Writer's Block: School days

[mothwing]

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No, of course not, sex is a very personal issue and I want my children to find out about it  based on their secret observations on RedTube at a friend's house, playground hearsay about Coke being a great contraceptive and whatever people harassing them online or IRL tell them. Formal education on the subject would completely ruin their innocent outlook on life!

How is this even a question, LJ?

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

arent u cleva

[cranky--crocus.livejournal.com]

Even more so than you are perplexing and provoking, Anon.

[cranky--crocus.livejournal.com]

I always think it's rather disturbing that I learned more about sex from church than school. Well, it is in general difficult to beat the UU's at excellent sexual education (OWL - Our Whole Lives programme) but I would have liked to receive something at least closer to equal.

Instead I got, what I called it at school, "Health and heterosexuality class - heteronormativity in action."

...That was the only class I ever got a C in, by the way. Proves I'm just not cut out to be heterosexual.

[mothwing.livejournal.com]

OWLs? I'm jealous at the title alone! :D

Looks like we got the same class, too - I don't think I ever heard about anything but heterosexual sex, AIDS, prevention thereof and pregnancy, how not to have one school. Those were usually like, "name your MAN!!! parts or your WOMAN!!! parts", "what nature intended you to do with those parts: PIV", "what will happen if you actually use those parts: male orgasm, illnesses and pregnancies".

[cranky--crocus.livejournal.com]

I remember getting lists and lists of all the symptoms of sexual diseases. Although I had the new health teacher who looked like the kind of guy who had JUST left the military and was there to teach gym; he left after my second year of health with him.

Although I do remember one of the pages in our 'booklet' was about a girl with an abusive boyfriend or something like that, and we were supposed to give her advice. I put down something like, "Drop the dude and date chicks. Or, really, dump anyone who doesn't respect you and your body - take it to the authorities if you have to, and tell people about it so they can help protect you. Research the help services for abuse. Get a restraining order if you have to."

When my friends saw the answer they wondered how on Earth I got credit, but the teacher had underlined the first line and scribbled, "Well, it is advice..."

I also brought up LGBTQQIAP issues as often as I could. I'm sure I sounded a bit like a soapbox preacher. :Þ

[mothwing.livejournal.com]

I also brought up LGBTQQIAP issues as often as I could. I'm sure I sounded a bit like a soapbox preacher. :Þ
All the better for your classmates! :D

I'm at a loss as to what your teacher might have been expecting if not that, for advice, I mean. Is there anything else she could do, or did she think people should go for, "stick with him, you can chaaaange him!!!!"?

[cranky--crocus.livejournal.com]

I don't think he was expecting the first line of my advice, or that I would start my advice with a little bit of a joke. (Which is often what I would do anyway - I have found that humour is an excellent bridge in conversation, and opens people up more than they would have expected.) But he should have expected a "date girls!" from me, given how incredibly out I was fresher year.

...I really wish I had had the lesbian health teacher...

[mothwing.livejournal.com]

Oh, good, I was getting really worried there.

...I really wish I had had the lesbian health teacher...
I can imagine. :D I wish I had had a competent sex ed teacher once. I had two people who were incredibly anti-body themselves, so that went well.

[cranky--crocus.livejournal.com]

I couldn't expect anything from my school sex ed, but my church one was great - the two instructors were fantastic. And I loved the LGBT panel we had since I was already coming out at the time. (Nowadays I'm on the panel, which is just...wow.) We had "all sorts of people have sex!" slides that were rather graphic, but actually beautiful in their own way--and did help me realise that sex wasn't just between attractive married people to create attractive little spawn. And we had lots of discussions on sex, the age of first sexual activity, what "feeling ready" feels like and why there's no shame in waiting, even if peers think there is. And we got pizza during every session.

It was a win-win situation.

[mothwing.livejournal.com]

...That was the only class I ever got a C in, by the way. Proves I'm just not cut out to be heterosexual.
Hehehe.

[bronnyelsp.livejournal.com]

You win one internet. Where would you like it?

[mothwing.livejournal.com]

:D

[therealsnape.livejournal.com]

Great post. The problem with sex-ed lessons at school, alas, outside the complete het-normativity, is the strong focus on contraception, teenage pregnancy, and how 'saying no' should always be respected. Mind, it should. I'm not saying it shouldn't, heaven forbid. And it definitely needs saying time and again.

But the notion, somewhere, that people might like saying yes to each other, or that sex is more than what married people have to do to get babies, might have been welcome. A mention of the clitoris wouldn't have come amiss, either.

[mothwing.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it was similar in my sex-ed classes. In primary school we did basic parts and plumbing and I was somehow left with the impression that moving during sex was entirely optional for both parties and not the norm, and that people only did it to have babies. Later on, it was taught by an awfully embarrassed middle-aged teacher who blushed harder than us fifth, sixth, and later seventh years. It was usually "reproductive biology" only, too, and that is a far cry from sex, after all. I think I can remember the clitoris being featured on the drawings we had to practice our identifying skills on, but other than that? Nahh.

[cranky--crocus.livejournal.com]

Oh! That jogs a memory of my own health class!

See, I had the Newbie Teacher who had obviously come to teach gym, and left soon after my last health class with him. The other teacher, though, was a lesbian - not out to students, of course, but some students (coughmecough) had especially open ears for such things.

Our two health classes played a strange game of Jeopardy against each other. Given that I hadn't memorised the advantages and disadvantages of each contraceptive nor every single symptom of each sexual disease, I hid a book beneath my desk and read. Soon enough I heard, "The female equivalent of a penis that is the only anatomical part entirely for pleasure" (or something of that sort) and I had hit the button and called out "What is 'clitoris'?" before more people had finished listening. Ms. Swain looked at me with pride, if I recall. (And it's worth further note that my health class didn't actually teach us about the clitoris.)

One of my friends looked at me and questioned, "Kiwi, how did you even know that?" and I told her, very seriously, that a "lesbian had to know the clitoris."

I think lash_larue would be telling these kids to watch more South Park and listen very closely to Chef.

[ysilme]

Coke is a contraceptive? Hey, why didn't anybody ever tell me?




/irony

[mothwing.livejournal.com]

It R fact: http://het.sagepub.com/content/6/5/395.abstract.

[ysilme]

Who would like to use that anyway? Just the thought of the stickiness kind of squicks me out... ;o)

[mothwing.livejournal.com]

I'm still boggling at the thought that anyone seriously got funding for that study and thought publishing it in a medical journal, even, was a good idea. o.O

I wouldn't like to poor fizzy drink down my private parts, anyhow, and doubt anyone would go for that.

[ysilme]

I wouldn't like to poor fizzy drink down my private parts, anyhow, and doubt anyone would go for that. *lol* My thought exactly! And you're totally right with the funding/research part, of course. Knowing natural science research through the uni times of my partner, though, I suppose - or better hope - that such a study was done as a fun (though serious) research in spare time sometimes available. The other alternative would be that the study was comissioned by some institution dealing with unwanted pregnagncies due to that misinformation... *rolls eyes*