I exempted my daughter from the sex education class within her public school health class, because I didn’t agree with its “abstinence only” orientation, nor its being provided by a “pregnancy crisis center” whose website calls it “Christ centered” (not meaning to offend or provoke, just explaining where I’m coming from). So, given that I pulled her out for probably the opposite reason as whatever other kids were exempted by their parents, I’d like to provide her the kind of comprehensive, sex positive education presumably available in blue states.
If there are book suggestions, that’s cool too–but ideally I’d like to save the money a book costs if there is a really good website that can do the job.
Check out the information online from Planned Parenthood, and/or sxetc.org. There’s lots more of that sort of thing.
I know the phenomenon you describe is common, but your case sounds particularly bad. Where are you?
I would go to a local woman’s health center or Planned Parenthood; they have lot’s of great info to give out (not just pamphlets, either).
http://www.plannedparenthood.org/health-center
I learned most of my sex ed in Spencer’s Gifts; I thought sex would always be rasberry-scented and involve black light posters of unicorns. Please learn from my mistakes.
How do you define sex-positive and abstinence-only? In my “sex ed” (in California) I was told about condoms and the like but also (correctly) that abstinence is the only 100% foolproof way to avoid STDs and/or pregnancy. I think such an “abstinence-encouraged” form of sex ed strikes the right balance.
I’ve mentioned this before in another similar thread a year or so ago:
Here is the book you probably don’t want: The Dirt on Sex by Justin Lookadoo, written from a “Christian” (and apparently evil-and-guilt-drenched Puritanical) perspective. Unless just for entertainment purposes, of course, as this reviewer finds:
This wouldn’t happen to be the textbook your kiddo’s school uses, would it?
I once dated a guy whose family owned a large old house in the country. It was maintained but at the time nobody lived there. I once went along with him when he had to visit to check out the furnace or something.
Wandering around on the first floor I found a bookcase with a lot of very old books.
One was a puberty manual for boys titled What Every Young Man Should Know. I leafed though it and boy howdy, how far we have come on the subject of sex ed!!!
I remember one section mentioning “self abuse” The author claimed to have known young men who went insane from the practise. It even repeated the old wive’s tale about growing hair on one’s palms it you overindulged.
And young men should never do “size comparison”. That could lead to something almost too horrible to contemplate.
I think the book was from before 1920. Most of the other books in the case had dates nearly that old. There was also a college yearbook from 1919, in which some of the graduates were wearing WWI uniforms.
I have (somewhere) a similar book from the mid-1910’s, but it isn’t the same one. One of the interesting things that mine has is the section on prostitution, or, more specifically, the issue of men patronizing prostitutes. The literal message to the reader as printed in the text is clear - Don’t visit a prostitute - but the chapter is illustrated with several portraits of preteen girls looking wistful that, at first glance, seem to have nothing to do with the chapter. If you think a bit harder, it becomes clear that the author is trying to use the pictures for their emotional effect - e.g. would you support this girl becoming a prostitute, and would you really be willing to pay to defile some woman who used to be this cute little girl?
The text does ask you to consider what you would think if you found out that your sister wanted to become a prostitute. Would you approve? Then the book comes out and bluntly states that if you see a prostitute, you are doing someone’s sister.
Wow, OP… my jaw just dropped. Is this a public school? Abstinence-only, by the anti-abortion league?!! How did… why… dear Og. Good on you for catching it and not exposing your kid to all that.
If there’s a Unitarian Universalist or United Church of Christ Congregation, they have an excellent comprehensive sex ed program called Our Whole Lives (OWL for short). Rest assured it isn’t abstinence only.
I made a conscious choice sometime back not to post any longer in IMHO (or Great Debates), so in that case I’m out after this post (just to courteously respond to things people asked upthread, and thank those who provided suggestions).
Thanks, I will look for that. I am in Missouri, which is rapidly becoming redder even as the rest of the country goes the other way. But the school district in our college town is usually more progressive than this: for instance, the high school has a GLBT support organization, sponsored by the school administration.
Senegoid, I will check out the recommendations in that thread–thanks.
LOL!
Baker, that book sounds hilarious! Had you kept it, you could get a lot of play with a Tumblr featuring choice pages.
Sarabellum: yup, public school. I know, right?
P-Man and Qadgop, that sounds like a cool program. I was raised UU (sort of–my parents and sister went regularly, but I rarely did) but there is no congregation in my city. I wrote them to ask if they have an online or written version.
Oh my god, you definitely did not go out with this chick I went out with, man, I think bending over and spreading her cheeks probably killed the dinosaurs all on her own!
What about those that have made a mission in life to become pregnant, no matter the circumstances. Like a chick that you’re fucking says to you “If I’m not pregnant in a month, I’m going to a clinic to get impregnated”.
And What if you so happen to be the poor soul on the other end of this baby birthing tirade but you end up impregnating her and she never sees you again nor tells you about the child.
How much research, exactly? Because not only is that a new one to me, but what else accounts for the wildly different outcomes between, say, the Netherlands and the US, and between different regions (and demographics) within the US, all of which can be differentiated by their sex-ed approaches?