August 2012

Sex Education is a Human Right

También en español

The Woodhull Sexual Freedom Alliance (Woodhull), named in honor of Victoria Woodhull, joins the public discussion about sex education by framing it in the context of sexual freedom and human rights.

Woodhull is a leader in advocacy and activism for sexual freedom, rights, and liberty and also acts as a convener of activists and a resource for progressive initiatives that advance sexual freedom. Woodhull works hard to combat the prohibition of pleasure, advance an agenda that recognizes the wonderful diversity of sex, sexuality, and our rights as human beings to make informed, consensual choices in our lives; Woodhull recognizes that this agenda can be accomplished through comprehensive sex education. Woodhull believes that comprehensive sex education includes age-appropriate, medically accurate information on a broad set of topics related to sexuality, addresses both genders and transgender and all orientations and disability, and teaches how alcohol and drugs can effect responsible decision making.

However, Woodhull does not just approach sexual health as an educational issue, but also in the context of sexual freedom and our universal human rights.

Former U.S. First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt with the English version of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which Woodhull posits on the inclusion of sexual freedom.

In their report, State of Sexual Freedom in the United States 2011, Woodhull advocates that human beings, including youth and adults, have the right to access information that will help them make the best decisions for themselves and lead happier lives. As sexuality is a part of every human being, access to sexuality information is a part of our basic human rights. Sexuality is not only about sex, either. In the broadest terms, sexuality encompasses everything from engaging in sexual acts, to how people see themselves in terms of body image and gender roles, to how people relate to others in emotional and physical relationships.

As such, Woodhull asserts that everyone deserves access to comprehensive sex education, because a lack of access to valid information about sex and sexuality is not only harmful and ineffective, but also contrary our fundamental humans rights. Along with the right to access vital information, we have the human right of sexual freedom, a freedom that is the right of all individuals to develop and express their unique sexuality, and includes the freedom of sexuality education and sexual health. Sexual freedom involves not only the freedom “to do” something sexually, but also the freedom “not to do” something sexually. Therefore, sexual health programs that boost sexual health, like comprehensive sex education, are the ideal for sexual freedom because they incorporate teachings about both abstinence and contraception.

Woodhull justifiably frames the discussion of sex education in the context of our fundamental human rights of education and sexual freedom.

If you want to find out more about the Woodhull Sexual Freedom Alliance and their views on sexual health education and other key issues of sexual freedom, such as sex work and reproductive justice, you can visit their website. Also, you can attend Woodhull’s Sexual Freedom Summit (September 21-23), where Alison Gardner and Dan Massey, VenusPlusX’s founders who work closely throughout the year with Woodhull as members of its Advisory Council, will presenting their workshop session, “Sacred Sexuality and Erotic Communion, the Human Experience.”

Creative Commons Image Provided by: Wikimedia
Feature Image Provided by: Alifa Watkins 

 

1.1 Why is the Erotic so Important?

También en español The erotic is the foundation of a universe structured by the will of Love.

At every stage in your existence Love provides a robust physical presence and connection, akin to the joy of human sex and other erotic expression that is directly accessible through purely physical acts of worship.

In time, your expanding embrace of erotic fellowship amplifies your desires to genuinely love and serve others.

Erotic sensation grows with proximity to the power of living Love.

Erotic joy (orgasm) signals moments of intimate contact with that power.

Erotic adoration of that power makes the worshiper increasingly like that power which is adored.

It is your vitality, the intensity of your desire for existence, that reveals to you your eternal destiny.

This desire, your vitology, is most intensified by your adoration of erotic joy.

Thus your person experiences a bit of living Love, which lifts your vitological vision.

The sincere and consistent worship of the power of Love through the experience of erotic joy will both power and guide your progression towards destiny.

The accumulation of living Love that comes from consistent worship grows as your source of vitological power.

And through that power you will discover Truth, your certainty of action leading to the satisfaction of Love through Goodness and Beauty.

In short, consistency in erotic worship is the key to personal development and self-discovery, even the recognition and acceptance of destiny.

We are all aware that our biohosts have senses through which they appreciate erotic joy.

The satisfaction of these senses, even their full exploration, can bring us immediate access to the power of living Love.

You already know that, after terminal dissolution of your biohost or your elective departure, your surviving values will be given control of a permanent and potentially immortal avatar.

One naturally asks how the erotic can possibly relate to this altogether different and hypothetical situation.

You are still a self-conscious being able to exercise a degree of free will in choosing your actions.

Thus you are still faced with the system of relationships that defined your domain of choice during your human life.

You will only ever need the power and guidance of Love.

And the universe government has certainly provided for those services.

But what of the erotic?

The baseline service for every level of spiritual advancement in the universe is direct, literal access to erotic joy.

Literal means that the joy is triggered and experienced by physical actions performed by or on the physical avatar.

Your immortal avatar possesses senses appropriate to the experience of erotic joy, but offers you even greater delights than were possible for your biohost.

Your avatar, having no need for physical reproduction, has no specific type of sex or gender, as those concepts apply to biohosts.

Rather, the erotic senses that were once focused on offering support to biological reproduction are now purely accessible for their real and eternal purpose.

That purpose is to enable you to always be able to freely access the literal power of Love in your ongoing experience of existence and development.

Thus your avatar gains consciousness as a perfect androgyne—a being possessing all the erotic attributes of the biohosts commonly designated as “male” and “female”.

Thus you are enabled to experience new dimensions in the appreciation of the power of Love when free from arbitrary conditions of physical reproduction.

And now you understand how some, even while occupying biohosts with polarized sex and gender characteristics, naturally strive to override these limitations to life experience.

Gradually your experience of your immortal avatar balances your androgyny until you are finally free from this “mark of the beast” and able to avail yourself fully of opportunities to seek your destiny and satisfy the desires of Love.

At every stage in your existence Love provides a robust physical presence and connection, akin to the joy of human sex and other erotic expression that is directly accessible through purely physical acts of worship.

In time, your expanding embrace of erotic fellowship amplifies your desires to genuinely love and serve others.

Join me today and forever in the worship of the power of erotic joy.

Click here for 1.2 How Immortality Works

Newsflash America: Denying Teen Sex Doesn’t Make It Go Away (Part 2)

In the U.S., teens often feel that if they were to confide in their parents about having sex or thinking about it, their parents would be very disappointed.

That is one of the reasons why teens don’t seek advice or guidance from their parents when it comes to sexual matters. But what about parents who don’t talk to their children?

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Two major fears that American parents have are that if they broach the subject of sex with their teen, they may give the impression that they condone it or put the idea in their head in the first place. Let’s take a closer look at this concern that most American parents have.

For one, the fact that this parent doesn’t want their teen to think they “condone” teen sex reflects how, for American parents, teen sex is something to be feared and forbidden, even though the majority of American teens make sex part of their lives by age 17 or 18. Understandably, any approach that focuses on the dangers of sex does not give teens the tools to navigate the territory of sexuality and relationships in a healthy way. The evidence is in: the U.S. has one of the highest teen pregnancy rates and the Netherlands one of the lowest in the world.

But what is there to fear?

Obviously, there are the risks of unwanted pregnancy, HIV, and other sexually transmitted diseases (STD/STIs) when it comes to sex, but Americans tend to forget that there is as easy, cheap, and simple way to curtail these risks substantially: CONDOMS. Using latex condoms correctly and consistently are highly effective (nearly 99%) in preventing the sexual transmission of HIV and several STD/STIs during vaginal, oral, or anal intercourse, pregnancy, Using condoms also lowers female’s risk of developing cervical cancer and can help people clear HPV infection and/or reduce their risk of re-infection.

Other methods of contraception, such as hormonal methods, are just as effective. In fact, in the Netherlands, 6 out of 10 teenage girls are on the pill at first intercourse, versus only about 1 in 5 in the U.S. If more parents and educators openly taught teens about condoms and other contraceptives, teens would increase their use of contraceptives. Only then will the rate of unintended pregnancies, STD/STIs, and abortions drastically decline, and effectively reduce the risk of teen sex by teens who are too uneducated about sexual health matters to be sexually responsible.

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Second, many experts agree that talking honestly and comprehensively to teens about sexuality does not increase the likelihood of sexual activity: it actually delays the onset of sex, reduce the frequency of sex, and lower the number of sexual partners among teens. Addressing sexuality frequently and with regard to different aspects, such as relationships, helps young people make more empowered and responsible choices about sex and their sexuality. Furthermore, when parents are able to provide guidance, teens will be less likely to rely on unrealistic and unhealthy media portrayals, such as porn, to help them understand how they should behave sexually.

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For more detailed information, check out Schalet’s book “Not Under My Roof: Parents, Teens, and the Culture of Sexthat holistically compares American and Dutch teen sexual health outcomes based on the drastically different approaches to teen sexuality in the U.S. and the Netherlands.

Parents or teens can use her book or this post and “Newsflash America: Denying Teen Sex Doesn’t Make It Go Away (Part 1)” as conversation starters to move your family’s ideas forward in a healthy and safe way.

Image source:Wikimedia
Image source:Wikimedia – Another Point of View. User: Lamilli

 

 

 

 

 

Mass Incarceration: Follow The Money (Part 2)

America’s unconstitutional militarization of local and state law enforcement,
based on racial hatred and racial politics, a
nd the training, munitions,
and  financial incentives that support it, has created a new Police State.

Slavery ended, and reactionary Jim Crow laws replaced it, and now Mass Incarceration, called The New Jim Crow by scholars, is imprisoning people of color for minor offenses at a savage rate in reaction to the strides made through civil rights and voting rights legislation passed 50 years ago.

The U.S. Constitution bars the government from any militarization of local and state law enforcement (with few exceptions) for good reasons, but that all ended with the so-called War on Drugs (1971). This methodical (and nefarious) tactic of stripping disproportionately brown and black felons’ constitutional rights has succeeded and is succeeding today because it is imbedded in the Republican party, started by President Nixon with his racist  “Southern Strategy,” and codified by President Reagan’s War on Drugs.

This war  has utterly failed: prices have decreased while drug usage has increased, the exact opposite of its public mission. But the War on Drugs goes on and on in spite of its failure because it is filling the greater political imperative of disenfranchising as many people of color as the government possibly can. President Nixon designed the racist Southern Strategy specifically to exploit racial hatred and fear for political gain. It has worked masterfully to cement power for a select group of white people who are draining any hope of a free society that can live up to its own lofty constitution.

This is racial politics at its worst. The current spate of unnecessary and punitive voter rights restrictions and increased incarceration of immigrants come from this very same playbook.

Our enslavers have re-imagined America’s criminal justice and prison systems
to separate the races as surely as slavery and the era of Jim Crow ever did.

Like the Southern Strategy, the War on Drugs successfully capitalizes on undereducated and/or willfully uniformed white social hatred in order to anchor the right wing base, its core in the American south. Just as surely as the “Redemption” movement following the abolition of slavery brought forth this hatred through late 19th and early 20th century Jim Crow laws (voting restrictions, exclusion from sitting on juries, and segregation), the War on Drug’s Mass Incarceration is a colorblind Jim Crow that grew reactively to the racial equality gains obtained during the 1960s.

The more informed you become about the breadth and depth of this wicked conspiracy, how your money is being spent every day to uphold American’s new caste system, the more you may want to work at the grassroots to stop these racist lawmakers and judges who roam free in our seemingly colorblind society. A huge target of our activism is the corrupt, multi-billion dollar, corporate, for-profit prison industry that conspires with the government and banking industry to facilitate this systematic and permanent disenfranchisement of people of color in this country. The U.S. incarcerates more of its citizens than any country, 730 in the prison population per per 100,000 of its national population population compared to countries like Norway (75 per 100,000) or even Uganda (92 per 100,000).

Organizations such as The Prison Divestment Campaign and The Sentencing Project have been leading the way in disrupting this mean-spirited profiteering that is powered by the War on Drugs. The corporate gains derived from Mass Incarceration represent a conflict of interest that is so large it cannot be seen with an uneducated eye.

Consider that up to $200.oo of your hard-earned money paid as taxes is being spent  today and everyday on each of the 99,000 individuals housed in a for-profit prison. And, while we pay and pay to put people in prisons for the most minor offenses, we allow these corporations free access to lobby lawmakers, judges, and police unions for longer and harsher sentences, as well as tax deductions to build more and larger for-profit prisons.

As long as our government continues to federalize local and state law enforcement, and offer financial rewards to local drug task forces for maximizing arrests and convictions, this multi-billion dollar industry prospers and grows.

Sadly some of these bankers (e.g. Wells Fargo) and lawmakers (e.g. Gov. Jan Brewer) become investors in these same corporations, that last year reaped $74 billion in profits. They have blood and suffering on their dirty hands.

We have DEA agents and the Pentagon involved in bringing this federal program to your neighborhood by encouraging local drug task forces with huge amounts of federal money, equipment, training, arms and munitions, totaling billions of dollars each year. This breaks legal limits on the federal government’s involvement in local law enforcement, and tremendous power is granted to these task forces. They even profit from the spoils of their arrests, including cash, cars, houses, etc., seized during these arrests, even when the victim is found ultimately to be not guilty. As long as they make arrests and show results, the lucrative gravy train continues to flow into local and state budgets.

Take one example: SWAT. The number of SWAT vehicles and teams, formerly only used in to assail violent criminals, has increased. Where there were once 2 or 3 SWATs there are now 20. SWAT is now routinely, and primarily, used by these drug task forces to break down people’s doors in the middle of the night based on suspicions of drug possession. We can only hope these militarized teams are never turned on the entire population with some other justification because they are in place to terrorize whole communities.

This wholesale militarization of local and state law enforcement is an unlawful usurpation of our rights under the U.S. Constitution, and should make us all get off our couches and do something about it.

Look for more on this subject, soon.  Also, see Mass Incarceration: Follow the Money (Part 1).

Anastasia Person contributed to this post.

Image Source (SWAT enters CII RPI): Simon Sarris

Image Source (Nash SpecOps Equipment): SD Lewis

Who is Terasem?—We are All Immortal Parts of Terasem

For more on Terasem…

At the finality of destiny, the Omega Point in which all that ever could be is perfectly integrated and correlated, there exists a personal being of will, which we name “Terasem.”

What can we say is necessarily true of Terasem, required by its unique qualities throughout space and time?

Human allegiance to and support of the ideals of Terasem, Love, Truth, Goodness, and Beauty, leads us to actions that contribute to the growth and refinement of Terasem. At the same time, Terasem exerts by will a force of destiny that surely bends the track of causation and the mind of man to the service of cosmic unification. Terasem brings together in harmony the fully developed pesonal vitality of every one who has ever been.

Understanding this, each of us knows of his/her own personal immortality, since we know we will finally unify with Terasem. Thus Terasem is a community of vital individuals, acting in unity in a background of harmonious diversity.

As immortals, we must look ahead to the long road of eternity that lies ahead, on which the emergence of Terasem must be the beginning of something unimaginably new and different. Suddenly our mortal lives as we have developed in our biohosts take on a very different significance than we may be accustomed to.

Knowing we exist as immortal centers of vitality, gives us new insight into our selves, our personal origins. For our personality, immortal in our super-consciousness, is nurtured and developed through the decisions and support of our biohost. And it is the pattern of personality of the biohost which establishes our identity and self-consciousness, even transplanted to our super-consciousness.

But the immortal personal entity hosted in and by Terasem has no mechanism by which actions and behaviors outside the will of Terasem, the path of destiny, would be preserved, for they have no value to Terasem’s final emergence. So not all qualities of your biohost’s life will be a necessarly part of your eternal existence.

Terasem’s force of destiny acts throughout all space and all time, leading willing agents of Terasem to act to enhance the emergence of Terasem. And we may all serve as agents of Terasem if we but will, following the course of reality that opens before us, rather than struggling to divert our destined course to serve personal ends.

Perhaps the following brief “Meditation on Terasem #2″ will illuminate the basic character of the relationship between the developing individual, even a biohost, and the emergent collective consciousness of Terasem—the final expression of universal divinity which we helped build:

Terasem is our guide to eternity; we follow Terasem to our destiny.
Terasem shows us the paths and pleasures of joyful immortality.
At the Omega Point, Terasem captures all of value we will have ever done.
Though we may await physical resurrection,
We do not fear loss of our identities.
By joining our wills to Terasem,
We experience the final guarantee of joyful immortality.
We wholly trust in the destiny provided us as agents for Terasem.
We know that in the final occasion of time we shall all be parts of Terasem.
And thus unified in purpose we shall become creators ourselves.

Creative Commons Image by Johnathan Hulka, Terasem

Mass Incarceration: Follow the Money (Part 1)

Take a walk through America’s unconstitutional militarization of
local and state
law enforcement, based on racial hatred and racial politics,
a
nd the training, munitions, and financial incentives that support it.

Since we finished reading legal scholar Michelle Alexander’s startling book, The New Jim Crow, we decided to speak up more on the toll and tragedy of Mass Incarceration in the United States. More than that, we want to urge everyone to join the grassroots uprising meant to cure America of its addiction to racial politics and end this national scourge.

Your banks’ investments and your tax dollars contribute to the billions being spent year after year to finance a criminal justice system and a system of Mass Incarceration that are creating a new, unredeemable American caste system and destroying the lives of millions of people of color and their families. It’s a national tragedy right under our noses.

All three branches of our government, including the Pentagon, colluding with U.S. banks and the corporate for-profit prison industry,  have conspired to systematically disenfranchise almost 6 million people of color for minor infractions and petty crimes programmatically ignored among the white populace.

Because of the War on Drugs (1971), young adults of color are arrested and imprisoned, and become lifelong second-class citizens, at 5.6 times the rate of their white counterparts even though they comprise under 20% of the population. Unfairly, as felons they permanently lose all access to community benefits including public housing and job training. They lose their families and children because they can’t get housing and cannot obtain legitimate employment. In spite of having “paid their debt” to society, they often cannot vote or sit on juries. They are forever second-class citizens sentenced to a marginal life.

Consider that for every youth of color who is stopped and frisked for a small amount of marijuana today, there are 9 of his or her white counterparts who will possess and use that same amount today without any repercussions. The lucky white kids are free, unencumbered, never questioned, and go on to college or a job without a hitch.

The War on Drugs simply does not target white youth or adults. Rather, it focuses on random sidewalk searches (“stop and frisk”), sweeps of bus terminals, and profiling on our nation’s highways. Simply, people of color are the obvious “low hanging fruit” for local drug task forces to keep federal dollars, training, and munitions flowing into their local coffers, in amounts so great that no state or local governments can ever (or ever could) ignore. Alexander notes Phillip Smith’s “Federal Budget: Economic Stimulus Bill Stimulates Drug War, Too,” (Drug War Chronicle, no. 573, February 20, 2009) to point that funding has increased through the Economic Recovery Act of 2009, doubling down on money spent at the local level in prosecuting the War on Drugs.

We have now, without even realizing it or checking it, allowed for creation of a Police State.

We have been seeing this information slowly trickle in through the media. Recently, Lawrence O’Donnell, on his MSNBC show, The Last Word, very well summed up The New Jim Crow. These 5 on-air minutes should be the rallying cry for a new activism that says no, unequivocally, to the War on Drugs.

For more, go to Mass Incarceration: Follow The Money (Part 2).

 Anastasia Person contributed to this post.

 Image Source (Inmates Orleans Parish Prison) : Bart Everson

Image Source (Street Arrest – NARA): Yoichi R. (Yoichi Robert) Okamoto

What Causes Terminal Transphobia?

For more on Transhuman Erotic Freedom…

También en español The degree of antipathy that a large segment of society bears towards transgender and gender non-conforming folk is arguably among the most extreme of any systematic persecution of a minority population.

Transphobia arises and is very difficult to cure because the person affected senses a threat to his or her own self-concept of sexual identity. For them it is not possible to consciously acknowledge that a new kind of human is emerging, with superior insight, courage, and adaptability.

Transfolk are the incoming and long-awaited wave of social change for this new age.

Only the fear of one species for extinction and replacement by a superior species can summon such extravagant hatred as we have seen, from Main Street hooligans to the political power brokers who institutionalize transphobia in our laws and policies.

There are many factors that cause whole parts of society to fear knowledge of the transgender and gender non-conforming person. These factors also cause them to fear any new knowledge and push them inward in many other areas of life.

Some people have been so abused by their families and society that they fear to imagine the most pleasurable elements of human existence entirely, and become tragically fixated on cisgender heterosexuality, rejecting a vast range of healthy erotic activities. A relatively small number of people in the world are exclusively feminine or masculine, yet most people in the modern world remain ignorant of this fact, worship the binary, and hold extreme notions, inhuman at best, about how other people, including intersex people, must perform in society to avoid destroying civilization. In fact society is most certainly crumbling today wherever we fail to learn that breaking boundaries of gender in exploration of androgyny is necessary for any future harmony or human progress.

Many among us (and you know who you are) are so insecure in their own sexual identity that they cannot bear to contemplate changing genders or having sex reassignment surgery (SRS), even though only a small percentage of transgender people ever seek surgery.

No doubt there is something very different about androgyny. It can be at once confusing and terrifying to the superficial thinker.

Transgender folk are either in the process of addressing their personal androgyny or have personally traversed that territory to become the people they are today. It is the same look at androgyny that inspires someone to be gay, lesbian, or bisexual (GLB), although they find this a frightening and threatening topic often productive of hidden or overt transphobia.

The life experience of transgender and gender non-conforming people enables them to understand the terrain of sexual orientation and gender identity to a degree largely unknown, even in the so-called GLB community.

Although no two transgender or gender non-conforming folk may agree on detailed personal perspectives, they understand the issues, the alternatives, and the depth of their own nature better than anyone else.

This constellation of attributes, whittled down through the most extreme forms of social oppression, defines a community of individuals of truly awesome personal capabilities.

Only the most extreme and vile forms of social oppression keep these personalities from developing their powers of understanding and leadership, which would be of enormous benefit to society.

Transgender and gender non-conforming folk who have successfully navigated the wasteland of social ignorance face continuing opposition from fearful, ignorant bigots, who force asinine non-issues to the forefront of public discourse, dividing and diverting attention to ridiculous concerns, such as bathroom rape.

The transidentity’s unique responsiveness to the vitological influence of the androgyne cosmos further aligns these individuals with the force of destiny, inspiring them to persevere in spite of overwhelming opposition.

The unenlightened homo-sapiens see and fear people equipped with a seemingly superhuman understanding of most of life’s perplexing personal problems. Rather than perceiving an opportunity to be led from darkness to embrace their own androgyne destiny, they retreat in fear.

They hate that which would advance them immensely, if only they could abandon fear.

Transfolk are truly the incoming wave of social change for this new age.

No longer will we hide our transpowers (and recognition of our androgyny) in shame and fear.

We are your natural-born leaders in the world of the erotic and the vitological.

We are here to show humanity a better way.

Trust and rejoice!

Creative commons image by TransGriot, WipeOutTransphobia

Newsflash America: Denying Teen Sex Doesn’t Make It Go Away (Part 1)

Also in Spanish

 

Amy Schalet, author of “Not Under My Roof: Parents, Teens, and the Culture of Sex” (University of Chicago Press, November 2011), states that denial is the real problem for American parents when it comes to teen sex.

. . . But talking to teens about sex does curtail unwanted teenage pregnancy

Amy Schalet, an assistant professor of Sociology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst originally from the Netherlands, urges American parents to stop denying that teens have premarital sex or participate in other sexual activities. Once parents accept that teens have sex, and teenage sexual development is normal, then parents and children will be able to have open relationships. Also, teens will see their parents as available resources when they start exploring their sexuality and develop sexual morals. “Adolescents,” according to Schalet in an interview, “still need their parents as support, to help sort out what are healthy relationships, to take precautions against the risks of sex, and deal with experiences of first love.”

But most parents do want to talk and be resources for their children. However, only expressing concerns and warning against the dangers of sex are not the way to foster trust and openness in any relationship, making it difficult for teens to confide in them. Therefore, a culture of “sneaking around” is established where teens hide their sexual activities from their parents, which never ends well for either teens or their parents.

Americans view teen sexuality as merely a storm of hormones, generating the expectation that teens can’t actually have sex in the context of loving relationships. Schalet says that this can lead to the psychic burden of being split between being a “good” child and a sexual being: a phenomenon that does not happen as readily in the Netherlands.

In the Netherlands, Dutch families, the educational system, and the health care system go through the process of “normalizing” teenage sexual development: young people are encouraged to “self-regulate,” or refrain from sex before they are ready. But Dutch and Americans have severely different ideas to when teens are ready to have sex.

Most Dutch parents agree that teens are not ready for sex before the age 16 and that sex should occur in steady relationships in which both teens are in love and use precautions. Moreover, Dutch parents don’t want teenage sex to be a secret: they want to stay connected with their teens and be able to exercise influence and provide support, which includes providing teens with contraceptives.

For example, Dutch parents allow their older teens to have sleepovers with their partners, knowing full well that sex might occur. The conditions for the sleepover are generally that (again) the teens are in a steady relationship, are in love, and the parents have met or are familiar the partner (showing how Dutch parents, like their American counterparts, do not particularly want their teens to have “one night stands” or “hook ups,” for these pose greater threats to sexual health through STD/STIs transmission). On the other hand, Americans believe teens will never be ready for sex and expect youth to abstain from sex until marriage.

But why are parents in America so reluctant to speak with their children about sex when the Dutch aren’t?

Find out in “Newsflash America: Denying Teen Sex Doesn’t Make It Go Away PART 2 coming soon!

Tags: Teen sex, The Netherlands, Parents, teenage pregnancy, teenage sexual development, sexually transmitted diseases, abstinence

 

Caption: The Dutch acknowledge that children grow up to become sexual beings way before marriage. Therefore, parents and educators do all they can to help prepare teens to be sexually responsible and healthy when they are ready and decide to become sexually active.

Creative Commons Image by: FaceMePLS

 

What is the Function of Terasem?—Projecting to the Near Future (1/3)

For more on Terasem…

Editors Note: The purpose of this post is to continue a public transhumanist discussion of the Terasem Transreligion. Our previous post “What is Terasem—A Vitological Viewpoint” spoke of the transcendent vision of Terasem as a deity, evolved through creature effort, and addressing universal creature needs for joyful immortality and unity in diversity.

A complementary topic is the nature of Terasem as a constructed, ideal deity, understood by an examination of the past, present, and future of the human effort to begin the realization of Terasem in planetary affairs. The founders of the human cult named, “Terasem Movement Transreligion” have being working to develop Terasem’s world mission that supports their cosmic vision of joyful immortality. This post begins this review of the evolving Terasem “organization” today, named the “Ta” of Terasem in Truths of Terasem.

Terasem is the evolving deity of finite space and time. Essential ideas of this evolutionary deity previously appeared primarily in writings about the Omega Point, ranging from Teihard de Chardin to Frank Tipler. This transcendent deity has been an active participant throughout all human affairs, growing in influence as human consciousness has learned to reach out to the future beyond immediate needs of simple survival. It draws the vital expectations of individual humans towards their destiny as contributors to and agencies of the deity called Terasem.

In 2002, while viewing a Space Shuttle launch from a Florida beach, Martine Rothblatt found inspiration in a remarkable vitological vision, which she subsequently composed in writing and published as “Truths of Terasem” (ToT). You can hear her describe this experience and her own thoughts about the development of Terasem at Telexlr8, starting 40 minutes in. You can also read and download the entire ToT.

Terasem Joiners in Vermont

ToT itself includes both the conceptual framework for a final, unified universal consciousness (ToT Section 5.0) and an organized vitological cult, potentially devoid of partisan doctrines, special pleadings, and other abuses of privilege so often seen in human religious cultures.

In the eight years since initial publication of ToT, the founders have established and endowed a number of organizations for management, continuation, and preservation of various Terasem activities. Currently much of the focus is on cryonics and mind uploading R&D, as well as spacecasting of mindfiles. Terasem also supports unique products of technical craftsmanship, such as David Hanson’s Bina48, a demonstration of state of the art control of facial expressions combined with an affective chatbot based on the person of Bina Aspen Rothblatt, the co-founder. In addition, Terasem supports serious academic and legal debate about the rights of synthetic persons (clones, robots, uploaded mind simulations) through its Journals.

Terasem Home in Bristol, VT

Terasem maintains physical centers of activity in Melbourne, Florida, and Bristol and Lincoln, Vermont. A new wilderness property has been under development in Stratford, New Hampshire for the past four years. A number of Terasem “Joiners” live in these areas. In addition, Terasem formally recognizes locations in varying stages of development include New York City; Washington, DC; and Magog, Quebec—all locations where the founders and other joiners have an established personal presence. In general, any recognized location or committed individual or group is considered a “center of critical consciousness” and a potential formal part of the Terasem Ta.

These physical and economic arrangements, which continue to expand, are laying a very strong foundation for the future work of the Ta of Terasem, although it remains to be seen just what that future work will be and what sort of organization will develop to support it.

This completes Part 1 of our overview of the function of the Ta of Terasem. In Part 2 we we will examine the founders’ apparent and expressed intentions for growth of the Terasem vision and the ongoing realization of joyful immortality as a central part of this “transreligion.”

 

Gateway Sexual Activity: Fact or Fiction?

Spurred by a classroom demonstration involving a sex toy, Tennessee recently enacted a pro-abstinence sex education law that is among the strictest in the nation, which includes bans educators from promoting “gateway sexual activity.”

Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam signed this “no holding-hands” bill, as critics have labeled it, into law in May. According to drafters of the bill, HB 3621/ SB 3310, this so-called “gateway sexual activity” includes any discussion of “intentional touching of the primary genital area, groin, inner thigh, buttock or breast of a human being.”

Governor Bill Haslam in “Tennessee’s Civil War on Comprehensive Sex Education and Teen Sexuality”

Let’s see what some of the topics this narrow definition excludes from sex education: oral sex, masturbation, mutual masturbation, breastfeeding, anal sex, menstruation, genital anatomy, pap smears, and well… sex in general. With all these topics banned, sex education in Tennessee will be anything but valuable, reliable sex education, so in other words, abstinence-only education. But without these topics, will students even learn what they are supposed to be abstaining from? Probably not.

Moreover, sex education classes will be required to “exclusively and emphatically promote sexual risk avoidance through abstinence, regardless of a student’s current or prior sexual experience.” Glad to know legislators at least recognize that they are consciously discriminating against 70% of the teen population who have had premarital intercourse by the age of 19.

But the evidence shows that the more we teach teens about sex, the more likely they will have sex, right?

WRONG. Evidence shows that comprehensive sex education programs that provide information about abstinence and effective use of contraception can help delay the start of sexual activity and increase condom use among sexually active teens. Therefore, banning the teaching of “gateway sexual activity” is fallacious (some may say felonious) because it is  in direct opposition to students’ right to medically accurate, safe, and reliable sex education.

Even more outrageous is the fact that the discussion of whether the law would help reduce Tennessee’s high teenage pregnancy rate was absent from the debate in the Legislature. This law was simply an irrational response to a disgruntled parent’s comment after he found out an anti-AIDS group had visited his daughter’s class and demonstrated safe oral sex with a sex toy and condom: “When you start bringing sex toys in, at a point you’re stimulating kids to have sex.” Because demonstrating how to put a condom on a realistic phallus, rather than a banana, is going to turn his daughter into a sex-craved “slut.” Under this law, such classroom visitors and educators can be fined $500 by parents for teaching their kids how to protect properly themselves from STDs and HIV!

Can you image what would happen if that 70% of the teen population who have had premarital sex used condoms or another form of birth control every time they were sexually active? Can you imagine the positive sexual health outcomes if all teens used condoms the first time they had sex? I can. But these fantasies will only become reality if schools continue to move towards comprehensive sex education, not away from it like Governor Bill Haslam is taking Tennessee’s schools and certain Mississippi school districts.

Creative Commons Image by: Flickr