Langford - The pride guide: a guide to sexual and social health for LGBTQ youth

The Pride Guide

The Pride Guide

A Guide to Sexual and Social Health for LGBTQ Youth

Jo Langford

Rowman & Littlefield

Lanham Boulder New York London

Published by Rowman & Littlefield

A wholly owned subsidiary of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.

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Copyright 2018 by The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.

All rights reserved . No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Is Available

ISBN 978-1-5381-1076-8 (cloth: alk. paper)

ISBN 978-1-5381-1077-5 (electronic)

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information SciencesPermanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

Printed in the United States of America

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

T hank you to the young queer people reading this; your efforts and energy are going to build on the evolutionary and cultural gains we have already made, and bring us into a deeper understanding of what gender, sex, and ultimately humanity mean.

Thank you to the parents and other grown-ups in the lives of our young queer folk. There are too many LGBT youth who are orphaned in this day and ageboth physically and emotionallyand we have lost too many of these young people to shame, suicide, and the specific dangers of living on the street.

For my three most-importants, Amber, Xander, and Bella: You have taught me what it means to be strong, self-aware, and as much myself as I can be. I feel so fortunate that I am close to the man I always wanted to be. I am indebted to the three of you in more ways than I have words.

Thanks, also, to so many others who have been there for me: my family, friends (who also happen to be family), and colleagues (who also happen to be friends). Thank you all for the support, inspiration, conversation, patience, flames under my buttand always, the palpable, palpable love.

And a very special thanks to my smart and enthusiastic focus group of LGBTQ people, professionals, and allies for the fantastic feedback and, ultimately, the endorsements! Your help, time, and opinions were integral to this resource.

INTRO

I am a therapist, a sex educator, and a dad. Ive worked for decades to bring information (with humor) to queer underagers to increase their knowledge and self-confidence. I see this as an essential, proactive defense against the sometimes-serious consequences that can accompany sexual activity, as well as the often-serious consequences of simply being queer in the world.

This book can help you protect lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender youth from some of the other trauma that can be associated with being both a teen and queer at the same time.

If you are a teenager, consider this:

• Approximately half of you are already sexually active in some way.
• A quarter of you have already gotten a sexually transmitted infection (STI).
• A third of you have received an aggressive solicitation from an online predator in the past year.
• One out of every three of you has sent a nude picture to someone with your cell phone.
• About one-third of you will have been sexually assaulted in some way before your eighteenth birthday.

If you also happen to identify as G, L, B, T, or Q,

• At least one in ten of you has missed school in the last month because you did not feel safe.
• Approximately a third of you have been bullied at school (34 percent) or online (28 percent).
• You are twice as likely as your straight/cis counterparts to experience physical dating violence (18 percent vs. 8 percent).
• 40 percent of you have seriously considered suicide.
• As many as 30 percent of you have tried.

This book will help you deal with people who will try to victimize you. Though you are stronger than others due to your struggles, more creative due to having to think outside larger, cultural boxes, and braver in the face of both external adversity and your own, unique, inner journeyyou will still face adversity, invisibility, and violence, just because you are you. Predators and haters are real, as are the problems and barriers they will create for you, and we will talk about them throughout this book.

It is also common, now, for adolescent girls and boys (of all genders, orientations, and identities) to accidentally become their own worst enemyespecially where technology intersects with their sexuality. Much of the sexual damage being done to you, as individuals and as a generation, is being done to yourselves and each other.

LGBTW

Peppered throughout the following chapters are smaller, sidebar bits of information that some readers will find relevant, titled LGBTWa compound word mixing the LGBT initialism with the Internet shorthand BTW (for by the way). These time-out-of-time subsections are meant to expand on topics within the chapters or, in some cases, to add in an extra layer of consideration.

LGBTW... The Values Contributing to This Work

I am a kinda crunchy, sorta groovy, West Coast, American, liberal, educated, secular, cisgender, bisexual, white dude. I am the dad of two amazing children, as well as a veteran sex educator, with decades of experience helping teenagers grapple with the many fun, fascinating, and sometimes frightening aspects of sex and sexuality. As such, I have a deep appreciation for the difficulty and confusion associated with puberty and adolescenceincluding having to navigate the wide landscape of both sexuality and gender.

My goal in writing this book is to share what I have learned from decades of working with young people, both boys and girls, both queer and straight, both trans and cis, and to be as helpful, inclusive, thorough, and empowering as possible.

As a person, a parent, and a professional,

• I believe teens ought to be held responsible for their own learning and experience, actions, and reactions.
• To achieve this, I believe they need to be treated with respect, have access to accurate and relevant comprehensive sexual education, and be held to high standards.
• I believe it is the responsibility of caring adults in young peoples lives to provide such information and standards and to model the importance of acknowledging and accepting all sex orientations and gender identities.
• I believe that there are both risks and rewards inherent in sexual behavior, self-expression, and simply existing in the world as a queer person.
• I believe that fear and ignorance, vagueness, and avoidance increase those risks, and that frank, honest, medically accurate, and open-minded approaches lower them.