Shelby Knox grew up as a conservative Southern Baptist in Texas turned progressive activist and documentary film subject. She recently graduated from the University of Texas at Austin with a degree in Political Science. Throughout her college career, Shelby traveled across the nation to speak to young people about the importance of comprehensive sex education and the power of youth activism, using the film that carries her name, The Education of Shelby Knox, as a vehicle for discussion. She currently lives in New York City and is a full time speaker and organizer working with progressive organizations to promote sex education, women’s rights, and youth empowerment.

Blog Entries by Shelby Knox

Smart Girl Guide to New Year's Eve

Posted December 15, 2009 | 01:17 PM (EST)


New Year's Eve - a sparkly dress, a glittering party, a bubbly drink, and if you're lucky, a kiss that lingers minutes past midnight. What better way to send off 2009 (good riddance!) and ring in the next decade?

Yet, anyone who's ever experienced a New Year's Eve knows the...

Read Post

Smart Girl Guide to College (Sex)

3 Comments | Posted September 8, 2009 | 11:36 AM (EST)


When I started college, I had never been to a party where there were drugs or alcohol. Within the first week, I was rolling a keg down three flights of stairs and watching a friend get it on with a fraternity president while standing in three feet of dish soap...

Read Post

Sex, Lies, and Federal Money: My Experience With Abstinence-Only Education

24 Comments | Posted May 7, 2009 | 12:37 PM (EST)


Every year when I was in high school in Lubbock, Texas, we were herded into the auditorium for a lecture from a local youth pastor about the birds and the bees.

At the culmination of every presentation, the pastor pulled a girl up onstage, produced a dirty, dingy toothbrush from...

Read Post

Abstinence is the New Feminism (And Other Things I Learned at Harvard)

107 Comments | Posted April 1, 2008 | 10:19 AM (EST)


The chastity movement has grown up and gone off to college, which is no wonder, really, since legislators recently decided to focus attention and federal money on keeping unmarried adults abstaining until at least their 29th birthday. The members of Harvard's True Love Revolution, a campus chastity club,...

Read Post

Teen Sexual Health Crisis: What Parents Can Do

Posted March 13, 2008 | 03:30 PM (EST)


While America is focusing on the evolving drama of the Spitzer sex scandal and the MySpace musical styling of "Kristen," the young woman who he paid for sex, the CDC has announced that one in four American teen girls has a sexually transmitted infection. It's fitting that the...

Read Post

Seventeen Tackles New Teen (Pregnancy) Trend

Posted January 29, 2008 | 04:17 PM (EST)


While Juno is trading a hospital gown for Oscar couture and Jamie Lynn is dodging photographers in Louisiana, the American public is grappling with the new visibility of the teen baby bump and turning back to the media for answers.

Actual teen voices, the only ones that can really...

Read Post

Hollywood Bests Washington On Teen Sex

Posted December 17, 2007 | 02:47 PM (EST)


This month we learned that teen birth rates are on the rise for the first time since 1991.While this alarming statistical shift should inspire concern or anger or action, it has received little more than wary acknowledgment from any of the 2008 presidential hopefuls (on either side of the...

Read Post