Sex Education

Yes, it’s come to this

Flickr/creative commons

Flickr/creative commons

As reported last night by Rachel Maddow (see video below), at the urging of an anti-abortion religious group, the School Board in Gilbert, Arizona, is tearing out pages from a high school honors biology book. It is the first action taken after a law in Arizona passed two years ago that requires all textbooks “to present childbirth and abstinence as preferred options to elective abortion.”

The offending page, which simply discusses that abortion exists as a factual matter, something that is rightly part of the national curriculum for all Advanced Placement and other students hoping to enter college equipped with a complete education and able to compete on a level playing field.

Cutting out this page, retracting information previously available to students, is stupid and exceedingly counter-intuitive (see map below), whether in a biology textbook or in the context of sex education.

In this case, Rachel Maddow comes to the rescue by securing the domain, ArizonaHonorsBiology.com, to make this page available in perpetuity. But what about the next time and the next time after that?

This is similar to what we are witnessing in the state of Texas, where access to sex education is severely limited, and where social studies and history textbooks are being censored or in some cases rewritten to falsify facts (such as wiping out all mention of slavery, that it ever existed).

What will be next? Tearing out pages that mention homosexuality? marriage or cohabitation without children? the achievements of people of color? The answer is: Yes, more page-tearing and book-burning is in our nation’s future if we don’t start paying more attention to elections, starting at the local level.

We bring attention to this especially because it demonstrates the horrible repercussions of the theocratic fundamentalism now permeating American politics and law, retarding our progression towards a fair and just society.

These are not the first or only examples of censorship within our schools, and we are poised to see more of this retrograde behavior wherever right-wing nuts can gain a foothold, from local school boards to congress and possibly the White House itself someday.

These founts of poor decision-making are operating out of fear. They don’t believe women should ever have control over their reproductive health or equality rights, and think they are “protecting children” when they are actually hobbling them.

Complete sex education is the only thing that actually protects teenagers.

Center for Disease Control, 2012

Center for Disease Control, 2012

Free access to complete sex education is a human right. To withhold it is blatant child abuse when you consider the actual facts and repercussions.

Research proves that these programs are entirely ineffective. As a matter of fact, unwanted pregnancies and STDs including HIV are more prevalent in areas in the country that limit all sex education to abstinence-only programs. So these misguided lawmakers are not just wrong in purpose but wrong in deed.

Please go the polls on Tuesday (and every Election Day) and vote these people into the dustbin of stupid history.

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More on sex education here.

 

Salutes!

Quick salute to record 400,000 People’s Climate Marchers who turned out, yesterday. More about that, tomorrow, with an Op-Ed on what’s gone down today in Lower Manhattan many of these activists showed up to Flood Wall Street calling for corporate environmental responsibility. Naysayers who think that big marches don’t bring about real change fail to understand there is a pluralistic revolution already underway that will change the world whether they like it or not, divesting the world away from corporate rape of the world’s natural resources.

Future Feminist by Melissa Brewer Flickr/creative commons

Future Feminist by Melissa Brewer
Flickr/creative commons

Today, we are pausing to give kudos to our United Nation Good Will Ambassador, actress and activist Emma Watson, for defining feminism for a new generation.

. . . [F]eminism by definition is: “The belief that men and women should have equal rights and opportunities. It is the theory of the political, economic and social equality of the sexes.

… Men—I would like to take this opportunity to extend your formal invitation. Gender equality is your issue too.

We don’t often talk about men being imprisoned by gender stereotypes but I can see that that they are and that when they are free, things will change for women as a natural consequence.

… I want men to take up this mantle. So their daughters, sisters and mothers can be free from prejudice but also so that their sons have permission to be vulnerable and human too—reclaim those parts of themselves they abandoned and in doing so be a more true and complete version of themselves.

As we’ve opined before, many people (especially young people, especially those of all ages who resist progress) misunderstand or just miss altogether this central truth of feminism which Ms. Watson has just so eloquently stated. Feminism is and always was an all peoples movement, and it’s been on the advance for a long time now.
We are all standing on the shoulders of those far-thinking, any-gendered soldiers who saw the future (our only collective future, peace). True feminists go to work each day to enrich the present by upstepping progress in any way possible, and always across gender gender divides, despite disinformation of radical feminists. Those of us around when feminism first emerged recognize it as a philosophy that builds on all older philosophies that hold the potential to save the world by bringing about universal plurality and peace.

Men had, and have, a lot to gain once they back away from the precipice of hyper-masculinity, something forced on little boys, practically at birth. We have highlighted how this overriding male privilege, machismo and masculine extremism, has led directly to today’s misogynistic rape culture. This hyper-masculinity has no peaceful end. It doesn’t drive good works. Instead it maintains a vicious and constant competition with other men to be the most extremely hyper-masculine among one’s peers beginning with the repression (and conquest) of all women and all (in their opinion) less masculine men, making them trophies, conquests, less than human. To the extent that this overpowering man-centric point-of-view disappears from the halls of power, within corporations, governments, and religious hierarchies, people-centric solutions emerge. Gradually, old coercive, inhumane systems are replaced by entirely voluntary, humane associations in part built upon everything that is good and salvageable we find around us.

Hospice care is an example of an existing human partnership worth maintaining. The idea of hospice care, where dying patients receive palliative care with dignity, was conceived in the 11th century and has remained an welcome and useful association, surpassing what any corporation or government could conceive or control.

Two good examples of the transition of leaving bad systems behind us and creating better ways of doing things are the military and reproductive rights. In the United States, mostly poor young people are not given the choice to go to college or serve in the military. If they want to go to college, the military gladly pays but with an awful codicil: you have to be willing to fill a body bag on behalf of your government’s wrong-headed, greed-motivated, big budget, militaristic pursuit of world domination. Instead, how about a Green Army that is called upon to full diplomatic philanthropy, disaster relief, and environmental clean-up?

Confining a woman’s abortion and birth control decisions in the hands our government’s old white men is driven by their hatred and fear of women’s power. As an issue it has to be removed from public discourse and remain solely with a woman, her family, and her doctor.

Learn more about this formula for progress, here. And salute all people and groups of people who have the means and the courage to speak truth.

 

 

Park your formulaic sex at the door

Like a lot of people, I took note a couple of weeks ago when Cosmo, Cosmopolitan Magazine, the fun girl’s bible, ran a story with pictures laying out 28 Mind-blowing Lesbian Sex Positions.

Flicker/creative commons

Flicker/creative commons

The modern Cosmo was the brainchild of its brilliant editor and author Helen Gurly Brown in 1965, who started dialogs on topics unheard of in print at the time, skillfully merging sexuality with a commercially available mainstream magazine. Long considered a sexual freedom advocate, she told women they could “have it all.”

With this article on lesbian sex, and few others on gay, bisexual, and transgender subjects during the last year or so, Cosmo can be commended for branching out and acknowledging lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people, appearing to be more inclusive while trying to tap into that lucrative market they’ve ignored for decades. They are trying even while acknowledging that many or most feminists and lesbians have shunned Cosmo, put off by so much editorial about how the average woman, once objectified, can make herself sassy and attractive to their male partner/s.

While wondering if any lesbians were consulted in the making of that article I came across some criticism by real lesbians who posit that this entire concept seemed to have been the product of frat boys based on their porn fantasies (pretty much the style of most of the magazine’s stories). That may well be true but I think it was overreach — when making fun of the positions, these critics called them “stupid” saying they were either undoable or useless, dismissing them entirely.

It was impossible to hold up one’s own body weight, let alone the body weight of the other person in half of them. We had to balance on our tip toes and contort our bodies in the most insane ways. And, most importantly, there was nothing arousing about any of it.

What I think is being missed here by all parties is that touching bodies in unusual or unexpected ways can be rewarding, bringing you to heights you might at first have overlooked. It seems that, once liberated from the constraints of men, feminists and lesbians have gradually become more like men in how they approach satisfying their own desires.

We have sex. We fuck. We use our fingers and our bodies and our mouths and our toys and we get ourselves and each other off. Just like straight people do. There’s stimulation and penetration and vibration. There’s licking and sucking and smacking and grabbing. 

Instead of exploring erotic encounters that expose oneself to unexpected delights found all over the body, not rushing so much and staying curious to couple all parts of the body in surprising ways, men, and now it seems many straight women and lesbians, tend to recreate a slalom with specific goals to be met at every turn, usually in a certain order to get to their orgasm in as straight a line as possible.

But that is so, so boring.

Even the critics include a paragraph with two contradicting statements, aptly portraying the push and pull between anxiety about reaching the goal of orgasm and the desire for sex to be more than just that.

But there is not, I repeat, there is not anyone rubbing foreheads on each others’ belly buttons or rubbing bottoms against anyone’s sternum, not in the name of having an orgasm any way. By making sex all about an orgasm we miss the erotic excitation of our minds as well as our bodies.

Sex is an erotic encounter that stimulates physical, psychological, and, some agree, spiritual growth. If you focus less on scoring the goal you will play a more artful and nuanced game that is rewarded of surprises and new stimulation.

Slow down, set aside your usual formula for a week and see what happens.

 

The Sexual Freedom Project: Do your own research


The level of sex education in America’s schools is impartial at best and at its worst calls for abstinence. What has been your experience?

Many people believe that the responsibility for sex education lies with your parents. How has the worked for you?

The bottom line makes you responsible for your own sex ed, researching those aspects that teachers, parents, and even your peers left out. There are plenty of good sources of sex ed on the Internet (and in your local library), including sites especially for teens such as teen source, Scarleteen, and sexetc, so you don’t need to be left in the dark.

What have you done to complete your sex education?

If you believe is sexual freedom, then sex ed is an important tool for you.

Make a video, write a poem, song, or an essay — or even create an original work of art — and express your thoughts. If we feature your contribution on the site, we will send you a free VenusPlusX t-shirt to thank you.

More videos.

New Anti-HIV Condom Available

Starpharma: VivaGel® Condom Receives TGA Device Certification – Launch Preparations to Follow

Don’t Get Too Excited About The ‘HIV-Killing’ Condom Yet

by Gabe Av Flickr/creative commons

by Gabe Av
Flickr/creative commons

An Australian company, Starpharmahas just received its government’s approval to produce and sell a promising new condom incorporating VivaGel®, a lubricant purported to block viral infections, including HIV, HPV, and other sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), up to 99.9% of the time. The Australian consumer brand is LifeStyles Dual Protect, and the company has plans to market worldwide. 

Some experts, such as Dr. Anna-Barbara Moscicki, initially raised red flags. Dr. Mosciki submitted that her earlier study on HPV transmission and and other studies on HIV prevention, showed that VivaGel(R) can cause irritation of surrounding tissues, which of course increases the likely incidence of infection.

Starpharma’s clinical studies included 1000 participants, and its spokespeople were quick to neutralize these concerns by pointing out that those studies used a 3% concentration of VivaGel®, while its study used 1% and the drugstore version will be .5%, neither of which was shown to cause irritation.

If VivaGel® succeeds it promises to significantly reduce infection rates when these condoms are used for safer sex.

However, like all other condoms before these, they have to actually be used, making it doubtful that those needing it the most, the highest risk populations in certain countries, and others insisting on unprotected sex, will benefit.

The important take-away is that if used consistently and correctly, reliance on condoms, VivaGel® or not, significantly reduce the incidence of HIV and other STDs. This is underscored by trends showing that young people are chancing unprotected sex believing incorrectly that HIV is easily curable. It’s not. Go forth and have as much sex as you wish but make sure it is safer sex.

So what do you think of this new product, and how it may say lives?

Condom poster by Jun Jhen Lew Flickr/creative commons

Condom poster by Jun Jhen Lew
Flickr/creative commons

 

Decriminalizing Sexting

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Manassas Case Rekindles Debate Over Penalties for Sexting

The recent efforts of Manassas police and Prince William County prosecutors to photograph the erect genitalia of a 17-year-old boy for evidence in a “sexting” case has revived a debate in Virginia over whether such conduct between minors should be illegal at all . . .

Sexting is a phenomenon that emerged with the digital age, the sending of nude or semi-nude photos via a smartphone. In the “old days” people exchanged polaroids if they could, easier to hide, and to destroy.

If charges are brought, punishment, even for consenting teens, can include jail time and a permanent place on the Sex Offender Database along with all the pedophiles and child pornographers and rapists.

“The laws are outdated and literally make my daughter a violator,” the mother said.

First Amendment lawyers across the country defend these cases and many work on forging better state and federal legislation that would make sexting a misdemeanor with counseling and education versus felony punishments. Some lawyers and some defendant’s parents reject even that notion, positing that teens sexting with their friends doesn’t constitute pornography — that is free speech covered under the First Amendment. But we are along way from this sane point of view in the United States. 

[The American Civil Liberties Union of Virginia] opposes . . . any bill that will put sexting into the state  has opposed Surovell’s bill and similar attempts to put sexting into the state code. “We will resist as actively as we can anything that seeks to define this behavior as criminal at any level,” said executive director Claire Gastañaga. “Making it a misdemeanor just invites prosecutions and convictions.”

Another lawyer, Jonathan L. Phillips, who has defended sexting teens and worked on new legislations, calls their use of smartphones, “immaculate weapons of their own self-destruction.” 

A friend of mine, Lawrence G. Walters, Esq., is a nationally recognized expert on the front lines of this issue for a long time, defending cases and fighting to drop or reduce charges and shorten sentences. Click here to learn more.

What’s going on in your state? in your community? Should sexting between consenting minors, or adults for that matter, be a crime? Let us know what you think!

Another for Independence Day: Sexual Freedom is the Bedrock of All Freedoms

Another special for Independence Day 2014, we are representing one of our key issue posts that explains why sexual freedom is the underpinning of all of other freedoms. Please let us know what you think, and for more see A Manifesto for A New Age of Sexual Freedom and Transhuman Erotic Freedom.

Why Sexual Freedom is the Bedrock of All Freedoms was originally published on July 17, 2011.

(También en Español)

Flickr/creative commons

Flickr/creative commons

Our sexual pleasure response is completely individual. When we feel it, those precious moments, we experience unbridled exhilaration that is at the same time indescribable by mere words, even in great art or poetry.

There is only one way to replicate this experience of unrestrained freedom and that is to recreate — re-create increasing favorable circumstances to plug in at a healthy pace. Although sexual pleasure exists by definition in a time and space all one’s own an imperative to share it and enhance it with others is built in. Studies have demonstrated over and over again the irrefutable benefits to mental health, prosperity, and longevity of a life regularly punctuated with the desired number and rate of pleasurable encounters. This inviting pressure brings people into relationship, the midwife of personal growth.

These cumulative states of sexual pleasure, those knowings of  at-one-ment in the universe, can be mutually acknowledged as both a singular experience and the bodily guarantee of true pluralism. It is the one authentic human experience that virtually all other humans agree exists, and no other experience comes close to this criteria. Pluralism leads inevitably to democracy and the extension to more and more people their birthright to pursue sexual freedom and all other freedoms that emanate from this mutual acknowledgement of each other’s immutable bodily freedom in the form of sexual pleasure.

Our own sovereign portal to experience physical pleasure and love in infinitely inexhaustible manifestations makes possible a mutuality of individual autonomy that is expressed as true pluralism and the quest for universal equal rights for each person without qualification. Everyone shares that inner experience of freedom to the same extent everyone else does and is why civilizations progress in making all freedoms universally felt in society.

This inner experience of sexual pleasure is what joins together each and every person on earth, an organic unity all of us can recognize and agree is important, even a type of magic, that makes our world better day by day.

Party on.

On this Independence Day — Religion: Real and Fake

Stepping back in history for a moment to uncover the birth of religious freedom in this country, and how it was hampered by the Puritans, we are gladly representing a post we delivered a couple of years ago.

Religion: Real and Fake, originally published on July 20, 2012

Society suffers from a severe misunderstanding of the nature and role of religion. Nowhere is this more apparent than in ongoing arguments about the “separation of church and state.” Blame the Puritans.

The basic idea in the U.S. Constitution is one of freedom FROM religion, expressed as “freedom of religion.” The tenets of any religion may not be imposed on its citizens who disagree. This concept is fundamental to the unalienable human right to absolute privacy of person, and pillar of sexual freedom and the bedrock of all other freedoms.

120px-Human_soul-1The pilgrims who came to Plymouth imagined that they could impose their concept of the divine will upon everyone who opposed them, that the free exercise of their religion meant forcing the world into compliance with their beliefs, a severe misdirection victimizing all sincere people. A few years later, Puritan fanaticism swept England herself into a great civil war. Such foolishness has characterized many fanatical conflicts throughout history, and can be seen today in the demands and schemes of theocratic groups worldwide, including today’s America.

A real religion is world religion. One could say there are as many religions in the world as there are people. Even atheists and agnostics objectify “god” and choose to exclude these hobbled, uninspired notions. World religion is superstition- and mythology-free and an immediately accessible and consistent guide to living in tune with the rhythms of cosmic destiny. This vitology—our urge to persist—gives each person a vision of immortality, an unending, improving, and harmonizing ecology of living.

Our faith is one of loving—desiring to do good to one another. This perpetual cycle of love shared is powered by all kinds of love, especially including the erotic, and it gives us a unified power for progress the world has yet to see. Our inherent and inherited capability for sexual pleasure and orgasm (erotic joy) is the living and loving communion that matures us individually to the service of Love and its destiny, and unites us as a team in shared fellowship—a loving siblinghood.

For more on Transhuman Erotic Freedom…

 

 

Teens Thinking About Homophobia Must Dig Deeper

Note: the slurs in this video are not censored to enable a frank discussion.

These teens were shown a video of a recent homophobic reaction on a public street by Jonah Hill, the actor, and another video showing his apology on a late night talk show where he was a guest. It is worth watching to the end because it takes a while for some of these teens to get close to the crux of the problem in both the slur and the apology.

The teens were especially struck by Hill’s apology that noted his long-standing support the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community, and his regret that he was provoked by paparazzi that had been dogging him all day. Hill said, at that moment, he wanted to say the “most terrible thing he could think of” but he didn’t mean it in a homophobic way. A total disconnect relieving him of any actual responsibility for what he said.

Most of these teens come very close to concluding that homophobic slurs are never okay outside your small circle of friends who would know it was in jest. Some decided on the spot to stop using these slurs in consideration of anyone who might be listening and be hurt by them.

That’s a noble first step but we have to dig deeper. This is not just a homophobic slur — it’s actual homophobia.

What all of these public displays of homophobia reveal is a very real central belief buried in the consciousness of the person speaking them, that calling out someone as gay or a f**got or a c**k-sucker is the worse thing you could say. You may be a straight person like Hill or Alec Baldwin, and may even have done some stuff to advance the rights of LGBT persons, but when you want to shout back in anger you draw on your true character, who you really are as a person.

A better apology is that you found you needed counseling and education to find out why you, yourself, view being gay so negatively, and that you will work hard in the future to help yourself and others understand that gay is actually good, certainly as good as choosing to be a heterosexual.

These celebrities, whose social contract assumes public displays of their good, bad, and ugly expressions, shouldn’t get off the hook with faux apologies focused on what a good LGBT supporter they have been. They were caught showing something deep inside them that triggered the reaction in the first place, and as painful as that is, it’s not something that should be swept under the rug.

 

An Introduction to the Worship of Love

Photo by Jonathan Emmanuel Flickr/creative commons

Photo by Jonathan Emmanuel
Flickr/creative commons

Here is small clip* from A Course in Immortality, (en espanol, Un Curso En Inmortalidad), written as an Appendix for our upcoming book, The Unseen Journey (working title), about the erotic connection to cosmic technology. The Course’s complete table of contents can be found here. Tell us what you think either by commenting here or on Facebook/VenusPlusX or by private email (columbia@venusplusx.org).

The most direct, basic, physical manifestation of the reality of Love is experienced in erotic joy, in the intense experience of neurological orgasm, in which the stimulated sensorium explodes with joy as the individual consciousness briefly impinges on the reality of absolute Love.

And what should be our attitude towards this experience of momentary contact with maximum joy? Certainly not fear, though that is the reaction of far too many who have been told and/or come to believe that they are unworthy of pleasure.

What is the appropriate action of any person confronted with a vast goodness beyond any other human sensory experience? There can be only one answer.

Worship.

Worship erotic joy.

Worship the living experience of orgasm.

Worship the most basic sensory experience of Love.

Worship is the conscious act of surrendering one’s mind, one’s will, to the object of worship. Worship makes the worshiper more like that which is worshiped.

Worship of the orgasmic spirit of Love defeats barriers to interpersonal expression of Love through service. Worship opens the door of the mind to Truth, which directs our action.

Through erotic worship the human spirit is progressively attracted to higher levels of understanding, enjoyment, and service.

Those who would deny this first great step, this open and personal acceptance of a physical gift of Love, place a barrier between the human state and the progressive expression and experience of Love.

When worship of Love is only invoked in the abstract or in deep meditative states, extreme focus is required to experience enlightenment. By comparison, when the first step in the path of Love recognition and worship is taken in the erotic, growth of the consciousness to experience greater enlightenment is simplified and expedited for most people. All humanity knows erotic joy. The time has come for all humanity to acknowledge the supremacy of erotic joy and join in worship of this amazing, far too long ignored, gift of Love to humanity.

* All humanity knows erotic joy. If you are among the less than 10% of adults who have not yet experienced ecstatic orgasm, or for some reason you cannot, don’t feel left out! There are innumerable instances that are considered non-sexual experiences of erotic joy happening for you everyday. Maybe it’s your friend’s hand on your shoulder to comfort you when you needed it. Or that thrill that courses through your body during exercise or sports. Or how your pet makes you feel. Or when your child embraces you. Or that feeling of well being when you acknowledge the certainty that you are in the right place at the right time to turn a situation to the positive. Your internal love pathways are alive within you no matter what, so think of those as you read this.

Also see: Manifesto for The New Age of Sexual Freedom