Bronwen Pardes - Doing It Right. Making Smart, Safe, and Satisfying Choices About Sex

Praise for Doing It Right ,

2007 edition

[Pardes] is up-front with her audience.... She [gives] teens the information they need, without judgment, to make their own decisions.

SLJ

An empowering opening chapter sets the tone: No matter what anyone tells you, what you do with your own body is up to you.... Bolstered by excellent resource lists, this title stands out for its comprehensive, open coverage of teens most urgent questions about sexuality.

Booklist

Informative and candid.... The language is honest and at a level to be appreciated and understood by teens.

VOYA

The conversational tone will allow teen readers to take in the wealth of information.

Kirkus Reviews

This is an informative, highly intelligent look at a teens changing body, sexuality, and actual physical intimacy.... A wonderful guide.

Teensreadtoo.com

Mothers and daughters can agree on Doing It Right nonjudgmental, informative, and easy to understand, its like a whole semester of sex education in under one hundred and fifty pages.

Dr. Carol Livoti and Elizabeth Topp, mother-and-daughter team behind Vaginas: An Owners Manual

Bronwen Pardes has the courage to tell young teens everything they need to know about their sexuality and responsible sexual expression. A required (and stimulating!) read for all teensand their parents, too.

Eric Marcus, author of Is It a Choice? and What If?: Answers to Questions About What It Means to Be Gay and Lesbian

Refreshing, honest... powerful! This book will make a life-or-death difference to many of todays teens. Bronwen Pardes writes to inform, not to judge, and she succeeds.

Bishop John S. Spong, author of The Sins of Scripture: Exposing the Bibles Texts of Hate to Reveal the God of Love

NOTE TO READERS:

This publication contains the opinions and ideas of its author. It is intended to provide helpful and informative material on the subjects addressed in the publication. It is sold with the understanding that the author and publisher are not engaged in rendering medical, health, or any other kind of personal professional services in the book. The reader should consult his or her medical, health or other competent professional for medical advice and services.

The author and publisher specifically disclaim all responsibility for any liability, loss or risk, personal or otherwise, which is incurred as a consequence, directly or indirectly, of the use and application of any of the contents of this book.

SIMON PULSE

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This Simon Pulse edition March 2013

Copyright 2007 by Bronwen Pardes

All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

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Designed by Mike Rosamilia

The text of this book was set in Gotham.

Library of Congress Control Number 2006928450

ISBN 978-1-4424-8370-5 (hc)

ISBN 978-1-4424-8371-2 (pbk)

ISBN 978-1-4424-8373-6 (eBook)

For Eric Marcus, my mentor and friend.
This is all your fault.

MANY THANKS TO EVERYONE WHO OFFERED ME SUGGESTIONS OR feedback throughout the writing of this book: Mich Bombich, Mary Beth Donnelly, Yael Lipton, Kimberly Lynch, Ryan Marcus, Miriam Richter Matz, Scott Mendelsohn, Shannon Sugarman, Emily Brouwer, future sexologist Biz Kornblum, and my human sexuality students at LaGuardia Community College.

Thank you to Susan Rowley, Steven Paxton, Juan Olmedo, Arthur Kosmopoulos, and Joanne Rodriguez for teaching me to listenand therefore writeempathically.

Id like to thank my parents for not letting me literally be a starving writer; and my brother, Jordan, for the drawing. Thanks to Georgette Weir, the first person who ever hired me to write, and to Brett Wean and Lex Burling for their patient publishing advice.

Special thanks to Melissa Eaton for reading my first draft with a keen sex educators eye and offering invaluable suggestions. And my eternal gratitude to my dear friend Tara Gorvine, for tying the pencil to my hand and nailing the paper down.

And finally, I am indebted to my agent, Miriam Altshuler, for taking a chance on me, and my editor, Bethany Buck, for making me write a better book than I thought I could. Thank you both for sharing, and never compromising, my vision for this book.

IM A SEXUAL HEALTH EDUCATOR. THAT MEANS I GIVE PEOPLE the information and skills they need to make healthy, confident decisions about sexuality. Ive taught teens about all the subjects in this book.

I teach at junior highs, high schools, and collegessometimes in classrooms, and sometimes in more informal workshops where students show up because they heard The Sex Lady was coming to campus. My students sometimes get embarrassed about the things Im teaching, but thats less common than you might think. Mostly they are interestedsex is an interesting subject! And lots of times they want to talk to me privately after class, sometimes to ask me a personal questionHow do I know if my girlfriend is pregnant? Do you think I have an STD?or to tell me something they havent told anyone elseIm gay, but Im not out to anyone.

My students have a lot of fun in my classes. Theres usually a lot of laughter, which I always encourage, so even when were talking about difficult or serious subjects, my classroom is usually a happy place. Part of the reason for that is the fact that I love what I do.

People often want to know how I got into this line of work, because its a pretty unusual field. (I have a masters degree in human sexuality, and when I was in graduate school there were only six people in my graduating class.) There are a lot of reasons why I chose to become a sexual health educator:

First of all, when I was in my twenties I had a good friend, named Jim, who died of AIDS. This made me want to help other people prevent HIV and other STDs, and one of the ways to do that is to educate people about how to have safe sex. So in some ways, I do this work in memory of Jim.

Second, when I was in college, I realized that I had a talent for talking to people about sex. My friends would often come to me for advice, not because I was the most experienced (I wasnt) but because I was the most well-informed. I made a point of learning everything I could about sexual health, and I started to realize that I was great at communicating this information to my friends in a way that was both helpful and fun. My college friends like to recall demonstrations I would do for them using a carrot to represent a penis. (The guys always got a little upset if I used a baby carrot.)

I have a strange gift for never being embarrassedat least not when Im talking about sex. Recently I had breakfast with one of my best friends and her parents. After the meal was over, when we were alone, my friend said she had been mortified when I mentioned anal sex. It hadnt even occurred to me that that was an unusual topic to discuss over eggs.

So I wanted to do work that helped people and knew I had the odd skill of being able to talk to people about sex without feeling shy. Most important, I knew that the world needs good sexual health educators.