I am going to use this last column of the year to reflect on some issues that come up every year, either in my classroom or my column.
It is clear after teaching human sexuality for 15 years here at Oregon State U. that many of my students received, at best, an inadequate sexuality education in high school or at home, and at worst, no sexuality education to speak of.
Most of my students will tell me they heard plenty about plumbing (“This is a penis; this is a vagina; this is how you make a baby”), diseases (AIDS; sexually transmitted infections) and abstinence.
Worst of all, many received the information via scare tactics. By that, I mean they were told all the negative consequences of sexual activity – and it stopped there. Few students tell me they learned sex is a wonderful expression of love, that it usually feels really good, and that it can be very fun.
I challenge someone to disagree with those three things. I know there is more to sex than those three things, but rarely are those three things expressed in K-12 sex education.
What students didn’t get was sexuality education. What I mean by “sexuality education” is acknowledging the existence of behaviors beyond the obvious and the stereotypical. Many of my students come into my class with a very limited idea of what sex is and how it plays out.
Many think sex equals penile-vaginal intercourse in the missionary position (man on top), and anything else is abnormal, unnatural, perverted, sick, immoral or wrong – when, in fact, most adults participate in a variety of sexual acts.
In high school, they didn’t hear about homosexual love relationships, anal sex, masturbation, sex after age 60, women with high sex drives or men with low sex drives. I am not saying the teacher has to approve of, or condone, these activities, but students have a right to know they exist and they have a right to be fully informed.
Knowledge is power – it is what gives us the power to make informed decisions. Research shows that a sex education program consisting of plumbing, disease and scare tactics produces an uninformed, sex-guilty young adult who lacks confidence. This type of individual makes the poorest contraceptive choices.
This is also the college student who is least likely to take my course. The end result is someone who is the most likely candidate for an unplanned, unwanted pregnancy.
I spend an enormous amount of time in my class trying to get students to broaden their ideas about what it means to be a man or a woman in a sexual relationship, to broaden their ideas about what “sex” itself is, and to have a sense of diversity when thinking about individuals who make choices about sexual activity.
In a way, it is no fault of their own that some of my students behave immaturely in class, talking, laughing, and making rude, inconsiderate or judgmental comments. What troubles me is that many of these comments are directed at people when it is simply the behaviors that bother them.
It is sort of a “throw the baby out with the bath water” syndrome in that they reject the person for the behavior when they should simply express disapproval of the behavior itself.
For example, they label people who enjoy anal sex as immoral instead of labeling anal sex as an immoral act (and I’m not suggesting that is or is not immoral). Or, students have labeled the people who patronize adult stores as perverts, sickos and dirty old men, instead of saying they don’t like the products purchased by these individuals.
Students have even gone so far as to label the people who work at adult stores as white trash simply because of their place of employment. It is this sort of limited thinking that results in prejudice, discrimination and intolerance. Remember OSU’s motto: “Open minds. Open doors.”
Have a great summer and be safe!
– Kathy Greaves, Ph.D., is a senior instructor at Oregon State U. in the department of human development and family sciences.