Ah, bibiliographies and resource lists.

I am so not into this part of the book work. It’s grunt work, it’s monotonous in a mind-numbing way (rather than, say, the meditative space something monotonous like painting a wall one uniform color can nurture), and it’s just bloody boring. Plus, I am SO tired of spending my day sitting, I could scream.

On the other hand, I love giving back, I love acknowledging others and tramping all over the all-too-common arrogance one sees in waaaaaaaaay too many authors setting forth, directly or via omission, the ridiculous premise that every idea they have is original, rather than a historical and evolutionary process; a creation myth of turtles stacked to the sky.

I’m always so jazzed when I’m reading a book I really like and either find myself quoted or my work listed in the text or the biblio. So, it’s cool to be able to do that for other people. There is also something profoundly cool about the sort of intellectual history a bibiliography and resource list makes. For instance, while I don’t quite anything directly from Diane Ackerman’s A Natural History of the Senses, or from Audre Lorde or Foucault; from Susie’s Sexual State of the Union, or all of Shere Hite’s reports (I worship that woman), I know for a fact that all have at some point been a part of my process in terms of a certain chapter or approach, so I get to include them and document that.

(Of course, you can’t get TOO crazy with this, especialy when you’re a compulsive reader like myself, otherwise your biblio/resource list ends up in the same sort of overwhelmed, double-stacked disarray as my bookshelves. I mean, sure, everything Blake ever did, the works of John Donne and Mary Daly, the art of Judy Chicago and Remedios Varo and Leonora Carrington and three hundred and fifty-seven types of mythology from Greece to New Zealand have all had influences on how I approach sexuality and sex education, too, but this damn book is long enough as it is.)

Right now, my editor is sending back her teeny edits to my last big edits, so I’m tending to those and to the front and back matter of the book. We’re supposed to have the whole big pile into the copyeditor by the 1st, but I’m aiming for Friday. I’m glad to be finishing this long process, but I’d really, really rather be finishED.

Of course, that’s a bit delusional on my part, because until we’ve also handled the cover, the illustrations and other design elements, the making of the site expressly for the book and the supporting pages at Scarleteen, the edits back from the CE, the checking and return of those, the galleys, the press stuff and the thing is on the shelves and has been for at least six months or more, I’m not going to be The Big Done.

Trying not to think about that right now, though. I don’t know if ignorance is bliss, but in this case, intentional denial is mighty helpful.

At this particular juncture in time, I am the whining child desperately in need of a nap, kicking the front seat from the back, making everyone else’s ears bleed with an endless loop of “Are we there yet?” I’m sick of sitting in this car: I need a rest stop, a primal scream and some big green grass to roll round in.

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One hundred and fifty-seven thousand, seven hundred and nine.

One hundred and fifty-seven thousand, seven hundred and nine words…

…(not counting some front and backmatter, which thankfully, I can deal with a few days from now) with which I am — at this precise moment — finished spending just too damn many years writing, researching, editing, rewriting, re-researching, re-editing then AGAIN re-researching, re-editing and spit-and-polishing an ungodly number of times.

I already had my happy cry. It was intense.

I need a bath.

And my bed.

Addendum: To be filed under Y for Yep, our bodies are as amazing as I just wrote they are: in my insane stretch of nonstop, hyperfocused 16 hour + workdays and so little sleep, I hadn’t even noticed my period was several days late.

Until I got it, not even two hours after I finally crossed the finish line. And it’s the mean ovary/tube (we can never figure out who the culrpit is), too, so getting whacked with it mid-steam would have totally broken my stride. It’s like my body and my brain made a deal. How cool is that?

Brain: “Our deadline is nigh, and it is imperative we complete this task, well and on time. Is there any way we could perchance enter into negotiations to forstall your reproductive process?”

Body: “Dude, I don’t know WHAT the hell you just said. I’m SO wasted: we haven’t slept for days. All that damn coffee’s got me all nervous, then I gotta sit still all day, and I feel all… whack.”

Brain: “I empathize completely. I acknowledge it hasn’t been easy on you; it’s been challenging for me, as well. But if you could just set your needs aside for but a few more days, including your required shedding of endometrial tissue, I’m sure we can design a compromise.”

Body: “Endo me– ohhhhhhh. I getcha. The crampy thing. Yeah, okay. Howsabout if I wait, you get me some sleep, a couple Advil, a lotta cookies, then buzz off so I can get some tail and then grab a spin outside?”

Brain: “Your terms are acceptable.”

Body: “Uhhh..whatever.”

Thanks, adrenaline! Thanks, my body!

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Four days to go.

Tegan & Sara are buoying me along very nicely this morning, gods bless’em. (And Garrett? Not listening to them instead of my rollerrink favorites just to make you feel better about your alliance with me. Go soak your head.)

I have just finished editing all the real meat of the book, sparing reconfiguring the rape & abuse material, which used to live in another chapter, but is now being given its own, and lightly editing the STI appendix to make a few small factual updates since the last edit.

But after I do that, the big editing? Is DONE.

I want to run my eyeballs through all of it again from start to finish to make it as shiny as I can, and to integrate feedback from my focus group. But I’ll do that in the last two days: I’m one of those crazy people who thrives under pressure. The closer I am to a deadline, the more sharp and brilliant I tend to get. In college, I had to put papers off to the last minute, because otherwise, I’d write and rewrite really good stuff into absolute slush, and usually just end up redoing it from scratch in a 72-hours-of-no-sleep period.

(Coincidentally, my longest-term college roomie just emailed me this week. The same roomie who woke me up with coffee one morning, having found me passed out on my bed with one hand still moving on the typewriter beside me. The same roomie who had to then inform me that the whole last typed page of my paper was total gobbledygook which I had literally typed in my sleep.)

So, that means that after I finish those two things, I get myself started on the resource list/bibliography and on the acknowledgments (which could go for 20 pages at this point, given how long a process this has been, so keeping it pared is going to be tricky). The short summary waits for the very last minute, when I have a full re-read in my head and heart.

I miss Brandon. Last time I was in this stage of the editing process, we sat there together going over pages in the park, imbibing nicely, gabbing about everything, listening to great music, ordering in a lot of lunches and connecting at the frontal lobe. I even looked at plane fares yesterday to see if I could afford to fly him in for the last couple of days. I can’t. Lordy, can’t I.

I know better than to think that after the slap-happy Big Giddy wears off from being done Wednesday there won’t be some serious postpartum at some point: there always is. But I expect that this time it may either take a longer time to get there, or be a lot more mild. In my planned month-long sabbatical next month, I have visions of much baking bread, many long walks or rides, some bloody photo work, enjoying that big pile of books that’s been accumulating over there next to my filing rack in front of my fireplace and the longest baths in human history.

So close!

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Six days until deadline.

Amazingly, I think I’m going to make it — maybe even early — which is shocking as hell, even to manic, workaholic me, because it’ll mean that in less than two months, my editor and I edited and completed around 600 single-sided pages of really in-depth material, all while doing a million other things on the book and our other projects.

(And in case I haven’t said it in a few days? I LOVE her. Love her, love her, love her. I got so lucky.)

Yesterday, I had my game on, big time, from 7 AM until just after midnight, with only a short break. (We needed to go grocery shopping and prepare for my being a shut-in for the next week, since my ass leaving my office chair is highly unlikely. Times like this are the great rarities where it’s unlikely I’ll be eating anything but frozen Amy’s veggie bowls.)

As of yesterday, I was through all but the last two chaps, including updating all of the BC information since the last time this ms. was finished. In a better world, one where women really mattered, that would NOT have been such an easy job: my queendom to have a myriad of new, safe methods to add every time we revise this puppy. But alas.

Today, I finish up yesterday’s work, move the rape and abuse information that was part of one bigger chapter to its own chap (I’m worried about it getting lost, and with the rates of young adult abusive relationships rising as it has been, and rape being as prevalent as ever, I need to assure it’s very visible), move quickly through the STI appendix and then the reproductive options/pregnancy/parenting chap to finish their edits, then start some work on either the summary, acknowledgments and/or the resource list.

Per usual, a lot of really cheesy music from my rollerrink days is buoying me along. Pat Benatar, 10CC, Journey, ELO, Wings and Abba are — whether they know it or not — avid supporters of young adult sex education. I know, because they sing those power ballads JUST for me.

I’m starting to get excited. This has been such a long, long journey, with so many long, hopeless periods, thinking I’d either never find a publisher or a good editor who’d really let me say all that needs be said as plainly and balls-out as I do, who’d get what I do and why it’s so vital, and who’d be of size enough to really get this out there. For various reasons, when my last publishing arrangement — after so much work and so much trouble in making things work between them and me — totally blew up in my face last summer, I didn’t speak to how completely shattered I was. It was such a hard blow, one I really wasn’t prepared for, and I earnestly felt that this was dead in the water. I think I didn’t let myself get 100% excited about this until very recently out of nothing but self-protection: it’s so great to be able to let myself feel that now.

What I’m doing now is not all that different from what I do every day. I’ve seen it on the page before in its various incarnations. But for some reason, only now that I’m nearly at the finish line am I seeing some of it on the page and going, “Holy CRAP, this is really, truly revolutionary stuff they’re letting me say.”

Which is fuckin’ awesome when it’s revolution you aspire to.

(One other favor? I now have pretty much all the consult I need, but I’d really, really like at least one feminist woman with a more second-wave sensibility to look over some parts of the book. My own feminism straddles the waves in — I think — a pretty balanced fashion, but I still always like more eyes, and per looking at aspects of the book from a feminist standpoint, I’ve got third-wavers a’plenty, but I’d really, really like someone more old school to peek at it. I’ve sent out feelers elsewhere per this, but to no avail. Anyone up for it?)

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Okay, I can add the other good news now. Yippee!

1) I got the final okay from my publisher on the phenomenal illustrator I wanted (and who, lucky for me, wanted to do this, too!) for the Scarleteen book. So, three cheers for the insanely talented Molly Crabapple and what I know will be her fantastic, whimsical and gorgeous sexual anatomy, safer sex and birth control illustrations (as well as the illustrated menstrual charting page we’ll do together which I know I’ll henceforth be using)! Dacia, thanks so much for introducing us to each other.

2) And on that note, pre-orders for the book have begun! So, now you can get your little tucases over to Amazon and pre-order the book — S.E.X. (spelling out all you need to know about your sexuality) — pronto, to have it in your hands in the spring!

I’m going to go ahead and give you a schpeal I’ll give again when the actual release happens, and that is this:

If and when you order a copy for yourself or the young adult in your life you adore, I ask you also consider ordering an extra copy to donate that extra copy to your local public, school or university library or your local GLBT youth group, young adult or teen shlter or community center. Getting good, inclusive young adult sex education into the hands of those who need it isn’t so easy, especially for the teens and young adults most at risk, for those who cannot afford to buy books on their own, or who would be in deep shit if their parents found a sex information guide in their bedrooms. If every library and YA community center could have one for teens to use — with the sort of accurate, all-orientation, all-gender, feminist and friendly sex information we’ve always given at Scarleteen — I believe it’d make a substantial difference in our world and theirs.

So, if you’ve the means, please buy two and go deliver that other one to the library of your choice. Thanks much!

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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.

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I wouldn’t call what I had the other night a meltdown. Meltdown equals some sort of crying or wailing and the strong desire to consume a lot of tequila and play Joni Mitchell all night on an out-of-tune piano.

I suppose, despite it sounding flip, what I had was instead a sort of existential crisis.

In a word, I am feeling very concerned about the book. I am not concerned about the edits: those continue to go really well, my editor continues to rock the house, even to the degree of, in places, allowing me to be a bit bolder in some not-so-popular statements which my previous editor would NOT have supported. Even to the degree of sending me a book full of recipes for vegan cupcakes. I am also — so far — not concerned about the marketing issues. When I came into this agreement, I was very firm on some title (nothing cutesy, nothing too woo-woo, salacious or attempting to be outr? or purposefully provocative) and cover (NO photographs, no objectified women/teens, no “token” couple illustrations, given that unless you had ten couples on there, you’d likely be stuck with young, middle-class, white, pretty as the only representation) issues, which my editor backed me in 100%, and she is all kinds of scrappy. You can never control, entirely, the art department and marketing, but I feel pretty confident I’ll be supported in my limits. I’m not even all that concerned about it doing well financially/sales-wise or not: it’d be great if it did well, both for how much I think it’ll benefit the readers, and because making a little money after six years of working it would be swell, but my world will not end if it happens to bomb, especially since at a certain point, I managed to get decently unattached to the idea it’d ever find a publisher ballsy enough to put it out there at all.

None of that stuff or anything like it is my big worry.

My big worry is that I will fuck this up. That what seems dead-on to me misses the mark. That everything I thought I learned from, effectively, millions of Scarleteen readers over the years, and tens of thousands of emailers and board posters, is somehow wrong. That I’m either talking over or under their diverse, collective heads. That it’s too late, in the world where they grew up fed on Girls Gone Wild, cosmetic surgery as a change of clothes, and crappy gender roles that somehow have made a comeback since 1955; where 80% of girls who are sexually assaulted by their partners continue to date them, where the best a lot of these kids feel they have to look forward to with sex is maybe an orgasm and maybe a partner they can have some small measure of trust in, to really do something good for them. That something this one kid needs the most will be the thing I forgot or didn’t have room for. (And I have this new weird niggle where I feel like part of this has to address the teen that was me: like this has to somehow make things better for her in this regard which is… well, it’s a good thing I’m not in therapy right now, because that’s so textbook it’d put a therapist right to sleep.)

That I will blow what really is a unique and amazing opportunity. Few writers with a first solo book know their audience is already alert and listening before their book even gets advance press, let alone hits the shelves. I already have my readership, internationally, in droves. I already have the best targeted marketing possible, and since I built it, I don’t even have to pay for it. More to the point, I already have the trust and faith of my readers.

Which means that they have given me the opportunity to make a profound difference in their lives and in the world, and I am starting to feel profoundly fearful that someone, some way, I will waste that opportunity and not do the very best I can for them, and that their trust has been sorely misplaced.

Okay, it may as well be said, because we all know this about me already. I have a severe heroine complex. I know, I know. I have absolutely put a lot of responsibility for the world on myself, by myself, and while I certainly don’t think it’s up to me to save the world alone — or that I even could, or that absolute physical and emotional sexual health and well-being worldwide could fix all that’s wrong in the world — a lot of the time, I take more responsibility as one person than is probably sane.

But lord gawd, if I didn’t think it could make a really big dent, there’s no way I would have worked in almost nothing BUT sexuality for the last eight years. I mean, sure, I can be a horndog, but not enough of one to work as hard as I have for so little, be as isolated from every camp possible because of it as I have been, and sacrifice some of the vital things in my life I have to do this. I can’t tell you how many times over the last couple months of burning the candle at both ends with this, the ACLU case and then everything else I already do I have sat sighing with a great big miss-on for my Montessori classroom of yore, wistfully wishing I could be giving a simple, totally uncontroversial lesson in math with the red rods instead of explaining other sorts of rods entirely, and with a lot more at stake.

So, here I sit, right? I have this amazing open door. I have the goods, crafted painstakingly for years — years of writing and editing, years of broad, direct field research — and a great person to help me refine them even more and get them out there. And I really do have faith that if it were in any way possible to rear a generation or two with some WAY healthier attitudes and approaches to sex and sexuality, to their bodies, to sex and gender issues, to sexual orientation, to sexual relationships, it WOULD be a truly revolutionary thing, for all of us.

(But especially for them. The longer and longer I do the work I do with them, the more and more it emotionally burdens me and wears me out, the more I really, really want everything to be better for them in this regard. If a genie gave me three wishes, this would be one. Another would probably be for the ability to make my pug immortal. I’ll get back to you on that last one.)

It’s just that, you know, I get sent books on sex that come out for teens. And to say that sparing maybe one exception, to say I’m beyond disappointed most of the time is a substantial understatement. A lot of the time, I just want to throw the book against the wall, whether it’s because of sexism, heterosexism, a total mind/body disconnect, commercialism, a serious lack of respect for the readers and their intelligence, classism, what have you. People usually fuck this up, and that’s not just because some people are stupid. It’s because it is really fucking hard to get this right. Teen sexuality is a big-time sticky wicket, and all the more so in our culture and, from my vantage point, right now, at this point in time.

Given that, and given my various complexes, suffice it to say, I remain unconvinced that I, too, will not muck this up like so many other smart, kindhearted people have before me.

Fuck all, is that terrifying.

And I know, it’s also kind of stupid. I am as much an overachiever as ever, and thus, have in no way scrimped on research, fact-checking, and all the legwork to do this to the best of my ability. I have worked this field in a way I don’t know anyone else has. SO many people — and I’m mostly talking to myself here, to try and convince myself, but feel free to listen in if you want — have now read all or parts of this book in various stages. I have a nice focus group of ST readers on it again this time around. I’ve learned what I have per what to address and how to address it from what THEY have asked me — not what I’ve decided they need to know — and from answering them, en masse, for years. My editor has 100% faith in me. My partner has 100% faith in me, Some friends and colleagues — even some idols — I really respect and know wouldn’t do me the disservice of bullshitting me have 100% faith in me. So do these readers.

Why don’t I?

Wish I knew the answer to that.

I mean, look, I think this is probably healthy. I think anyone who really cared deeply would have this concern, and that anyone who didn’t have it likely doesn’t care as much as they should. I think my being this concerned about this will be one more thing to assure that this IS as great as I hope it can be, and do all I think it can do. I think: I also am a little worried that if these concerns escalate or go off course they might have the opposite effect of causing me to have my vision obscured by some sort of self-absorbed obsession with failure or anything less than utter heroism. I mean, I baked a pie the other night that didn’t turn out right by my standards, and despite the fact that I have anything even approaching a cooking blunder maybe once every year or two, I was totally annoyed with myself and apologizing left and right to everyone who just happened to be trying to enjoy my pumpkin-flavored self-assigned disaster.

Ai carumba. This? Right now? I didn’t need. I shouldn’t be surprised: I have an awful lot all coming together at once, and on the heels of some big changes for me, including living clear across the country and that Love of One’s Life thang kicking my rump in the (best, but) most alarming way. I’ve been so overcommitted and overworked that I haven’t been able to have any time at all to do any artwork. It should come as no great shock to me that with a project like this, all of my various complexes about responsibility, accountability, caretaking, adolescence, working-enough-to-be-found-worthy and overachieving would come to a big, puss-filled head.

I have the psychological equivalent of the world’s biggest zit, right on the tip of my nose, on the eve of the most important date of my life.

Isn’t that fitting.

(Other comments for this from the original html copy live here.)

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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.)

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