Sex Ed
ow young is too young to be sexually “safe”? How young is too young to start passing out condoms and birth control pills? A school in Maine is addressing that issue.
Administrators at a Portland middle school are considering a bold proposal that would allow students to access a broader range of contraceptives from the school’s health center.
King Middle School’s health center already provides condoms as part of its reproductive health program, implemented after five of the 135 students who visited the center last year reported being sexually active.
Prescriptions for birth control pills and patches would be included in the new measure, which has become a lightning rod for controversy in the area.
First, a quick quibble: This issue was apparently discussed on Good Morning America, where they had Glenn Beck on as a commentator: “They are sending mixed messages. In the state of Maine it is illegal to have sex under the age of 14,” said cable talk show host and ABC News commentator Glen Beck on “Good Morning America” today. “You are enabling people.” I don’t particularly care that it was Glenn Beck, even though I don’t like the guy, but when in the hell did talking heads become experts on anything? I am really goddamn tired of “reporters” interviewing other “reporters” (maybe “pundits” would be a better word), as though they know any goddamn thing at all. It annoys the shit out of me. It’s almost as annoying as when Larry King has Dog the Bounty Hunter on to discuss a legal issue, as though that dude is an expert on anything except, possibly, mullets.
Anyway . . .
Ideally, I’d like to see sex ed starting at about fourth grade. (That was middle school back in my day.) I mean, for the first couple of years, you could cover it as “Just the facts, Ma’am.” and proceed from there as the kids got older. I’d like to see complex and comprehensive sex ed, taught in an informational manner, covering everything from lifestyle choices to the biological nitty gritty. I’d like to see a vending machine on every corner that spits out condoms and pills for a quarter. No, seriously. We need to stop stigmatizing and hiding this from our kids. If we want to lower the abortion rate, and lower the rate of teen pregnancies, and get a handle on “social” diseases, then we need to stop turning sex into some big, bad evil thing, and teach our kids about all this stuff. They need to know what to do and how to do it, and most importantly, how to do it safely. They need to know the physical and emotional ramifications of sexual activity. They need to be taught this stuff in an intelligent, common place way. Stop making sex an evil taboo, and we’ll have a lot less of problem with it. Also, if kids know the “right” way to go about sexual activity, they’ll have a lot better idea of what the “wrong” way is — abuse, pedophilia — and feel much more confident about reporting it.
No one likes to think about 11-year-olds having any sort of sexual activity, but we need to get our heads out of the sand on this issue, and recognize the fact that 11-year-olds are, in fact, thinking about and possibly performing sex acts of their own free will, with each other. While I was not sexually active at 11 years old, I know for a fact that my Barbie dolls were. 
And it’s a pretty short step from thinking about it to doing it. That step is getting shorter every year.
Now is the time to teach these kids to be safe. And frankly, if we take the mystery and taboo out of the thing, it’ll probably get a whole lot less interesting.
(Photo credit: Barbie & Ken. Or is that Blair? I can’t keep track of that crap.)
October 18th, 2007 at 7:20 am
Hahaha. My Barbies were doing it by then, too. I had whole love triangles and even - gasp - lesbian relationships! (Mainly because I only had 1 Ken doll.
)
The gap between that and the real thing got a lot smaller (and continues to get smaller) as the internet became more popular with younger kids. As far as my group of friends when I was 12 (I started using the internet just before turning 10) was concerned, cyber sex was run of the mill. A few of them that had webcams. It wasn’t said at the time but all of them have admitted to having used the cameras for sexual activity back then.
My best friend was having sex with a 18 year old who she’d met only a week prior by the time she was turning 14. That is, incidentally, why we’re no longer friends - I told her mom, because while I could accept her experimenting digitally, she knew nothing about real relationships or sex and wasn’t using protection.
It’s really tragic - according to a mutual friend of the time, she’s still going out and having sex with people she doesn’t know and changing “boyfriends” every week. She’s only 2 months older than me. She would have turned 17 just a few days ago, I think.
So I’ve seen first-hand the problems that our current “too little, too late” system creates. I can’t stand for it. Education should begin early, be presented like any other class subject and all forms of protection should be easy for anyone to get. I can’t understand or support people who treat it as though this is still the era of chastity belts.
On second thought, bringing back the chastity belt might not be such a bad idea…
JavaElemental Reply:
October 18th, 2007 at 1:30 pm
Let’s see — if you’re about 17, that makes you about 14 years younger than me . . . which means in less than the span of a generation, kids have gone from boinking their Barbie dolls together and giggling about it to having cybersex and experimenting with the real thing.
Wow. I feel ancient. Heh.
But, it underlines the point. When I was 11 and 12, it was not unheard of for a kid that age to be sexually active in some way (seems like boys were likelier than girls to be active — I’ve heard a lot of “I tagged the babysitter when I was 12″ stories), but it was still rare. There was a couple of pregnant girls in junior high with me, about 13 or 14 years old, and several more in high school. By high school most kids were fooling around in some way or another.
And not a damn one of them knew anything about birth control or anything else. Considering how a lot of the girls I know who got pregnant turned out, I have to wonder how much better off they would have been if someone had just honestly told them how birth control worked. Hell, at work I’ve had to teach the birds and the bees to many of my waitresses, and some of them have kids!
The abstinence crowd can blather on as much as they want — the answer to this problem is education.
October 18th, 2007 at 12:16 pm
To steal a quote fm “Gray Dog’s Wisdom”…I DONT CARE WHAT THEY TOLD YOU, I DONT CARE WHAT YOU LEARNED IN SCHOOL, I DONT CARE HOW ITS S’POSED TO BE–IM GONNA TELL IT TO YOU LIKE IT IS!: THERE AINT NO SANTA CLAUS, THERE AINT NO PONY, AND ELVIS IS WAY DEAD…” and children experiment sexually as soon as they figure out the difference between girls and boys. Most begin to participate in sexual or pseudosexual activities at the onset of puberty. (google up “rainbow parties” if you ever had any doubts) Sexual activity is taking place: debate the ethics of it till the end of time if you like, but the fact is THEY ARE DOING IT.
In earlier times, children and adults lived in close quarters–often a single room for an entire family–and with poultry and livestock kept in the residence as climate required. The ‘facts of life’ were clearly evident. In modern times we have attempted to create a prolonged dependent adolescence in order to provide higher education and delay procreation –for nearly a decade after the body has signaled biological change.
It only makes sense to provide information and education. Ignoring a fact does not change the existance of said fact.
JavaElemental Reply:
October 18th, 2007 at 1:37 pm
Ignoring a fact does not change the existance of said fact.
Sure it does. Half the population thinks that if they tell things the way they want them to be, and then promptly stick their fingers in their ears and scream “LALALALALA CAN’T HEAR YOU!” then what they want will magically become true.
I’m going to start trying that and see if it works out for me.
I’m independently wealthy, live in a mansion, and have servants to finish my laundry for me. *sticks fingers in ears* “LALALALALA CAN’T HEAR YOU!”