<p>Without reading the textbook itself I cannot say how appropriate it may be as presented in the book. I am no prude, but a course like that shouldn’t get into the details, there is no reason to get into that kind of detail. I appreciate what some people have written, that kids may get curious (especially now with all the hype of 50 shades of gray, especially with the movie coming out), that some may try it and there are risks to this kind of sex (it is why S/M groups and authors spend a lot of time on safety, about risks and so forth)…No, I don’t think this is going to encourage kids to go out and try it, I think kids at that age if they are getting close to having sex, barely can grasp regular old sex to be honest, I think they may be titilated by the ideas, giggle at it, but won’t run out and try it I suspect. The other thing is if kids do experiment with it, I suspect it won’t be particularly risky stuff either. </p>
<p>That said, though, there is a point to be made that kids are being made aware of what is out there, the religious right and others have been trying to stem the tide with denial, like the claim that sex ed causes kids to have sex (every study not done by biased religious groups shows that comparing kids who had comprehensive sex ed versus kids taught “abstinence only”, or the kids brought up with the purity pledges and so forth, that the kids with abstinence only delayed their first encounter, but roughly a year and a half or so, but by that time the rate of teen sex was pretty much equal between the two groups…and the abstinence only kids routinely were having sex without birth control or taking the risk of STD’s into concern. If the book mentioned BD/SM play or sex toys and briefly described them as alternative kinds of sex, I think there could be value to it to a 14 year old, or mentioned other variations on sex, straight, gay, poly, whatever, simply to give them information, you can be informative without being graphic, and I think simply talking about it in an appropriate fashion is not a bad idea. As others have pointed out, this is a different generation, and back when I had sex ed, when Led Zeppelin was still together and someone thought digital watches were a neat thing, people said the same thing about talking about issues like being gay or believe it or not, transgender (not that they used that term). I think anything that demystifies sex is good, and personally, when it came to S/M and such, I would probably tell them that if they ever decided when they were older to try it, to make sure and do research on it, about how to do it safely, and leave it at that. </p>
<p>Unfortunately, we have a weird situation out there, where there is a ton of information about sex out there, being thrown around all over the place, kids have access to porn (which is a disaster area, in more ways than one), and there isn’t a good counterbalance to it. In my/our generation there was plenty of bad information on sex, primarily because a lot of it was coming via other people and myth and such, but today while there is wonderful information on sex, kids are also bombarded by conflicting messages about sex, we have popular culture that has sexualized so much, the net with all its things, then we have the reactionary forces trying to put the genie back in the bottle who promote a message that is not only way out of whack with the realities of the world (the whole no sex before marriage, little hint, 90% of people are not virgins when they wed), or where sex is still stigmatized as being for procreation, where doing it for pleasure or whatever is wrong, or that certain forms of sex are wrong, and it is a mess, and it is creating all kinds of conflicts. I don’t know what is worse, the message that porn gives out that sex is this cheap thing done by plastic people with unreal physiques, or the other end of things, the uber religious, whose attitudes about sex haven’t changed since the 16th century, but both are bad news, and if sex ed can tread a middle ground, then it is needed as maybe an island of sanity in the middle of a bad acid trip of data overload. I also want to add that I have seen few posts if any in this thread I would characterize as over the top, most posters took the time to think through and their ideas are legitimate, I didn’t read anything where I said “WTH”, like someone spouting religious jargon or whatnot. I would hope that the biggest thing they teach in these courses is that sex is a very powerful thing, it is very tempting, but that it also has powerful emotions and consequences and the first rule of it has to be respect for your partner and respect for yourselves, a lot flows from that IMO:)</p>