Like Vernacchio’s students, I have difficulty rationalizing facts (“70 percent of women do not orgasm through vaginal penetration alone”) with logistics (One student tells Abraham that “when she and her boyfriend ‘do anything, we just end up having sex’”). Like them, I struggle with communicating with men who say they want to make me feel good, but feel “very insecure” if they don’t implicitly understand how to do that. Like them, I have struggled to align my feminism with what I actually want in bed. One girl told Abraham that “she doesn’t enjoy cunnilingus, but taking the personal is political to heart, she asked her boyfriend to do it anyway: if she was expected to service him orally, he should have to return the favor.” I could have provided Abraham that sound bite, too.
If we miss out on the basics at a young age, when do we evolve into full sexual adults, people who know what we want and how to get it? Proponents of “disaster prevention” sex ed seem to think that if we teach kids about sex at a young age, they’ll mature too quickly. I was educated on that assumption, and I’m still waiting to really grow up.
In its breadth, depth and frank embrace of sexuality as, what Vernacchio calls, a “force for good” — even for teenagers — this sex-ed class may well be the only one of its kind in the United States. “There is abstinence-only sex education, and there’s abstinence-based sex ed,” said Leslie Kantor, vice president of education for Planned Parenthood Federation of America. “There’s almost nothing else left in public schools.”
Across the country, the approach ranges from abstinence until marriage is the only acceptable choice, contraceptives don’t work and premarital sex is physically and emotionally harmful, to abstinence is usually best, but if you must have sex, here are some ways to protect yourself from pregnancy and disease. The latter has been called “disaster prevention” education by sex educators who wish they could teach more; a dramatic example of the former comes in a video called “No Second Chances,” which has been used in abstinence-only courses. In it, a student asks a school nurse, “What if I want to have sex before I get married?” To which the nurse replies, “Well, I guess you’ll just have to be prepared to die.”
“Teaching Good Sex.” — Laurie Abraham, The New York Times Magazine
See also: “Exit Strategy.” The American Prospect. May 26, 2009
Mulan asked, “Where do women keep their eggs?”
“Well,” I said, “we women have evolved to have our own pond, right inside our own bodies. We lay our eggs in this pond, which is so convenient when you think about it compared with frogs, because we don’t have to worry about any competing eggs. It’s a pond of our own.”
A pond of one’s own. I imagined Virginia Woolf contentedly sitting in a pond of her own. And then drowning.
—Julia Sweeney is completely unprepared when her daughter asks how human beings have sex. It gets even more amazing from here.
We Need To Support Planned Parenthood | Charlie Glickman
The article’s short and sweet, but here’s some quotes from it:
“Over the last several months, Planned Parenthood has been under even more intense attack than usual. Despite the fact that abortion accounts for only 3% of their services (36% of their services were for contraception, 31% for STI screening and treatment, 17% for cancer screening and prevention), the anti-choice folks are using the fact that the organization provides abortions services to justify cutting federal funding. They’ve also been accusing the organization of racist bias with claims that PP targets African-Americans. Fortunately, their New York billboard making this claim was taken down. And they conveniently ignore the fact that PP’s Title X funding can not be used to pay for abortion services…
“I must admit that I have some compassion for these folks, if only because it’s a very human thing to try to fix a problem in a way that actually makes it worse. I’ve done it and I’m sure you have, too. But one of the hallmarks of wisdom is learning new and more effective ways to deal with our challenges, rather than falling into our habit of reinforcing the very situation we’re trying to change.”
My Talk For KFADC2: Kissing (And Herpes)
This is the video for my KinkForAll DC talk this past weekend. I’m not big on having pics of me on the Internet, so they just half-closed the laptop so as to get audio-only. It’s a bit hard to hear for the first few minutes, but as I go on I get louder, and the meat of the talk is clear. Even if you don’t have an STD, I think it’s worth listening to to hear about “theory, practice, ethics, and follies of kissing when you’ve got oral herpes.” (Thanks for the great summary, Figleaf!)
I was weirdly embarrassed about giving this talk at first. I even listed it as “something about kissing” or simply “kissing” so as to avoid possibly squicking people out with an over-serious title about disease. “Kissing (And Herpes)” actually comes from Maymay, when he edited the schedule page for clarity. I think that’s as good a title as any.
There’s some statistics on herpes and some health information I mention during the talk, so here are the sources:
* The statistic that 1 in 4 people have herpes is one I’ve read several places.
* Scarleteen.com lists the infection rates as high as 1 in 2.
* General symptoms of herpes and “asymptomatic infection”, when there are no symptoms.
As always, I’m open to discussion, questions, and stories about kissing in the comments. If I’ve linked you to a source that says something that just isn’t true, speak up and I’ll look into it. I’m not a health professional, just a chubby chick trying to get laid as much and as safely as possible! :)