Bad Sex Ed classes
- Thread starter Dirty Hipsters
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I already explained that I made the jump between true love of marriage to monogamy, and just explained it didn't have to be drug or sex free. There's the one link you were a bit shaky on, and the other two were inferred by you, not meant to be implied by me.Pluvia said:
Pardon my cultural background for assuming true love meant monogamy, but I don't think that's an inappropriate thing to assume. Generally speaking, marriages are monogamous.
Perhaps my ignorance is showing again, but I was also operating under the assumption that marriages were generally monogamous, and even cultures that practice multiple partner relationships tend to have separate marriage contracts between the different partners.
Maybe a reorganization of my thoughts is in order: I disagree with the sentiment displayed by the video in regards to what seems to me an assumption that because monogamy isn't always the easiest answer to combating STI's, that it isn't an effective one.
We had a lot of "Don't feel peer pressured to have sex," "Just because your friends are having sex doesn't mean you should," and "Don't have sex unless you're DEFINITELY ready, or you'll regret it for the rest of your life." Only a minority of my year group had already had sex and those people (especially the girls) were looked down upon. "Slut" was the favourite insult to direct at girls, for anything from talking to boys to their skirt's hemline being above the knees.
What I'm saying is it would have been nice if there had been also been a bit of "Don't let anyone demean or devalue for your sexuality or because you've had sex". At least they didn't do the gum chewing or the passing shit around though. Even if they didn't bother to dispel the disturbing ideas about women and girls that were already pervasive at my school.
What I'm saying is it would have been nice if there had been also been a bit of "Don't let anyone demean or devalue for your sexuality or because you've had sex". At least they didn't do the gum chewing or the passing shit around though. Even if they didn't bother to dispel the disturbing ideas about women and girls that were already pervasive at my school.
I was in middle school during the height of the Bush administration's abstinence pushing. A few of the gems I remember:
Our teacher told us all to suck on a peppermint, under the threat that if we accidentally ate the peppermint we would fail the class. Apparently, this was an analogy for the stress we would feel if we allowed ourselves to have sex, "losing control" and biting the peppermint was supposed to represent the stress of maintaining self-control in light of the consequences (because apparently no one's ever used birth control before).
But wait, it gets better! It was actually a two-for-one. After that, she had us all spit them out into a bag, and then passed the bag around saying that we had to try to find our peppermint out of all of the others, reminding us that if we got the wrong one (as we likely would) it would have been in someone else's mouth. She also threatened everyone she brandished the bag at that if they did not take a peppermint, they would fail the class, and that was supposed to represent all of society's pressure to have sex.
This is a routine that continues to this day, and at my high school "peppermint" has even become a pet name for dating partners who have become sexually involved. You have to admit "peppermint" does sound a little cute, if sappy.
Oh, there was also this gem about how latex powder and lubricant from condoms could get into your urethra and cause permanent urinary tract damage and sterility/infertility and permanent and complete sexual dysfunction.
They trotted out the same tired nonsense about how birth control pills will give you acne and stunt your growth and make you obese and cause cancer, or how the morning after pill would allegedly sometimes make a woman's entire uterus, womb, and ovaries, literally fall out of a woman's vagina, the same story was alternately given about abortion (pro or anti choice, let's please at least stick to facts, thanks). Of course, the course material neglected to mention that prolapse of the uterus actually DOES occasionally happen....during CHILDBIRTH.
They told us that homosexuality directly leads to depression and mental disability, and had a baloney scientific "study" indicating that homosexuality is something people usually just do to get drugs or because they feel rebellious, complete with a link to none other than heritage.org and openly advocating for any students reading it who "might be considering homosexuality" (exact words) to seek reparative therapy and to "think about the costs to your friends and family".
A note about the last point. They'd cooked up this pop-psychology thing called "the bio-psycho-social" perspective, including a neat little triangle diagram. Whenever they wanted to say something was good or bad, they would use the "triangle chart" with all of the negatives for each category, ie, biological, social, and psychological.
So, they would bullshit that homosexuality was bad biologically because it "causes STDs", psychologically because "it results from depression and a lack of self-esteem", and (most offensively), being gay apparently hurts you socially for no other reason that that it would make people not like you. That was it. Their argument against homosexuality was homophobia itself.
Whenever they wanted to drive something home, they would finish it off with the social perspective. If you're "thinking about trying homosexuality", then "think about how your family will feel". If you're thinking about sexual intimacy, then you need to think about how it will hurt the feelz of your family and Jesus or something, I guess. And you need to get married (ideally when you're still in your most fertile years, because your highest calling as a human being is to be breeding stock) because it's popular and you'll be hurting all of your friends and family if you don't, and they'll also laugh at you and you'll probably commit suicide by 30 if you're still single by then.
Oh, then there was telling us that it was illegal for minors to get condoms and birth control. Yea, THAT'S going to reduce teen pregnancy. Fuck, you'd think that if they cared as much about reducing teen pregnancy as they did about pushing you into getting married, they'd be advocating tubal ligatures and for condoms to be surgically grafted onto every boy's penis the instant he hit puberty.
Finally, there was an entire chapter on masturbation. Include a foreword by Bill O'Reilly! Apparently, very few people masturbate and those that do are using it as a crutch to deal with various personality failings, the tired rhetoric about how jerking off can cause brain damage and permanent sexual dysfunction, infertility, acne, etc. Masturbation, they said, was the first step towards "unsafe" sex, including homosexuality, and that the teenagers who were masturbating were the ones who were "almost certain" to get an STD or knock someone up because it speaks to our lack of self-control.
Now, I "discovered myself" when I was 11, and had been continuing to "discover myself" pretty regularly (ie daily) between then and through most of high school, so now this book has me thinking I'm a sex addict (I didn't learn the actual statistics until much later) and one of a select few number of perverts who are almost certainly going to have to drop out at 16 to raise a baby and probably die of AIDS that I caught in a gay bar.
I look back on it and laugh now, but it actually really did leave me with a lot of anxieties about dating. I actually did go out of that class thinking that if I went beyond hand-holding and Christian side-hugging (our course actually said that we should only "side hug" though it left out the Christian bit) I would inevitably lose control and end up getting some girl pregnant. I was 13 and seriously worrying about what I'd do if I had a kid. I wasn't even in high school and I was judging girls based on whether or not they would make good mothers if it came to that, which in my mind was a possibility that had been made all but certain: if I dated, I would almost certainly have sex (remember, I was a masturbation addict with no self-control, allegedly), and because protection was illegal for teenagers, that would inevitably result in a pregnancy.
So yea. There's my shitty sex ed story.
Our teacher told us all to suck on a peppermint, under the threat that if we accidentally ate the peppermint we would fail the class. Apparently, this was an analogy for the stress we would feel if we allowed ourselves to have sex, "losing control" and biting the peppermint was supposed to represent the stress of maintaining self-control in light of the consequences (because apparently no one's ever used birth control before).
But wait, it gets better! It was actually a two-for-one. After that, she had us all spit them out into a bag, and then passed the bag around saying that we had to try to find our peppermint out of all of the others, reminding us that if we got the wrong one (as we likely would) it would have been in someone else's mouth. She also threatened everyone she brandished the bag at that if they did not take a peppermint, they would fail the class, and that was supposed to represent all of society's pressure to have sex.
This is a routine that continues to this day, and at my high school "peppermint" has even become a pet name for dating partners who have become sexually involved. You have to admit "peppermint" does sound a little cute, if sappy.
Oh, there was also this gem about how latex powder and lubricant from condoms could get into your urethra and cause permanent urinary tract damage and sterility/infertility and permanent and complete sexual dysfunction.
They trotted out the same tired nonsense about how birth control pills will give you acne and stunt your growth and make you obese and cause cancer, or how the morning after pill would allegedly sometimes make a woman's entire uterus, womb, and ovaries, literally fall out of a woman's vagina, the same story was alternately given about abortion (pro or anti choice, let's please at least stick to facts, thanks). Of course, the course material neglected to mention that prolapse of the uterus actually DOES occasionally happen....during CHILDBIRTH.
They told us that homosexuality directly leads to depression and mental disability, and had a baloney scientific "study" indicating that homosexuality is something people usually just do to get drugs or because they feel rebellious, complete with a link to none other than heritage.org and openly advocating for any students reading it who "might be considering homosexuality" (exact words) to seek reparative therapy and to "think about the costs to your friends and family".
A note about the last point. They'd cooked up this pop-psychology thing called "the bio-psycho-social" perspective, including a neat little triangle diagram. Whenever they wanted to say something was good or bad, they would use the "triangle chart" with all of the negatives for each category, ie, biological, social, and psychological.
So, they would bullshit that homosexuality was bad biologically because it "causes STDs", psychologically because "it results from depression and a lack of self-esteem", and (most offensively), being gay apparently hurts you socially for no other reason that that it would make people not like you. That was it. Their argument against homosexuality was homophobia itself.
Whenever they wanted to drive something home, they would finish it off with the social perspective. If you're "thinking about trying homosexuality", then "think about how your family will feel". If you're thinking about sexual intimacy, then you need to think about how it will hurt the feelz of your family and Jesus or something, I guess. And you need to get married (ideally when you're still in your most fertile years, because your highest calling as a human being is to be breeding stock) because it's popular and you'll be hurting all of your friends and family if you don't, and they'll also laugh at you and you'll probably commit suicide by 30 if you're still single by then.
Oh, then there was telling us that it was illegal for minors to get condoms and birth control. Yea, THAT'S going to reduce teen pregnancy. Fuck, you'd think that if they cared as much about reducing teen pregnancy as they did about pushing you into getting married, they'd be advocating tubal ligatures and for condoms to be surgically grafted onto every boy's penis the instant he hit puberty.
Finally, there was an entire chapter on masturbation. Include a foreword by Bill O'Reilly! Apparently, very few people masturbate and those that do are using it as a crutch to deal with various personality failings, the tired rhetoric about how jerking off can cause brain damage and permanent sexual dysfunction, infertility, acne, etc. Masturbation, they said, was the first step towards "unsafe" sex, including homosexuality, and that the teenagers who were masturbating were the ones who were "almost certain" to get an STD or knock someone up because it speaks to our lack of self-control.
Now, I "discovered myself" when I was 11, and had been continuing to "discover myself" pretty regularly (ie daily) between then and through most of high school, so now this book has me thinking I'm a sex addict (I didn't learn the actual statistics until much later) and one of a select few number of perverts who are almost certainly going to have to drop out at 16 to raise a baby and probably die of AIDS that I caught in a gay bar.
I look back on it and laugh now, but it actually really did leave me with a lot of anxieties about dating. I actually did go out of that class thinking that if I went beyond hand-holding and Christian side-hugging (our course actually said that we should only "side hug" though it left out the Christian bit) I would inevitably lose control and end up getting some girl pregnant. I was 13 and seriously worrying about what I'd do if I had a kid. I wasn't even in high school and I was judging girls based on whether or not they would make good mothers if it came to that, which in my mind was a possibility that had been made all but certain: if I dated, I would almost certainly have sex (remember, I was a masturbation addict with no self-control, allegedly), and because protection was illegal for teenagers, that would inevitably result in a pregnancy.
So yea. There's my shitty sex ed story.
My sex-ed was pretty good. We were taught what condoms were, that masturbating wasn't evil, encouraged to use safe sex, told that anal sex is more likely to transfer STDs if done without protection (Probably really important to know, considering that to the uneducated person anal seems like a good way to go if you don't feel like using a condom) stuff like that. Overall a pretty good class. Oddly enough in the same class we learned about addictive drugs, alcholism, how to treat allergic reactions, the layout of abusive families and how abusive relationships work. We saw two movies about abusive relationships, one male on female and the other female on male.
It was actually a pretty informative class.
It was actually a pretty informative class.
I don't remember much about my sex ed courses. Oddly enough, the only thing I remember was one of my classmates asking if you could get STDs or anything else weird from having sex with dogs. There were MANY laughs to be had. It was a legit question, but... with *many* implications of what brought that on. We were all curious about it. We were all teens. We were giggly as all hell after that class
I hardly remember anything at all about that.
I learned the concepts and facts kind of passively, like sex=babies, sex being some interaction between genders, and so forth.
In 4th grade we had some rudimentary but accurate sex ed that contained nothing new for me, but I never really connected anything from that to real people until much later.
I was pretty clueless.
I learned the concepts and facts kind of passively, like sex=babies, sex being some interaction between genders, and so forth.
In 4th grade we had some rudimentary but accurate sex ed that contained nothing new for me, but I never really connected anything from that to real people until much later.
I was pretty clueless.
Mine was surprisingly bad for living in a secular western European country... Not enough focus on STI prevention in my opinion.
Then again I mostly zoned out because it all concerned hetero stuff, avoiding pregnancy and such. And yes, I also remember a middle aged lady putting a condom on a pretty worn out looking dildo. I guess that's universal
Then again I mostly zoned out because it all concerned hetero stuff, avoiding pregnancy and such. And yes, I also remember a middle aged lady putting a condom on a pretty worn out looking dildo. I guess that's universal
Don't recall much of it, only that we went over the same stuff every year...probably so that we don't forget.
*snickers*
...Shanicus said:
*snickers*
Well, this was in Finland in the 90's...
Pretty good generally speaking. We also went though a lot of this stuff in biology too.
There was one in elementary school, which I mostly remember as being just 'once your periods start, this is what you need to do'.
Then in junior high we got more sex-focused education.
The biological classes were with all of our class together, at least part of the sex ed was with boys and girls divided into their own classes. Again, I remember mostly the talk about periods, stuff about different scenarios and if you should have sex (If you feel pressured in any way, you don't have to, even if you said yes before or he got the impression you wanted to have sex somehow)
In general the biggest problems I had were with it being so heteronormative. I think it was mentioned once that non-heterosexual people exist, and that was it.
I remember sitting in the class really wanting to ask how lesbians had sex...
Pretty good generally speaking. We also went though a lot of this stuff in biology too.
There was one in elementary school, which I mostly remember as being just 'once your periods start, this is what you need to do'.
Then in junior high we got more sex-focused education.
The biological classes were with all of our class together, at least part of the sex ed was with boys and girls divided into their own classes. Again, I remember mostly the talk about periods, stuff about different scenarios and if you should have sex (If you feel pressured in any way, you don't have to, even if you said yes before or he got the impression you wanted to have sex somehow)
In general the biggest problems I had were with it being so heteronormative. I think it was mentioned once that non-heterosexual people exist, and that was it.
I remember sitting in the class really wanting to ask how lesbians had sex...
We never had a sex-ed class, actually. There were one or two biology classes that discussed STDs and pregnancy, but nothing about sex itself. Odd now that I think about it, because I always hear the Netherlands being touted as a forerunner of comprehensive sex ed in the EU.
Also, reading the comments here made me realise that I've never actually seen a condom in real life. That's rather worrying actually. Do those things come with instruction manuals?
Also, reading the comments here made me realise that I've never actually seen a condom in real life. That's rather worrying actually. Do those things come with instruction manuals?
...on which planet did all the sex ed teachers mentioned in the video come from? It's the 21st century and people are still doing all that sex-shaming bullshit?
Sex ed in the UK is usually minimal from what I've heard. Mine personally didn't mention much apart from contraception and the classes were given at such a late period in secondary school (around Year 10/11) that many students had already had sex by then.
It was taught by religious education teachers (who usually have to teach about all the miscellaneous stuff for some reason) in a sort of "okay let's get this out of the way" attitude. While I appreciated that the teachers weren't taking it too seriously and were livening it up a little, the material that they were teaching from was very obviously out-of-date and had an androcentric bias towards sex.
Oh, and advice for LGBT kids? Not a chance.
Sex ed in the UK is usually minimal from what I've heard. Mine personally didn't mention much apart from contraception and the classes were given at such a late period in secondary school (around Year 10/11) that many students had already had sex by then.
It was taught by religious education teachers (who usually have to teach about all the miscellaneous stuff for some reason) in a sort of "okay let's get this out of the way" attitude. While I appreciated that the teachers weren't taking it too seriously and were livening it up a little, the material that they were teaching from was very obviously out-of-date and had an androcentric bias towards sex.
Oh, and advice for LGBT kids? Not a chance.
My first experience with sex ed was when I was in 8th grade.
The 5th through 8th grade classes were called to the cafateria for a presentation. There some ugly, middle-aged men and women told us about how terrible sex before marriage was. STD this, STD that, pregnancy this, pregnancy that, yadda yadda.
I don't remember much because I wasn't paying any attention but there is one thing that sticks in my mind.
The presenters had two boxes of chocolates. One was wrapped in plastic so it seemed like it was new and just bought and the other one was unwrapped and a bit beat up ad some of the chocolates in it were missing, half eaten, and individually unwrapped.
They went on to ask us all which one we'd want. The new and unwrapped one or the one that was all dinged up and "used" (exact word).
One girl from the 7th grade class started to cry a little.
I laughed at the time cuz I was a massive dick but now I can imagine how having someone indirectly call her "used" and "unwanted" probably made her feel.
My second experience was in my second high school. We got shown a lot of pictures of STD riddled genitalia and all of the absolute extreme symptoms of having an STD and a lecture on how ineffective all forms of contraceptive really were and that was about it.
Nobody that was in those lectures actually believed what was being said and they all continued to fuck as they were fucking before.
God, I love the American educational system!
The 5th through 8th grade classes were called to the cafateria for a presentation. There some ugly, middle-aged men and women told us about how terrible sex before marriage was. STD this, STD that, pregnancy this, pregnancy that, yadda yadda.
I don't remember much because I wasn't paying any attention but there is one thing that sticks in my mind.
The presenters had two boxes of chocolates. One was wrapped in plastic so it seemed like it was new and just bought and the other one was unwrapped and a bit beat up ad some of the chocolates in it were missing, half eaten, and individually unwrapped.
They went on to ask us all which one we'd want. The new and unwrapped one or the one that was all dinged up and "used" (exact word).
One girl from the 7th grade class started to cry a little.
I laughed at the time cuz I was a massive dick but now I can imagine how having someone indirectly call her "used" and "unwanted" probably made her feel.
My second experience was in my second high school. We got shown a lot of pictures of STD riddled genitalia and all of the absolute extreme symptoms of having an STD and a lecture on how ineffective all forms of contraceptive really were and that was about it.
Nobody that was in those lectures actually believed what was being said and they all continued to fuck as they were fucking before.
God, I love the American educational system!
America.DizzyChuggernaut said:
Best planet on the Earth.
Full of bald eagles, white protestent families, apple pie, a complete lack of sex, and a monument to God made out of cheese, corn syrup, and the blood sweat and tears of non-whites.
The sex Ed I got in the 80s was anything but comprehensive. They got the basics, sex, masturbation, contraception and puberty. I don't remember being taught anything that was wrong. I just don't think it went quite far enough. They were actually really thorough on the contraception side which I can thank not being taught it in the US for I think. I don't think even the most obscure of the options that existed then was overlooked.
No discussion of consent that I can recall. Only limited and frankly useless discussion of relationships (lumping it into the same class as discussion of sex organs with a bunch of horny teens in the room = less than useless) and some frank talk about homosexuality. I have a suspicion that one of my sex ed teachers was gay and that may have added to the progressive nature of the material.
A little too much focus was placed on STDs for my taste (an abstinence only flavor I think) though it was refreshing in hindsight that there was no talk of AIDS being a "gay" disease.
Overall especially for the period I'd say it was 8/10
No discussion of consent that I can recall. Only limited and frankly useless discussion of relationships (lumping it into the same class as discussion of sex organs with a bunch of horny teens in the room = less than useless) and some frank talk about homosexuality. I have a suspicion that one of my sex ed teachers was gay and that may have added to the progressive nature of the material.
A little too much focus was placed on STDs for my taste (an abstinence only flavor I think) though it was refreshing in hindsight that there was no talk of AIDS being a "gay" disease.
Overall especially for the period I'd say it was 8/10
renegade7 said:
Ever since I saw this, I thought to myself "This shit cannot possibly be real", but as usual there is an undercurrent of truth to this insanity. Ably presented by you.
While watching that video it got to the part where she said someone said Gay people are molested or something as kids and that's why they're ga*Sudden bluescreen of death*
Normally I'd be pissed but after hearing that I just look at my tower and actually say "This time I agree with you"
Normally I'd be pissed but after hearing that I just look at my tower and actually say "This time I agree with you"
Hmm, my schools 'sex ed' was during a science lesson for biology. I remember much tittering, but I remember it being very... technical. With little mention of sex at all, and more description of parts and what they existed to do.