[Caution: There are some seriously dirty words in this post. Not mine, though. Don’t read if that offends you.]
Here’s an interesting tie in with the last bit on sex ed – the Globe And Mail had an article on March 13th (thank you to my info-pusher again) called The death of sex education, written by Siri Agrell. The lead in tag says “Now that kids can go online and learn about pregnancy and penis size on their own, are the squirm-inducing classes a thing of the past?”
This worried me on first glance – learning about sex on the internet for the most part means learning about sex from porn; more about that coming up.
But the real point of the article was a focus on a site mentioned in the podcast from the Um post, called Sex Etc, which is a right-on website written for teens by teens – it’s really well-done, and I would have loved something like that when I was young. The point of the Globe article was that using a site like this allows kids to ask questions without the worry of doing so in public, to a teacher, which is of course embarrassing.
According to the article, Sex Ed is being eliminated in Quebec (with instruction to teachers to incorporate sexual education into the rest of the curriculum).
If Quebec teachers are less puritanically messed up and actually able to incorporate sex ed into classroom discussions, right on: cross-curricular teaching is (I think) a better practice than isolating subjects from each other. But in Ontario, I’m not sure that if teaching sex ed was an option, it’d get done. This isn’t an argument against the website approach – I wonder if what we should offer is a computer lab with that site enabled and some free time for the kids in there. Obviously a comfortable teacher in the room would be a bonus.
I taught sex education in my middle-school-teacher days, and really enjoyed it. It was always interesting, never easy, and generally rewarding – but not because of any information I was imparting. Despite my repressive upbringing re. sex and the enormous shame issues I grew up with, I KNEW what I thought the case should be, so I was (I think) able to encourage comfort and openness and health in the students I spoke to.
Here’s a funny/scary story. I had a kid in a class who was way over-familiar with pornography. His family had plenty in the house and not much guidance, and he’d seen a lot. In one class, I offered to just discuss “terms” the boys (these were gender separated health classes, which is a good idea in middle school) had heard and wanted to know more about. Naturally, I learned a couple of new ones myself – though I’ll claim ignorance on what “felching” is forever – that definition is in a tiny box in my brain that I never open. Anyway:
One kid asked what a Boob Job was, and I said, “Well, I’m not sure, but I think that probably refers to plastic surgery that can change the size of a woman’s breasts…”
The porno-boy raised his hand and cut me off: “No no no… I can explain.” (To great laughter, naturally.)
“A Boob Job,” he explained with a great grin, ” is when a man sticks his dick in between a woman’s tits and fucks them and comes all over her neck.” (Absolutely gobsmacked, like the rest of the room, and a little scared, I just stared and stuttered for long enough that he was able to add: “It’s beautiful! It’s so PURE.”
Funny and terrible, I know. It did lead to a great conversation about porn (on another day; I can’t remember the rest of that day or how I dealt with that sad and suddenly popular kid) – and pornography desperately needs discussion because we’re fully porn-saturated now, and that’s seriously confusing to kids.*
The boys started mentioning all sorts of Acts they’d seen performed or heard mentioned or picked up rumours of, and the anxiety level in the room was building and building, and one sweet boy asked with all of the weight of the adult (Adult) world in his face “How are you supposed to know how to DO all that stuff?!”
And THAT was the gold moment, the moment when I was glad to be teaching it, and glad the kids were comfortable enough to ask what they wanted to ask. Because all I had to do was explain that what happened in porn was not what tended to happen on dates, and that the people in porn movies were acting, and that how they did it was not how everybody did it. The look of relief on his face was profound. I explained that dating could go slowly if he wanted it to, and that just spending time with a girl was great. And that people figured out sex together, didn’t have to know how to have sex right away, and that they had choices all along.**
I can’t imagine what it must be like to grow up saturated by pornography – not just the images, but the constant references to the imaginary perfect sex that everyone is supposed to be having. I’m glad there’s a great site like SexEtc.
—–
* The Onion summed this up nicely recently with the headline “Pornography-Desensitized Populace Demands New Orifice To Look At”. Full article here.
** No, I do not teach abstinence. I teach reality – that there are plenty of ways to be.
A Different Fish 