Hi all!
Well, Jill was kind enough to offer me the chance to guest blog over here at Feministe, which did cause a jaw, meet floor moment, but hey, who am I to deny such a great extending of the cool blogging offer? Oh yeah, I am Ren, I blog over at Renegade Evolution (NSFW), as well as SWOP East, The BPPA (possibly NSFW), and, well, yeah, Feminist Critics.
Let’s see…about me? Well, I’m a stripper, Internet porn performer, swinger, gonzo fan, BDSM tourist, blogger, history buff, feminist expatriate and all around gamer geek who is unapologetically addicted to caffeine, nicotine, action movies and sports. My dreams of sailing the High Seas in search of adventure and booty of all types or becoming a soldier of fortune fell through so instead I went to college and got degrees in History and Theatre which sit unused in dusty frames on an obscure wall in my suburban den of iniquity. Life’s ambitions include being the inspiration for an action flick villain, running the Boston Marathon, and finally figuring out after all those years of failed Algebra classes what X really is… I think that about sums it up!
I decided for my first post here I’d repost something I’d written over at my place on June 2nd about Sex Education, so, here we go…
Sex Education
(this post is rather US centric- I do appologize)
If the studies are to be believed, today, in the United States, and in a great many other countries around the world, the average age at which persons of both sexes have sex for the first time is somewhere between the ages of 13-17.That means that the majority of people today are having sex before they ever graduate from High School. In those years they are taught about Hemingway & WWII, they dissect frogs and fetal pigs, learn trigonometry, fitness and nutrition, take on the five-paragraph essay, and even in some cases learn how to sew or fix a car. Things they may or may not use in real life (after all, how many of you have been asked to quote “the Old Man and the Sea” at a dinner party or in the office?), but what they are not learning about is sex, and the fact is, by the time they have mastered x divided by y equals, they are also having sex, pondering having sex, or having sex for the first time. And, at least here in the states, they are doing so under a system of abstinence only education which is obviously teaching them nothing…because they are still having sex.And what else is going on there? Well, let’s look at that.
The population with the highest growing rate of HIV infection currently is teenagers. One in five people in the US has an STD. Two thirds of all STD’s occur in people under the age of 25. One in four new STD infections occur in teenagers. One in five Americans have genital herpes. At least one in four Americans will contract an STD at some point in their lives. HPV and Chlamydia are the most common STDs in the United States. More than 5 million people are infected with HPV each year. Less than half of adults ages 18 to 44 have ever been tested for an STD other than HIV / AIDS.
Compared with older adults, adolescents (10- to 19-year-olds) and young adults (20- to 24-year-olds) are at higher risk for acquiring STDs for several reasons: they may be more likely to have multiple (sequential or concurrent) sexual partners rather than a single, long-term relationship; they may be more likely to engage in unprotected intercourse; and they may select partners at higher risk. In addition, for some STDs, e.g., Chlamydia trachomatis, adolescent women may have a physiologically increased susceptibility to infection due to increased cervical ectopy and lack of immunity. During the past two decades, the age of initiation of sexual activity has steadily decreased and age at first marriage has increased, resulting in increases in premarital sexual experience among adolescents and in an enlarging pool of young people at risk.
The United States has the highest STD rates of any country in the industrialized world.
There were an estimated 15.3 million new cases of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) in the U.S. Of those 3 million were in teenagers.
By age 24, at least one in three sexually active people are estimated to have contracted an STD.
Nearly 1 million young women under the age of 20 become pregnant each year. That is close to 2800 teenage girls becoming pregnant every day. Approximately 4 in 10 young women in the U.S. become pregnant at least once before turning 20 years old. Teen childbearing alone costs U.S. taxpayers nearly $7 billion annually for social services and lost tax revenues.A great many teenagers believe they are safer and at less risk for not only pregnancy but also infection by an STI or STD by refraining from vaginal intercourse, thus they practice oral sex, which they believe to be safer and “not really sex at all”.
Abstinence only sex education is obviously failing to do what it intended…create abstinence. It is also failing utterly to prepare teenagers for the realities of sex in a great many ways, ways which have costly and dreadful consequences, both mentally, physically, socially, financially, and emotionally.Now granted, teenagers think they are invincible. STD’s and unplanned pregnancies are things that happen to other people, but the data shows otherwise. And it is my belief that teaching abstinence only sex education is, without a doubt, one of the ways the US is failing its youth with devastating consequences. Yes, they may believe themselves to be invincible, but failing to inform them of the realities of sex not only bolsters this lie, it lets them walk right into sexual experience with blinders on.And the sad truth is the schools, the government, the church, communities, whomever else, cannot rely on parents to teach sex education, so someone has to…and, as we will get to eventually in this long and winding rant…that person should not be me…or people like me. Thus, I think sex education does belong in schools. It is the right place for it.So then, what to teach, and how?
I remember when I was a kid, young even, six or so; I asked my parents how babies were made. They told me, I recall thinking it was gross. Almost everything else, I learned in biology or human health classes. Periods were explained. The entirety of pregnancy up unto delivery was explained…including a video of a live birth! I remember thinking “Ouch!” This was around 7th- 8th grade or so. Erections were explained. Ovulation, testicles, ovaries, all that, it was explained. It was all very technical. In short, the biology of sex was taught. The biology of sex should still be taught. Long about freshman year high school we learned about STD’s, contraception, and all those things. Those should also be taught. The point is, kids go to school to learn and be informed, and sex education, practical sex education, should be apart of that.
With regards to sex education in schools, children should be taught about their bodies…the biology of sex. What parts they have (yep, including the clitoris on women!) and how they work. They should be educated as to how and why their bodies are changing…why is there hair where there was none before? Why are their voices changing? What’s going on with their breasts? Why do girls bleed once a month? Why does the penis seemingly suddenly have a mind of its own? All that shit can be scary to a kid if no one explains it to them…and often, sadly, parents don’t, so someone has too…and it in the end that info will probably be more helpful than long division.
And sex education needs to continue. Kids, teenagers, need to be made aware of safer sex practices (because there truly is no such thing as safe sex, aside from masturbation-which should also be discussed). They need to know about condoms, how to use one properly and yes, it needs to go on BEFORE the penis enters anything…not mid way through. They need to know about the pill, the sponge, everything else. They need to know about STD’s and how they are transmitted…sure, oral won’t get you pregnant, but it can sure as hell give you herpes. They need to know statistics…because while they think themselves invulnerable, perhaps hearing One in Four will make them think. They need to know these things, because despite what the abstinence only crowd would like to think…teens are having sex, and right now, they are doing so live, without a net. And they are paying for it.
It is also my belief that kids should be educated on the less biological and more human aspects of sex…that is, treating other people like humans when it comes to sex. Girls should be taught to say no if they want to, boys should be taught to respect that. Boys should also be taught to say no when they want to, and girls taught to respect that. They should be taught what rape is, what date rape is, what coercion is, when consent is consent, and when it is not, or when it could be a grey area (such as when alcohol is involved, because yeah, teenagers drink too). They should, in essence, be informed about basic levels of respect, for themselves, and others. And yes, ideally, this could and should be done by parents, to an even more deep degree, but they cannot be counted on to do so…so someone has too, and it is a lesson more important than the cultural impacts of “the Great Gatsby”… I personally even think homosexuality should be discussed, but I suppose that is truly wishful thinking!
Now, why oh why, do I find quality, realistic sex education to be so important? Well, because like it or not, kids are going to be curious about and interested in sex, and like it or not, they will seek out information about it. And if they can’t find it elsewhere, or have nothing to balance what they see out there with, well…let’s put it this way: They are very likely to get the whole of their sex education from the media, and yes, from porn. And porn is crap sex education. The job of a porn performer, the role of a porn film, is adult entertainment, not sex educator or sex education, and what one sees in porn, especially a kid with no other knowledge, is not the reality of sex. Most women don’t look like porn women. Most men do not look like porn men. Most people do not engage regularly in a lot of the acts seen in porn. There is not a lot of mutual respect or human, realistic dialogue in porn, and all of that aside…what you see often in porn, which will sure as hell lead to problems in really real world sex, is unprotected sex- often with multiple partners. In porn you will not see widespread condom use. You will not see talk of safer sex practices, pregnancy, STD’s, how to use a condom properly. You will not see conversations about rape. You will not hear conversations about human emotion, respect, or consequences. You will not see, in short, anything other than often uncovered penises going into holes A, B, or C. And that is performance sex, performed by often ‘unrealistic” looking people, for profit and entertainment- not sex education. So please, I beg of you, as a porn gal, do not let the porn industry be the only sex education out there for YOUR children.
I’m not asking anyone to make a stand against abstinence only as a personal choice or as a choice in the greater realm of sex education, merely a stand against abstinence only sex education, because the truth is, most kids will have had sex by the time they graduate from high school, and abstinence only only ends up hurting them.
Thank you, and just say no to abstinence only.
(Statistics drawn from American Social Health Association: http://www.ashastd.org, and the Center for Disease Control http://www.cdc.gov)