ANN DOUGLAS, columnist for the Toronto Star and author of books on baby care and motherhood, recently interviewed a sex education expert who advised broadening teen education to include lessons on what sexual moaning sounds like, how to tell if a drunk girl really consents, and the sexist stereotypes in pornography. Douglas was interested and approving of Cory Silverberg’s ideas.

“Teenagers need to know what pleasure looks and sounds like — pleasurable moaning, asking for more — in order to be sure that a partner is providing enthusiastic consent to sex,” said Silverberg.

Douglas wrote that “to be relevant to today’s generation of kids, sex ed needs to cover a lot more ground” than in the past.

—- Comments —-

Renee writes:

Whenever liberals talk about being relevant to the current time to justify something, you know they are trying to avoid any real conversation in which they actually have to defend their statements. I am not sure what the rape laws are like in Canada, but I am sure they are similar to the U.S. where, in my state at least, it is illegal to have sex with someone (actually just women) too intoxicated to consent. Trying to get boys to figure out whether a girl is consenting puts them in a position where they can be accused of rape for following this person’s advice if they get it wrong. It puts girls in a position where they are less likely to be protected from unwanted sex. It would be much better–particularly in an effort to be relevant–to tell boys that if they don’t get actual consent they should just leave the girl alone. If you are at the point where you are taking your cue from the pitch of someone’s moaning, something is wrong. Obviously, that would never hold up in court, and those boys should be advise of that in an effort to keep relevant as regards the law.

Her advice will keep girls at risk–and what ever happened to teaching underage girls not to get drunk in the first place?

Also, if the boys themselves are drunk they are not likely to be in a position where they are going to be at full capacity mentally to figure out the difference anyway. Liberals must have such a high respect for the intellect of boys and men since they seem to think men always have their wits about them, even in situations where the women don’t.

Laura writes:

Sex education does not belong as a separate subject in any school curriculum. In saying this, I am not suggesting reform of public schools. That’s not possible. I’m speaking of how things should be in any sane society that cared for its own preservation.

Sex involves the whole person. The vision of life, the distinctions between the sexes, the morality, the ways of being a school conveys all teach students about sexuality. For instance, single-sex schools by their very existence teach something important about sexuality — and that is, men and women are very different. Schools that teach students about real individuals in history, and the evil and good they accomplished, rather than presenting history as a movement of impersonal forces, teach students about the importance of the individual and his every action, which is relevant to sexuality. Schools that require certain dress and behavior teach respect for others and modesty, both central to sexuality. Schools that require prayer and obedience to God teach the most important sex lesson of all.

Even if public schools today somehow included the sternest traditional morality in their sex education classes, they would contradict these lessons in a thousand ways in the rest of the curricula.

The other reason why sex education shouldn’t be taught as a separate subject is that the details of sexual life are best discussed in private. To discuss these things publicly destroys the sense of discretion and privacy upon which truly human sexuality is based. Parents, or people whom parents entrust to teach a child about sexuality, can convey the subject with greater sensitivity and understanding to the individual, to his maturity level and personality. Sex education is just one more form of parental disempowerment, of outright theft of the authority and rights of parents. It is also, by its very nature, opposed to good relations between the sexes.

Hurricane B., who sent the above article, writes:

It’s a tossup as to who is the biggest idiot – Silverberg or Dan Savage. In any event, I think Silverberg is pulling our chain, I really do. He is wondering if the lot of us are as stupid as he thinks we are.

John Purdy writes:

You write: ” Sex education is just one more form of parental disempowerment, …” Quite so, but when it was first introduced into my school, in grade five (just basic physiology), a majority of parents were in favour including my own. Why? My parents were simply too mortified to discuss sex with me. Was this a motivation for other parents, too? I don’t know but such inhibitions almost had to play some role in the early phase of sex education. So, parents were not exactly disempowered so much as they abdicated. Some of them anyway.

Laura writes:

It was abdication, and now disempowerment for parents who don’t want it.

It’s normal for parents to be uncomfortable talking about sex with their children. But that doesn’t mean schools are the right ones to do it either. A friend, relative, club leader, priest — these are some other possibilities.

Mary writes:

Parents abdicated because they were convinced by educators that one must discuss the *mechanics* of sex with their children. This is patently absurd and most unnecessary, as obviously the human species has managed to proliferate without classroom instruction for time immemorial. There is nothing embarassing about telling children that the procreative act is beautiful and sacred and reserved for marriage; delicate language delivers the message home without awkwardness because the children are not hearing nonsense or embarrassing detail from a stranger in a classroom full of people, but they are receiving eternal truth from the person designed by God to instruct them in eternal truths; and so they are beautifully receptive to it.

Especially in this day and age when they’re bombarded with images to the contrary, it’s a actually relief for children and teenagers to be told that this is something they don’t have to worry about yet, that they can take their time and grow up; that physical intimacy is one of the goods of married people and until they are married they need not be concerned about it. They are free to wonder in innocence and look forward to something lovely and to in confidence move beyond the pervasive sexual pressure present in our society (Wendy Shalit provides an interesting anecdote on this subject in her book A Return to Modesty; caution: language could be a little strong for some). A parents job then becomes the preservation of that innocence by the various means available to them.

A parent who doesn’t practice a religious faith which would back up this way of thinking about sex is still obligated, on the basis of their child’s physical and emotional health alone, to impress upon that child that they should be *extremely* careful about choosing partners/limiting the number of partners etc etc. That this is not a major focus of sex-ed programs is not only very telling, but criminal. Non-religious parents who don’t correct at home the misleading “neutral” message taught in sex-ed classes (there is no such thing as neutral here) approach the criminal as well; there is too much on the line for it to be looked at any other way.

That parents abdicated this simple responsibility, that parents bought into the idea that they had to become walking sex manuals to have these sorts of discussions with their children, reveals how vulnerable Americans, during the 60’s and 70’s were to believing in the new and modern and giving way to it; by overriding their own common sense, they allowed their children’s natural reticence and modesty to be eroded. One can see shadows of it building in the 40’s and 50’s, in the movies (a movie such as Now, Voyager reflected the advent of psychology and its effects), advertising and in magazines. We loosened our dependence on the transcendent for the New Frontier. We placed ourselves in the hands of the scientists and educators. The public school system provided the superhighway on which to deliver the message to the masses, and still does to this day.

Carolyn writes:

Hurricane B., I’m afraid neither Silverberg nor Savage is an idiot. (Fools, as defined by the book of Proverbs, I would agree to.) Nor is either of them pulling our chain. They are dead serious: two intelligent men engaged in a sophisticated and deliberate campaign to make sexual perversion of whatever kind appear normal.

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