sex education | Nicole Collet

Sexual education is being implemented in schools across Canada, the US, UK, New Zeeland and Australia. At one point it will become a global reality: children as young as 5 years old will all be introduced to “the pleasures of sex.” If that sounds strange, it’s because that is strange.

What those new sex curricula do is encourage children and teens to have sex without telling the whole story. They raise kids’ curiosity and awareness to sexual possibilities but leave out important facts concerning physical and psychological health.

That’s really disturbing. Even more disturbing are certain people behind the curricula. I’ll get to that in a moment.

Many communities of outraged parents are protesting the sex ed curricula. Brushed off, they’re accused of ignorance. To sort out once and for all this matter, a group of concerned parents in Canada asked Dr. Miriam Grossman to revise the Toronto sex ed curriculum. Grossman is a renowned child and adolescence psychiatrist with many years of work at the UCLA campus, and what she finds in the curriculum doesn’t sound good: health here is not the priority.

“The priority,” Grossman tells the parents, “is to mold your child’s thinking and attitudes so that they respect, affirm and are comfortable with all sexual choices and lifestyles.” The Toronto curriculum, like so many produced by the sex ed industry, is based on a specific agenda. By centering on political correctness, it completely ignores truths of current science, as well as biological, cultural and individual differences between people. “There is a significant flaw with this approach: it’s not based on reality,” says Grossman.

Basically, children are left to decide what’s best for them in terms of how, when, dos and don’ts of sex. Really? Are children that well-informed and mature to know what’s best for them? Grade 6 students, for example, are instructed to consider their comfort level, personal and family values, and the limits and comfort of others when making any decision regarding a relationship. Grossman questions how a 6-grader could possibly know any of that when even adults struggle with those things.

For Grade 7 students, this is what the curriculum delivers: “Be clear in your own mind about what you are comfortable or uncomfortable with. Being able to talk about this with a partner is an important part of sexual health. Having sex can be an enjoyable experience and can be an important part of a close relationship when you are older.” Grossman questions how a Grade-7 student can possibly know what when you are older means.

They may think that at Grade 8 they will be older. The curriculum is vague and leaves the immature child to decide when they are ready, after discussing it with their equally immature partner. That doesn’t make any sense. Then, at Grade 8, students are taught that there are many options available for sex. Again, it’s up to the child to decide about their choices instead of giving the teacher authority to clarify important things.

The teen brain is different

Teens act on impulse and emotions because their brains are not fully developed: the portion that plays a critical role in decision-making, problem-solving and understanding the consequences of actions won’t be fully mature until the person is into their 20s. This neuroscience needs to be brought into sex education so teachers and parents, and also teenagers and children, understand it and know not to even get close to a situation that they will later regret.

This information doesn’t get into sex education, though, because it doesn’t jive with the ideology that people are all the same, sexual beings from cradle to grave that should act on their sexual urges at any time. The curriculum then ignores current knowledge about child and adolescent development, sexually transmitted diseases, neuropsychology and many other areas, since current science undermines that ideology.

Students are offered a menu with various forms of sexual expression, presented in the curriculum as if all forms are the same and pose the same risks. The curriculum omits that young girls, having an immature cervix, are much more prone to vaginal infections than adult women; that condoms do not offer total protection against infections and sexually transmitted diseases, including AIDS; and that anal sex presents much higher risks of contracting STDs—in the case of HIV, from a very conservative estimate, the risk is at least 31% higher in anal sex than in vaginal intercourse, according to the Health Department of New York City.

Grossman does not advice anal sex to young kids: “It’s too dangerous. Don’t do it.” She mentions a student who got HIV the first time she had anal sex—it can happen. Until 2014, the FDA website used to have a warning for anal sex: “Condoms provide some protection but anal intercourse is simply too dangerous to practice.—C. Everett Koop, General Surgeon.“ Now the warning has been removed. Did biology change? asks Grossman. No. What changed is the culture and the pressure to push for the sex ed agenda. As a result, this information becomes unavailable to the people who need it the most, such as young gay men.

In addition, the curriculum fails to mention that women are much more vulnerable to STDs than men. The Centers for Disease Control in the US informs that “Sexually transmitted diseases pose severe threats to women’s health and fertility … biological factors place women at greater risk than men.” Grossman adds: “The ignorance and lack of biological correct information due to the sex ed industry has lead the US to a situation in which a young person between the ages of 13 and 24 gets an STD every 3.5 seconds.” In Canada, STD rates are also going up.

“This is a crusade to change society, to desensitize children and indoctrinate them,” concludes Grossman in her lecture. What Grossman says is crucial, as it relates to many preventable health problems that are not properly addressed in the curricula and may be a matter of life or death. Not to mention psychological immaturity for sex, which can cause confusion and depression.

One last thing you should know: one of the creators of the curriculum in question, former deputy education minister Benjamin Levin, is in jail for sexual crimes against children, including the possession and distribution of child pornography of the worst kind. You can read the details in The Toronto Life.

8-year olds learn lesson 1: “Let’s have sex”

If you want to check out the controversy about the sex ed curriculum in American schools, here’s a video. At 36:00, its final segment brings a creepy presentation by the US National Sexuality Administration. Using a puppet, it teaches 8-year olds about gender identity, abortion, birth control and sexual intercourse (“It’s when a penis is inserted into a vagina, a mouth or an anus”). This is Lesson 1, entitled “Let’s have sex.” Please note that this is not a title: it’s a command.

What I also perceive in this scenario is that encouraging girls to have sex prematurely means throwing them unguarded into a culture that treats sexually active boys like studs and sexually active girls like sluts. I can’t stress enough how the double standards are still prevalent in our society, especially among teenagers too young to know better. The occurrence of bullying against fragile girls and their resulting stigmatization is a serious issue. Some of them get so depressed they commit suicide.

The defenders of the sex ed curricula argue it’s necessary for children’s safety. Is it really? Dr. Grossman destroys this argument with a very simple instruction: explain to kids that they have private parts, those covered by their bathing suit, and if an adult tries to see or touch them, kids should run, scream and tell their parents. That’s it. No need to be dwelling in anatomically correct names and anal sex.

The same approach is adopted by Lynnette Smith, a sex educator interviewed in the 2014 BBC documentary Porn: What’s the Harm? In her case, she teaches children about pornography. It has nothing to do with what’s proposed by the sex ed curricula, yet she also teaches 5-year olds. Another difference is that she talks to parents first, whereas the sex ed curricula is applied without parents being informed when. You can see Smith’s educational approach at 50:00 into Porn: What’s the Harm? The way she talks to the children is really inspiring.

I would add some questions to the mix. How about regulating the media so it will stop bombarding children with sexual content and encouraging precocious sexuality? How about regulating the multibillion-dollar porn industry so it stops distributing material that glorifies violence, misogyny and pedophilia? How about finding effective ways of stopping revenge porn and the rape culture in universities? Amid all the hypersexualization that occurs, children are being robbed of their childhood and pre-teens have to carry an extra emotional burden for being exposed to sex when they are not ready.

The sex ed curricula not only fails to educate children about porn, but it also fails to prepare young girls for the potential hazards of an active sexual life in a world of double moral standards. Boys have their masculinity defined by how many girls they can score as opposed to cultivating sexual integrity. Girls are conditioned to dress and act like sluts in order to fit in, but they aren’t supposed to be sluts. Slut is a stereotype, though. If something dresses and acts like a slut, then it must be a slut. It’s a conundrum. Sociologist Gail Dines explains that, when a girl is labeled a slut, she experiences the same trauma symptoms as a rape victim because that’s the equivalent of raping her own identity.

Say a girl likes a guy and he asks for an intimate picture of her. She obliges because nudity is everywhere as a norm, and she thinks that’s expected from her in order to please the boy. The photo leaks on the internet, as the boy wants/needs to brag his conquest, or maybe he’s a resentful ex-boyfriend. The girl then will be called a slut and will be bullied relentlessly. She’s a victim. In countries like England and the United States, however, to add insult to injury, the law will label her as a sex offender for sending out “child pornography.” Now how hideous and hypocritical is that?

That’s how institutions go. A poor girl victimized by a leaked photo is victimized again by the legal system while it is OK for the porn industry to distribute videos suggesting incest with pre-teens that any child can access. It’s the typical situation where petty infractions are punished (not in this case, though, since the girl is innocent) and huge crimes committed by big fish are not addressed because big fish have money.

Sexual education should not be left in the hands of institutions, as every institution has an agenda. Parents know what’s best for their children. Each child is different, and what those curricula do is treat children as if they were all the same, ignoring the specific background, personal stage of development and needs of each child.

On my next post I want to take a look at the hookup culture. Yeah, party, alcohol and sex, right? There’s interesting stuff ahead, stay tuned!

What happens to a generation that has porn at their fingertips through computers and smartphones?

Just by typing the word porn into a search engine, they get 436 million results in a matter of seconds. In the 2014 BBC show Porn: What’s the Harm? presenter Jameela Jamil leads us through the biggest survey ever conducted on pornography use in the UK, with over a thousand teenagers from the ages 16 to 21 anonymously answering questions such as: How old were you when you first watched porn? How often do you watch it now? How do you think it affects what men and women expect from sex?

The answers were analyzed by leading experts in pornography Dr. Miranda Horvart and Dr. Maddy Coy. The average age for boys to watch porn for the first time is 10. Of all teenagers surveyed, only 22% saw porn for the first time on purpose; the rest was shown porn by someone else. And amid the bombarding of pornographic images in their daily lives, 24% of the teenagers said they encountered pornographic material at least once a week when they were looking for something else. Most men and women used it for sexual stimulation and masturbation.

From the entire group, 10% responded they thought that while men watch porn for sexual gratification, women watch it to learn about sex. I myself—judging by what I found in my own research—think many males also use porn to learn about sex. I remember a few mentioning they would watch girl-girl porn to that end, and they also believed porn sex was what girls liked.

In general, 30% of the boys deliberately looked for porn against 12% of the girls, and 50% of the boys looked for porn from once a day to once a week, whereas 50% of the girls never looked for porn online. Out of a thousand teenagers, 229 persons said there was nothing good about porn—75% of those were females.

How porn affects sexual expectations

Former pornstar Gemma Massey tells Jamila many girls in the industry take drugs to endure the sex scenes, and they only do such scenes because they need the money. I also heard that from countless ex-porn stars. And, like all of them, Gemma says: “Porn sex is not real. It’s not how I would have sex at home at all.” She adds that doing porn all the time mentally messes up with the person. I will discuss that in a future post.

When asked “Do you think porn affects what young people expect from sex?” 75% of the survey group said yes to males’ expectations, and 53% said yes to females’ expectations. One out of 3 top responses was that boys expected girls’ bodies to be like those of pornstars, with no pubic hair and large breasts. I would add that porn also taught boys their own penises need to be huge and deliver long, sustained erections—which naturally causes great anxiety to them. As for girls, porn has led a large number of young women to seek cosmetic surgery for vaginal lip reduction: girls as young as 12 are considering this kind of surgery.

This goes to show how porn imposes limited views of women’s bodies. A group of boys and girls participating in the survey were shown a panel with 57 molds taken from real women’s vulvas, which naturally varied in shape and size. Both boys and girls were surprised to learn those vulvas were normal: all of them thought the vulvas were abnormal or ugly. As for me, I was saddened by the fact that girls today can’t accept the very symbol of their womanhood. It’s not enough that they need to compete with photoshoped models 25% thinner than a regular woman (in old times, the rate would be only 8%), now they also learn to reject their genitals. Gynecologist Gail Busby, who conducted the experiment, discourages young girls to do the surgery: “They don’t need surgery because there’s nothing wrong with them.”

The most common answer to how porn affected teenagers’ expectations about sex was that young men expected women to behave like sex objects, and young women expected to be treated like sex objects. A 17-year old boy responded: “Guys will expect the chance for rougher sex, or for a girl to be very flexible and so on.” A 16-year old girl said: “Boys think all girls will behave like girls in porn and that a lot of quite extreme stuff is normal to do.”

In addition, the behavior of girls sexting their naked pictures has become a natural progression in a hypersexualized society that regards females as sex objects, and in which females regard themselves as sexual objects. Here, we go back to my post about the hypersexualization of children: girls send those pictures because they believe it’s what’s expected from them in order to fit in and avoid rejection.

When those sexy images leak— and they often do—it doesn’t end well. Sometimes it can even lead to suicide, like in the case of 18-year old Jessica Logan and 13-year old Hope Witsell. The lives of girls are ruined when those pictures are shared and become viral, and there are cases in which such images are downloaded and transferred to child pornography sites (on those sites, according to the UK Internet Watch Foundation, there are photos of victims as young as 3 to 6 years old, which were taken by older children). When images leak, female victims face social isolation and bullying. As much as modern society likes to deem itself progressive, double standards are stronger than ever when it comes to sexuality.

There’s more to porn

If there are clear consequences for young people when it comes to sexting and posting sexual images, the effects of childhood exposure to porn are harder to gage. In 2014, a 12-year old boy raped his 7-year old sister after watching hardcore porn online: he said he watched it with friends and gained a desire to try it out. Sociologist Gail Dines, author of the book Pornland: How Porn Hijacked Our Sexuality, interviewed a man incarcerated for child molestation: he told Dines he wasn’t a pedophile and just wanted to try something different. His is not an isolated case. For the first time, men who aren’t inherently pedophiles are initiating sex with children.

In the BBC program, Jamil interviewed a girl in her early twenties who was raped by someone she thought of as a friend. When she went to his blog afterwards, she found out it included porn images that were very similar to what had happened to her. She adds: “For certain people who do that, rape is so ingrained in their minds that for them it’s okay.”

Lynnette Smith, a sex educator working with teenagers on a daily basis for the past 20 years, is concerned about what she’s been hearing from teenage boys. In several schools, quite often, they ask her: “If I’m being intimate or trying it on with a girl and she doesn’t like it, if I keep going and keep going, she will finally like it, won’t she?” Invariably, Smith ends up tracking the boys’ question back to porn they had watched.

There you go.

So far I’ve covered what porn does physically and mentally to boys and what stems from the interaction of boys and girls with pornographic images. On my next post, I’ll focus on females and porn.

In the meantime, you can watch Porn: What’s the Harm? for additional information and also to learn more about what the surveyed teenagers said. It’s a fascinating program.

What about you? What’s your take on porn, and how do you think it affects your own behavior or the behavior of those around you?