2020 In Review: You Were The Worst, But At Least We Did Okay

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Wed, 01/17/2024 - 13:58
Heather Corinna

It feels a fitting start to open this by telling you that in the most 2020 way possible, we -- including me, the founder of this place, who first launched it frozen in my basement apartment with the entirely unuseful radiator in the ceiling  -- forgot our 22nd anniversary earlier this month.

I managed to remember my own 50th birthday this spring and even then it was utterly forgettable, as were so many of our pandemic birthdays, so I’m hardly surprised I forgot this one. But it’s not like keeping Scarleteen going has ever been easy, least of all during a year like this. That graphic there, borrowed from a piece Jacob wrote this year, sums up the least of the worst of so much of the last year for so many of us all too well.

So, happy belated pandemic birthday to us. We did survive it, and that’s truly not a minor achievement for anyone in this terrible year.

Anyway, 20 effing 20. Only one more day. Finally. Thank Fiona.

Like so many, our team has had to deal with a great deal of hardship.

Members of our team this year have lost parents, beloved animal companions, and cherished relationships; living situations and work, potential citizenship, expected benefits or helps. On top⁠ of the terrible and unforgivable losses of Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, and so many others lost to racism and other institutionalized inhumanity, losses of land, of rights, and the millions of lives lost — and the millions more challenged and ever changed — around the world to the pandemic, we also lost some who the field we work in wouldn’t have been the same without, particularly researcher Shere Hite and author, artist, activist and educator Betty Dodson. I couldn’t have even envisioned a place for someone like me in this field at all if it hadn’t been for both of them. It won’t be the same without them, as it will ever be different because of them.

Everyone’s spirits here have been frayed. Everyone’s energy has been sapped. I had my own menopausal mayhem and a new book to write in the middle of all this mess, and a giant eldercare crisis and then the unexpected addition of two adolescents full-time to our small household, which meant that I was often less available to the team than usual, on top of everything else.

Despite all of that, and in partnership with our incredible group of freelance writers, this amazing little team that could still managed to do so much in this epically awful year. That our staff and volunteers still showed up for our users, for Scarleteen as an organization, and for each other is a testament to the fantastic people they are, and everyone's deep dedication to this work and to one another as a community. I’m so proud of them; of us. Particularly in a year full of so, so much that’s been so painful, so horrible, so bleak and so awful, I’d like to take a little time to shout out⁠ some of the work and other good stuff that happened here that was anything but.

The Good Stuff.

Between the end of 2019 and early 2020, with help from the deeply excellent Chitra Panjabi and a dedicated small group (including my sweetheart: thanks, pal), and thanks to funding from the Tikkun Olam foundation, we were able to hire Rachel Ronquillo Gray as our first People Manager. For the first time ever, we now have someone solely dedicated to managing our staff and volunteer team as well as to helping mediate with any user conflicts or issues if and when that’s needed. Rachel’s worked hard in her first year to get us all in better communication⁠ and coordination, and, with the help of some others on our existing team, is about to get started training in a new cohort of amazing volunteers from around the world we’re all super excited to have on board.

In January, we rolled out F*ck Me! a print and interactive digital zine by Scarleteen volunteer Al Washburn with illustration from Archie Bongiovanni. Like Yes/No/Maybe lists, it's a way to figure out, take, and potentially share, a kind of sexuality inventory when it comes to what you (or whoever is using it) want and need, what works for you and doesn't, what your unique body, mind, and other parts of yourself are like in ways it's important for sexual⁠ partners to know about. It’s free for all, like nearly everything we do, and if you haven’t checked it out and used it before, it might be a great start for the new year.

Before, during and after COVID, we continued to provide the kind of diverse, inclusive, informative, wide-reaching and comprehensive content we’re known for here at Scarleteen.

That included articles on sexual healthcare and access like:

We continued to publish sex⁠ and relationships content that’s often harder to find, like for trans and nonbinary⁠ , bisexual⁠ , disabled and neurodiverse people or sexual assault⁠ survivors, like:

We provided an array of international, intergenerational and other diverse perspectives like:

And then came COVID.

One of the best things about being wholly independent media is that we aren’t obligated to provide a particular kind of content or focus to anyone: not funders, not a publisher, not advertisers. What we create and publish, what topics we focus on, have always been based in our user’s expressed needs and the world we’re all living in, a world that sometimes changes radically and quickly.

When the pandemic began, we had already had practice making big swerves in content production fast before, and we'd obviously already had over two decades of experience providing education and information online. Our autonomy⁠  gave us the freedom to continue to do our best to provide our readers and users with information, help and other content relevant to their actual circumstances, rather than having to stick to topics or content that weren’t as relevant post-pandemic, social distance, or lockdown as they may have been before.

Since the spring, our team of staff, volunteers and freelance writers* has quickly created incredible and uncommon of-the-moment resources like:

We even — thanks in large part to our assistant director and frequently willing experimenter Sam Wall — managed to figure out how to throw a little Pride celebration in spite of COVID. We had all-day programming across our social media channels, and even a little drag⁠ storytime for our inner (or actual!) wee ones. Speaking of Pride, Sam and I also took part in Models of Pride this year on behalf of Scarleteen, providing a virtual workshop in providing quality peer-to-peer sex advice. (Sam also worked with the California Science Center on Scarleteen's behalf to help develop reproduction/sexual health/ puberty⁠ exhibits, which I think is maybe the coolest thing ever.)

While most of our work is done online, we usually do some in-person outreach through Scarleteen, most often in shelters and schools. The pandemic meant we had to look for some different avenues to find ways to reach people outside our website this year. In case it isn’t already obvious from the Pride she organized, Sam is our resident outreach opportunity whiz, and that’s who took the reins and started up our now-ongoing video Instagram Q&A segments (with help from some furry friends) and, in July, our new sub-reddit, which you can check out and follow over here, if you aren’t already.

Throughout the year, our staff and volunteers also of course continued to work directly with some of Scarleteen’s readers and with our direct service users. That included advice answers like:

That direct work also included our usual, every day help for users and their families on our message boards, through our text/SMS service, in our live chat, and in the ways we do through our social media channels. As always, we intend to keep on doing all of this work and more, so if you’re able and into making one more donation as the year winds down to an end, we’d certainly be grateful for any financial support you can give. If not, we are also always equally grateful and glad for high-fives, thanks and pictures of cute animals of all varieties, even the ones other people don’t think are cute (bring us your Proboscis, your star-nosed moles and your warthogs: we’re weird-cute here, too, we get it).

Like literally everyone, we’re very happy this year is over, and we’re really, really hoping the next brings better things.

In the event any of you are not so completely exhausted you actually manage to stay up not only for the next few hours, but long enough to see the dawn of 2021 as it begins, please make big wishes on it for all of us. May 2021 bring us all more of the justice, care, well-being, and safety; the autonomy, interdependence and community; the sustainability, liberation and wholeness we all so deeply need as a people.