Writing affirmative consent into YA novels: Teens need healthy models in fiction, too | Salon.com

"I can’t remember learning much at school about sex either, at least not from my classes. Instead, I relied on what I read in the news, what I heard from friends and what I could find out myself. During this era, “no means no” was considered a big step in acknowledging that what people then called “date rape” was actually a real thing; this was also the height of the AIDS crisis, when it wasn’t a big leap to think sex might actually kill you. This meant what I could find on my own came mostly from books. Specifically, novels....

The problem was that the novels I read were mostly for adults — there wasn’t a whole lot of good, honest writing about sex intended for teenagers. Judy Blume’s "Forever" was the major exception — everyone I knew had read it and dog-eared the same pages — but most of the books for teenagers back then fed into the fears society was trying to instill into us so we didn’t get pregnant or sick. There was little room for pleasure or fun or even responsibility, except insofar as the characters had to decide whether to raise their children or give them up for adoption. I didn’t understand how (and when) we were supposed to transition from thinking of sex as something that came with either babies or death to something that we might actually enjoy.

Now that I write for young adults myself, I feel a sense of responsibility to do better, to tackle some of the issues teenagers face now...."