The Globe Nails Sex Ed Article

According to Allison Lobron, a former English teacher at Concord Academy and frequent Globe contributor, the future is here, and it is sex-positive. It's out with the old ineffective "abstinence only" programs bankrolled by the Bush administration, and in with a slew of new programs, both public and private, that aim to recognize that teenagers have sex because it feels good; that talking about sex as a positive thing may be the healthiest way to construct a conversation around the act and its negative consequences; that girls, who mature faster, may be the ones pushing for sexual experience first; and that girls are doing so to seek pleasure for themselves, not just acting to please their boyfriends, as is so often assumed in abstinence-only education. And of course, it aims to address the reality that not all sex is girl-on-boy to begin with.

Lobron writes:

With US sex education heading into its second century, some educators are suggesting that sex ed can, and should, be about more than just all the things that can go wrong, that adults need to do more than robotically recite statistics about condom failure or the merits of abstinence. This new approach, almost too small to be called a movement, exists largely outside the public schools, but it's a new twist in a debate that often gets bogged down in finger-pointing and name-calling. The "sex is good" mentality involves talking frankly to teens about sexual pleasure and about when and how to achieve it safely. It means focusing less on whether kids have had vaginal intercourse, and acknowledging that teens (like adults) will engage in a variety of sexual experiences. It's an approach that might make some grown-ups uncomfortable, but it's exactly what sex ed needs if it's ever going to grow up.

Considering that this Bostonist received most of her "sex education" from Cosmo's Kama Sutra special issues, and many of her friends still struggle to reconcile their love for Sex and the City with their fear of, addiction to or ambivalence towards the actual act, this change is much needed, whether it happens inside or outside the classroom. It is time that women's assumed responsibility for the entire species' sexuality went the way of our assumed position in the kitchen. And it's time that our male cohorts began to hear that it's okay for them to say "I'm not ready"; "I want to take things slower"; or "let's get a condom first" if that's how they feel.

And hey, as long as the feminism gods are granting our dearly-held wishes this week, we'd like to humbly ask that they make Jon Krasinski's film Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, the David Foster Wallace collection turned "feminist" Sundance hit featuring the "Office" star and Death Cab's Ben Gibbard, available on DVD in a video store near us sometime soon. Plzkthx.

Photo of vintage sex ed poster by mod as hell, via Creative Commons. (See a larger version here.)