Inside the Secret Networks Teaching Sex Ed to LGBTQ Youth

At 840 square miles, Jacksonville, Florida is the largest city by area in the United States. A vast network of highways bisect the city like a river, forming a canyon of bridges, apartments, and offices in its wake. On a good day, moving from the west side to the east side of the city takes an hour. On a bad one, gnarled webs of traffic grind Florida’s most populous city to a halt. 

Christopher Chasse, Jr. and his family moved to a rural area outside of the city when he was 14. The small town he lived in was a mash of lush greenery, traditional southern values, and far-right politics. The same year as his family’s move, Chasse began to publicly come out as trans. 

“During that time, I was in this extremely conservative area, where there wasn’t anyone else openly queer around me, let alone openly trans,” Chasse told VICE. He yearned for a space to meet people his age and process his experiences: whether he would be able to attend prom, the pain of being dead-named in class, or what college would be like. 

After an unsatisfying visit to a support group for adult trans people, Chasse discovered JASMYN Jacksonville. Nestled in three softly colored Victorian homes, the organization is a sanctuary in the heart of northern Florida. JASMYN offers dozens of services for LGBTQ youth: from a resource group for HIV-positive teens to mental wellness drop-in sessions to clothing and showers. After years of isolation, JASMYN felt like a revelation.

But one problem persisted: The organization was more than an hour from his home, and public transportation was non-existent. He knew he was not alone. Across the country, thousands of LGBTQ young people yearn for resources but cannot access them—or, worse, are being actively prevented from doing so.

Chasse remained active at JASMYN throughout high school, but when he enrolled at the University of Northern Florida—which is located in the center of Jacksonville—his calling was clear. In 2020, he became a programming intern at the organization and created a space that was accessible to LGBTQ youth in rural areas and cities alike.

His solution to the geographic problem was to eliminate distance entirely and move the programming to the social-networking platform Discord. The class—a chat space inside the larger JASMYN server—was called Let’s Be Transparent. More than a dozen trans youth join each week to discuss transitioning, sexual health, and their bodies. To do this, Chasse partnered with a professional sex educator to give users a space to discuss being a sexual person while also being trans. 

Chasse said that having this kind of resource could have helped his 14-year-old self feel safe and free—without an hour-long ride across Florida’s bustling interstates. “It’s so important for young people to know that things are going to feel different, but there are steps to take to ensure you’re still feeling pleasure,” he said.

Chasse is not alone. Across the country, LGBTQ youth organizers and their allies are leveraging Discord to ensure they have access to affirming sexual health education. This has become essential as far-right legislation limits access to life-saving resources in schools, homes, and health clinics throughout the United States. Without these in-person spaces, technology has emerged to provide young people with information about pleasure, consent, and medicine—ensuring they are satisfied and safe. 

In the first six months of 2022, legislators across the country have proposed more than 300 anti-LGBTQ bills, according to the Human Rights Campaign. These laws are wide-ranging, but their impact is consistent: the violent stigmatization of LGBTQ youth, their families, and the organizations that support them.

Florida’s House Bill 1577—dubbed the “Don’t Say Gay” law by opponents—bans the discussion of LGBTQ topics in classrooms spanning kindergarten through the third grade, and other conservative-led legislatures across the country are following the Sunshine State’s lead. In April, Alabama’s Senate Bill 184 made it a felony for doctors to provide gender-affirming medical care for trans children. In Texas, Governor Greg Abbott instructed the Department of Family and Protective Services (DFPS) to investigate gender-related care as “child abuse.” 

These policies have tragic consequences: 31 percent of trans youth reported a previous suicide attempt in a 2021 survey from The Trevor Project, a rate that’s nearly three times higher than the number of cisgender youth who said the same. As the American Association of Pediatrics states in a comprehensive 2018 report, mental health crises among trans youth “most often stem from stigma and negative experiences.” Under the guise of protecting children, these bills have made trans young people’s lives more dangerous than ever before.

Activists are already feeling the impact. “It has to be said: This is a hate crime,” said Roxanne C. Winters, a youth organizer at JASMYN, while referring to the onslaught of anti-LGBTQ legislation. “The laws aren’t violent physically, but it’s possible to be violent on paper.”

Along with this legislation, school closures during the pandemic meant that LGBTQ teens could no longer access essential safe spaces, such as Gay-Straight Alliances, that offered accurate information about their bodies. To support themselves, young people from around the country told VICE that they turned to Discord for sex ed. “We used Discord because we were already there,” said Esmée Silverman, citing the fact that thousands of young people have created accounts on the digital-only platform over the past two years.

Silverman co-founded Queer Youth Assemble (QYA), a youth-led organization with members across the U.S. that is currently developing a trans and survivor-centered sexual-health curriculum. “Discord makes us feel included and provides a space to ask questions and discover who we are,” she said. Young people access QYA’s server through a brief intake interview, and once they’re approved, they’re led to a plethora of youth-specific resources.  

In many ways, Discord is uniquely poised to meet the needs of these support groups. Servers are invitation-only, which means that young people can gather without fear of online harassment. Each group has their own process of identity verification—normally a brief Zoom meeting—to ensure that only young people and educators have access to the servers. Additionally, Discord does not require participants to speak or be on camera, which can spark body dysmorphia for trans and non-binary youth. 

For those who do access these spaces, LGBTQ groups typically have chats organized by discussion topics like “Sex-Ed Questions,” “Drop-In Hang,” and “#MemesOnly.” These content-specific chats ensure that youth are never forced to engage in conversations about sexual health before they are ready to do so or before it feels safe for them.

These functions provide an essential sense of belonging during one of the most isolating eras of recent history. “In a world that’s so dedicated to generating their misery, it’s essential for LGBTQ youth to practice experiencing joy,” Hanna Harris, a queer poet and organizer, told VICE. 

Harris, who grew up in rural Oklahoma, developed a weekly sexual health class called The Talk in September 2020 as part of their larger organization, Found Family. They started The Talk after noticing that LGBTQ young people were only accessing resources like preexposure pro-phylaxis (PrEP), which helps prevent the spread of HIV, after becoming sexually active. This “trial by fire” left them without the resources to thrive, Harris said. In an early session, one teen asked: “What’s strap-on etiquette?” 

Creating a new narrative about sexual health means sharing information about consent and pleasure before LGBTQ teens become sexually active, according to Harris. For Chasse, this means covering topics like access to birth control for trans men and discussing what it’s like to have sex when you’re pursuing a medical transition. 

“Having these online spaces is so important because it’s the rural areas that are being targeted right now,” Chasse said. “Those young people don’t have anyone around them to relate to or even who particularly cares. I’m talking to someone 50 miles away, and they’re probably the closest trans person to me, but at least I can talk to someone about this because I can’t talk about it in school.”

Although Southern states have become a hotspot for attacks on LGBTQ youth, the region is also a hub for strategic resistance. “We know how to collaborate in ways that are unimaginable in other places,” Amanda Keller, founder of the Magic City Acceptance Center (MCAC), told VICE. “We have a community worth fighting for.”

MCAC is an LGBTQ center in Birmingham, Alabama and has one of the largest Discord servers for queer and trans youth in the country. More than 500 young people have joined the platform from around the state, and MCAC’s staff frequently host conversations about sexual health. In a recent workshop, a Discord “bot” enabled anonymous questions, and MCAC’s facilitators “ended up getting more than we could possibly answer,” said Lauren Jacobs, the organization’s assistant director.

“By the end, young people were responding to the questions themselves, and we were liking the comments that were accurate,” she told VICE. These answers turned into a Google Doc that the teens continue to reference, while the Discord still remains active.

Although Discord is not the final answer—LGBTQ youth still need transformative policies protecting their right to bodily autonomy—the platform enables young people to explore topics in a space where they do not fear retribution for their desires. They offer trusted professionals and peers who can be honest in their approach to  answering those needs, especially for young people who would not be able to access this information otherwise. In that exchange, their sexual desires are affirmed and named what they are: beautiful and irreplaceable elements of the human experience.   

“These spaces assure young people: You are not rare. We exist and we’re normal,” Silverman said. “I only wish the internet could teleport my friends to give them a hug. Sometimes you want to reach through the screen and give each other that.”

Follow Colleen Hamilton on Twitter.