Imagine my amazement when I heard two sparky young Aussie women tell me that in school as part of their sex education they’d been taught how to put a condom on with their mouth. I actually thought, what a brilliant idea! Kids are reluctant enough to use contraception and with STDs on the rise it would give young women a good way of taking control of contraception. But of course I immediately thought of the lurid Daily Mail headlines that this would engender in the UK and realised that this would probably never happen here in my lifetime.

20 minutes later I noticed that they had deleted their RT. I asked them why this was and they said that someone else in their team was offended by it, they thought that using the term ‘masturbation’ and talking about pleasure was too graphic. This org uses their twitter feed to promote safer sex but can’t talk about masturbation….

Being sex positive is about standing up for stuff like this.

“So how do you know what they are selling is freely available?”

From my point of view, that’s exactly the point. How do you know? How do you know what information you will be provided with? How do you know the information will answer your question(s)? How do you know you will know what to do after reading the information (feel more “normal”, where to go, who to talk to etc.)?

The crux of the matter is that nobody knows what information GoGetInfo will provide you with. Is it right, fair or ethical that a young person has to take that chance so that a company can make money?

With this in mind, I find another of your sentences quite staggering: “a lot of hot air about nothing”.

I’m wondering how involved the young people were or are. At what point did young people become or stop being involved? Saying “lots of teenagers have been involved with GoGetInfo from the start” isn’t enough. Many organisations involve young people on a very tokenistic level; it looks good to “involve” the very people you are targeting. I’m not saying this is what you’ve done by any means but you haven’t demonstrated why, what, when, where and how young people were involved. Something as simple as this will help others to understand the background of your company.

I have text GoGetInfo to receive information on a couple of subjects. Due to my not having internet access (unlimited or otherwise) on my phone, I typed the address into my computer and viewed the information and video. At 13/14 I would have used my mum’s phone to text and, not being able to access the internet on her phone, entered the address into my computer… or I would have searched for the information / advice I needed on the internet.

I’m now 22 and times have changed: iPhone’s, BlackBerry’s and unlimited internet access exist. Does that mean that texting a number and viewing the information and video will be easy? No. Many young people will have “regular” phones with either no or limited internet access, it will need to be added. How do you support those young people?

It’s unethical to charge. Unless you are holding some secret information about (eg) how to use condoms that no-one else knows about then I’d be very surprised if it’s not freely available everywhere.

By the way I think it would be ethical and transparent for you to say that you work for the company behind this, or at least emailing from a machine that uses their server and IP address. (IP: 212.159.97.94 , osx-server.coles-mcconnell.com)

Bye!

Justin

Thanks for your not so thinly veiled legal threats.

I haven’t said a thing about your company, your staff or the young people that you have worked with. I’ve said that charging young people for vital information about sex and relationships is wrong and unethical. This is my focus. How much you profit from this, or how lovely you all might be in real life is secondary.

I think that any web project for young people about sexual health would have, as a minimum, clear links for young people to find their local free and confidential sexual health service. That would be right, proper and, dare I say it, ethical: where’s yours?

Best wishes

Justin

I think that it is fair to say that people need to make money and running a mobile phone service obviously incurs costs to the provider. I don’t however see why the information cannot also be available for free via the website. If, as you state, the ideal would be for all young people to have free access to the information that you provide, then put it on your website. It costs almost nothing to do so, as evidenced by the many individuals who do just that, including Bish.