Alifa Watkins
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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…
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Gateway Sexual Activity: Fact or Fiction?
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3 min read
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…
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Initiatives in New York, San Francisco, and Washington, D.C., allow the police to search and arrest women carrying three or more condoms late at night under prostitution charges. So a woman carrying a few condoms can be arrested under the suspicion of being a prostitute? Does this profiling sound familiar? It’s just like the stigmatization…
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Why Should Men Control Women’s Sexual Health? It’s Time for Women and Girls to “Take Control”
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4 min read
The Philadelphia Health Department launches a safe sex campaign called “She Takes Control” that promotes female empowerment and responsibility by encouraging female youth to carry condoms. Pennsylvania is one of the many states in the U.S. that suffers from high rates of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) among teenagers — they are as much as five times…
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Follow up: Adolescent Sexual Health: To Improve or Not to Improve? That is the Question…
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3 min read
También en español After initially postponing the decision to adopt either abstinence-only or abstinence-plus sex education curriculum, the Natchez-Adams School Board in Jackson, Mississippi chooses “both.” The Board voted to adopt the abstinence-only program, but also voted to require all 12 modules of the “Rise to Your Dreams” curriculum . . . the same curriculum…
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(También en Español) The Natchez-Adams School Board in Jackson, Mississippi, is currently deciding whether to adopt abstinence-only or abstinence-plus curriculum. This decision for Mississippi schools, to implement either abstinence-only or abstinence-plus curriculum, is the same as deciding whether or not to improve adolescent sexual health. The former, abstinence-only education, will be laden with religious ideologies, teach students about…
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(También en Español) “We must know that if we want to have a sexually healthy society, it’s about education, education, education,” says Joycelyn Elders, MD. With 9.5 million teens obtaining a sexually transmitted infection (STI) and 750,000 becoming pregnant per year in the United States, it is no wonder why Elders asserts that comprehensive sexuality…
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(También en Español) In 1994, then Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders, MD, proclaimed, “With regard to masturbation, I think that it is something that is a part of human sexuality and a part of something that should perhaps be taught.” Masturbation being taught in schools? This statement is not one of shock, confusion, and contempt (or…