William Quincy Belle: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: Sex Education

Published on Aug 9, 2015 by LastWeekToNight
YouTube: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: Sex Education
Sex education varies widely between school districts, leaving many teens without comprehensive information. We made a video that covers what some schools are too embarrassed to teach.

A woman who has sex before marriage is compared to a piece of used chewing gum. I'm stunned. I'm beyond stunned. This takes sex-shaming to an unheard of level psychological damage. I'm surprised any woman would want to ever had sex after having being given such a message.

You have to shake your head. This is a further reminder that we live in a puritanical society. We accept violence without thought, but recoil from anything sexual.

A TV network censored a sequence of John Steinbeck's The Red Pony, which showed a mare giving birth, but broadcast the rather hideous sequence from The Godfather showing a beheaded horse.
- Youth, Sex and the Media, CyberCollege

Several other bloggers have recently written about sex education and I thought to include their articles as further reading on the topics raised in the above video.

Sweet Woman, Dirty Mind - Aug 11/2015
Cartoon Animals Expose Ridiculous Abstinence-Only Lessons
“What did you learn in abstinence-only class today?” That’s the opening line in four animated videos that expose sex-negative lessons taught in public schools. Amplify, a sex-positive project of Advocates for Youth, posted the videos to YouTube. Advocates for Youth “envisions a society that views sexuality as normal and healthy and treats young people as a valuable resource. Society has the responsibility to provide young people with the tools they need to safeguard their sexual health.”

Alternet - Aug 10/2015
8 Insanely Stupid Messages We Give Kids About Sex—And What We Should Teach Instead by Jill Hamilton (In Bed With Married Women)
“It was like that scene in Mean Girls,” my 13-year-old reported after seventh-grade sex ed. “'Don't have sex, 'cause you will get pregnant and die.'” In the class, which lasted for just a few weeks at the end of the semester, she learned a lot (perhaps too much) about biological inner bits like Fallopian tubes and the harrowing effects of STIs, but nothing about arousal, consent, orgasm, masturbation, sex, technology or anything about the mechanics of sex beyond vague notions of the “sperm meeting the egg.” (“Pleased to make your acquaintance.”)

1. Abstinence-Only Is the Best Way to Prevent Pregnancy and Disease
2. ”The Sperm Meets the Egg” and Other Unexplained, Vague Allusions to...Something
3. Sex Is All About the Biology Of Reproductive Internal Organs
4. Sex Ed Is a One-Time, One Semester Class (If That)
5. Sex = Penis in Vagina
6. Girls are Responsible for Fending Off Boys Who Can't Control Themselves
7. Sex Is About What Happens IRL
8. There's a “Normal” Way to Have Sex

References

Wikipedia: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver
Last Week Tonight with John Oliver is an American late-night talk and news satire television program airing on Sundays on HBO in the United States and HBO Canada, and on Mondays (originally Tuesdays) on Sky Atlantic in the United Kingdom. The half-hour-long show premiered on Sunday, April 27, 2014, and is hosted by comedian John Oliver. Last Week Tonight shares some similarities with Comedy Central's The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, where Oliver was previously featured as a correspondent and fill-in host, as it takes a satirical look at news, politics and current events on a weekly basis."

Wikipedia: Sex education in the United States
Sex education in the United States is taught in two main forms: comprehensive and abstinence-only. Comprehensive sex education covers abstinence as a choice option, but also informs adolescents about the availability of contraception and techniques to avoid contraction of sexually transmitted diseases. Abstinence-only sex education emphasizes abstinence from sexual activity prior to marriage and rejects methods such as contraception. The difference between the two approaches, and their impact on the behavior of adolescents, remains a controversial subject in the United States.

Comprehensive sex education
The American Psychological Association, the American Medical Association, the National Association of School Psychologists, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Public Health Association, the Society for Adolescent Medicine and the American College Health Association, have all stated official support for comprehensive sex education. Comprehensive sex education curricula are intended to reduce sexually transmitted disease and out-of-wedlock or teenage pregnancies. According to Emerging Answers 2007: Research Findings on Programs to Reduce Teen Pregnancy and Sexually Transmitted Diseases by Douglas Kirby, Ph.D, “a large body of evaluation research clearly shows that sex and HIV education programs included in this review do not increase sexual activity – they do not hasten the onset of sex, increase the frequency of sex, and do not increase the number of sexual partners."

Abstinence-only sex education
Various analyses show that abstinence-based programs have little to no effect on age of sexual initiation, number of sexual partners, or rates of abstinence, use of condoms, vaginal sex, pregnancy, or sexually transmitted diseases.

2015-08-13

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