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.

#####

More on sex education here.

 

The Sexual Freedom Project: Birds and the Bees

Meet Ying, who doesn’t really believe in the abstinence-only approach, and tells us why. She received much of her formal sexual education in Catholic school, and shares with us some of the topics they covered. She tells us about her traditional parents and their expectations for her.  And she has some wisdom for us about bonding with and learning about our significant others.

What do you think about sex before marriage? Learning about sex from the Catholic Church? What parents should talk about with their kids? And how well your parents really know each other?

Send us your thoughts at columbia@venusplusx.org — we want to hear from you!  Make us a video, write us an essay or a poem, or create some original art — we’ll thank you with a t-shirt.

More videos.

TRANSCRIPT

Hmm… “Abstinence only”… Uh, I don’t really believe in that
because, I don’t know, I think that people
get really sexually frustrated so…
Like why? I don’t know. I actually went to a
Catholic school between kindergarten until twelfth grade, so…
Sex in religion, so they talk to you all about like the diseases that you can get and like,
the relationships that you should go through,
and like when you get into “walking on eggshells”
and it’s dangerous, but… I mean,I guess
they didn’t really stress out um, maybe, I don’t know, having sex with people or anything,
they just kinda talked about relationships.
They talked about um, you know, sexually transmitted diseases, what they look like, and how, yeah, how you get it,
how you prevent it. My parents um, are very very traditional,
so they don’t even talk like about, like, the birds and the bees.
They just kind of like hope that I don’t have sex before marriage so… yeah. It’s definitely about cultural taboos.
Cultural taboos really, I feel like um, you know, even today
my boyfriend gets questioned about sex by our cleaning person,
like, in the morning at Yaffa. They just like, he justasks him like how many times a day that we have sex,
or how many… like they have no idea.
And I mean it’s kind of weird and
I’m sure it’s very like they have no idea about it
because they ask about it, but it’s like
at the end of the day it’s like these people
don’t bond with each other until they get married. And how much, how healthy is that?
My parents… My mom didn’t even have sex with my father until they were married.
Like, to this day she knows nothing about him…

The Sexual Freedom Project: Let’s Talk About Sex

We are taking a second look at this video which asked a lot of basic questions. Many of you contacted us privately with your answers, and often with questions as well. So what do you think?

Who taught you about sex? Were you able to talk with your parents about it? Do parents have realistic expectations about the sexual activities of their children?

How does a person know when they’re mature enough to begin having sex? How can we ensure that young people have the relevant facts they need to make the best decisions about their sexual behaviors?What role does the Internet play in sexual education today?

Does more sexual information equate to more sexual freedom?

Let’s hear your voice. Make a video, write a poem, song, or an essay — or even create an original work of art — and express your thoughts on these topics. If we feature your contribution on the site, we will send you a free VenusPlusX t-shirt to thank you.

More videos.


The Sexual Freedom Project: Birds and the Bees

I’ve decided to offer my take on some of the media I have come across here. There are hundreds of Sexual Freedom Project videos to choose from, each with an important message. Everyone’s invited to join the cast by submitting your personal definition of or commentary on some aspect of sexual freedom.

In this video, the speaker Ying details her upbringing, and the sex education that she received in Catholic school, telling us of the limited issues that were addressed when it came to the realities of sex.

She and I share the idea that abstinence-only education creates sexual frustration. Not only that, numerous studies back up the correlation between lack of sex ed and high numbers of unwanted teenage pregnancy (in the American South in particular). Attempting to shut down the natural desire for sex is not healthy, and is considered by some a stealthy form of child abuse whenever and wherever accurate and complete sexual health information is intentionally withheld, or sometimes replaced with outright disinformation.

Ying even speaks of her parents’ relationship in which they avoided sex before marriage, detailing how this repression did no favors for their level of intimacy.

What was your sexual education like? Send us a video or essay detailing your story for a free VenusPlusX t-shirt.

More videos here

The Sexual Freedom Project: Use it or not

Revisiting what Eneko said about generational differences in how we talk about sex, saying, for example, that the use of pornography is always a choice — use it or not.

What was your sex education growing up? Was it easy or hard to talk with your parents about sex?

Is accessibility to pornography important to you? Do you think is pornography serves society? Or helps with sex education?

Please share your thoughts with us — make your own video, write us a poem or an essay, or make us an original work of art. If your work is featured on the site, we’ll send you a free t-shirt!

Check out hundreds of Sexual Freedom Project videos, and our new Manifesto for The New Age of Sexual Freedom.

Video by Tiye Massey.

TRANSCRIPT by David Kreps

Eneko: Hello?

Food vendor: Hello, how are you?

Eneko: Lamb with rice… no, give me chicken rice please. Yeah.

VenusPlusX: So, tell me about sex education in Spain.

Eneko: *laughs*

Sex education in Spain is really bad because it’s still, I think it’s still the Spanish culure is following the Christian, the Christianists. So, for old people it’s really difficult to talk about the sex. Young people is opening, and I think that… they are not afriad to talk about sex. My parents? No, we don’t used to talk about that. I mean, it’s something that we know that we do. But, we avoid to talk about that. Pornography is something that you can use if you want. I mean pornography must be in the society. It’s nothing bad. You can use it or you can not use it. Depends, I mean if you have a … plenty sex life maybe you don’t want to use it. But if you you have some need, then you can. I think that pornography was controlled for men, and… not  the girls [who] were not in a good position [as] men’s pornography maybe. But, I know that somewhere in Spain, a lot of women directors are doing really good  pornography. With different rules, with different goals, and with different style. I mean, the pornography was controlled for the mens, but in the future they’re going to share …control. And I think they’re going to make pornography for men and for women. Because the brains of the men and the women [are] different, so I think we [get] excited with different things. So, it’s normal that …
different kinds of pornographies.


Preventing Teens from Preventing Pregnancy: “Plan B” not an Option for Teens PART II

“As many as 11% of U.S. women ages 15-44 who have ever had sexual intercourse have used a “morning after” pill at least once, or 5.8 million women. Half say they used it because they feared their birth control method may have failed, and the rest say they had unprotected sex.”

First Federal Report on Emergency Contraception

The report also found that only 14% of sexually experienced females ages 15–19 had ever used emergency contraception, compared to 23% of women ages 20-24 and 16% of women ages 25–29. Moreover, the report showed that emergency contraception was most common among women 20-24, the never married, Hispanic and white women, and the college-educated.

So what’s with this fear that if the morning-after pill was available over-the-counter for girls under the age of 17 without prescription, that there would be a flood of 10 and 11 year olds buying it along with “bubble gum or batteries?” In my opinion, if they are old enough to have sex and have babies, they are old enough to have access to reproductive services, contraception, and especially the information provided by comprehensive sex education that is necessary for them to make healthy, responsible decisions about their sexuality and behaviors.

Federal Judge Edward R. Korman of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York seems to agree with me. In April (2013), Korman’s ruling in Tummino v. Hamburg reversed a prior decision by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and Health and Human Services (HHS). In 1999, Plan B became the first emergency contraceptive approved for use by prescription. In 2006, the FDA approved it as an over-the counter drug for women over the age of 18, while requiring a prescription for minors and subsequently allowed 17-year-olds to obtain the drug without a prescription, which was overturned by the HSS in 2011 (see previous article).

Magazine cover depicting headlines for MTV’s “Teen Mom” series, demonstrating how American society exploits the struggles of teen mothers for humor and profit. The media should be trying to reinforce teen’s sexual and reproductive rights, including access to reproductive services and comprehensive sex education, not mocking the experiences of teen mothers in a sitcom reality television show.

Many have argued that the controversy over emergency contraception is based in politics, not science, where it should be. Nonetheless, this ruling has sparked hope in many, including Nancy Northup, the president and CEO of the Center for Reproductive Rights, which filed the lawsuit against the FDA and HSS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius: “This landmark court decision has struck a huge blow to the deep-seated discrimination that has for too long denied women access to a full range of safe and effective birth control methods. Women all over the country will no longer face arbitrary delays and barriers just to get emergency contraception.”

Now we who support the sexual rights of youth and access to comprehensive reproductive services must wait to see what unfolds next, as the Justice Department reacted to the ruling by stating, “The Department of Justice is reviewing the appellate options and expects to act promptly,” according to spokeswoman Allison Price.

For more, see Part 1.

Creative Commons Image Provided by: Flickr

Preventing Teens from Preventing Pregnancy: “Plan B” not an Option for Teens PART I

In 2011, the secretary of health and human services’ banned over-the-counter sales of emergency birth control to girls under age 17… in 2013, a federal judge challenged this decision.

When Kathleen Sebelius, former health secretary of President Obama, blocked the sale of emergency birth control (commonly referred as the “morning after pill” or by its name bran of “Plan B”) to girls under the age of 17, President Obama endorsed her decision, saying that “the reason Kathleen made this decision was she could not be confident that a 10-year-old or an 11-year-old going into a drugstore should be able – along with bubble gum or batteries – be able to buy a medication that potentially, if not used properly, could end up having an adverse effect.”

However, not everyone believes that Plan B will produce “adverse effects” on young girls.

Ted Miller, spokesman for Naral Pro-Choice America, and others in women’s groups argued that science supported the use of such medication for young girls: “Teva, the pill’s maker, commissioned two large studies in adolescents to satisfy government concerns about selling freely to them.” This did not satisfy Ms. Sebelius, who said in her reject that neither study included 11-year-olds. Even so, according to Dr. Phillip Stubblefield, a contraceptive expert from Boston University School of Medicine, there is no reason to believe that the morning-after pill would react any differently than older girls.

A huge part of the controversy of emergency contraception is that it is commonly confused with the abortion pill, when in fact, emergency contraception only prevents pregnancy, not terminates it.

 

But you tell me, what would you rather have: a pregnant 10 or 11-year-old, or a 10 or 11-year-old buying Plan B?

Research has demonstrated how teen pregnancy and childbearing negatively affects the parents and society, including substantial social and economic costs. In 2008, teen pregnancy and childbirth accounted for nearly $11 billion per year in costs to U.S. taxpayers for increased health care and foster care, increased incarceration rates among children of teen parents, and lost tax revenue because of lower educational attainment and income among teen mothers. Moreover, only about 50% of teen mothers receive a high school diploma by 22 years of age, versus approximately 90% of women who had not given birth during adolescence.

Life isn’t easy for the children of teen parents either: compared to children born to older mothers, children born to teen moms are likely to drop out of high school, live in poverty, become teen parents, use Medicaid and CHIP, experience abuse/neglect, enter the foster care system, end up in prisons, and be raised in single parent families. Unfortunately as well, the children of teenage mothers are more likely to have more health problems and face unemployment as a young adult. Additionally, these children have lower scores on measures of kindergarten readiness and lower vocabulary, math, and reading scores. In 2011 alone, almost 330,000 babies were born to teen girls between the ages of 15 and 19.

To clarify, Plan B is an emergency contraception to be taken within 72 hours after unprotected intercourse to prevent pregnancy. Plan B is NOT to be confused with RU-486, the abortion drug. So if you ask me, I’d rather have emergency birth control available to teens who desperately need it than more disadvantaged teen parents and children. And apparently, so does a federal judge. Check out Part 2 for the rest of this article.

Creative Commons Image Provided by: Shannon Kringen
Edited by: Alifa Watkins

The Sexual Freedom Project: A Culmination of Things

As a new addition to VenusPlusX, I would like to express my views on some of the interesting media I have come across here.

One video I found is particularly intriguing because the woman speaks of the big picture – the culmination of things that influence our sexuality.

Everyone is a product of their environment, and everything connects. Social mechanisms such as school, church, media, and upbringing tend to have a large impact on individuality.

What do you think? Are you free from the external influences that we all experience, or how are you still affected?

Send us a video or essay expressing your thoughts for a free VenusPlusX t-shirt.

More videos here

VenusPlusX relaunches!

Welcome back to VenusPlusX.

As most of you know at the beginning of 2013 Dan set off suddenly and unexpectedly for the hereafter (WikipediaThe AdvocateHuffington Post). We had just finished our jointly authored book about the erotic connection to spirituality. It’s working title is The Unseen Journey, and we hope to publish it by the end of this year. We will periodically release short excerpts before publication here to stimulate discussion, and the comments and critiques we so avidly crave.

Already available now as a companion reference, A Course in Immortality (and in Spanish, Un Curso En Inmortalidad), which will be published as an included Appendix in the new book.

We again want to thank all the well-wishers who have reached out to our family this year. Many of you have asked about Dan’s amazing Memorial Service (February 23, 2013, Josephine Butler House, Washington, DC), so we have put those materials in a special section devoted to him personally.

During the past year our family and our extended family of VenusPlusX advisors have been recalibrating our new multi-plane relationship with Dan, and figuring out what to do next. Well, next is now, April 2014.

VenusPlusX’s has a new look for 2014, and we look forward to picking up where we left off. Our sister site, VenusMasX en espanol, will be getting a similar boost within a couple of months.

Newcomers can find out more about us, and old friends will enjoy our new streamlined navigation. There’s lots of new content, including our Manifesto for The New Age of Sexual Freedom, to remind our audiences of the diverse mix VenusPlusX puts together everyday, For example . . .

  • End Police Bias and Anti-Trans Violence is one of our continuing national advocacy campaigns with a grassroots component that offers communities help in developing a Transgender Day of Action for their city, using a process designed and proven to bring about systematic and sustainable change. Comparable to “Stop and Frisk,” walking while trans or otherwise gender non-conforming invites the same sort of constitution-crushing behavior by culturally challenged public safety officers who set a tone rarely fair to people of color and anyone else that is different from the white hierarchy.
  • The always inspiring individual Sexual Freedom Project videos. Maybe it’s time for you to join the cast by making your own declaration of sexual freedom by video or essay. And, we’ll send you one of our sought-after VenusPlusX t-shirts.
  • Transleadership and Transunity. This section has been corralled as a safe space to talk about the obstacle to unity faced by our community, both within the trans community and the LGBT community at large.
  • The transcendent aspects of sexual response and its direct connection to our role as cosmic citizens.
  • Sex Education, particularly for young people, since there is so much out there that constitutes harmful mis-information and the even more depraved and dangerous intentional disinformation propagated at all levels of society, from the family, schools, commerce, governments, and organized religion.
  • Sections on Transhuman Erotic Freedom and Sexuality, Freedom, and Cosmic Citizenship focus on dragging sacred sexuality out of the closet to save the world.
  • News [link to archive] and opinions, research studies, conferences, etc., that relate closely to our mission to bring about the New Age of Sexual Freedom. Issues such as net neutrality, de-militarization, and racial freedom are all keys to bringing about a new world that is voluntary and mutually supportive as opposed to inhumane, coercive, and enslaving by those who dare to amalgamate power against their fellow human. Sexual and racial freedom are inherited, inherent, and the bedrock of all other freedoms.
  • And, we have expanded our Library where among other things, you’ll find a handy table of contents to posts that Dan Massey authored or we co-authored with his byline.

Let us know what you think of our new look? To cheer us on, leave a comment, and if you haven’t already, please Like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.

 

Want Teens to Have Positive Sexual Health? Sex-Positivity Can Help With That

“Informed teens are much more likely to wait for first intercourse, use condoms and other barrier and birth control methods at first intercourse, and are more likely to take responsibility regarding their own sexual health.” Emily E. Prior

But not just any information given to teens will produce such a result. For decades, sex education programming in schools across America have used an agenda of fear tactics to teach teens that sex is bad, sexual pleasure is sin, and homosexuality is a mental illness. It’s time that Americans realize this approach of scaring teens from having sex doesn’t work: 46.8% of high school students report having engaged in sexual intercourse, with the rate increasing to 63.1% for high school seniors.

Using fear tactics in sex education is like hanging on the edge of a cliff: a person doesn’t have to be forced on to the edge to experience fear to know how dangerous it is. Similarly, if teachers taught comprehensive sex education using open, honest communication, then students will stay away from the cliff’s edge and practice safe sex.

So if you can’t scare teens from having sex, what else can we do?

The exact opposite of what doesn’t work: educate teens using sex-positive approaches. Wilhelm Reich (1897-1957) created the concept of sex-positive and sex-negative when he hypothesized that some societies view sexual expression as essentially good and healthy, while other societies take an overall negative view of sexuality and seek to repress and control the sex drive. Does the later ring a bell?

Emily E. Prior, the Director of the Center for Positive Sexuality, describes being sex-positive as “not limiting sexual scripts to reproduction and procreative-only sex, but also the pleasurable, rewarding, and nonprocreative aspects of sexuality.” However, Prior warns that this does not mean educators should start “promoting” sex, but rather, “recognizing sexuality as a normal, healthy part of being a person and that everyone is a sexual being.” But this is not a new concept: just check out the Dutch.

So how can educators utilize sex-positivity in the classroom? Prior has a tip.

First, educators can create a sex-positive classroom space: “A sex-positive space,” Prior begins, “is an open and accepting space where [students] can feel comfortable to be themselves, communicate with one another, and be accepting, not just tolerant, of others’ differences related to sexuality and sexual behavior.” This means that students who identify with the lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, and questioning (LGBTQ)  community will not be excluded or stigmatized, which typically happens in a sex-negative space. Also, as Prior eloquently puts it, a sex-positive approach “allows teens to recognize their personal and sexual development as an ongoing, lifelong, and healthy process. By allowing for communication and individual expression, teens are much more likely to make healthy choices that work for their bodies.” 

The differences between a sex-positive approach to sex and the sex-negative approach to sex, with the former reflected in comprehensive sex education and the later used in abstinence-only education.

Sounds great to me! And it should sound great to everyone who wants to help teens become sexually responsible and reduce America’s high rates of unintended teen pregnancies and transmission of STIs and HIV–and who doesn’t? Let’s face it: teens are going to have sex no matter if we try to scare them or not, so we might as well suck it up and give them the information and tools they need to be safe once they decide to have sex, be it during high school or after marriage.

Creative Commons Image by: epSos.de
Creative Commons Original Image by: bluekdesign
Imaged Edited by: Alifa Watkins