lol

lenachen: So! The above was filmed two years ago when I was a college senior. I had just met filmmaker Therese Shechter who was working on the documentary HOW TO LOSE YOUR VIRGINITY, and we were both attending an abstinence conference being held at Harvard. It was the first spark of inspiration for the Rethinking Virginity conference I planned later that spring. My 22-year-old self’s camera presence aside, Therese’s awesome project is now so close to being completed but we need your help! In her words: Our goal for How To Lose Your Virginity is to undo centuries of myths and contradictions around virginity, and to encourage an honest conversation with people navigating the confusing process of deciding when and why to become sexual. What do a rock violinist, an Ivy League blogger and an Ohio engineer have in common? They’re all subverting the virginity narrative in our film. We’re excited to be back with a second Kickstarter campaign to raise money to finish up the film this fall, hire our composer and animator and license our footage. We are so close to being done, but we can’t finish without a successful fundraiser. BUT - If we don’t reach our funding goal by May 9th, we don’t get anything. She has 9 days to raise an additional $10,000 on Kickstarter to reach their $35,000 goal (otherwise, they get none of it at all). I’ve been discussing the above topics with Therese for years, and this conversation is sadly STILL as relevant today as ever: Since we debuted the film’s first trailer on Vimeo, we’ve had over 60,000 views, hundreds of blog posts and an overwhelming number of people speaking to each other through our online crowd-sourced First Person story series. Demand for this kind of information is so high, the trailer is already being used in university Human Sexuality classes across North America. That said, independent films are notoriously difficult to finance and Therese can’t do it alone! I’m not in the habit of asking for readers for money, but having followed the evolution of the film, I can attest that Therese is the real deal and the stories she’s uncovered in her research represent such a diverse array of sexualities and experiences. They deserve to be shared with young Americans today! If you can make a pledge (even a dollar helps!), head over to the fundraising page on Kickstarter and check out some of the awesome rewards for donating. And please, please, please help get the word out about this important project by doing the following: Tell your friends, your feminist group, your peer educators, your teachers, etc. about this film and the fundraising campaign!Support Therese’s other great work (I Was A Teenage Feminist, the animated short-short Womanly Perfection, How I Learned to Speak Turkish)Check out HOW TO LOSE YOUR VIRGINITY’s blog, Facebook, or Twitter and reblog this post on Tumblr! Thanks a ton, folks :) Four more days, they’re almost there! Please donate if you can!