What is it with these prudish, stupid Americans? They want T&A on their TVs, they want crude humor and nekkidness in their movies, and they rent porn to watch when the kids are staying at grandma’s place, but just the thought of sex education makes them freak out.
The latest hysteria: a teacher in Washington state explained how STDs can be transmitted orally and anally.
According to KCPQ, the principal of Onalaska Elementary School was talking to 11- and 12-year-old students about HIV and sexually transmitted diseases when she was asked about oral and anal sex.
The principal’s answer allegedly included verbal descriptions of those sex acts.
Parent Jean Pannkuk recalled to Fox News Radio what her daughter said she was taught: “You take a man’s penis and you put it in your mouth – that’s what the girls do to the boys. … The boys spread the girls legs apart and put their mouths down on the vaginas.”
“Basically, how I feel and others that I’ve talked to, it’s just the same as raping somebody, but you’re raping their innocence instead of their physical being,” parent James Gilliand explained to KCPQ. “When you hit those levels and the sexual acts, you might as well hand them a Kama Sutra book or something, you know?”
“Just the same as raping somebody”…yeah, James, you’re an amoral asshole. Probably a Christian, too, but I wouldn’t want to get too insulting.
And sure, what’s wrong with handing them the Kama Sutra? Well, it’s a little bit opaque and full of euphemisms, and you’d have to define “yoni” and “lingam” for them…how about just giving them a copy of The Joy of Sex instead? We should have absolutely no problem explaining to children how sex works — why are these slackwitted freaks getting so upset over a dry, mechanical description of how oral sex works, especially when it’s in the context of explaining how scary sexual diseases are transmitted?
Long story short, conservatives upset a sex ed class was accurate and didn’t mince words so now the kids are more knowledgable than the parents.
It’s not like the parents had a chance to opt their kids out. Oh wait, they did have plenty of warning.
i feel it is important to share for those that are not from washington like myself, KCPQ is the local Fox tv station.
I want my kids to think my wife and I are still virgins. I know my parents never had sex.
</snark>
The interesting thing about the ideas that these people have regarding teaching the young about sex, is that they consistently result in precisely the opposite effect from the one that they were aiming for. It seems that you can prove these people wrong a thousand times without them ever catching on that they are, you know, wrong.
Am I right in thinking that Sarah Palin continued to preach abstinence only contraception after her own daughter became pregnant? 100% proof that you are wrong, so close that you cannot possibly ignore it, and you carry on being wrong?
AND her son’s girl friend IIRC.
Googled the name James Gilliand. Yeeeeaaaahhhhh, if it’s the same guy, Christian would be an improvement.
I don’t know, PZ. I sometimes think those of us who have studied any amount of biology tend to forget the squeamishness of those who faint at the sight of blood, close their eyes when they get poked with a needle, grow pale if you talk about anatomy over lunch, and seem to view people and animals and plants as cartoon blobs animated by magic.
Anyway, PZ, this is for you:
http://io9.com/5918453/cooked-squid-inseminates-womans-tongue-cheek-and-gums
Reminds me of the Goodies episode where they try to make a sex education video…
Found it: How to make babies by doing dirty things
Just imagine the response if the principal had said oral sex includes boys putting other boys’ penises in their mouths and girls putting their mouths on other girls’ vaginas.
And this is why there should be some sort of test before breeding may take place. I also object to the label of “parent” being used as to give idiots like James here any sort of special knowledge happily childless (read: babyeating) 20-somethings like me cannot even fathom.
Interesting that the news says these parents were informed of the curriculum before this particular class was held and did nothing. Did they not read the information? Was the information provided incomplete?
What would be an appropriate answer, in the parents point of view, to the question from a student, “What is oral sex and anal sex?” If the teacher answers, “You are too young to understand.” or “Ask your parents.” or some other bullshit, they are going to find out anyhow.
I just can’t imagine anything less than a straight and honest answer.
@rturpin #7
I admit that I can’t watch when I get poked with needles. I hate them, actually, because my imagination delights in showing me all of the horrible things that could happen if the technician is unskilled, slips, is bumped, is sadistic, accidentally sticks the needle in my eye, is secretly controlled by the government of lizard-people, etc. I can’t help it. I do it anyway, because I’m a blood donor and it’s important. But I hate it.
I remember how mad my mother got when my dad first told me what sex was (I asked him when I was eight). She thought he told me too much, although he explicitly said that sex was something that one only had when one wanted a baby. :P
I’d rather they didn’t, but a lot of 12 years olds are already experimenting with sex in some way. Knowing what a specific sexual act involves and the dangers of doing it unproptected might actually make some kids delay doing it.
This whole thing reminds me of this cartoon that I saw recently:
http://www.humorsharing.com/mommy-what-does-virgin-mean/5483
A bit off topic, but I met Susan Quilliam, who wrote the latest version, a couple of weeks ago. Nice lady.
Back on topic: this fear of sex education does a lot of harm. The kids are better off with accurate information, so they can make good choices. In fact, just how are they supposed to make good choices without enough information?
Wrong! A sin! Go to the principal’s office!
If i remember correctly, Joycelyn Elders was the u s surgeon general? she talked about masturbation and then was accused of “teaching” kids how to masturbate! I could be wrong on this, but might as well be right.
great majority of u s citizens are not able, aware enough to look at their own sexuality.
raping a child’s innocence–what a sick way to view sex ed.
“but you’re raping their innocence…”
Hmm. Okay.
I’ve known kids (and yes, I do mean kids) and adults who were actually raped, and I’m frankly pissed at this doofus for making such an inappropriate comparison.
I just love the wonderful demagogy.
Hey, I can do it too,
Teaching religion is just the same as raping somebody, but you are raping their ability to rationally view the world instead of their physical being.
I’ve often thought that the reason why some adult Christians are so absolutely terrified of their kids finding out what sex is is that, at some level, they’re afraid their kids will lose all respect for the authority of adults if they did. If they fear their own sexuality, as so many Christians do, if they think that it is something bestial and to be repressed at all costs, they believe that if kids knew what it was, they’d never listen to another adult again. And for people with an authoritarian mindset, they’d rather their kids got molested or worse than for that to happen.
This tabboo regarding sexuality (and on the opposite celebration of violence)is one of the things in amercian culture I probably will never understand. I just saw todays daily show with Maggie Gyllenhaal as a guest, talking about the movie Hysteria. I mean Jon Stewart occasionly throws in a dirty joke in his program, but he seemed incapable talking about (female) sexuality without hiding behind some shallow jokes and long pauses.
What a disgusting cretin Gilliand is. He clearly has no clue how horrific actual rape is, or he would not be fool enough to make so asinine a comparison.
When are these theist idiots going to realise that, while sexual innocence is cute in a young child, sexual innocence in an adult or sexually active juvenile is dangerous, and the only way to avoid that is to actually teach sexual education before kids start having sex? Abstinence only sex ‘education’ not only doesn’t work – its wilfull promotion of ignorance ruins lives.
And as for depicting sex as this terrible, evil, corrupting thing? The lucky kids just won’t buy into it, and will lose any respect they ever had for the moron that tried to force feed that toxic idea for them, but the unlucky ones will take it to heart, where it will breed in them an irrational fear of their own sexuality and will curdle into the kind of obsessive sexual repression that, again, ruins lives.
Fundies always whine ‘won’t someone think of the children’ – if they actually cared more about the well being of children then they do about maintaining their authoritarian stranglehold over the young, then they would be in favour of fact-based sex ed.
Still, hypocrisy is one of the fundie sacraments, as we all know only too well, so I suppose that the behaviour of xtians in this regard is no great surprise…
lol my parents were too conservative to tell me anything, same with my school, so I had to learn by watching porn.
In a class room full of 5th graders one child asks about oral and anal sex. Sorry folks the cat is out of the bag at this point. No matter how much rhetorical cat litter you try to bury this under it’s out in the open. The kids know the words now and will find out what they mean. If they don’t get it from a rational adult they’ll get it from another source.
Given that at least one strain of bacterial STD has become resistant to antibiotics, http://abcnews.go.com/Health/Wellness/super-gonorrhea-scientists-discover-antibiotic-resistant-std/story?id=14027745 ,
accurate sex education can save lives. Excessive prudery can kill.
The rough equivalent of trying to learn fencing by watching He-man
If the kids really want to know something, they can look it up on google or wikipedia.
I’m sure 11 and 12 year olds all know what the internet is and how to use it.
They teach this in the first and second grade in the school near me.
The era of restricted and prohibited information is over with.
About a decade ago, there was an incident just up the street. This is a very religious and very conservative family. No way was their precious little angel going to attend the sex ed programme at the public school. They would teach her all about what she can do and would ‘rape her innocence.’ Yes, Dad used the phrase.
A few months later Mom asked Dad what he thought about teens who got pregnant. He thought about it and decided that it was always wrong. Over the next few months, the subject kept entering the conversation. Dad’s opinion, as Mom talked about girls and boys doing things that they didn’t understand, that kids make mistakes, kids experiment, etc.
Finally, Dad turns to Mom and says, “Are you trying to tell me something?”
Yes, their thirteen year old innocent angel was now five months pregnant. The father was twelve. Neither had attended sex ed. They had no idea what they were doing. Which, as Dad asked, included unprotected anal sex, oral sex, and intercourse.
When it came time for the younger sister to enter the magic seventh grade, and be exposed to the horrors of sex ed, Dad, once again, said no. Younger daughter was pregnant within a year. However, in her case, the father was in his early 20s. He was charged with rape, convicted, and received parole so he could support his child.
The grandchildren are going to a Catholic school so they will not be exposed to the pernicious influence of public school They will not be taught about sex in any way, shape or form. Until, I suspect, someone offers to teach them.
This shit pisses me off no end. We insist on lying to children: about history, about their bodies, about reality. And then, when an adult actually tells the truth, they get pilloried.
And as for the claim that sex ed, or honest sex ed, being the equivalent of rape, no. Just no. He has no idea what he is talking about. Rape is violence, not speech. Rape is lies, not honesty. Rape is hatred, not education.
At this rate, James will inspire the coining of the Gilliand Law: as he continues to talk, the probability of filling out a hyperbole bingo card approaches 1.
His fetishization of innocence is typical of his ilk. Keep sexual acts a mystery, and they will be a blissful deliverance from heaven on the wedding night. Yes, when young people aren’t sufficiently armed with knowledge as their sex lives commence, they may indeed “go to heaven” or face a lifetime of hell. I believe that whatever the topic, when kids are ready to ask, they’re ready to know the answer. Looks like that idiot James Gilliand has confused the question “What’s oral sex?” with “How do I perform oral sex so as to deliver maximum pleasure?”
I used to think this obsession with innocence was just weird. Now I realize it’s actually blood-chillingly disturbing.
So actually it’s not at all the same.
To answer your rhetorical question, P-zed, it’s because they have dirty minds that obsess about sex, elimination, lactation, menstruation, and all related topics. Very likely a distant holdover from the Puritan attitudes of early America.
Ordinary people, while we enjoy sex very much and view it as an important part of the human experience, treat this whole cluster of topics in a matter of fact way. We think about it in wholesome terms: “Let’s see: if I insert Tab A into Slot B and wiggle it by rotating my hips, will my partner experience ecstasy?”, for example. We think of the word “fuck” as a word for joint behavior, not a verb that must have a subject and a direct object. We also understand that real intimacy is a private matter, so while we answer our kids’ questions straightforwardly, we don’t encourage them to speculate on just why Mommy and Daddy sometimes take a bath together.
The fundies do none of these. With them, it’s dirty, filthy, obscene – and it fascinates them to the point of being an obsession, like any other forbidden fruit.
Decent people don’t concern themselves with what other people do in the privacy of their bedrooms. Not that they are naive and unaware, but rather they understand that by social convention, it’s simply a private matter. And they let the topic go at that.
Oh, yes: porn. What about porn? Well, many decent people enjoy looking at porn. Eye candy is always pleasant; but we don’t view it was a substitute for a warm, breathing partner in intimacy. Good porn that captures something of the ecstatic sexual experience is hard to make and our hats are off in honor of the hard working men and women who create it.
Dear stupid parents: They already know, dumbasses! They just don’t know exactly what the finer points are, and how this relates to potential disease transmission (or possibly even pregnancy – some kids and adults may grok the act, but are otherwise full of weird ideas).
I got my first sex ed lesson at age 22 months. Coincidentally, my parents got a lesson on buying a lock for their bedroom at precisely the same time.
Old enough to ask, old enough to know, age appropriate.
So when our pre-k kiddo says that he heard that babies are made by “special kissing,” I say, no, babies are made by sex.
Sex?
Yeah. Sex between two people who love each other, like Mommy and Daddy.
Oh.
As a youngster I actually did get the vast majority of my sex ed from the Kama Sutra, and it didn’t do me any harm.
When I saw that headline, I thought you meant this:
http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20120614/POLITICS02/206140467#ixzz1xnuECyxP
My son had access to The Joy of Sex and an illustrated Kama Sutra by 5th grade. He was known for providing sex ed to all the kids whose parents didn’t tell them anything or let the school tell them anything. For once, the info available “on the street” was actually more accurate than in most schools….
I sent a supportive letter to the principal (assuming I got the right person). I remember sex-ed class in elementary school and even though I was taught by my parents about sex from a very young age, it really helped to have more adults talking about it in sensible, direct ways. It helped me figure out I didn’t want to have sex with anybody at that age and that I should only do it when I wanted to and felt ready.
Doesn’t look like the same guy to me but the one in Google is certainly a fruitcake!
Re KCPQ: It’s a Fox affiliate, not necessarily the same as FauxNoise. Sadly, it used to be a PBS station which was operated by a local school district. The district got a little too accustomed to having it’s levies pass and overspent, resulting in a near bankruptcy when the voters got tired of it. They had to sell the station. While with PBS, KCPQ was the first station to carry Geoff Smith, the “Frugal Gourmet”.
timgueguen #14
Why would you rather they didn’t?
And you think sex ed is good because it will scare them off sex?
If sex is scary you are doing it wrong.
When I was thirteen and an inmate at a (Baptist) private boys’ school in Melbourne in the 1970’s, we were all herded into the Chapel one day (ultramodern and recently built at great expense) and treated to a lecture on sex. All I remember was the teacher apologising that he only had slides of diseased penises and vaginas to show us, as these were all he could find.
thecalmone,
Yeah – I am sure that is why. Couldn’t possibly be for any other reason.
Usernames are stupid #36,
I am mostly with you, however you don’t have to be in love to have sex. It is not a requirement.
Maybe I am being pedantic, but I think it is important not to lie to children about sex at all. For a pre kindergarten kid I am not suggesting full blown sex ed, just not telling lies.
Then they ask, how does the baby get in there, and you explain that a tiny egg and a tiny sperm get together and start it growing. And they say Oh.
Then they ask, where do the egg and sperm come from, and you explain that the mommy’s body makes the egg and the daddy’s body makes the sperm and they work together to get the egg and sperm together. And they say Oh.
Then they ask, how do the mommy and daddy get the sperm and the egg together, and you explain that the sperm usually comes out of the daddy’s penis and give a very simple explanation of the mechanics of intercourse. And they say Oh.
Then they ask, do I have an egg? or, do I have a sperm? and you explain about how they’ll “have” one or the other when they’re grown up. And they say Oh.
I mean, it’s very simple really. It’s not like we drop graphic and intimate detail on our kids as soon as they’re verbal enough to point to a burgeoning belly and lisp “Baby?” At every stage, they ask the questions that they’re ready for answers to. If parents don’t freak the hell out, all it takes is exactly the nugget of information the kid asks for. And then they say “Oh” and go and play Lego or something.
Kristinc,
Exactly. And we owe them an honest response.
Thank you for your eloquence.
When I was in the sixth grade and STDs were discussed in a mixed class, a girl beside me raised her hand and asked, “So can you catch ’em from giving Head?”
A pretty stupid question, but it underscored the point of the class and the absolute necessity of it. She was twelve, and this was in 1986. If such a thing could be an issue even under REAGAN’S guidance, my god, who knows what goes on today, with socialist cats fucking communist dogs while expressing their anal glands right on the bust of Republican Abraham Lincoln in the White House!
kristinc @46:
Girls are born with all of their eggs. The egg from which you came was formed when your mother was still in your grandmother.
I despair at the idiocy of “abstinence only” sex ed. It’s exactly parallel to “Just Say No” drugs programmes. Kids know peers who have sex and take drugs and generally don’t suffer the catastrophic effects that these scare programmes warn them of. They decide they’re being lied to, and go ahead and ignore the risks. If we were open and honest both about the activities and the actual risks involved (and how to minimise them), then what they are being told will line up with their experience and they won’t (to use an unfortunately appropriate phrase) throw the baby out with the bathwater by ignoring what their teachers have told them.
PZ, you forget – to Christians, sex is icky. As in icky-poo! No one expected their beloved sons and daughters to get actual cooties during an STD class!
close their eyes when they get poked with a needle,
Hey, asshole:
NEEDLES FUCKING HURT, and, oh, maybe it’s just me, but did it occur to you–even a little–that most people don’t want to watch themselves BEING HURT?
What the fuck is wrong with you?
A mild overreaction, I think.
I’ve had needles hurt and not hurt, it all depends on the luck and skill of the person applying the needle.
Xe was referring to people who are squeamish to needles not for the pain, but for the idea of anything penetrating the skin. My mother is one of those people. She’s not worried about the pain, she’s just not comfortable with the idea of it.
Oh, I know, but that seemed to be more in-depth than my 5 or 6 year old children were interested in. When they were a little older they wanted to know more about where the eggs and sperm come from inside them, and that was when I explained more accurately. I felt like “You’ll have eggs when you’re a grownup” was an acceptable simplification of the idea that she would start releasing ripe eggs during puberty.
Same goes for menstruation. When she was 5 and 6, “Mommy bleeds every month; a lot of women do and you probably will too when you’re grown up; it’s not because we’re hurt” was fine. By the time she was 8, she was interested in the details of egg, uterine lining, etc.
The only problem I have is that the information given implied that only women perform blowjobs, and that only men perform cunnilingus .
The parents pray for them?
Also, my idiot sister opted her kids out of sex ed because “that should be for the parents to teach” and “I don’t want them being taught that going home with a stranger from a bar is an option. It’s NOT an option!”
Guess what? My niece was knocked up at 17. And of course she married the asshole who knocked her up, because it was “responsible”. Now she’s 20 with a divorce and another marriage under her belt (not an asshole, but a dumbass) and still no college education.
One of my minor criticisms of fundie xian cultists:
They set their kids up to fail.
Then the kids fail. I’ve seen it many times in many ways.
The teenage pregnancy rate and abortion rate is higher among fundies than the general population. Teenage pregnancy is highly correlated with life long poverty.
A lot of them are strongly discouraged from even going to college what with liberal college professors and free mingling of genders. So they get steered away or forced to go to expensive bible colleges which are just for enforcing endogamous mating systems and babysitting the kids for a few years.
(Didn’t I do this already?)
(Oh, wait, I think “virgin” is a problem word. Let’s see if this works…)
These are stills from a short film:
What’s “Virgin” Mean?
I almost missed it. Almost.
The kids asked the teacher about oral and anal sex.
My heartfelt, fervent hope is that it was the hypocritical psychotic Gilliand’s kids who asked. Pleasepleasepleasepleaseplease…