Sex Ed

(Warning: this post turned out to be a lot longer than I expected. Stick with me!)

(In honor of UN Goodwill Ambassador Emma Watson's call for more men to stand up for gender equality, I hereby dedicate this post to her. I'm sure she'll be quite moved.)

My goal with this blog is to not turn it into a parenting blog. There are plenty of those out there already, some of you probably don't care about a parenting blog, and in general, my position is, "Do whatever works for you," which really isn't all that interesting as far as blogs go. (I do hope that my blog is interesting. Uninteresting is not my goal.)

The exception to that, of course, is that, as a parent, you don't do things that hurt your kids. I try to be non-judgy, but that's where I draw the line. In fairness, I think that's where most people who try to be non-judgy draw the line, so I'm not claiming some great moral triumph here. And, of course, defining what actually hurts a kid can be more of an art than a science.

Except, that is, where we have actual science! And so my non-judginess doesn't extend to, say, not vaccinating your kids. Vaccinate your darn kids! (Barring real medical reasons not to, of course. Note that "because autism!" is not a valid reason, nor is any other squishy "I'm not comfortable" reason. To quote Neil DeGrasse Tyson, "The good thing about science is that it's true whether or not you believe in it.")

Nor does it extend, to get to the actual topic of this post now that we're already four paragraphs and many digressions and parentheticals in, to bad sex ed.

I have to admit, I honestly never expected to really care about sex ed. Why would I? I never really got much out of it; one advantage (From one perspective, anyways) of reading above your grade level is that you start reading books with the good stuff in them long before people expect you to start knowing about it. And it's especially helpful when your parents preview a book and tell you what pages not to read, so that you know to pay extra close attention when you get there, and know the page numbers for quick reference later.

(Sorry, Mom and Dad, if you read this, but honestly, what did you expect was going to happen? Unless this was another one of your sneaky ploys, which I would not put past you.)

So yeah. I'm not saying I knew everything there was to know, 'cuz I really didn't, but I had a pretty good idea of what was going on by the time anyone got around to providing a formal education on the subject. And as I recall, the formal education was pretty pathetic. So, no real expectations of caring.

But then again, I also didn't expect to like beer, and that ship sailed a LONG time ago (support your local microbreweries!). So what we expect doesn't always happen. And so here I find myself caring about sex ed, at least enough to write a blog post about it. And it's long, so you know I mean it!

In a way, it's an offshoot of my anti-"anti-science" stance. Why would you want your kids to deliberately be poorly- or mis-educated? But that's not entirely it, because I believe that bad sex ed is wrapped up in a whole other set of gender issues. And not giving your kids the facts, and the whole story, about sex, is harmful in a way I just can't support.

First of all, I'm not really going to draw a distinction between not teaching your kids anything about sex and abstinence-only sex ed, because abstinence-only sex ed also doesn't teach your kids about sex. It also doesn't work.

Here's one thing I want to make sure we get straight, because I can already see this objection coming: I don't really care what you tell your kids at home. You can give them every fact known to man, or you can tell them nothing but "wait until you're married". Or both. Or something in between. Whatever. (Emily and I haven't decided yet what approach we'll take, because it's not exactly relevant yet, and we also haven't gotten the "Where do babies come from?" question yet. Maybe we'll just tell Kieran what pages not to read.)

I get that as parents, we're responsible for our children's personal and spiritual (if that's applicable to you) growth and development. That's why I don't have any issues with the whole "wait until marriage" thing, as long as it's done at home.

But "leave it out of schools, because it's a parent's job" doesn't cut it, because all too often, it's not happening at home, either, and also why should this valid topic of scientific knowledge be excluded just because it's making someone uncomfortable? And I have some major philosophical objections to "opting out", because withholding important, personally relevant scientific facts from our kids because we simply don't want them to know not only crosses my "harming the kid" line, but it also raises some serious concerns at a societal level. (Probably the topic of another post in and of itself.)

And when it comes to schools, which are actually supposed to educate kids, abstinence-only doesn't cut it. Simple anatomy lessons don't cut it, either. This is important, and quite possibly literally life-saving, knowledge for kids to have, and I honestly do not see a conscionable reason for denying it to them. Life skills, people! You're always talking about how kids should learn to make a budget or balance a checkbook in school; you don't think this might be important, too?

Public schools are NOT supposed to be used for religious indoctrination, and religion is really the only reason I've ever heard given for why this education shouldn't be provided. I don't buy it, either as a parent or as someone who believes in the value of education.

Obviously, all the usual caveats about age-appropriateness apply. I'm not suggesting we give kindergarteners the full Monty. But I definitely think kids should have a pretty solid idea what's going on by the end of middle school, at least.

Look:

- No sex ed, or abstinence-only sex ed, doesn't keep kids from having sex. (I'm not interested in anecdotal rebuttals. Everyone's personal story differs, but on a population level, this is statistically true. Anecdata is just an attempt to distract from the actual facts of the matter.) They'll do it or they won't. (And most of them will.) And conversely, there's no evidence that I've ever seen that properly informing kids leads to them having more sex, just safer sex.

- Knowing about, and how to properly use, contraception leads to kids having safer sex, which reduces the pregnancy rate. This in turn reduces the numbers of teen parents and abortions, which is a result that I'm sure we can all get behind regardless of any other disagreements we may have.

- For that matter, actually teaching kids how pregnancy happens is probably a good start in that respect. It's appalling to read about teenagers who don't know that most basic fact.

- Knowing about, and how to prevent transmission of, STDs will help prevent their spread. This is some of the "life-saving" that I'm talking about.

- Kids are going to find out on their own, whether through books, movies, mass media, friends, porn, personal experience, whatever, that the main reason most people have sex most of the time is because it feels good. Trying to hide that fact from them is just stupid. I'm not advocating teaching them techniques, but a physiological discussion of why that is would not be amiss.

- I am not averse, at all, to discussing with kids the physiological and emotional effects of sex as well, as that's a key part of the whole thing. This is most emphatically not to scare them out of having sex, however, but so that they can make an informed decision (well, slightly better informed, anyways; let's be realistic) about their own preparedness.

And finally, to really, really get to the point, I promise, I mentioned gender equality as well. I'm not going to dive into (the very real topics of) rape culture, slut-shaming, Hobby Lobby, or anything else here, as I'm sure you've seen them all done to death elsewhere, and I don't know that I have anything new to add on those points, at least here. Here's what I do see:

- Women bear the brunt of a lack of knowledge about contraception and STDs. First of all, they are the ones who have be pregnant, and thus make the hard decisions about an unwanted pregnancy. You can't try to restrict access to contraception and abortion and also withhold the information about how to avoid getting pregnant in the first place! That's just... no. That's not a thing you can do.

Second, female-to-male STD transmission rates are also lower than male-to-female transmission rates, which means they're more vulnerable, especially in a society that condones, if not celebrates, male promiscuity.

And finally, there are many myths and misunderstandings out there about how contraception works on a physical level, which leads to things like certain recent unnamed court decisions, and better education would start to rectify that, hopefully leading to greater acceptance and availability of contraception.

- Women also bear the brunt of a lack of understanding (on both sides) about the physical aspects of the pleasure of sex. I mean, let's face it, in general, it's a lot easier and straightforward for a man to get off than a woman. Furthermore, statistically speaking, what works for men is not what works (at least by itself) for the majority of women. Wouldn't having at least an intellectual understanding, going in, of what works and what doesn't be a benefit to everyone?

Unless, of course, you have a negative view of female sexuality. Keeping them from enjoying it as much as possible is certainly one way to try to restrict it.

I'm not going to go so far as to claim that promoting abstinence-only sex ed is actively misogynistic, because I really don't know people and their motives, and that sort of speculation doesn't help anyone. I'm sure that it is for some people, and it isn't (actively) for others. But it certainly does seem to me to at least be passively misogynistic, for the reasons described above.

And okay, a tiny bit about slut-shaming. As a culture, we are undeniably preoccupied with female sexuality. I'm not saying that better sex ed is going to fix that, but it's sure as heck not going to hurt if we can be more open and honest about things and increase the base knowledge level a bit.

I'm not saying any of this is going to be easy; there are a lot of cultural and institutional hurdles to overcome. I know this post wasn't the easiest thing for me to write (he says 150,000 words and several edits later), and I didn't even start to get graphic or personal. Similarly, I imagine there are a few people out there who will be a bit uncomfortable reading about this topic from me. And again, I didn't even get graphic or personal!

So no, not easy. But something I definitely think is worth tackling. As parents, as educators, as a society.