Got Noods?🍜
Writing sexual health content for tweens and getting yelled at about it
I recently wrote four educational videos for an Online Youth Symposium put on by Victim Services Toronto.
Here’s my favourite:
The full animated series was showcased to over 22,000 kids last month and has been raking up online views (over 60K) since.
That’s the power of puns!
In this instance, a pun that fuses my love of writing for children and writing about sexual health.
Not your everyday collab.
But maybe it should be!
Sexual health is more than just “the talk.” There are nuances in how we understand our sexuality, and it starts young.
TikTok feeds are one long sizzle reel for suggestive dances, plastic surgery, and skincare for 10-year-olds.
Inevitably we all find ourselves in a LaSenza changeroom wondering how much push-up is too much.
…Or Googling which foundation isn’t going to smudge while making out at a movie.
…Or scrolling Reddit to figure out how much pubic hair you should have.
…Or fielding messages from a stranger on Chat Roulette who wants you to send him a picture.
…Or feeling kinda weird but also kinda cool and definitely super adult and mature about the guy in his 20s inviting you and your high school friends to his house party.
…Or thinking that - by age 13 - you’re so gross and weird for not having had a first kiss that you might as well commit to being the funny, ugly friend (you know, like all the best movie sidekicks).
…Or not understanding that being turned on means getting wet, and thinking that you have a disgusting medical condition because surely no one else’s underwear looks like this at the end of the day.
All of these thoughts and concerns are happening years before you actually start having sex.
And the conversations only get more confusing.
I recently read in The Guardian that teenage boys are so scared of crossing a line that they are recording entire sexual encounters to prove there was consistent, enthusiastic consent.
Yikes.
We’ve gone so far to avoid sexual assault that we’ve created a whole new problem.
But, in my experience, that’s how sexual wellness goes!
You think you’ve figured something out only to come up against an unexpected change in hormones, a new insecurity, or an emotional breakthrough.
It’s all constantly evolving. For example:
I used to write a lot about sexual trauma and assault in this blog as a way to heal. Now I write about worms because it’s fun.
I publicly read sports porn for my job, but I’m forever afraid of coworkers reading my older pieces about sexual empowerment.
I post videos of me pole dancing and twerking in the studio (so much so that women have reached out to say it’s inspiring them with their sexual confidence) but regularly had panic attacks trying to be intimate with my husband for years.
My music taste looks like this, and I’m also a children’s author:
TLDR: Our relationships to sex are complicated.
We do not hit 18, turn an “on” button, and have a normal, easy sex life until we die.
AND YET sex education loves to skip over any hairy details and jump right into “This is how babies are made, so don’t do it.”
I can’t describe how healing it is to write about topics like spotting sexual violence, meeting online friends IRL, unrealistic representation in porn, and toxic vs. healthy masculinity knowing that the videos are being shown to young people.
I feel like a sex pun fairy godmother for tweens.
What a LinkedIn bio that would be….
Alas, having a niche of writing for children and writing about sex is not the easiest line to walk.
In honour of this video release, I thought today would be a fun time to resurface a response I wrote to a Twitter troll in October 2022.
It’s a more serious (and kinda angry) essay than my new readers are used to, but I hope you like it anyway!
*** Below is a lightly edited post from October 2022 ***
I Can Do Both
Ah, Halloween. The one night a year when a girl can like a total slut, and no other girls can say anything about it.
If only dudes would follow suit.
Last week OttawaDaddy on Twitter (I wish I was making that up), commented on a post the Ottawa Catholic School Board made about my picture book.
Despite the content being geared toward child educators, OttawaDaddy felt inspired to share his thoughts on my sex life:
“She also writes about her love of smut and vibrators,” he tweeted, linking the “Sexual Health” tag on my website and a photo of the catechism of the Catholic Church.
The section he highlighted states that masturbation is “an intrinsically and gravely disordered action.”
Colour me disorderly.
The quote goes on to say, “…To form an equitable judgment about the subject’s moral responsibility and to guide pastoral action, one must take into account the affective immaturity, force of the acquired habit, conditions of anxiety or other psychological or social factors that lessen, if not even reduce to a minimum, moral culpability.“
Let me assure OttawaDaddy that I am both anxious and immature, so my vibrators should be cool with God.
That said, I’d love to hear how he manages a masturbation-free life. If you’re reading, please comment your prevention tips!
I kid, but OttawaDaddy’s tweet immediately sparked shame.
As someone who chooses to put my writing online, I’m more aware than anyone of the contradictions in my work.
I also question if I can be a role model for children and share my thoughts on sexuality. Of course, I can’t write for kids.
I’m too slutty.
As a Catholic school grad, I grew up in a world of virgins and whores. Everything belonged in clean binaries: you’re good or bad, hot or smart, devout or devilish.
There is no room to be more than one thing.
Instead, we try to force ourselves into these narrow definitions, and — doused with the sticky goo of Catholic guilt — end up labelling ourselves as “bad” or “slutty” because it’s a catch-all for anyone who isn’t perfect.
Aka: everyone.
As a teenager, though, I thought I was the only one who was tainted.
Losing my virginity wasn’t a choice. My first sexual experience was forced, and it completely changed the way I saw myself.
And, depressingly, how my peers saw me.
Girls who had been friends started referring to me as the “slutty one” of our group.
Boys waited by my locker to make comments about my “kill count.”
When I went to university, the only natural thing to do was double down.
Until my early twenties, I touted the benefits of casual sex.
I brought friends to buy their first vibrators.
I vocally declared that I was a Samantha (though I’m actually a Miranda)
For years I leaned into a persona where sex wasn’t a big deal and “slut” was a badge of honour. I wore that costume because it was the only way I knew how to process.
As a married woman, intimacy has been hard. Time and security have forced me to recognize the façade I was living with, and it’s overwhelming to think my entire sexual identity was something I just went along with.
What do I actually like?
Girls have to figure out their sexuality while protecting themselves at the same time.
We fall in love with fictional vampires and get our bra straps snapped in math class.
We learn, too quickly, that getting off and getting murdered are only ever a few degrees apart.
Who can blame us for growing into women who are confused, hurt, and scared? How strange is it that I try to unpack this in my writing, through smutty books, or in dance class?
Without those outlets, I would have struggled even more. I need places (and many of them) to unload the thoughts that still make me feel at fault.
Despite what OttawaDaddy thinks, this blog isn’t a mark on my morality.
If anything, it’s my stain remover.
While I cried over the tweet, my husband cracked a joke.
“I thought you would have endeavoured to have a scandal with the church”, he said.
He’s not wrong.
I’m resentful of the way my sex education was handled.
Namely, it wasn’t.
I walked into my sexuality entirely underprepared:
I only learned that women could orgasm after I had been sexually active for years.
I didn’t know what enthusiastic consent was or looked like.
What to do after you’ve been raped wasn’t in the curriculum.
How can we expect kids to make good decisions if we give them information in half-truths?
I want OttawaDaddy to read this blog and understand the nuance behind my writing. I want him to question why he thinks smut is so bad.
I want him to know that yes, I masturbate.
Yes, I think sexual health is important.
And yes, I write great stories for children.
I also want him to feel like absolute shit.
OttawaDaddy, you thought you were letting the school board in on my dirty little secret. You actually gave my insecurities a voice.
To that voice, I’d like to say that I can do both.
And fuck you for thinking otherwise.
Hanging thoughts:
Wow is it ever cathartic being petty
Who’s laughing now, OttawaDaddy??? They’re showing my sex writing to thousands of children in schools! Gag on it
Do you want to see the other animated videos I wrote?