• ABOUT
• CONTACT
• SUBSCRIBE
• HOME

Monday, October 8, 2007

Abstinence Only “Education,” from .gov to YouTube

filed under: Smart. Safe. Sex., State of Sex Ed by Melissa Gira | 1 Comment

Via Voices of American Sexuality, a PSA from government-run 4parents.gov, with a whole raft of young people just begging their parents to teach them to wait until marriage to have sex:

Jenna Bush notwithstanding, of course.

Tuesday, July 31, 2007

Speaking & Teaching Sex Outside the Bubble

filed under: Smart. Safe. Sex., State of Sex Ed, We Are The Sex Media by Melissa Gira | 5 Comments

The challenge with the democratization of media-making has been just that: you know, democratization, getting voices and stories from outside the social media saturated echo chamber (San Francisco, New York, hello) out into the Great World Beyond. Which might be why finding a show like The Midwest Teen Sex Show is still shocking:

Click To Play

Shocking?

Because, the phrase “teen sex” online still conjures up exploitative badness, even among the most sex-positive minded, and is here used in an actually context-appropriate fashion.

Because the opening (cute girl scantily clad) apes so many cliches of online video, and in so doing, shreds them, at the same time as resisting a desexualization of the discussion of sex — a discussion of sex amongst teens, no less, which is so often over-sanitized to the point of nonsense.

Because the sense of humor throughout is sharp, and real, and not from a place of pained hipster irony, or calculated self-mockery, or some bizarre disdain for sex itself.

(It happens.)

Because being able to laugh at sex from a smart place may be one of the only things keeping us sane these days.

And because giving girls a chance to write and make media? About sex? That doesn’t shame them? Oh my god, Nikol, adopt me ex post facto, please.

Wednesday, July 11, 2007

Newsflash: Sex Ed More Than Diagrams, Directions, Disease

filed under: State of Sex Ed by Melissa Gira | 2 Comments

A study out of Melbourne University, polling the usual captive audience of young people — this time, those who’ve received sex education in Victoria — finds (unsurprisingly) that:

Many appeared to be crying out for sex education that went further than the standard biology and risk prevention.

“If they did get sexuality education it was mostly focused on the biological, safe sex and reproduction aspects, and what they really want is someone to talk to them about the social aspects of negotiating sex,” she said.

Besides this form of sex education requiring more pedagogical prowess on the part of typically woefully over-stretched teachers, it seems a little challenged at present.

One of the rhetorical dodges of comprehensive sex education has been that it is based in science and fact; that this is just the biology of the birds and the bees; that safer sex practices are proven to reduce disease & unwanted pregnancy (true). All this “social” talk is just too prone in some moderates’ eyes to coming off as an actual commendation of sexual pleasure.

Really, though, the appeal to science! softens not at all the outcry of cultural conservatives who wish to squelch all discussion of sex — not because they’re not obsessed, mind you, but because a sexually ignorant public is far easier to push around when it comes to moral panics in times of vote-mongering. (See: US election, 2004, “God, guns, & gays,’ remember?)

For all it may be fraught when it comes to The Young People, this move towards Even More Comprehensive Sex Ed is something that we can already see in the production of sex-culture-at-large. Where once sex education was relegated to “marriage manuals,” and now to a full-fledged industry of how-to and after hours classes in erotic goods shops, a polarization has still been at play, between sex education & education — pontificating, usually — on relationships, dating, & (shiver) intimacy. Typically, “relationship” education falls back on the same sexist stereotypes it so desperately needs to question. The very act of wanting to learn more about human sexual relationships is so often tasked to women, is thoroughly feminized as a pursuit for both student and teacher.

And fuck knows the last thing the world needs is another Rules or similar rubbish.

So, has a sex smart approach to talking about relationships emerged? What would it look like? How will it be sold — to politicians, to the public?

Monday, June 4, 2007

The Big (Corrupt) Business of Abstinence-Only Education

filed under: Do It for Science, State of Sex Ed, Strange Bedfellows by Melissa Gira | 1 Comment

Not only is abstinence-only sex “education” (where’s the education, exactly?) without evidence in reducing STI’s and unwanted pregnancies, now its crooked money trail is starting to unravel, as well.

Out in this week’s Nation, The Abstinence Gluttons tracks the neoconservative anti-abortion, anti-comprehensive sex education agenda, and reveals it for the cashgrab that it is. Abstinence-only “education” is simply another business for the Bush administration, a way to funnel funding into long-time campaign contributors pockets and out of programs that are proven to increase sexual health.

There’s simply no way to combat the seemingly anti-sex, Christian Fundamentalist motivations of abstinence-only programs on the grounds of the public health imperative to promote positive sexuality alone. Really what we need is to reframe the excessive waste of money and the total abdication of civic duty as the coming of the Halliburtons of sex. This is sex war profiteering, and like any other, the casualties are mounting.

Tuesday, April 24, 2007

Oh, Please Don’t Go Getting Your Safer Sex Education From digg

filed under: Smart. Safe. Sex., State of Sex Ed, Web Sex Index by Melissa Gira | 5 Comments

We’ve tried, we’ve tried, and we’ve failed to keep any regular sexual tabs on digg. Simply put: a) a story on digg needn’t even touch upon sodomy to bring out some users’ inner homophobes-cum-AssholeTeenageBoys (no, that’s not a gay porn); b) when so much sex online is so bad, and then you throw a load of too-much-time (and-god-knows-what-else) on-their-hands digg users at it… yeah; c) this is honestly the kind of thing we would rather have an intern do.

So we’re disdainful and overworked, we admit it — that, and now our expectations for what could be thought of as “smart sex” at digg are astoundingly low.

Which is why I’m rooting for the few sex-positive commenters on this story on a poster of sexual positions supposedly designed as a safer sex intervention for teenagers.

Granted, that a few people would like to engage the otherwise clueless and kneejerk responses with more than a “im in ur girlfriend givn her the aidz” is laudable, but just being jazzed about safer sex does not a peer sex educator make. When that style of “advice” comes couched in comment-jacking bravado and superiority, much like the abstinence-only’s propaganda, any grain of reality possibly conveyed goes distorted and fairly useless.

So, to the aspiring digger looking to so totally pwn everyone when it comes to condoms and fucking: shocking, yes, but Wikipedia is not the end-all be-all resource on sex acts and associated risks. Yes, it has been proven that fear tactics promoting abstinence-only do not reduce HIV transmission. No, if you get HIV, you will not “be dead by your next birthday” — some people with HIV have had the virus for twenty years or more. Of course, this depends on your access to treatment; this other recent digg submission on HIV anti-retroviral drug costs gets into the political economy of Big AIDS Pharma. And yes, condoms are still the most effective way to prevent the transmission of HIV and STI’s. For those of us actually (oh, say it - ed.) having sex.

keep looking »