When I was a teenager, I felt like everyone—doctors, teachers, politicians, police, pundits—was trying to control and repress my sexuality. Now that I’m older… I feel like everyone is trying to control and repress teenage sexuality, and I’m collateral damage.

So much of the discourse about birth control, about abortion, about sexually explicit media, about STIs, even about sex ed, assumes that everyone who has sex is a teenager. Should we have subsidized birth control because it’ll prevent teenage pregnancy, or ban it to discourage teenage promiscuity? I don’t know… let me ask my 40-year-old married aunt who uses birth control! Should we allow abortion so girls don’t become teenage mothers? Yo, I can’t afford to become an adult mother!