Time for a bit of a touchy subject: Sex Ed in the USA

[O h a y a r i]

So lately I have been reading a new book i got from a friend. It's called The Purity Myth. It's definitely an interesting read. It's made me happy I don't live in the USA at times. The sexual education classes are majorly misinformed on a lot of topics.

Now here are a couple facts out of the book:

1. Over 80 percent of abstinence programs contain false or misleading information about sex and reproductive health, including retro gender stereotypes like: "A woman is far more attracted by a man's personality while a man is stimulated by sight. A man is usually less discriminating about those to whom he is physically attracted"

2. Abstinence-only education programs which cannot in any way mention contraceptives unless to talk about failure rates, have received over $1.3 billion dollars in funding since 1996, despite the fact that 82 percent of Americans support programs that teach students about different forms of contraception.

3. More and more laws are cropping up that attempt to curb pregnant women's rights and even to punish them. In 2004 a Utah woman was charged with murder after refusing to have a caesarean section and one of her twin babies was delivered stillborn. One legislator in Virginia even introduced a bill in 2005 that would make it a crime--one punishable by a year in jail--for a woman not to report her miscarriage to police within 12 hours.

4. There is no working medical definition for the word "virginity"

Some questions to get this going:
- How do you define virginity? Where do you think this current definition came from?

- Were you brought up to think of female sexuality as somehow dirty? How did it affect you?

- How can we get the word out in our communities and beyond that abstinence-only education teaches more than "don't have sex"--but sexist gender roles?  

[Saverio C.]

I've never in my life met someone who got these lesson in school. The more people I meet from our generation the more I meet people who were told that "Abstinence is the only way to be sure. Condoms break" education that should be given in school. I really can't help but wonder if there books are an actually representation of what American education really looks like.

Female sexuality is dirty in just about every freaking culture because men are really easy to make jealous.

Virginity would be a spiritual state of not having had sex of any kind with another person willingly.  

[Kusaragi]

Saverio C.

Virginity would be a spiritual state of not having had sex of any kind with another person willingly.

I'm not sure I agree with this. For women who are raped, their spiritual and mental states are fundamentally changed once their Virginity is forcibly taken.

I think that virginity is both a physical status, and a frame of mind. It's something that can be given by or taken away from every woman. It's naïveté and innocence, of the carnal nature of humans. But this is the image that the government, and evangels are trying to preserve (quite unsuccessfully) by restricting the information that is being supplied to teenagers. However that innocence is slipping away from our race as a whole, through over-exposure to the market medias and the preconceptions of an "Attractive" woman form.

The Physical aspect of Virginity is of course the Hymen, the small wall of flesh within the v****a that acts as a barrier. However I don't even KNOW what the real purpose of the hymen is. That is how lax the information from schools is. Either that or scientists don't even know.  

[Phaeton 2]

Sex ed was like one half day and a video in 5th grade. Basically they explained the biological processes. I fell asleep halfway through. They didn't tell me anything I didn't already know.

I ignore the term "virginity" it's based upon some bizarre idea that somehow there's a massive psychological and spiritual change just because someone has sex. These sorts of things are instinctual. Even if a person is asexual they would still get the gist of what's supposed to happen one way or another.

I grew up surrounded heavily by women, so I wasn't necessarily brought up to think of female sexuality as dirty. Well my grandma didn't help much but she was raised to think of female sexuality as dirty. It didn't take on the rest of us.

I thought people already knew that abstinence-only education was steeped in sexism and double standards. I mean the signs are everywhere. It just doesn't work. I don't know if my city is still up there but it should still be at least in the top 10 for unplanned teen pregnancy rates. (It's a pretty popular town too.)

The birth control pill isn't a "Go have all the sex you want" permit. It's a countermeasure. I mean what, are we supposed to not put locks on the doors and just HOPE people don't barge in and take stuff?  

[Rica is insane]

My 'sex ed' was pure luck. In 5th grade health class I had to do a project on the reproductive system, a very extensive project with one of those overheads prepared with notes for the class to take down, a oral report, and a crossword prepared, that was the first part.

My second part was I stumbled upon a book that was basically sex ed in a book.

It worked out nicely for me, but it's depressing to know that if I hadn't gotten lucky, I might not be as well off as I am.

Now for answering the questions:

I define virginity as whenever the person feels it was given/taken from them. It's more psychological than anything else.

I wasn't brought up with much thought on female sexuality at all. We just didn't discuss those things.

I doubt people will listen even if we bring up the sexist gender roles. People seem to think if we ignore the fact that people have premarital sex then it saves people from having premarital sex or something.

 

[PixiecuTT]

Our sex-ed was pretty decent, I think. Granted, I'm not American.

It started in like grade 5 and 6, but that was mostly just biological stuff. Extensive information about the "upcoming biological changes", etc, etc.

Then in grade 7, they actually get into birth control and sexuality, and covered the different types of STDs.

By grade 8, we had covered many, many forms of birth control, and been told about the pros and cons of all of them.
Abstinence was certainly stated as being the only 100% sure way of preventing STDs and pregnancy, but that wasn't the focus of the curriculum.

By grade 9, we had seen an extremely graphic video of childbirth, and discussed vaginal, oral, and a**l sex, as well as masturbation, among other things.

At the time, it was kind of cringe-inducing, since our teacher for grades 7, 8, and 9 was this tiny older lady who was extremely frank with us about everything. How many teenagers are mature enough to handle the thought of their 50+ teacher having a**l sex?
sweatdrop

 

[Erverain]

Phaeton 2

Sex ed was like one half day and a video in 5th grade.

This for me as well.

And I split virginity into two things: Mental and Physical virginity. Physical is, of course, the aforementioned hymen, as well as any other penetrative contact of a sexual nature, willing or otherwise. Mental virginity is usually lost by the time the child hears their first curse word. It's the unblemished innocence that people have as children.

As for how the ladies like it, I wasn't brought up thinking it was dirty at all. I mean, it's no worse than a guy's, anyway. It just is. Nature must take its course, after all.

Gender roles are something that have been ingrained into the communal psyche since the beginning of civilization. Women were usually relegated to the care of the offspring, as well as holding down the fort while the men went out and hunted/gathered/fought against the world. We won't be escaping these sorts of stereotypes anytime soon, even with the swapped roles of house husbands and working momswomen. Can't even say working moms anymore, because women find it offensive that they are simply assumed to have children at some point, regardless if they want to. Same with getting married.
But that's a patriarchal society for you.  

[pickle relish]

My sex education started in 5th grade with a video about puberty. In 6th grade we watched another film that explained a bit about sex and male anatomy. And that was it until 9th grade, when I took health and biology, and covered reproduction for about a two weeks in each class. We watched this video in biology that showed a woman giving birth as well as part of an abortion. In health, we covered STDs and several types of contraceptives. So apparently my school did pretty well.  

[Roland Karloseth]

I also had the video thing in 6th and 7th grade. That was pretty much it. My parents never told me about how the human body reproduced before-hand, nor had I heard anywhere else. I just didn't care. (Also, I feel the need to point out here that I am horribly oblivious to my surroundings at most normal times, and was even as a child.)

Also, beyond that, I grew up in a christian house-hold. THAT was a fun trip. I was put through abstinence classes and was basically told that God would smite me down if I ever had sex before I was married. Yay, crazy religious nut-jobs. rolleyes  

[wakusei]

Saverio C.

I've never in my life met someone who got these lesson in school. The more people I meet from our generation the more I meet people who were told that "Abstinence is the only way to be sure. Condoms break" education that should be given in school. I really can't help but wonder if there books are an actually representation of what American education really looks like.

Mmm, yeah.

I got sex ed at least every year in middle school...6th-8th grade. I can't remember earlier or later than that.... But it definitely was not like that book at all.... Granted, I'm 25. So things may be different now. But most likely, sex ed is determined by school district. And the US has, you know...quite a lot of those.

But for me, there wasn't an abstinence program. And I recall no gender stereotypes.
We learned about penises and vaginas and how they work. How fetuses grow. How STD's spread. About rape and sexual abuse....
I mean sure, a common message was "You should not be having sex" but it certainly wasn't shoved down my throat. Of course they're going to tell you not to have sex when you're in middle school....

Could they have talked more about contraceptives? Yes. Could they have mentioned more STDs other than the big ticket items like AIDS? Yes. Definitely room for improvement, but majorly misinformed? Not in my personal experience.

In the end, though, it's the damn parents who are responsible for making sure their child is properly educated when it comes to sex and gender roles. A lot of parents are too embarrassed I guess, and the child suffers. A school system can only be responsible for a kid's behavior so much.  

[Slim95]

I thought my sex-ed class was just fine. We didn't learn of any gender stereotypes; only the biological functions of each gender and such textbook matters. We were taught about various forms of contraceptives as well (for a while at my high school, they even had the students putting condoms on bananas. The amount of laughter that ensued nixed that method...), though the message that was of course flashing in our faces most boldly was:

ABSTINENCE

I think a more medical definition for virginity would be, as others have said before me, the presence of an intact hymen. Personally, I find the more spiritual take on it is very susceptible to change from person to person, so I have no definition for it that applies to everyone. I just have one that applies to myself: You're a virgin until you've had vaginal sex. I've built this action up to be such a significant and unique one that it stands on a different level from other forms of sex, and thus do not consider things such as oral sex to be capable of taking virginity.

Also: I agree with Waku. The most responsibility for education on this particular matter should be put in the hands of parents. What's so embarrassing about talking about sex to your child? I find it a little silly to be afraid of such matters.  

[YukiOfTheMightnightHour]

I had the basic sex ed videos in 4th grade which covered the basics of anatomy and defining what sex was, and of course being a little persistent with the concept of abstinence. And then they went on to talk about all the main STDs that you hear about more than others and that in it of itself scared the crap out of me and any thoughts of sex was usually accompanied with anxiety.
Then when I was about 12 and started my menstrual cycle my mum sat down with me and a colour dictionary and covered eveything I needed to know. In the end the fear of contracting an STD made abstinence easy for me. As a child I was so afraid of getting sick or getting some disease it would almost be tramatic at times. sweatdrop So glad those days are long behind me.  

[invisible-weirdo]

In 5th grade, we had the puberty videos. In middle school we had to take a health class that didn't cover much in terms of sex ed, other than the whole STD thing. And high school didn't do s**t (or at least nothing I can really remember (which, looking back, was really stupid on their part because there were a s**t ton of teenage pregnancies at my high school and a large portion of my graduating class is either married/engaged or preggo, or both.)). Looking back though, where I was at the time kind of reflects the kind of sex ed I got; I had elementary in Washington (so I'm thinking that if I had stayed in the state, I would have gotten something similar to what Pickle got), middle school in Texas, and high school in Arizona. The latter two states are considerably more conservative so...yeah.

I do believe that it's important for parents to do most of the teaching in terms of sex ed, but my folks never did. When I started getting my period, my mom helped me out with that (in that she bought stuff for me to help me deal with it). I never ever got 'the talk' or anything remotely close, at least until the actual prospect of me having sex was almost inevitable. I can only hope that they did this primarily because I'm a girl (my family's Catholic. Not ultra-Catholic, but Catholic enough) and that they'll take a more active role with my little brother.

Also, I should point out that apparently an intact or broke hymen isn't always the best indicator of virginity because I've heard that there are other ways to break it (e.g., use of a tampon).