, skills (or lack thereof), unique needs and questions, we choose what materials to make or find and what to present to them. In doing this, we’re also trying to help students learn to be observers, as well as working to empower them when it comes to trusting their own interests and instincts and to be self-motivated and self-directed, rather than reliant on — or vulnerable to — others to give them directives. Montessori teachers see ourselves more as helpers, as guides, than as directors or teachers. We see our students as the real directors, not us: it’s our job to follow their cues, not to teach them to obediently follow ours. Questioning is not discouraged, but intensely encouraged. The principles of Montessori are all about independence, liberty and freedom, without which one cannot achieve, develop or experience self-discipline or learning, or live a life of any real quality. Montessori wrote that, “Discipline must come through liberty. . . . We do not consider an individual disciplined only when he has been rendered as artificially silent as a mute and as immovable as a paralytic. He is an individual annihilated, not disciplined.” 

(This is also a particularly pertinent notion when we’re talking about sexuality, and says — I think — quite a lot about what we can expect when we come to sex education or sexuality from a standpoint of sex and sexuality being something we and others must control.)

Particular areas of what we call absorbency — times during which a person is most able to learn something and can most easily and enthusiastically absorb information — is also something we pay close attention to and bear in mind. The big deal that identifies a time of absorbency is when a person is both expressing a strong interest in a subject or area of development and is just starting to use and hone those skills: ages 1-3, for instance, as children are learning to speak and are fascinated with language, is usually the time of the greatest absorbency for language. If we help children be exposed to and learn language then, not only is their mastery best, they usually can also learn more than one language, more easily and ably than they will be able to during other times in life.

It doesn’t take someone with Montessori training or keen observational talents to identify the fact that when it comes to sexuality, the minds of adolescents and pre-adolescents are greatly absorbent. Because part of identifying what and when to present certain things has to do with when a person is starting to use what they learn, we can easily spot adolescence as a great time for sex education. In working with young adults, while I’m not really getting in on the ground floor since so many sexual attitudes are learned in childhood, I’m still in early enough so that our readers can get help forming healthy habits and attitudes at a dawn in their sexuality and during a time when they are very absorbent. I’m not just working with them just so that they can use this information and these skills now — after all, some of them want the information now, but don’t intend to, or are not, putting all of it to practical use, while others are becoming or already sexually active — but so that they can have them early, available to them for the whole of their lives.

Using the models — or really, the un-models — of education I liked best, like Montessori, like ideas from John Holt and A.S. Neill, the first thing I did was assess my students, not based only or mostly on statistics or standardized testing, but based on who they really were and what they were telling me.  I had needs clearly expressed to me by young people.  They had important questions about sex and sexuality which were not being answered, and they needed and wanted answers.  Clearly, they also felt comfortable asking via the new terrain of new media, and also felt comfortable approaching me, personally, likely due to both my openness about sex, my casual tone and probably also because they were so desperate for anyone willing to answer their questions who seemed likely to have answers, and also likely not to be able to hold them accountable for asking,  that they were not being particularly selective about who they asked in the first place.

What were my tools and materials? I had what felt like the perfect fit for their needs with the Internet.  It was anonymous.  It was relatively cheap (and while my costs have certainly grown with our traffic, compared to print media, it’s still peanuts).  I was not going to have to try and slog through endless beaurocracies to provide what the teens were asking me for, wasn’t going to have to argue with parents and administrators — though later I did have to argue with the federal government, but we won that argument.  I would be able not only to build what I felt was best based on their expressed needs, I’d also have the freedom  — should I need or want to — to knock it all down and try something completely different on a whim, a flexibility and whimsy which often had not exactly been appreciated the few times I’d tried teaching in pre-established systems with administrators, but which is central to student-based and directed education.

I had me, someone who had been a teacher for some time and loved teaching, who had had an incredibly challenging adolescence and an easy and intense compassion for children and teenagers.  I had a set of diverse skills I could draw on which helped: I had writing skills, design skills, and the great gift of a sense of humor, which tends to be a godsend when talking with people about sex.  I had  the ability to camp out at the library and further my education as much as I liked with sexuality and related issues, a field of study I had already gotten into in college.  I had a love of anarchy, and of pioneering: I preferred to start with my imagination, rather than with pre-existing systems.  I brought my own diversity to the table: I grew up very marginalized in a handful of ways, had some views and experiences that were often outside of what many teens were exposed to.  I was queer, I wasn’t on the marriage-and-baby track, I came of age in the 80’s and made the absolute most of it, I was comfortable with the provocative, but not all that impressed with it, either. I was beyond comfortable — and quite happy — with sex and sexuality.  And I was impressed with that plenty.

That’s the way Scarleteen started, and at more than ten years since, that is still much of the way I direct it.  By all means, we are monstrously larger than I ever imagined we’d be: I certainly did not forsee this becoming my full-time job and my life’s work with those first letters, nor did I imagine we’d have 20 - 30,000 readers every day.

But I still stick to the same model I had at the start: the content we have is almost entirely based  — with some unavoidable but relatively minor limitations — on the content our users have asked for, which, as it turns out, has tended to result in an incredibly comprehensive, inclusive and holistic body of work. When you have this many people to work with, from this many places in the world, with this kind of diversity, in a medium with this much openness and an aversion to control, and you let them lead what you do, it is going to tend to result in a body of work and a community which is highly diverse, inclusive and holistic.

I rarely, if ever, have to think about what to teach, and what information to give: my users and clients — when I do in-person outreach — tell me that, and I trust them to know what they need.  More times than not, what it is I have to figure out is HOW to provide it for them, and I do that most by asking just as many questions of them as they ask of me, and by being open to what they tell me, willing to adjust my thinking at any time.

It might sound simplistic to posit that coming to sex education not through what we as adults deem important for young people to know, but by starting — and primarily staying with — what young people themselves tell us they want and need to know seems to solve many of the typical and current pitfalls of sex education.  But that has been my experience.

I also very strongly believe that  when we move past risk management, and address sexuality more holistically, not only do we better equip young people — any people — to have a happy, healthy sexuality that is self-designed rather than conformist, we also tend to also help young people build skills and a knowledge base which easily includes risk management and provides them with additional context and tools to make reducing and managing risks easier for them.  If a young person can talk to a sexual partner, for instance, about something as loaded as pleasure and desire, as perhaps not reaching orgasm through intercourse or even finding it all that compelling, or can openly show a partner where to find a clitoris or prostate gland, to discuss what dynamics they do and do not want in the relationship, negotiating condom use or discussing birth control can tend to be a piece of cake, and inclusivity also gets a lot easier.  This information also tends to come about pretty organically and in a way that makes a lot more sense, and is a lot less scary or intimidating.

For instance, if a young person does ask what a clitoris is, what it’s for and where it’s at, once you answer them, they might then ask how it is someone might experience pleasure that way.  In giving them that answer, you’re going to address sexual activities that aren’t for one given kind of couple, and which will likely challenge some heteronormative ideas, and likely ALSO wind up talking about how certain activities with the clitoris do or do not pose risks of pregnancy or sexually transmitted infections.

If we teach young people about things like how incredibly diverse sexuality is, because it is, if we model active and compassionate listening when it comes to sexual pleasure and creating agreements in a relationship, not only can they use that knowledge and those tools with their own sexual lives, and in the way they think about sexuality as a whole,  they can also apply those skills even more broadly, such as for conflict resolution and understanding in other tough or loaded places.  Honestly, all I have to do to know that most of the members of our last administration didn’t have a really good sex education is to look at how they handled international diplomacy.

I feel like sex education in and of itself is still revolutionary, to be sure, but I also feel like most sex education at best is not very revolutionary, and at worst, is about devolution.  But real-deal sex education — that is open, that is honest, that is a lot more fearless, that is human and comes from who it’s being given to, that nurtures inclusivity and diversity of thought and experience — is seriously revolutionary stuff.  And I think it’s totally doable.

I want to leave you with a strong sense of how doable that is, and — hopefully — a desire to do so.   On the note, I’ve a few helpful hints I’ve picked up over the years I want to toss out at you about how to be — in my book — a totally fantastic sex educator.

• Be yourself and be honest. You do get to have boundaries — and limits and boundaries are vital with any relationship between teens and adults, and all people, and setting them is certainly one of those things that gives them some great tools for their sex lives. So, if a student asks you something you’re not comfortable answering, or it feels like an invasion of a privacy you need, you get to tell them that, though I’d advise really telling them that.  In other words, rather than saying “I can’t talk about that,” you say “You know, that makes me uncomfortable,” or “Actually, that for me is something I like to keep private.”  But ultimately, they’re looking to you as the person to be candid with them, and you can benefit them by repping you and sex as it is, in all its diversity, silliness, awesomeness, awkwardness, complexity and joy.

• Assume yours might be the only formal sex ed that they get.  Hopefully, that will NOT be the case: ideally, everyone should get sex ed from multiple sources and perspectives.  But all too many people really don’t, including well into adulthood.  So, don’t put undue pressure on yourself, but bear in mind this may well be a one-shot deal, and it’s best to make the most of it.

• Ask as many questions as you give answers.

• Recognize that no matter how protected an environment teenagers will inevitably feel vulnerable when discussing sex, meet them in that space.  If they’re vulnerable, but you don’t allow yourself to also be vulnerable, that creates an imbalanced dynamic that asks a lot more of them than it does of you.

• Peer educator training: any time you are doing sex ed, you are also effectively doing peer sex educator training.  More than anything else, teens get their sex information and education from each other.  So, when you educate one of them, you’re always educating more than one of them.  Teens having accurate information isn’t just about their own sex lives, but about the sex lives of all the teens they may wind up talking with about sex and sexuality.

• Take risks.  Know that if you take a risk and find yourself in a pickle, you’ve always got the ACLU.  I’ll give you their number.  Seriously.  They love sex educators.  A lot.

• Consider that an unhappy sex life or sexual self is just as dire an outcome as an unwanted pregnancy or a serious sexually transmitted infection.  I think we need to accept that it is, especially if we’re serious when we say that sexuality is huge and important.  Plus, from everything I have observed over the years, people at peace with their sexuality and in healthy sexual relationships tend to make smarter choices when it comes to things like contraception, safe relationships and safer sex.

• Lastly, don’t stop educating yourself.  As you probably already know, sex and sexual health information changes constantly and sometimes quickly.  What you learned in med school five years ago can quickly become archaic.  And that education includes your own personal field research. I’m talking about your own sex life. If you aren’t honest about your own areas of growth and doing your best to have a sex life and sexuality that is healthy and enriching — alone or with partners, and whatever that means to you — I’m just not sure how great a sex educator you can be, just like I can’t imagine that an English teacher who hated to read or only read the Cliff’s Notes would be very inspiring and effective.  Be an aspirational sexual demographic.

posted in Heather Corinna, aclu, Scarleteen, activism, soapbox, Auntie Heather's Helpful Hints, feminism, sex/life, education | permalink | comments (3) »

Kicking federal government attempts at censorship is so the gift that keeps on giving, man.

I swear, this just never gets old. Ever. If I could send the feds a card that issued the world’s biggest zurbitz – is that how you spell that? — when opened, I really would. Of course, knowing they keep paying to try and reprise this stupid thing with our tax dollars does take the bloom off the rose a bit, but still.

Had a small, but nice presentation at the youth residential center this morning, got to wake up and see a bunch of new plants I put into my garden, solidifying a fall trip hosted by two libraries in one of the toughest hit places in the states when it comes to unwanted teen pregnancy to go help get those kids edumacated (my love for librarians: another thing that never gets old), and heading out to supper with my sweetie.

Good day today.

P.S. Mr. Price and I are beginning the serious couples trial of trying for… a second dog! Wahoo! We expect it to be a long, arduous journey, full of false hopes and times when we are certain we may never find out exact second dog (particularly since with Madame Sofia, there is much to live up to), but we’re now — as of this evening — 100% committed. Wish us positive, perky puppy thoughts!

posted in Heather Corinna, aclu, activism, home, Happy! | permalink | comments (4) »

Tain’t nothing like a hard-won win for civil liberties before you’ve even had your first morning cup.

FINAL ADJUDICATION AND ORDER THAT BASED UPON THE FINDINGS OF FACT AND CONCLUSIONS OF LAW DETAILED ABOVE: (1) THE CHILD ONLINE PROTECTION ACT, 47 U.S.C. 231, IS FACIALLY VIOLATIVE OF THE FIRST AND FIFTH AMENDMENTS OF THE UNITED STATES CONSTITUTION; AND DEFENDANT ALBERTO R. GONZALES, IN HIS OFFICIAL CAPACITY AS ATTORNEY GENERAL OF THE UNITED STATES, AND HIS OFFICERS, AGENTS, EMPLOYEES, AND ATTORNEYS, AND THOSE PERSONS IN ACTIVE CONCERT OR PARTICIPATION WITH DEFENDANT WHO RECEIVE ACTUAL NOTICE OF THIS ORDER ARE PERMANENTLY ENJOINED FROM ENFORCING OR PROSECUTING MATTERS PREMISED UPON 47 U.S.C. 231 AT ANY TIME FOR ANY CONDUCT. THIS IS A FINAL ORDER AND THIS CASE IS CONCLUDED.. SIGNED BY JUDGE LOWELL A. REED JR. ON 3/22/07.

Know what that is, my friends? That is myself, my fellow plaintiffs — and specifically, myself, Salon and Nerve; stated to have standing and a credible fear of prosecution — and our fantastic ACLU lawyers and support staff soundly kicking government ARSE.

At issue in this case is the constitutionality of the Child Online Protection Act, 47 U.S.C. §231 (”COPA”) and whether this court should issue a permanent injunction against its enforcement due to its alleged constitutional infirmities. COPA provides both criminal and civil penalties for transmitting sexually explicit materials and communications over the World Wide Web (”Web”) which are available to minors and harmful to them. 47 U.S.C. §231(a). After a trial on the merits, for the reasons that follow, notwithstanding the compelling interest of Congress in protecting children from sexually explicit material on the Web, I conclude today that COPA facially violates the First and Fifth Amendment rights of the plaintiffs because: (1) at least some of the plaintiffs have standing; (2) COPA is not narrowly tailored to Congress’ compelling interest; (3) defendant has failed to meet his burden of showing that COPA is the least restrictive, most effective alternative in achieving the compelling interest; and (3) COPA is impermissibly vague and overbroad. As a result, I will issue a permanent injunction against the enforcement of COPA.

Not bad news to get first thing of a morning. Not bad at all.

P.S. I really appreciate some of the issues that were brought up within the pages of the decision, because it brings some things to light that need very serious examination, and which are near and dear to my heart. For instance, this text about the issue of how minors are defined could be something pretty darn awesome to reference when it comes to young adult rights, and not defining teenagers as children: As discussed by the Third Circuit, defining minors as “any person under 17 years of age,” creates a serious issue with interpretation of COPA since no one could argue that materials that have “serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value” for a sixteen-year-old would necessarily have the same value for a three-year old.

There is also a lot of address in that decision which makes clear that we really need to stop conflating pornography and any address or examination of sexuality or the body, as well bringing to some light the inherent classism of requiring credit cards to verify age (especially since they aren’t even useable for that purpose: a credit card account doesn’t list the age of it’s holder, so requiring a credit card doesn’t discriminate by age, it discriminates by economic class), and the issue of the government usurping the roles and choices of a parent.

P.P.S. I’m really tried of people — from the left, from the right, from the center — calling this “the porn law.” Half the deal with the judgment was that the COPA was overly broad, and would criminalize all sorts of content that dealt with sexuality or the human body, so citizens reducing it to the lowest common denominator are doing the same stupid thing the government tried to do. (To boot, porn profiteers not only didn’t win this case, they weren’t even testifying for our side: if you understand what COPA proposed, and you understand the big biz of porn - or just the basic given that anyone who is not a potential buyer is not a wanted vistor — you understand why a porn profiteer wouldn’t have any problem with it at all.) Of course, by the same token, that sort of broad brush used by anyone and everyone — especially when we recognize that most of our current administration is no more intelligent than our general populace — does stand to make all the more clear how problematic something like the COPA would have been.

Unsurprisingly, I’ve also already read more than a handful of conservative outcries to this ruling because it means that all of America’s children will continue to be “exposed” to homosexuality. So, plenty of barely-informed folks may think this is all about making sure they’re able to keep getting as much porn as they like, but there was so much more riding on this that that, of far greater import. No one’s life will be grossly impacted by not getting as much porn as they’d like: the same can’t be said for not getting education, information and visibility.

The way the COPA was structured was based on what general “community standards” would find obscene, and if you think that porn would go in that pile before realistically sexually informing teenagers, before resistance TO porn (for bigger reasons than sparing the poor, wee children’s eyes) and other status-quo beloveds, before discussion and presentation of any kind of homosexuality and bisexuality, you gots to be kidding yourself. Bear in mind, too, who would have had the big money and the agency to fight a COPA ruling if it came to them. The heads at Hustler, Penthouse, Vivid, Bang Brothers and the like wouldn’t have spent a single day in jail, they’d have just written a check for the fines — if they even had to do that — and gone on with business as usual. Someone who does what I do and got whacked with it? Scarleteen would have just been off the map, period, and not having access to anything close to that kind of money, this gal’s butt would have been in jail, for at least six months, and while tens of thousands of teens each day would have been without a source to find out about their real bodies, or how to deal with a pregnancy, online pornography-at-large would have been sitting cozy and warm at home, no problem.

Anyway, it makes getting this — Plaintiff Heather Corinna is a writer, artist, sex-educator, and activist whose primary presence on the Web consists of Scarletletters.com, Scarleteen.com, and Femmerotic.com, “each of which deals with issues of sex and sexuality with an explicit focus on challenging and combating the sexual oppression of traditionally marginalized groups.” — into the public record small all the more sweet. Such a pity legal decisions like this one never end with the nice “Neener neener,” you’d really like them to.

This, from Judge Reed, came darn close, though: “Perhaps we do the minors of this country harm if First Amendment protections, which they will with age inherit fully, are chipped away in the name of their protection…”

Addendum: Oh, good LORD. Not that I expect anything different from Morality in Media, but this is just priceless.

“While this may come as a surprise to some federal court judges, many parents are overburdened and tired. Many are naive. Many don’t want to be overly strict, like their parents were. Many are ‘technologically challenged,’ like me. Many don’t speak English. Many have physical or mental health problems. Some neglect and abuse their own children.

Overburdened? Umm, since when was parenting mandatory? Oh, right! Since conservatives have done and continue to do everything they can to keep women from having a choice as to whether or not men have sex with them, from having any and every birth control method possible easily available to them (and access to materials and healthcare that tell them how to use those methods), and to keep women from having the right to terminate pregnancies. Silly me!

And, uh…okay, so we need to engage in censorship to help abusive parents protect their kids from sexual material, rather than putting efforts into protecting them from those PARENTS? We need to do everything we can to limit everyone else’s speech to help those pitiable, tired, burdened parents who can’t be sussed to BE parents? And English-speaking is now an issue? Wasn’t the conservative concern with this supposed to about keeping kids from seeing images of breasts, vulvas and homosexuals? Since when doesn’t the visual translate?

But even assuming that every parent with one or more computers in the home used filters at all times on each computer and even assuming that filters blocked all pornography and could not be circumvented by tech-savvy children, there would still be a huge problem — namely, as children get older they increasingly have access to the Internet outside the home.

As children get older and spend less and less time in the home that is because they are becoming ADULTS, you giant buffoon. But per usual, be sure and make this about pornography, and say the word pornography as much as possible to keep those parents terrified so they’ll behave the way you want them to.

…When it comes to ‘cyberspace,’ the federal courts think it is up to parents to keep children away from Internet pornography.”

Believe it or not, that was stated as a complaint. Of course, the beauty there is that conservatives want the feds to parent for them only in the way they would parent themselves if they could be bothered to do so, if they were not so “naive,” so “technically challenged” (love that one: so, we’re to believe your six-year-old can figure out how to work the net to find all the porn, but you can’t?) and so full of mental health problems. When the federal courts think it should NOT be up to parents per the ways their children are publically educated in many respects, particularly when it comes to sex, then the complaint is the the feds are butting in.

Yeah, well….neener neener.

posted in Heather Corinna, aclu, copa, Scarleteen, activism, Happy! | permalink | comments (16) »

I can earnestly say that testifying in a federal court, to a federal judge, with the ACLU and against the United States government was not only utterly painless, it was really, really quite enjoyable. It’s like being wary as hell to get on a big scary rollercoaster, going on anyway, getting kid of sick but having a really good time all the same, getting off, and begging to get right back on again.

I’m employing some tact in the following portrayal of my testimony, believe it or not. I feel it’s a bit inapporpriate to take the “I kicked the government’s ASS!” approach right out here in the public eye. Oh. Oops. Anyway.

I can say that while providing vitally necessary testimony, which no other plaintiff but me could have provided (which is pretty dam cool, right?), to help protect our first amendment rights, I not only got through it and didn’t bungle anything at all, I — merely in being truthful, brave, and in being myself — totally, utterly kicked righteous ass and had a profoundly good time doing it.

I expect to be nervous with all things home-leavy and public-speaky, because I always am, and the fact that my left thigh was covered in hives the night before I left for Philly last Tuesday appeared to be clear evidence of this. I never get hives.

The the flights were utterly unremarkable and painless, to the point that somehow, by the second flight, I forgot I was a smoker. (This happened twice this trip: and I have no explanation for this whatsoever: I could more easily find a fine explanation for a Mystery Spot than I could for how a 25-years-addict forgets she is one.)

It wasn’t until Wednesday afternoon, several hours before my evening prep for the trial the next day that I started to realize that I wasn’t actually at all nervous. By the time Thursday morning rolled around, after I had woken from having almost zero sleep and my babymaking dream (we have now named the infant in my dream Slimerella: when you don’t intend to have kids of your own, you forge attachments to the symbolic ones, I guess); as I was walking the eight-block dead-girl-walking trek to the courthouse with Ben, my ACLU lawyer and the brother I really should have had, who found my dream highly entertaining, I felt just fine.

For those new to my adventures, I hatehatehatehateHATE public speaking. Doing it makes me weak in the knees, lightheaded, and totally nauseated. More than once during a speaking venture, I have nearly fainted, and more than once I have almost wet my pants. Hours and sometimes days before a public speaking engagement I am a completely neurotic mess who spends all her available time praying for every kind of natural disaster to prevent the engagement from happening. I have turned down — to my great shame — a couple of gigs I was really honored to be asked to do, which would really have benefitted me, because of this stupid phobia. Needless to say, then, I fully anticipated it hitting me like a bag of rocks when the public speaking I had to do was to defend the constitution quite literally in front of the ACLU and the federal government, the latter of which I had a very healthy fear of instilled into me by my commie pinko father at a very early age, drills to hide from them should they come for us and all.

During this walk, I wondered if maybe going without sleep, food and even coffee was why I felt okay. Or if I had someone just become completely delusional per the import of what I was about to do. Or if the orgasm I had the night before had made me just that stupid.

As I entered the courtroom, anticipating that the nerves would finally, hit, they still didn’t. I gotta tell you, though: if ever in doubt that we live in a very rich country, check out a federal courtroom. Swanky business, this.

So, the day’s testimonies start. First up was this intensely wonderful school librarian as an expert witness on filters and how they — and bonafide guidance and supervision — work just fine if someone wants to be sure minors don’t have access to certain content. This woman also got in a closing statement that was the Rocky moment of the morning. I had to remind myself that this wasn’t Norma Rae, and standing up and cheering was not appropriate.

(Iris Tava Smathers) I think the
4 best filter is librarians and teachers and parents who pay
5 attention and who talk to kids and say, you know, this is
6 good information. Here’s how you decide what’s good
7 information. Here’s how you decide what’s not going to
8 accomplish your task. And there are things that are bad
9 decisions for you to look at. But I think you need to, I
10 think you need to tell kids why and, you know, teach them to
11 reason because if we throw up a lock on the door and they
12 don’t know what is on the other side, when they get into a
13 position where they have to be on the other side, how are
14 they going to navigate if they don’t have those skills. And
15 I think that is my job and a teacher’s job, and then
16 hopefully the parents’ jobs to teach them to discern in cases
17 like that.

I heart librarians this much. Always have, but my adoration exponentially increased that morning.

Then came (sorry, expert witness-guy) a bunch of insanely boring testimony explaining filtering software for PDA devices. This would have been the one period of time in which I did start to feel the profound lack of caffeine and nicotene in my system.

And then came me. And I still felt fine. I went up, I sat down in a very cooshy chair (though I’d not advise, should you ever find yourself in this position, wearing double-lined wool trousers when sitting for some time in a leather chair, just FYI). Before I was supposed to, actually: I underestimated the importance of standing formally while putting my hand on the Bible, possibly in part because the one in the drawer at the hotel had the traveling dildo on it, so it seemed pretty casual to me.

The judge had a great vibe. I adore my ACLU lawyer, and we’ve had these conversations for a couple of years now. So, during his questioning, I blame my unfamiliar feelings of calm and competence on familiarity.

Most of them. The spelling of things out loud occasionally got me flustered, because I had traumatic spelling bee flashbacks.

17 A I operate Scarleteen.com, Scarletletters.com.
18 Q Maybe you should spell each one when you mention it for
19 the first time.
20 A Sure, scarletletters is S-C-A-R-L-E-T-L-E-T-T-E-R-S.COM.
21 Then there is also Femmerotic.com, that’s F-E-M-M-E-R-O —
22 yeah, see, spelling bee — E-R-O-T-I-C.COM. And then
23 heathercorinna.com, spelled like my first and last name. And
24 allgirlarmy.org.

I wasn’t as witty in this trial as I was in my deposition last year — mostly because I was not as nervous, and thus not suffering from verbal diarrhea, and because it’s a lot more formal a setting — but I did get a few zingers in, and had a few priceless moments (which don’t translate as well in court reporting, sans my imitable charm):

12 Q Why did you decide to publish scarleteen online instead
13 of in a print magazine?
14 A I can’t for the life of me figure out how I would be
15 allowed in a print magazine to publish scarleteen.

A much better answer, I’d say, than “Are you high? What effing country do you think we live in, anyway?”

7 Q Do you believe any of the contents on scarletletters,
8 scarleteen or femmerotic might be prohibited by the act?
9 A Absolutely.
10 Q Why do you fear that?
11 A Because even as I function under the Government that I
12 live in in this country, they have made clear that the sex
13 information that I give to teenagers isn’t what they want in
14 schools and isn’t what they’re willing to pay for. So, if I
15 were to (define) community standards just as my federal
16 government and no one else, I’d be told right there and then
17 that what I do is inappropriate and not sexually appropriate.

Take that, federal government!

5 Q Would scarletletters link to a site like hustler.com?
6 A No.
7 Q Why not?
8 A Because I don’t want to. Because a lot of what is done
9 at hustler, to me, is not sexy, it’s sexist and misogynist
10 and it doesn’t support my goals…

Take that, Hustler!

21 Q And is the journal section ever sexually explicit?
22 A Not often, but every now and then, yes.
23 Q And why is it sometimes sexually explicit?
24 A Because my life isn’t always sexually explicit.

In retrospect, a better answer might have been, “Because I have sex sometimes. Don’t you?” However, I was trying to be good, and mind my lawyers comments to me from an earlier date that unlike most of my life, what was most important was the earnest, true answer, not the most clever earnest, true answer.

3 MR. WIZNER: Your Honor, at this time, plaintiffs
4 would like to move exhibit 42 into evidence.
5 THE COURT: Any objection?
6 MS. ULRICH: Your Honor, defendant has an objection
7 to just a few of the pages. Specifically, defendant objects
8 to page 1 and page 2. These pages are blow-up images that
9 appear elsewhere within the exhibit. The image on page 1 is
10 a duplicate of page 17 and as the witness explained, page 17
11 is how that image appears when somebody clicks on the link.
12 The image on page two is a duplicate of a photo on page 26.
13 And it’s defendant’s position that those other pages are more
14 representative of the actual images on the website. And so,
15 defendant does object to pages 1 and 2.

Let the record show that this was a discussion about a photo of my breasts, being held up and on video screens while I was both attempting to still appear professional, and not take a woman objecting to my breasts for the first time in my life personally. I have never had a pet name for my body parts, but I’m seriously considering calling my tits Exhibit 42 from now on.

25 Q Have you ever considered using an age verification system
1 for scarleteen?
2 A No.
3 Q Why not?
4 A Because it’s like saying I’m running a coffee shop, but
5 I’m turning away people who drink coffee. I can’t serve my
6 user base that I’m intended to serve if I put that up there.

Maybe I was starting to want that coffee after all.

17 Q What would you do if COPPA were to take effect?
18 A It really depends on, it depends on the site. You know,
19 I’d say I’d move to Canada, but I said that when Kerry lost,
20 too. And here I am. So, it’s a hollow threat coming from
21 me. You know, so given, I probably wouldn’t do that. You
22 know, in scarleteen’s case, I would keep doing exactly what I
23 do. I’d feel like I was at risk. I’d know that I was
24 choosing to take those risks.

That was the big laugh of the day, even from the judge. I’ll be here all week. Nah, scratch that: after this, I am so outta here.

(These portions are from the cross-examination by the Department of Justice lawyer)

8 Q And Plaintiff’s Exhibit 42, page 9, is the splash page
9 for femmerotic, is that correct?
10 A It’s a bad scan of the splash page, but yes.

Hello, my name is Heather Corinna, and I’m an annoying little perfectionist.

10 Q If you have photos on Femmerotic that show — would show
11 people having sex, those would be for subscribers only,
12 correct?
13 A It really depends on how you define sex.

Watching the straight people in the room try and work that one out was pretty amusing.

(For the morbidly curious, here’s the whole transcript of the day, by the way.)

Here’s the thing. When the cross started, this is where I figured I’d muck things up, talk too much, annoy the judge, forget the decorum, say something totally idiotic, like “Yes, I recognize Exhibit 42, I’ve seen them every damn day since I was 11.” My inner prankster also kept wanting to do something like plainly say “Frootloops,” to a yes or no question, or to pretend to break down and confess that I was a dirty, dirty lady who suddenly realized the great error of her ways in corrupting all the wee children, just to see what would happen.

The DoJ lawyer was the same woman who deposed me for an ungodly number of hours (which translated into around 260-some pages of transcript). We’re all still a little bitter about that. I didn’t dislike her at all during that deposition, save that she was making me stay answering questions that seemed redundant and foolish to me, when I really wanted some air, a dirty martini and a smoke. But I was so frazzled that day, I couldn’t see anyone’s strategy.

This time was different. From the minute she came to the stand, whether it was so or not, I got the distinct impression she thought she was smarter, more powerful, than I was. Again, fact or fiction, the effect this had on my was apparently quite visible. Mark said that my whole body language shifted: from sitting prim and upright in my chair, to leaning back, opening my arms and clearly sending out, “Oh THIS is how you want to play it? Well, you just bring it ON” vibes. I realized in that moment that this was just like boxing, and that my boxing partners have usually been larger and stronger than me, still never knocked me out and I’ve always been able to throw them off balance. I imagine the pinstriped vest I was wearing and that body lingo may have made me resemble an old school mafioso, especially since my lawyer made some offhand remark at dinner later about me and bloody horses heads.

Setting aside my cement shoes, here cometh the cheeseball bits. I need schmaltzy theme music: I need violins, dammit!

Did you ever read The Monster at the End of This Book? You know, the Sesame Street book where Grover is terrified of that monster — mortified, fearful throughout, knowing one is at the end — but he discovers at the end that the monster is just loveable, furry Grover? That’s how I felt about the federal government that day. There’s something really awesome about being an activist and suing the U.S. government. It is a substantially groovy thing. And it’s even better when you’re up there, doing it actively, with them in the room. I’ve spent a lot of time in my life mastering bravado, I am the macha queen in many respects when it comes to that. But when bravado translates into balls-out brave in a context like this, it is an intensely empowering thing. It’s seeing the Grover behind the monster, and having moments where you feel like it’s YOU no one is seeing the Grover in. Feeling the feds intimidated by you, when you always felt so under their thumb? This is FABULOUSNESS, especially when you’ve worked as an activist for a really long time, and your winning moments are few and far between, and buried underneath an awful lot of frustration and helplessness.

When I finished, then we all walked out into the break room, I got loads and loads of judos. I was so damn high on myself that I couldn’t even take a compliment properly. “You are a rock star,” got responded to with “I KNOW!” “You were awesome,” with “You bet your ass I was…..umm, oh, thank you.” I was tempted to ask at a certain point that everyone stop paying me compliments, because it was inflating my ego in a way I was not accustomed to and clearly unable to graciously manage.

And I couldn’t. I’d turned some sort of corner. It’s so weird, really. I wasn’t actually prepared for this particular feeling. That’s not to say I didn’t know I was doing something really important, I did. But in my mind, no more or less so than what I do every day: I think what I do every single day is just as important as this was.

So, it’s a little confusing to me as to why I feel so….different. Pardon my sounding cheesy, but I haven’t really had any time to myself since this happened to even really process it, and I suspect the delay in that may have upped the ante here.

(Which I hope also excuses my behaviour at the shoe store down the street the other day. I was returning a pair of clogs I bought one size too small — not my fault, though, the shoe-fitter needed to have told me about how to fit them properly — and the owner looked at the bottoms and said, “Oh, you wore these outside?” To which my response was, “To defend your freedom of speech, buddy! You could BRONZE those shoes!” As it turned out, I think he was more inclined to make my exchange because the shopgirl overcharged me than because of my totally uncalled for snippy retort. Thankfully, jumping right back into mounds of editing and fixing my umpteen mistakes is very humbling.)

Maybe I feel like this because something I’ve done — and a something that is about the value of all the work I do, and the vital need for it — feels earnestly recognized for a change. Maybe it’s because I don’t often get the opportunity — the gift, really — to do the important things I do and have a roomful of people I respect witness and applaud that so directly. Maybe because given the medium in which I do my work, the effects aren’t really something I see very directly, and so seeing it, feeling it, was pretty unusual. Maybe it’s because more often than not, other people have more faith in me than I have in myself, and having a moment where I understood why they have that faith, and had it for myself for a change, was pretty intense.

Or maybe it’s just because I kicked the government’s ass.

posted in Heather Corinna, aclu, copa, activism, soapbox | permalink | comments (10) »

I’d like to make a couple of Philly shoutouts before I post the whole sordid tale of my COPA trial experience.

To Ben: I love you. In a better world, we’d have been wondertwins fighting battles together far earlier: at the age of six, me jumping up and down on my soapbox, pigtails fearlessly flying, while you worked the crowd with your precocious logic into more passionate feelings on the care and feeding of goldfish, the dire need for good beer with school lunches, a turn on the slide for every kid in line before recess ends, and the need of all to have new, bouncy, shiny red sneakers (but not made in sweatshops). Having been denied that sunny Utopia, I’ll take what I can get.

There’s a return bottle of tequila waiting with your name on it for that visit in the Spring. And donuts.

To Elan: Thanks for the cigarette walks. And I won’t say I’m sorry for sharing that very filthy quip with you after all that bourbon, as I fully believe apologizing for sincerity is disingenuous. I will, however, apologize for making you unable to breathe or complete a sentence afterwards, as I did not anticipate those results.

To the other people on the plane the morning after: I’m really sorry. Most of our drinks the night before, well into the pre-dawn hour, were paid for by someone else. Thus, we could not possibly decline a single one, which — combined with my continued adrenaline rush, and the fourth night of very little sleep in a row — was likely why we nearly overslept our plane. This is also likely why we were not panicked as we raced to shove everything in the hotel room into our bags and get a cab without coffee, but instead could not stop laughing, because we were still as drunk when we woke up as we were when we went to sleep.

So, probably you didn’t find our jokes as hilarious as we did, and were not, as we were, launched into uncontrollable laughter by any given funny face we’d make at the other. If it’s any consolation, our jovialness was much more comfortable for us than the usual panic we both feel flying, and it was the best flight either of us has ever had. Probably that doesn’t console you. Probably we’ll forever be that awful drunk couple on the plane.

We’ve certainly been called worse.

To Moe: You seriously lucked out more than you know. Because in our morning still-drunken rush, I hollered out to Mark that I’d tossed his pants into my bag. Lucky for you, he hollered back that he already had his pants, which prevented me from accidentally stealing yours, leaving you to wake up in our room, hungover and pantsless, making a call to the hotel to the effect of, “Umm, room service? Could you send up some coffee, a bagel and…. pants?”

I know there were about 20 different things we were supposed to contact each other about once I got home, but I cannot recall what a single one of them was. If you do, let me know. Also? I so wasn’t a band geek. There aren’t bands in performing arts schools, silly girl. Performing arts schools, much like the arts community at large, are/were mainly run and managed by gay men who are much too kind to let any of us be caught dead in those awful outfits.

To Aaron: You’re a peach, kiddo. A peach who is the owner of something incredibly valuable (however weird a valuable thing it is), and you make sure that your wonderfully friendly, warm self does not let anyone think for even a moment that they can walk all over you. If they do, you tell me and I’ll beat them up. Or make them blush. Your call.

To the big, fluffy bed at the Residence Inn: I miss you. We didn’t get much sleep, it’s true, but you sure came in handy for very important pre and post-trial orgasms which I understand to be a required part of the legal process. It’s vital when about to stand up for Freedom of Speech to remember than “Oh god,” and “Fuck ME,” and “MmmmMmmmmMmmmAie!” is speech just as important to protect as something totally inconsequential like, say, sending the message that it’s really okay for people under 30 to have sex if they aren’t married.

posted in Heather Corinna, aclu, copa | permalink | comments (2) »

First day back.

Much grogginess from wearing oneself out amidst three different time zones, five flights in six days, and coming back home to have several crises plopped on my plate while I also am now in the last nine days of finishing my book edits and additions.

I have a bunch of meetings and catchup this morning I am racing to do, all while still on my first cup of coffee, but later today, will fill y’all in on the tales from Philly.

Long story short? I ROCKED it. Even by the much higher expectations the ACLU had for me than I had for myself. Quite frankly, I’m not even sure who inhabited my body while I was up there on the stand, but whoever she was, the girl was golden. (I’m told the transcript of my testimony should be up by the end of today.) Unfortunately, I know for sure it was me back in my skin the next morning when Mark and I nearly missed our flight due to oversleeping and waking up still as drunk as we were at 4 AM the night before.

More news later today or tomorrow. More coffee — much more coffee — now.

posted in Heather Corinna, aclu, copa, bookish bits, activism, home | permalink | comments (3) »

Wow, the beauty of Wordpress means that quickly journaling my completely crazy dreams before I go to testify to try and keep our first amendment rights in place is a snap.

You may or may not see this as a boon.

I did not sleep for shit last night, and my unconscious had quite a lot to say about it.

So, in my dream last night, Mark and I were in some parking lot, and we were engaging in some very nice finger-fucking. But it was taking a while to get me off. I was aparently stoned, and was kind of slipping in and out of awareness, to the point that I felt myself falling alseep. I remember thinking it maybe wasn’t so cool to do that, but at the same time, I was testifying in the morning and I had to get some sleep, so…oh well.

When I came to, Mark was standing outside the driver’s seat window next to me holding… my newborn baby. I not only had apparently managed to be pregnant for nine months and not know it, but also to give birth while completely alseep. It was a bit of a shock — especially since I was just thinking, “GOD, they so totally overtalk this labor thing: it didn’t even wake me up! People are such whiners!” — but I managed to get over it, while still remaining incredulous. I also had this annoyed feeling about never having had that orgasm and having had a kid instead.

We got out of the car, and the parking lot was really full, with this weird sense of something being ominous or something like it. It looked like some kids were going car to car, but turned out they weren’t, and this lady walked up to me. I asked her what was going on, she said she just felt like something weird was going to happen. I pointed at said slimy kid in my arms and suggested it already has.

Then Mark starts trying to rope me into some new film project, right that day, and I remind him that again a) I have to go testify, and b) I’m not even sure I can do THAT because of just having given birth, and the kid might cry, and I was kinda starting to feel a little tired, now that I thought about it. I decided I could like deal with testifying, but that he needed to understand a film project was totally out, since between childbirth and the federal court, I was really overcommitted that day.

Then the wake-up call came, and I woke up out of the only half-sort of sleep I was getting which was producing all of this subconscious mania. Thank god.

Yeah. Didn’t sleep so good. Alas, so it goes: adrenaline, ahoy! Coffee is ready in the room, a shower and suit await, and a busy, intense day. Which I cannot WAIT to be done with.

Hopefully, sans stealth pregnancy and labor.

posted in Heather Corinna, aclu, subconscious life | permalink | comments (4) »

Well, I’m off to Philly for the COPA trial at an ungodly hour tomorrow morning, where I’ll be doing my level best to represent the interests of women, teenagers, sexuality educators and independent artists in the case. (Hello, underdog.) Glad to be going; obviously glad, per usual, to put my money (or my time, energy and wistful masturbation memoirs, as it were) where my mouth is, ever glad to fight the good fight.

Bit perturbed with timing, though: I have been so in the zone with the book edits, so having it disrupted when I’m so deep in it really kind of sucks. But, flying from one side of the continent to the other means a lot of hours to fill uncomfortably, so I’m hoping that I can get some good editing done en route, especially considering that Mark and I added a leg to the trip, so we’re stopping back in Minneapolis for an abbreviated weekend before we get back home. In toto, we’re looking at 13 hours of flying over a span of six days. Lordy. Will be great to see missed friend-family in Minnesota, but it may be greater to get back here afterwards and cross the finish line with all of the stuff on my plate right now. Seriously, no one should expect to see me anywhere for the month of December. I fully intend to turn my brain completely off and be a total vegetable before my head explodes and my blood pressure goes through the roof.

Do I have Philly readers? I mean, I have Icelandic readers, I have Korean readers, so I must. Not sure how much time I’ll have, but I do know I’ll have Wednesday morning mostly to myself (Mark doesn’t get in until Wednesday night), and since I haven’t been in Philly since I was wee, someone wanting to be a brief tour guide would be a very cool thing. Even just a recommendation as to where one could find vegan meals in or around downtown would be really swell.

While I’m asking for favors, yet another edit around, I could really use a little more consult on some of the chapters. My general approach is that one can never have enough fact-checkers, especially when writing about young adult sexuality given how many biases are at play. Can one or two of you OB/GYNs or clinicians in sexual health who read find an hour or two to go over some sections for me? A shiny thank you in the acknowledgments is in it for you: or some vegan donuts. Or both! I could also really use someone working in eating disorders/self-esteem, and another someone working with rape prevention/crisis counseling as well as another someone working in domestic/relationship abuse issues. If any or all of you people are interested and willing, drop me a line (heatherATheathercorinna.com)? Thanks so, so much.

And with that, I am off to the supreme crazy that is my day: laundry to do, suits to pack — it’s been suggested I look like a grownup for this — housesitter to prepare for, book files to gather, and a dire need to run out and get a triple-shot mocha so I can function this close to properly. Didn’t get much sleep last night, won’t tonight either, and I fail miserably at sleeping on planes unless there’s turbulence and it feels like a car.

P.S. I got all full of nostalgia last night after a long, 13-hour day, and started the process of compiling the art-elements of all the plane and other woo Mark and I did for each other before I moved. I don’t have everything we did scanned, but we have it all here: there’s a lot of it. Don’t expect to get this all done anytime soon. But it’s still very gooeymaking to look at when I’m stressed. And much more uplifting than this sad affair.

P.P.S. Zelig? I’d put one of those cool monkey-with-a-fez bandaids on it, have a laugh with everyone I encountered about the whole works, and forget it was even there in a few moments. So, thanks again. I’ll be bringing the money-fez-bandaid approach to my worries, which I think is exactly the very best thing.

posted in Heather Corinna, aclu | permalink | comments (0) »

Three important bits from my day yesterday:

1. My new editor? EDITS. Like, for real. She doesn’t ask me to do her job for her; she doesn’t pass her job off to anyone else. She does this cool, ingenious thing where she reads the material, makes smart changes, suggestions and notes based on the actual material, returns them efficiently, and passes them over to me to ask my input, which she has an actual interest in. My new editor? Advocates for me to the publisher, to everyone else involved in the project. My new editor has renewed my faith in the publishing industry. My new editor is my new shero.

2. I realized the other day that not only did I not know what the hell the FDA decision on OTC emergency contraception meant in practical application, no one else really seemed to either. Given the growing rate of pharmacist refusals, even for scrips, this seemed kind of important. So, I researched all day and made a lengthy post with all the info I could find here and cross-posted it at the All Girl Army. This also includes information on what to do per refusals, and arrangements I made with my lawyer at the ACLU about forwarding refusal reports to their repro rights sector for possible future cases against these assholes. So, pass the info on, if you would, to the women you know, especially in states and areas where refusals are more likely. Thanks!

3. So, the latest news in the Child Online Protection Act case is that the government filed a motion asking to dismiss the case (against them, against COPA) brought forth by the ACLU, myself and a handful of other plaintiffs, on the grounds that our case against them was frivolous.

Why, according to them, was our challenge without basis?

Because according to the U.S. government, none of us have prosecution to fear under COPA.

All of us being concerned that if we did not put up an age screen we would be prosecuted is vital to us having a grievance. To refresh your memory, the basic terms of COPA are such:

“Whoever knowingly and with knowledge of the character of the material, in interstate or foreign commerce by means of the World Wide Web, makes any communication for commercial purposes* that is available to any minor (without using a credit-card based screen to assure the user is 18 and over) and that includes any material that is harmful to minors shall be fined not more than $50,000, imprisoned not more than 6 months, or both.”

* Understand that if I use my portfolio site to sell prints or net new photo clients, that’s commercial. If I use Scarleteen to sell my book, or make any revenue at all, that is commercial.

“The term “material that is harmful to minors” means any communication, picture, image, graphic image file, article, recording, writing, or other matter of any kind that is obscene or that–
(A) the average person, applying contemporary community standards, would find, taking the material as a whole and with respect to minors, is designed to appeal to, or is designed to pander to, the prurient interest**;

** the legal definition of “prurient interest” is: a morbid, degrading and unhealthy interest in sex, as distinguished from a mere candid interest in sex. I bet you just love such a scientific approach, don’tcha?

(B) depicts, describes, or represents, in a manner patently offensive with respect to minors, an actual or simulated sexual act or sexual contact, an actual or simulated normal or perverted sexual act, or a lewd exhibition of the genitals or post-pubescent female breast; and
(C) taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value for minors.”

In other words, if even a given itty-bitty community — such as, oh, let’s say, half the populace of this country who voted for Bush in the last election — decided that by their standards, my work isn’t artistic, isn’t educational, isn’t scientific, was offensive to minors, or was designed to appeal to “unhealthy or degrading” sexual interest, and I do NOT have an age screen up (which, obviously, in the case of Scarleteen particularly, is a contradiction in terms), I’d be looking at jail time or tens of thousands in fines. I’d absolutely be looking at the close of my sites, full-stop.

Why would I POSSIBLY be so silly as to be concerned about this?

In a country where my own government refuses to fund comprehensive sex education? In a country where a woman who does not meet this or that beauty ideal or this or that normative sexuality model (like, say, being heterosexual, or bisexual only when it’s pretty and looks like what men want it to) expressing her own authentic sexuality is often expressed on bulletin boards in group conversation as more morbid and obscene than a Girls Gone Wild ad? In a country where I have even had intellectuals and academics state that what I do is NOT art, that certain stances of mine ARE harmful to minors? Where I can read pieces from other writers stating that readers going to Scarleteen are being sent “into the open arms of pornographers eager to encourage them to see themselves and others as soulless sex objects to use and be used?” (I refuse to give Dawn Eden traffic: if you’re curious, google.) In a country where I can with a simple flick of the search engine find endless articles stating that I am encouraging teens to become lesbians (oh, would that I could: to be able to reduce teen pregnancy, STI transmission, and years of unsatisfying, compulsory sex many teens girls have in one fell swoop? Please. I wish.) and engage in that oh-so-ooky-and-immoral “homosexual activity?”

Why, oh why, would I have ANY concern living in a country in which some towns continue to support domestic abuse, shame raped women, name-call lesbians and gay men, fetishize fat women, older women and menstruation because of how “gross” they are, and feel that unwanted pregnancy is a justified punishment for wayward women who have the audacity to have sex when they don’t want to be married or pregnant? In this fantastic wonderland where I’m well aware that when my book comes out, I can forget about the most major superstore chain carrying it because it’s so immoral and obscene, and all the worse because I have the unmitigated gall to not only talk about sex outside marriage, but about gender equality for women? In a country which allows for legal adults to make arseloads of money off the dramatic, pornographic, and inauthentic portrayals of adults parading as “Barely 18’s,” but tells the ACTUAL barely-18’s that they have no right to the ownership and expression of their bonafide, non-commerical and authentic sexuality or consensual sex lives, or forms of birth control by which to manage some of same?

In this veritable utopia in which the NEA can’t deal with Karen Finley (it was a yam, for crissakes, not a rocket launcher), classical statues’ breasts are covered with drapes, 30% of a parenting magazine’s readership calls a tasteful photo of an infant breastfeeding obscene and hides the magazine from their children for fear of their lost decency, women’s right to ownership of our own bodies is challenged daily, and in which, even if I wanted to, I couldn’t likely ever go back to teaching Kindergarten because I not only allowed myself to be seen unapologetically nude, I’ve gone and made the whole deal worse by being that naked lady who doesn’t tell sexually active teenagers that they are making a horrendous mistake, refers young adults to abortion clinics, and doesn’t do the smart thing, the good thing, and tell gay teens that they’re just “confused” and obviously simply haven’t met the right man or woman yet?

Yeah, I just don’t know why I’ve been so worried, especially here, in this absolute honey of a progressive, forward-thinking land I live in. Clearly, I’m paranoid. Clearly, the communities in my country, while they may feel all of the above, still think the work I do is of infinite value and no trouble at all for minors. Or, as the documents from the motion filed states, my concerns are “illusory.”

We’re likely still going to trial in October/November; the ACLU is filing an opposition to this motion this week.

But to file that motion, and do their level best to get our challenge tossed out, see, they had to try and convince the judge that none of us plaintiffs had anything to worry about if COPA went into effect was sound. They had to SELL it, sister.

“(Scarleteen) offer(s) health, scientific and political information specifically geared towards teenagers. In addition, it does not contain any photographs of sexual acts, nor could the educational dissemination of sexual information in a manner geared towards teenagers be considered “patently offensive” to minors. It also has seriously scientific value for minors…

Ms. Corinna identified several pages in her deposition about which she feared prosecution under COPA. These pages are: an article about a 15 year-old’s experience with being a gay teenager (dig that, Jhames!), instructions for putting on a condom, and the Scarleteen message boards. A review of these pages demonstrates that… it is information that is age-appropriate for older minors, which is the goal of the Scarleteen website. COPA was not designed to prohibit the type of information that Scarleteen offers…

(the pages of Scarleteen) are designed to educate teenagers about sex, have serious value for minors, and are not designed to pander to the prurient interest.

…those articles, as well, (which also) have serious value to minors.”

This is probably one of the best reviews I have ever gotten for Scarleteen.

From the federal government under the Bush administration. From an administration which, per its policies and practices, feels comprehensive sex education does NOT have value, and has been crystal clear on that point…unless it’s coming from me! Whee! I’m so special!

“the Femmerotic material…is artistic as well as political.”

And lookie here! My work is finally made clear to be capital-A Art at long last. So nice to have it all shiny and certified!

Here’s the beauty of this. The federal government has not only just handed me a very glowing review, but a Get Out of Jail Free card. A very real one, when it comes to its practical application.

Even IF COPA passes (and I don’t think it will, really: I feel confident we’re going to win this thing, again), myself and all my sites (this one, Scarleteen, Scarlet Letters, and my personal portfolio) are essentially free and clear. I have the material equivalent of a lifetime doctor’s note to get out of gym class because I’ve got bad cramps. Should the government ever decide to try and prosecute me (or sites very similar to mine:”COPA was not designed to prohibit the type of information that Scarleteen offers”), all this girl’s got to do is wave this text around and have it laughed right out of court, because in THEIR own words, my work is now exempt. They have just made it all but impossible to prosecute me for my work — or anyone with similar work — with their own words, however much they conflict with their own policies and platforms.

Did they actually mean the stuff they said about my work, or did they just want to ditch this case that badly? Who knows. They might have meant it (the two lawyers who deposed me were cool enough, despite who they chose to work for). They might not have. We’ve no way of knowing. But it makes absolutely no difference because they said it, in a legal document, signed by the Assistant Attorney General, and a handful of gov’t lawyers, in the service of Alberto Gonzales.

In other words, this is a win-win situation, kids. (And just really, really funny in the most wonderful way.)

I spent all of yesterday with a ridiculous grin on my face, because you know, it’s not everyday that when the U.S/ government shoots itself in the foot, you not only be out of the crossfire and keep your friends out, too, but their blunder is to your benefit, especially when you’re just some weird queer feminist chick who spends her days explaining sex to teenagers and contemplating her ovaries as art and politic. It’s not every day that activism actually pays off in a tangible way you have put your hands on.

Yesterday? Was a Very Good Day. Mr. Price came home, we reviewed our days together, and he said, “You did a good job saving the world again today.”

And maybe I did. But not without help from the fine folks at the ACLU and…

(take a moment, now, because I can almost assure you you will NEVER hear these words out of my mouth again, so best we all relish them)

…my good pals at the Bush administration!
(Yeah, it’s still funny. Think it’ll remain so for a good, long while.)

posted in Heather Corinna, aclu, copa, reproductive rights, bookish bits | permalink | comments (1) »