Letters to the Editor
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No "and then!"
Sure, but when was the last time that a girl looked to the government to find out what an orgasm was? The government always has to walk a fine line between way too little and too much (according to some folks) information. I'm sure they goof it up, but rwally, would you, when given a plethora of online Google hits to the words "condom" "AIDS" or "orgasm" want to click on a site that ended in .gov?
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10 year olds do not need sex education
I note your piece on the "bad education" at the Woman's office. the page is for "women" from 10-16. Women from 10-16 have sex, but it is a small minority. It is simply not clear that omitting the information about sex from a page intended for 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, and 16 year olds constitutes "bad education".
After all, most kids accessing this page are likely to be on the lower end. Do you wish to furnish 10 year old girls with information about sex?I don't think so. Bad idea.
In fact, the whole piece is just more liberal whining that kids need sex education. As a parent who put my girls through a very explicit education process in my church (unitarian-universalist; they discuss everything, penetration, lesbian sex, male homosexual sex, etc), I would not want my 10 year old child to be exposed to information about safe sex. 10 year olds are too young.
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Please read the rest of the site... it's not quite that bad.
There is a giant glossary section with more explicit information about AIDS/HIV, biological information and mentions of the words "condom", "penis", etc.
Sexual health topics are covered at a basic level in the Body sections and the Safety sections, using proper terms.
The relationships section is focused on emotional health, something that is missing from traditional sex education, and I think entirely appropriate for the age group targeted. This section actually would have been very useful to me as a teen, I already had most of the basic info about human reproduction by then but nobody talked to me about feelings or relationships. The section emphasizes what a healthy relationship feels like, whether friendly or romantic, not what behaviors are ok or not ok. Establishing norms of behavior should largely be up to the parents, whether they want that responsibility or not. By the time I was 10, I had a basic understanding of sex, and an understanding of what my parents believed about when it was appropriate, i.e. when you are ready to accept all of the consequences and responsibilities, which is not until you are older. I had been given information about menstruation and pregnancy, (good thing, since I got my first period at 11) and a couple of years later I learned about STDs, through school sex ed.
This website actually has important information, I wouldn't knock it quite so hard.
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maybe this is off topic, but... eh
i just wanted share that the most honest sex ed talk i ever heard of was given by my friend melissa... to her church youth group. all through high school & before we'd been warned repeatedly that as girls we'd exposed to "unwanted pressure" and we should feel free "to say no." this wasn't more than a decade ago and they were still treating girls like sexual neuters- nobody ever said anything to us about wanting it. we discovered that for ourselves (uh not togther [darn]). it was great for me, but for melis, her hormones took her somewhere she wasn't ready to go. we both agreed that it wasn't fair the way knowledge was kept from us. i mean, the government does know that girls like sex, right? right?
anyhoo... melis was asked to give a talk on sexuality to her youth group & with her youth minister's help devised a talk that included "and by the way, you're gonna want it" and ways of dealing with those feelings & deciding if it was the right time or to wait. you know, without making anyone feel guilty for waiting or not & acknoweledging that females experience desire too. i just thought it was pretty amazing.
i wish our government had the cojones (or ovaries) to talk to girls like well, people with urges & the ability & right to decide how to deal with them. they might be surprised at what happens when they treat their citizens like rational beings.
oh & two more cents... 10 is too young for sex, though it does happen, but the earlier you start giving this info the more time girls have had to process it and more practice they've had evaluating what they want to do.
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Maybe the idea is that no female who wasn't being pressured
would want to have sex (at least not with a male). Those crazed fundies come up with the wierdest shit don't they.
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Re:Sex Ed
The hypocrisy here is that the government, and Republicans in general, don't even flinch at the logical contradiction exposed by two government-supported informational campaigns, drugs and sex.
We don't want our children using drugs at a young age, and abusing recreational drugs like tobacco and alcohol. So what do we do? We educate them about alcohol, tobacco, marijuana, methamphetamines, cocaine, heroin, etc.
Similarly, we don't want our children having sex, or unprotected sex at too young an age. So what do we do? We tell them nothing, nada, zip, zero, zilch, crickets chirping softly in the silence.
If parents want to help their children avoid the pitfalls of drug dependency, and addiction, they need to talk to them about drugs.
If parents want to help their children avoid the pitfalls of teen pregnancy, child molesters, sexually transmitted diseases, and other issues, they need to talk to them about sex.
Where is the logic of informing someone about drugs in the hopes that they'll be able to exercise good judgement when the time comes, and make good choices, when you have an exactly similar situation with sex, and the government-approved solution is to do the exact opposite?
It's all about parents squeamishness about discussing sex with their children in a frank and honest manner, grow up people, these are your children. It amazes me that parents will do the bravest things when it comes down to protecting their children, go into burning buildings, step in front of a moving vehicle, attack someone twice their size, but the strongest of them can't seem to steel themselves to have that all-important talk about love and sex with those same offspring.
Additionally, children need to get over their own squeamishness about their parents' sex lives, and parents need to actively discourage that type of thinking entirely. I feel these types of attitudes contribute to parental squeamishness about sex later on in life.
People, get over it, and get over yourselves. Everyone has sex, everyone wants to have sex, and everyone will have sex, no matter how hard you try to stop them. It's time that we as a society just acknowledge the fact, and move beyond it, so that we can move the discussion forward.