Information on sexual health permeates the contemporary Internetfrom Instagram moguls with a sex ed agenda to crowdsourced Wikipedia entries on gender identities to Netflix original series on the joys and perils of adolescent sexploration. Unfortunately, much of this information is far from comprehensive, and at times unreliable.

But it could be worse: Heather Corinna remembers a time when this wild west of resources was nothing more than a desolate wasteland. That is, before 1998, when they founded pioneering sex education website Scarleteen to answer the questions of tech-savvy and body-curious youths.

Over two decades later, Corinna opened up to Ms. about how much has changed since they pushed through the tumbleweeds of an early Internetdishing on the origins of their career, their freshly minted graphic novel and the fickle state of sex education.

Tell me a little bit about the original website you hosted that prompted you to start Scarleteen.

Just to backtrack a little bit: starting Scarleteen: It was not something I meant to be a full-time job! [My original website], Scarlet Letters, was meant mostly to focus on womens experiences with sexuality; it had some smut, some advice, some literary pieces. And because it was one of the few things about sex and sexuality that was on the web at the time, I presume thats why young people were ending up there, because they were looking for anything on sex and sexuality. So they started to write in.

This was before abstinence-only education and purity pledges, and because it was then and not now, what they were writing in was not particularly complex stuff. Like: How do I take the birth control pill properly? How do I figure out what I like with my boyfriend?

My mother was in public health my whole life, my dad was an activist and Id been a teacher already for a while, so I could answer their questions. The nature of the questions wasnt very complicated, so putting together Scarleteen I figured I would put up five or 10 pages as a supplement and that would be fine.

Of course, what I wasnt aware of is that even by that point in the mid-90s a lot of people were not getting sex ed in school or anywhere else. So I put up those pages and it kind of exploded and everybody started writing letters. So, naturally, the questions coming in didnt necessarily stay so fast and easy. I had to basically stop teaching in person. I had to make a decision to do Scarleteen full time and once it took off it kind of ate my life.

What went into that decision to choose Scarleteen and make that your full-time passion?

Well, it certainly wasnt the ability to support myself! For me, it was just that I already liked working in sexuality with adults but the need did not feel as compelling. Im not sure if I would have made the same decision if there had been other sites that appeared to be serving this need. A lot of my nature as a person has to do with serviceif somebody needs a thing that I have the ability to provide, then it seems like I should do it. And a lot of the feedback that I was getting when I started doing Scarleteen was young people saying that they had a hard time finding other adults who had [sexual health] information who they could talk to, who wouldnt shame them, who didnt have innate problems with sex, who talked to them with respect, who talked to them like they were people who are becoming adults and who werent embarrassed.

When you were growing up, did you see anything like a pre-Scarleteen?

I cant think of anything like [Scarleteen] when I was growing up, but Id definitely say it has forbearers and parents. I remember as a young person being buried in Our Bodies, Ourselvestheres no way I could do this without that book and all of the little legs of the feminist, self-help health movement in the 70s.

I think about growing up reading Judy Blume; she wrapped quite a bit of really excellent sex and body information into what she did. I think about Free to be You and Me; theres a lot of stuff about gender equity and fairness in relationships. I think about the initial initiatives to provide information about HIV and AIDS, which were very grassroots and street, because health care providers and the whole government in America was denying what was happening. So I think there are a lot of organic parents of Scarleteen.

How would you say sex educators have changed since you entered the field?

About five years ago, we had an intern start who was 19 and who was talking about how she knew she wanted to be a sex educator since she was 12. It was lovely, because when I was 12, that wasnt a job! There was no way I would have ever gotten the idea that was a job, whereas someone whos 12 now, if theyre just watching YouTube, they can see that its a job.

I do think that one of the biggest changes is that you have young people, when they are still young people, identifying that this is an area of work that they want to get started in and get involved with. And thats a massive difference.

If you were to compare the sexual education climate when you started Scarleteen to the climate today, what would you say has changed or stayed the same?

Its interesting because theres definitely some things that have gotten worse in the interim and some things that have gotten better. Adults in general are still scared of speaking to their kids about sex and sexuality but you know, the 80s and 90s was kind of the hay day for really good sex information. It wasnt very highly policed and massive conservatism in the United States was kind of at a low. When I first started Scarleteen in 98, I wasnt answering questions from people who were in deep, deep shame from having been sexual because you didnt have all of this purity culture.

Then, of course, when the Bush administration came in, and you had billions of dollars going to abstinence-based initiativesthe opposite of sex education. So right now, were still at a point where people are fighting to get back good sex ed. But now that fight includes people saying: Oh, and by the way, we want our sex ed to include queer people, we want it to include trans and gender nonconforming people and we want it to recognize that not everybody is going to get married and have babies.

What are some of the biggest challenges at Scarleteen?

One of the biggest challenges right now is that Im the oldest person at Scarleteen by a very serious long shot, but thats by design. Coming from a generational place that was very, very sex positive and really sexual to a generation that is full of purity culture and has a lot of shame and extra fear is definitely challenging. Its not the easiest thing for me to relate to. I had a lot of things that I was scared of growing up, but sex was one of the few things that I wasnt scared of. From a personal perspective, I need to work a little bit harder to connect.

What are some aspects of traditional classroom sex ed that youve consciously brought into Scarleteen, versus ones that youve consciously ditched?

My teaching background is Montessori and Unschooling, so Im not a fan of compulsory education. One of the things I like best about Scarleteen is that nobody is forced to be here. So nobodys suffering through an education that theyre not ready for, that they dont want or isnt relevant to them. Having things be opt-in, rather than compulsory is a really big thing for me.

So, we try to make sure that what were doing is based on what young people are asking for, whether that ask is super explicit, or whether that ask is based on a trend that were noticing. In a lot of any education, whats being presented is being decided by the educators. One of the things Ill often hear as a sex educator is, when I was a teenager, I wanted [to learn] Xwhich would be great if we were going back in time, but generally, thats not a good basis for figuring out what somebody whos an adolescent now wants. They could be a radically different person from you, so what you wanted or needed 20 or 30 years ago is not necessarily helpful in figuring out what an adolescent right now wants.

Are there any projects or programs that you really feel fulfilled by right now with Scarleteen?

On September 3rd, our comic, Wait, What? A Comic Book Guide to Relationships, Bodies, and Growing Up came out! The comic is for middle readers and what we wanted to focus on is how young people10 to 11- or 15-year-oldscan talk with each other about basic issues, so that readers in this age group can see a good model of how to be supportive of each other. For example, how to talk about gender roles, boyfriends and girlfriends, crushes and feeling awkward in bodies. Theres absolutely some sexual anatomy [in the book]; theres some stuff about gender identity, orientation, how to build a support group, how people use virginity constructs to make other people feel bad for 75 pages, theres a lot! For example, theres one character who says hes worried that his genitals are weird, and our approach is to say that genitals are weirdso, we have two pages of illustrations of different ways genitals can look!

Separate from Scarleteen, I just got a contract to write a guide to perimenopause and menopause: What Fresh Hell is This: Perimenopause, Menopause, Other Indignities, and YouA Guide. By and large, a lot of [the perimenopause and menopause literature] out there assumes that youre cisgender, assumes that youre straight, assumes that you had kids, assumes that youre married to a man. Its meant for a very different generation than Gen Xers.

[This book]s pretty much going to be: youre in this, this is going to be terrible, this is whats going to happen, this is how were going to keep from killing people and hopefully come out on the other side. I want to make a list of everyone thats been in perimenopause and hasnt killed anyone. Just as a little inspiration just to be like: see, if they did it, you can do it. YOU can not kill anyone through this process.

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The Ms. Q&A: How Heather Corinna Started the Online Sex Education Revolution - Ms. Magazine