<p>Well, if it was shelved in Fremont it likely isn’t going to make it into too many school systems making it a huge waste of money, again.</p>
Fremont Sex-Ed Textbook With Topics On Bondage ... Along With Explicit Diagrams Has Parents Riled Up
<p>I hear what you’re saying Romani, but in this case, I’m not convinced that there is such an epidemic of teens (or anyone) playing risky bondage games that the needed corrective is giving high school students information about BDSM and sex toys - or that, to the extent that these problems do exist, that they couldn’t be addressed in more general discussions of safety and consent. </p>
<p>I’ve lived in two communities where young male teens accidently killed themselves with auto erotic asphyxia practices. So I would support some education in that area.</p>
<p>adding: one may have been only twelve.</p>
<p>The false assumption seems to be that education will prevent people from doing dumb and dangerous things. If it were that easy there would be no such thing as a drug overdose. This is not at all age appropriate for a ninth-grader and goes way beyond health into how-to with no shame. We’re all open minded and everything is okay just do it safely. Nope. Glad to hear it was shelved. </p>
<p>A couple of years back, the pastor for a local youth sports organization had a parents-only meeting. 30% of the kids he met with were addicted to pornography, looking at it at least once per day. The kids were between 11 and 17 years old. Alcohol and drug use rates were higher.</p>
<p>I would have had no problem with my kids using this text book as part of a comprehensive health class. Knowledge gained in a controlled setting is much more reliable than learning it on the playground.</p>
<p>Did anyone else see the South Park episode with the “Lord of the Rings” DVD?</p>
<p>Apprenticeprof, I volunteer in a free sexual, anonymous sexual health clinic. Most of our clients are adolescents between the ages of 14 and 25. I will say this- just because you don’t think a lot of young people aren’t doing risky things sexually doesn’t me they aren’t. They just don’t talk about them- for obvious reasons. </p>
<p>Textbooks, teachers, and parents don’t talk about alternative sexualities or fetishes or how to do them safely. </p>
<p>I’ll give you an example. Have you ever heard of sounding? It’s a sexual “fad” that is becoming more common among young people, especially MSMs. It’s also incredibly dangerous and often leads to needing medical care. </p>
<p>Again though, they’re not even TEACHING about these things- they’re just in a book that they happen to be using. I say good. Those resources should be available for those who need/want them. No 9th grader is going to go and check out a book that specifically deals with BDSM or the like. However, if it’s there already, maybe they’ll take a look and learn how to do it more safely. </p>
<p>Should we really be teaching children to safely do things that they shouldn’t be doing at all? I’m not convinced that because some people do crazy sexual stuff we should routinely teach 14 year olds that fetishes are fine and dandy. “Just be careful honey where you stick things you could hurt yourself. And, make sure you have a safe word all picked out for when you want the choking to stop.” Good grief. We are going crazy.</p>
<p>There are any number of dangers that school curricula don’t cover. Frankly, some of this sounds like common sense; I don’t think we need a textbook to tell kids not to stab themselves in the eye with forks, and we probably don’t need one to tell them that simulating hanging oneself for the purpose of sexual pleasure is risky either. </p>
<p>To a large extent, this discussion parallels the debate over teaching ANY sex-ed in schools. Plenty of people still think that high school kids are a little young to be having sex at all, in which case teaching it in school validates something that shouldn’t be happening in the first place. That’s not a totally irrational position, in a vacuum, but it is outweighed by copious evidence of the real, negative consequences of NOT doing comprehensive sex-ed.</p>
<p>In that case, however, the evidence was that ready or not, the majority of high school students were already sexually active, thereby risking predictable and quite common consequences. It isn’t rocket science: if you don’t teach the majority of teens who are having sex already about how to prevent pregnancy and protect themselves from STDs, a lot of teenagers are going to become pregnant and get STDs.</p>
<p>There seems to me to be some fundamental differences here:
- Kink is not a necessary component of healthy sexuality. Whether or not a kid is sexually active at sixteen, the chances are very good that he or she will benefit from the information from a high school sex ed class at some point. The same can’t be said for offering tips on fetishes.
- The percentage of kids engaging in risky sex of the type we’re discussing has to, at the very least, be far lower than the percentage of sexually active students. It might even be low enough to reverse the balance between benefit of offering information and risk of normalizing behavior that really shouldn’t be normalized, at least among that age group. Before you balk at this, consider that even most non-vanilla sex - and even the kind that might benefit from a safe word - isn’t usually accompanied by severe risk of irreparable physical harm. Experimenting with some light bondage isn’t necessarily all that dangerous in the first place. I’m far from sure that the benefit of teaching some small number of students about how to be safer about their kinks outweighs the risk of introducing specific practices best avoided to students who might not have encountered them
3.To the extent that there is a need to warn kids about these practices, a lot of that purpose could be served by more general information on consent. If the message is “whatever you do, make sure it is consensual,” that also covers things like spanking. “Don’t believe everything you see in porn” is a good one too. - Education seems likely to be less useful here than in that of general sex ed, because the risks involved are closer to a feature than a bug in the case of things like sounding (which I had to look up). Any kid whose pre-school teacher ever told him not to stick crayons up his nose would have to know that that isn’t a good idea. If someone is doing that, it isn’t because he lacks knowledge about how to do it more safely.</p>
<p>Absolutely. What Apprenticeprof said! =D> </p>
<p>Girls in middle school are getting pregnant. Sexual experimentation starts in middle school and sometimes younger. There’s a lot of things that kids don’t share with their parents at all or maybe until years later.</p>
<p>Just because I’m uncomfortable with something doesn’t mean that I don’t want my kid to know about it or be able to ask questions in a safe environment.</p>
<p>I didn’t read the Table of Contents very carefully, but what has struck me about a lot of sex ed curricula is that it is very hetero normative. In addition to straight kids, I know gay, queer, trans, and probably questioning ones as well. Just because I and my DD are straight doesn’t mean that we turn our backs on the rest of the rainbow.</p>
<p>FWIW, I strongly support the OWL (Our Whole Lives) sexuality curricula published by the United Church of Christ and the Unitarian Universalist Association.</p>
<p>Girls in middle school are 12. This is getting ridiculous. And, it’s not about not wanting your kid to know about sex. Tell them. The school system does not need to teach kink just because some people are kinky.</p>
<p>You know I agree with whoever said it depends on the maturity of the kid. I have one that when she saw one her soccer friends kissing her boyfriend next to her locker, she had to wait for them before she could access it, she said ew to me. She was a freshman. She might not say ew now.
She might say ew to all these things in this text book. And yes she heard of the 50 shades of grey book before I did. I might have thought it was related to hair products at first. :D</p>
<p>“I’m not convinced that there is such an epidemic of teens (or anyone) playing risky bondage games that the needed corrective is giving high school students information about BDSM and sex toys - or that, to the extent that these problems do exist, that they couldn’t be addressed in more general discussions of safety and consent.”</p>
<p>I mean, bondage is pretty much the most common kink out there. Just because they’re teenagers (or actually, especially because they’re teenagers) people have to be realistic that good ol missionary is not the only thing people are going to try. Is it a huge epidemic among 14 year olds? No, but 17 year olds? FOR SURE. And I’d much rather have them learn about safety and consent <em>before</em> they actually start to get into that stuff.</p>
<p>I don’t think anyone is talking about “irreparable physical harm” but rather enthusiastic consent, understanding boundaries, feeling safe and secure, and related emotional/psychological topics. Is it THE most urgent, relevant, crucial thing to be teaching students? No, but it’s just one small part of a comprehensive book. </p>
<p>And to the point of “Kink is not a necessary component of healthy sexuality.” What does necessity have to do with anything? If it’s happening, it’s happening. Teenagers are not going to want to experiment with something kinky but then say “actually, we don’t <em>need</em> this to complete sexual intercourse.” </p>
<p>And to whoever said sex ed should be limited to reproduction and “perhaps contraception”…yeesh. Yes, perhaps contraception.</p>
<p>Sex ed does not teach kids how to have sex. Kids are quite able to figure out how to have sex without the help of a textbook. Discussing fetishes and other activities does not mean that teachers are giving a stamp of approval or saying they are “fine and dandy.” There’s been plenty of studies on sex ed, and (a quick google search) shows that “Numerous evaluations of sexuality-education programs have found the very same thing. These programs do not increase sexual behavior among teens, they do not cause teens to have sex at a younger age, they do not increase the number of partners young people have, and they do not increase the frequency with which young people have sex. In fact, they tend to do just the opposite. Young people who have gone through highly effective sex education and HIV-prevention programs tend to delay sex and have fewer partners.”</p>
<p>I’m sure romani could provide more info on this. (And I had to google her references to sounding and MSM.) </p>
<p>Romani seems to think everyone is doing it and not telling their parents, though. She is just plain wrong about that. And, I do think that learning in school that a particular practice is done in a particular way is too much. As you note, if they want to do that they will figure out how to go about it. The safety business is unconvincing to me since as someone else noted people do plenty of unsafe things everyday although they all know better. And they are adults.</p>
<p>I’m all on board for teaching about safety, and consent. I see no reason why any of these important discussions need to include references to vibrators or BDSM. “Don’t let someone convince you to do something that you feel uncomfortable with” and “communicate about boundaries” can apply equally well to losing one’s virginity and getting tied up in a dungeon.</p>
<p>I think some people seem to be misunderstanding the objections some of us have to aspects of the proposed curriculum. we are not! averse to sex education. We do in fact, support sex education in the schools as a valuable and necessary component toward helping kids make informed decisions about their sexual health, respecting the rights of others, and avoid things like rape and STDs. But we also think that that education should be age appropriate at every level. A few things included in the proposed Fremont curriculum are not appropriate for the average 14 yr. old middle school student. Full stop. It does not make us cretins, throw backs, or people with our heads in the sand. The proposed textbook was supposedly written for college students. The content is fully age appropriate for college students. </p>
<p>@poetsheart - excellent post!!</p>
<p>Sounds like a book I can gift to H on our 25 wedding anniversary. It seems to have a few ideas we hadn’t come up with on our own. </p>
<p>There are jokes about vibrators, sex toys, and bondage on prime time situation comedies. Kids are being spoon-fed large amounts of junk on a daily basis via television, the internet, and other media. I think it is good to address it in an educational setting. There needs to be some counter balance that advocates healthy, respectful relationships.</p>
<p>Although the vast majority of high school students aren’t taking part in these particular practices, they are still exposed to them on a consistent basis. Maybe we can provide some perspective. </p>