Sex Education is a Basic Right

Call me what you will, right now I've got sex on the brain.

This doesn't come out of nowhere. These two posts on Shakesville and this post at AngryBlackBitch have got my mind workin'.

So, let's talk.

Sex is a touchy topic. A lot of people are squeamish about it. Our culture makes it something to be ashamed of, something dirty, and at the same time, tells us that all the cool people are doing it.

But one thing we need right now is sex education. Comprehensive, open discourse, education about sex in all its wild and woolly aspects.

What would that do? It would help prevent unplanned pregnancies (and by that token reduce the need for abortions), it would help reduce the spread of sexually transmitted diseases, and I honestly think it would make the world a better place.

Who should give the sex education? Ideally, parents. As the mother of an 18-year-old daughter, I felt, even before she was born, that it was my responsibility to make sure she knew how to be an adult by the time she became one, and part of being an adult is being educated about sex.

I had my daughter when I was 16. Needless to say, it was not a planned pregnancy. I was in the eleventh grade in high school. I grew up upper-middle-class, and I'm fairly well-educated. I knew where babies came from, I knew what sex was, but from books. My mom handed me books and left it at that. There was no discourse, let alone open discourse.

I decided before I had my daughter that she would know the things I didn't know about sex until I jumped into the pool, so to speak. I wanted her to know that there's more to it than Tab A into Slot B. I wanted her to know about contraception and the correct ways to use it. I wanted her to know about masturbation. I wanted her to know about the ways emotions can get tangled once the pubic bones start bumpin'.

So I opened a discourse with her when she was little. She knew what periods were long years before she got hers. She knew about the changes in her body that would come with puberty before her age was in double digits. And she knew about condoms and how to put them on correctly (which I did NOT know when I was her age). Most importantly, she knew and still knows that she can come to me with questions about sex and her body and boys' bodies and girls' bodies and whatever she needed to ask. I sometimes have had to tell her "I don't know, let me look it up for you," but I'd rather she got an honest "I don't know" than a line of bullshit.

But not all parents are comfortable talking that openly with their kids, gods only know why.

So what we need is comprehensive sex education. Kids need to know this stuff before they jump into the pool. They need to know how to prevent pregnancy, how to prevent sexually transmitted diseases. They need to be encouraged to explore their own bodies and discover what they like and don't like before they have sex with a partner or partners. They need to know that sex is nothing to be ashamed of, that when entered into with full consent and responsibility, it can be--it should be--joyous. Every student in every school across the country needs sex education, not that abstinence-only horseshit that the Bush administration tried to push, but comprehensive sex education covering not just the mechanics of Tab A into Slot B, but contraception and how to use it, abortion, disease prevention, sexual health (as in, it's not normal to bleed every time you have PIV sex, another thing I didn't know when I became sexually active), fantasies, masturbation, oral sex, anal sex, all of it. GLB students need to know that their orientations are legitimate, that it is, in fact, okay to be sexually attracted to other people, regardless of their equipment or identity. Transgender students need to know that their identities are legitimate, and they need to know about their options with regard to gender reassignment procedures and the legal tangles of gender identity.

The kids need to know all this. They need to know it without shame, without guilt, and maybe most importantly, without bullshit. And not from a book. From parents and teachers who care that these students, these children and adolescents, these young women and men, grow up to be well-adjusted, healthy adults.

An Almost-Argument with a Pro-Life Man

I almost got into an argument over abortion last night. The other party to said discussion is militantly Catholic and therefore pro-life to the point of believing that not even rape victims should be allowed to terminate a pregnancy caused by the rape (not that this situation occurs that often in the real world anyway, and more and more rapists are using condoms these days to avoid leaving their DNA with their victims). The only reason it didn't turn into a loud and vociferous debate (at the very least) was that I cut it short with the excuse that it was late at night and people were trying to sleep and would not appreciate said debate/argument. I really wanted to tear him a new one, though. Pro-life men drive me even crazier than pro-lifers in general; men are not the ones who have to carry a pregnancy. They have no clue what it's like, especially not someone his age (early 20s). And yes, I know men can be raped and I have every sympathy in the world for any victim of any sort of assault, but the plain fact is, women are hurt in that way much more often than men. His argument (re: pregnancy as a result of rape) was that the unborn is not responsible for the crime of its father. Mine is that rape is not just a physical and sexual crime; it is deeply emotional. Pregnancy is also a deeply emotional experience, and I don't think that a woman who is trying to recover from a rape should have to carry the child of her rapist. She can if she wants to, but she shouldn't be forced to. It comes down to this. The needs of a living woman are more important, to my way of thinking, than the needs of a cluster of cells, albeit a cluster of cells that will one day become a human being. We count life from the date of birth, not the date of conception, which can't usually be nailed down anyway. There are just too many situations in which abortion is a viable--and in some cases, the best--option. What about a pregnancy that endangers the mother's life? Why should a 12-year-old incest victim have to bear her stepfather's child? I used to know someone who had been in that situation. It is not healthy to carry a pregnancy so young, and her body paid for it in later years. And when you really get down to it, why should any woman have to bear a child she does not want or cannot afford?

A Fertilized Egg Has the Same Rights as a Person?!?!

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/02/18/north-dakota-house-gives_n_167884.html

If you don't want to read the article (it's short, I promise), the North Dakota state House of Representatives has passed a bill giving a FERTILIZED HUMAN EGG the same rights as a person. It isn't law, yet. It has to go through the state Senate first, and with any luck, somebody in the ND Senate has a brain and will stop this lunacy in its tracks.

Can you say "anti-choice" and "anti-women's rights"?

Don't get me wrong. I don't think abortion is the greatest thing ever. From the perspective of a woman who has had an unplanned pregnancy (my daughter was born when I was 16 and a senior in high school), there are no easy choices in that situation. I chose not to have an abortion, but the choice was available to me. I want the choice to be available to my daughter (now age 16 herself) should she find herself in that position (heaven forbid), or to any other woman.

A man can walk away from an unplanned pregnancy. Yeah, there's such thing as child support enforcement, but a really determined man can hide from that if he wants to. The anti-choice crowd wants women to be stuck with a child they might not be able to support, or might not be medically able to carry, or (in some cases) might not have had any say in the conception of, or just plain don't want. And I can't quote statistics, but I wonder how many abused children were unplanned.

A fertilized egg has the same rights as a person? WTF? So I guess the 40% of pregnancies that end in miscarriage (some of which happen before the woman is even aware she's pregnant) merit a funeral?