What questions did you want answered when you were a teenager? Did you get the right answers? Do you wish you had gotten those answers? If your parents couldn't or wouldn't have given them to you, would it have been helpful to have an adult who could?

What limits do you think there ought to be on the information provided to kids by the state? Did the people in this article go too far?

Share your thoughts.

-- Anonymous, June 22, 2000

Answers

The article you linked on Mass. sex ed was the strongest argument for home schooling that I have ever seen.

I can't imagine a reason for the state to explain to children what fisting is.

-- Anonymous, June 22, 2000

You might be interested to note that Heather Corinna, the darling person who runs Scarleteen as well as some rather more adult sites, has drawn a fair amount of fire and pain for the crime of daring to give any sort of accurate information on sex to teenagers.

(The biggest flap was when she wrote an article on talking to your teens about sex on Oxygen, which got people's attention from wholly new precincts - both good publicity and bad, if you get my meaning.)

Her friends give her encouragement all the time, which she needs, because she is definitely fighting the good fight and I know that if I got her hate mail, I'd have probably hung it up by now.

Anyway, I guess my biases are obvious, eh?

-- Anonymous, June 22, 2000

Well, Jarvis, how's this: the kid is 16 or 17 and asked the question? (I also noted that the person who answered the "what's fisting" question was another student; the state employees clarified his explanation.)

I was 17 when I started college, in the height of the AIDS scare. One of the first things that happened in my dorm was the distribution of a pamphlet listing high risk and low risk activities. Included among the high risk activities were fisting, water sports, and rimming. I had no idea what those things were, and neither did most other people. We asked everyone we could think of, believe me, and finally got an answer from another student.

I don't know; maybe we didn't "need" the information, but it certainly didn't hurt us any -- and we were only a year or two older than the kids in this seminar, if that. It's not like this information is being put into a graphic "how-to" pamphlet by the Department of Education. We're talking about answering teenagers' questions, and giving them honest answers. I guess I'd have a different reaction if these were twelve year olds, but they weren't. I think if a sixteen year old is old enough and knows enough to ask the question, he or she ought to be given an honest answer.

-- Anonymous, June 22, 2000

I'm 27 and I don't know what at least one of the aforementioned pamphlet items is. And unless water sprorts means playing a game in a swimming pool, I don't think I know about that either.

My mother was a nurse, so I *did* learn about a lot of things VERY early on. When I was kindergarten, my mother caught me in a closet kissing an older boy.... It was during a hurricane scare where the friends of the family came up from Galveston and stayed with us. My mother got this book that explained where babies came from and had the mother and dad in the bathtub together. For the longest time I thought that was what sex was - taking a bath together.

As I got older, she just gave us more information. !BUT! My mother was sexually abused, so she had a lot of hang ups and negative slants on her info. She made sex very bad. When she found out my sister was sleeping with her long-term boyfriend, she called my sister a whore and slut. BUT, it was so strange because here was a woman, very obviously greatly upset, who'd given us more infomation about sex than any of my friends had.

I took Health in summer school and we never had the sex talk. So I learned nothing from school.

I think it absolutely fantastic that kids can learn healthy sex behaviours & answers to their questions on the internet in a medium everyone would feel comfortable with (the annonymous nature of the internet allowing them to ask the questions they need answered and an adult being frank without embarrassment for both parties). I don't think there are a lot of people who can handle necessarily answering teen questions - it helps to have an expert that kids know they can trust. I see nothing at all wrong with that. Absolutely nothing. Everyone needs to set their hangups aside & get over themselves. Kudos to the girl who is doing it!

-- Anonymous, June 22, 2000

I just don't think 16 years olds are "children" anymore, particularly if they can be sent to adult prisons and can work full-time in the summer. I have no problem with this kind of sex ed, especially since it appears it was a voluntary program that these teenagers attended. The fact that kids are asking for help with their concerns about sexuality is a huge step. That shows a really great amount of self-confidence.

I know some folks who have worked for the Mass Dept of Public Health in this division, though none were mentioned in that story. They do incredible outreach to all kinds of people all across the state. They are creating a space where people can ask these questions, rather than being pressured to do stuff by other people when they are feeling vulnerable. When I was in 7th grade, we had a little sex ed class, boys separate from girls. All the girls were paralyzed by shyness until one girl finally asked "when you have oral sex, what happens, do you spit or swallow"? of course, none of the rest of us even knew what oral sex was. We talked for at least an hour to the shock of the boys who apparently knew everything and had broken up their group after 15 minutes. I think all the girls were so relieved that they had been equally naive and now knew what boys knew.

I wish more heterosexual kids had the confidence to ask questions about non-missionary position sexual practices. Then they can urge their state governments to get those stupid sodomy laws off the books.

This doesn't have to do with teenagers, but the Village Voice has a lot of interesting articles this week for Gay Pride week. I think there are a lot of different ways to be gay and straight and some of these articles portray that.

All that said, I totally support a teenagers right to be squeamish and not want to know. I just don't like people who are only a few years older deciding for them what they should or shouldn't learn.

-- Anonymous, June 22, 2000

I guess I didn't answer the question though: Its the state's public health responsibility to teach kids safe sexual practices. They'll probably start fisting some day anyway, so you should tell them that in some cases, it might be a bad idea and why!

-- Anonymous, June 22, 2000

Well, since you put it that way Beth, i think it is a great idea and the state should start how to classes in your living room. Now, am I PC enough?

-- Anonymous, June 22, 2000

Beth, Maybe I'm being naive, but what is rimming?

-- Anonymous, June 22, 2000

Um, KC, I believe rimming is when one licks another person's bunghole. Doesn't sound too sexy to me, but to each his own.

Beth, it's funny that you listed Anti-Porn's site on the weblog today. I was getting ready to send it to you. I can't make up my mind if it's a joke, or if that kid is serious. If he *is* serious, he may want to change his views on masturbation...I don't think he's going to be getting any post-marital,pro-creative, missionary position only nookie any time soon. Can't wait til he posts the pics of himself after losing the zits and that 40 lbs. Oy.

-- Anonymous, June 22, 2000

Sixth grade, same deal as you Beth, anonymous questions. I had read in Seventeen magazine that kissing was considered sex, or something like that. Of course at the time I was sure I'd wait until my wedding day, so I needed to know if kissing was considered sex. When the teacher read my question everyone laughed. It sucked. Also, one of the snotty boys asked if redheads had red pubic hair, and of course, I was the only redhead in the class. Tough stuff. Someone asked about oral sex and the teacher explained what it was, upon returning home from school I confirmed with my mother that this oarl sex thing was for real. It stands to reason then that I asked my mother if she had ever done this with my father. I'm sure that was her worst nightmare, but to her credit she answered yes. At the time I was disgusted by my parents.

-- Anonymous, June 22, 2000

If kids ask questions they should get honest answers. But the hard part is having a class that gives the right level of information for everyone. When I first found out about sex I was horrified by it, though I learned the mechanics. If I'd heard about fisting and stuff when I was a teen, I don't think I could have stood it. Yet there were probably others who wouldn't be bothered by it or needed to know about it.

I still don't want to know anything about anything my parents might have done, or to picture actual people I know having sex.

-- Anonymous, June 22, 2000

What bugged me about that article was the underlying intimation that it's really really bad to give kids this information, because if we give kids information about non-mainstream sexual practices, or, God forbid, gay sex, that means they might be CURIOUS about those things, and -- dear Lord! -- TRY IT THEMSELVES!

Like that woman in the article whose son had some pamphlets about homosexuality and who was going to gay support groups, and she was horrified and apparently thought that the school was turning him gay or something. Um, lady, maybe it's because your son IS gay? And maybe it would be better for you to support him and make him feel loved than to freak out and start a letter writing campaign about it?

I mean, seriously. Who cares if the school tells all the kids what fisting is? So they know. So what? If they were curious about it, they'd find out from other sources, and if they're not curious about it, they won't try it anyway. In my opinion, more information is generally always better than less.

FYI: rimming is the same as salad-tossing, which means licking someone's ass. "Water sports" means sexual practices involving urine (exactly WHAT sexual practices, I don't know). Any other questions, feel free to ask, I'm a veritable crapnacopia of sexual info.

Incidentally, if my own hypothetical kids came home from school and told me that they'd been taught about gay sex and fisting and had all their questions about sex answered in a friendly and nonconfrontational way, I'd do a dance of joy. My own "sex education" consisted of an uncomfortable half-hour with the school nurse during which she explained what a period was and how to use a tampon. Mom, bless her heart, explained it all to me after she found some amateur porn I'd written lying on the desk in my bedroom.

I sure as hell wish somebody had answered all MY questions when I was a teenager.

-- Anonymous, June 22, 2000

When i was a teen, it was all embarrasement. All I got from my Mom was "Don't Do It". It would have been helpful to have an adult to aks, though. Didn't stop me from getting pregnant at 17, and I'd had *plenty* of sex by then!.
Up here, in Canada (at least htis part) they are not allowed to answer specific questions about sex. in a way, it's too bad. As for did they go too far? If you think kids are becoming sexually mature at an earlier age than say, 20 years ago, then no. Heck, I didn't know about half that stuff, and I had close gay friends in high school.
But I'm a parent, too. I just wish my kids would come to me first. I have a great sex life, and hope someday they will too. i wouldn't want them to come home from school one day and then tell me what their day was like.. but then again they're homeschooled.
I also felt I knew a lot more about sex than i should have at too early and age (I won't get into the reasons) and I honestly feel it led me to be promiscuois (I know that's not spelled right!). But back to the kids: maybe if more parents would talk to their kids about sex, as in it's perfectly natural for two people who love each other to do, AND enjoy, (a little masturbation doesn't hurt either!) maybe we wouldn't have a lot of the problems we do now.

-- Anonymous, June 22, 2000

That's one thing my mom did totally right... she explained the basics early (earlier than I'd need to know, so that when I did NEED to know, I already would), and she never rebuffed a question on the subject - if I was knowledgeable enough to ask, she wanted to make sure I had enough details to get the facts properly. Some of my questions made her answer the question red-faced, but she DID answer, or if she didn't know, helped me find the right material so we could both find out.

I vaguely recall some sort of sex ed - the 6th grade haul the girls into a separate room from the boys thing. We talked menstruation and acne... I am still curious what the boys were taught. I think it was how to keep territorial rights to remote control devices.

In 10th grade, we had a unit on reproduction in biology, but it was very much kept to an anatomical/biological level. I don't recall any questions being encouraged.

I used to be appalled at some of the crazy stuff my friends thought, and there was at least one girl who wasn't allowed to come over to my house anymore because I demanded that my mom explain to her that yes you CAN TOO get pregnant even if the guy pulls out before he comes. (heh..shades of another conversation here...) No, it never quite dawned on her mom that if she was counting on that to be the truth, she was probably past the point where my mother and I were going to 'encourage her to be promiscuous'.

Curiousity and ignorance are two common traits in teens - and they are an explosive mix.

-- Anonymous, June 22, 2000

Nobody told me anything. I had to find out for myself, and exploded a lotta weird theories.

That's not my son Brian's problem. I took him aside when he was six, and told him. When he wasn't sure about a point, I literally drew him a picture. I covered basic sex, and with that these days I'm sure he knows what anal, oral, etc. sex involves. (For a while he was watching LOVELINE devotedly.) He also, during the school year, goes with an acting troupe from school to school, in skits that explain how one catches AIDS and how to prevent it.

--Al of NOVA NOTES.

-- Anonymous, June 22, 2000

I wish I had a decent sex ed class when I was in school. The whole thing was diagramming male and female reproductive organs and a short speech on how we shouldn't do "it" made by a smirking student teacher (who didn't exactly seem to be a believer in abstinence, if you catch my drift). Later on that education was furthered by my Human Anatomy course I took my senior year. The poor teacher found herself having to deal with 30 students who didn't know much of anything about sex. One day, she closed and locked the door, explained that what she was doing was against policy, and then proceeded to give us the laydown of how sex -really- worked.

Still, though, the bulk of my knowledge about sex came from a copy of _The Joy of Sex_ found hidden in my parents room and the Internet. That's pretty sad, when you think about it. And my brother is even less informed than I was at his age (he's 14 and doesn't even know what sex is). Sad.

-- Anonymous, June 23, 2000

DOH! I tried to check out that anti-porn site, but it's now deleted. I guess the author got nasty e-mails up the ying-yang, and decided it wasn't worth it to share his thoughts...oh well.

The subject actually reminded me of this one Hare Krishna (sp?) dude I met at the Seattle airport last year. We started chit chatting about his reliogon and beliefs, and for some reason we got on the topic of sex. He said that they believed that sex should be for procreation only, similiar to that anti-porn guy. Hare Krishna followers believe that humans should keep their bodies clean and free of impurities. They believe that it is "gross, and unclean" for one human to share bodily fluids with another. I remember him telling me to think about other people's "snot, feces, urine, blood, or saliva" mixing in with my insides. Then he asked "don't you find that disgusting? Well that's what sex is!"

All I could wonder was-What the HELL kinda sex was he (not)having??

-Zhyla

-- Anonymous, June 23, 2000

I am one of those people whose very strait-laced parents informed about sex early on. I think I was seven or eight when my mother walked through the basics on heterosexual sex, fetal development and child birth. She had an illustrated little German pamphlet as a teaching aid. My father explained about homosexuality, etc. (not in an entirely politically correct way, but looking back I am amazed at how sensitive he was), during my late grade school years.

This is especially funny, given that my folks exempted me from my school health class on religious grounds. I guess that's how I came to miss the part about maintaining control over the remote control. Maybe that explains why my wife always gets the remote.

-- Anonymous, June 23, 2000

I learned most of my information from books, which was okay because I was a major raider of libraries. We did have a 'health' lecture in 5th grade, which cleared a few things up, and apparently I was the only kid in my class who didn't come home and tell my mom what I'd learned that day because a few weeks later she sat me down and said some other kid's mother had told her we'd had this class. She asked me if I had any questions. I said no. We never discussed it again. I would have been woefully underinformed if not for my independent research.

When I was about five or six I was terribly worried about how one got pregnant, because I knew I definitely did not want to. I asked my mom about it, and she said that you got pregnant when you decided to, and that still worried me because I wasn't sure enough how to avoid it. I wish she'd given me even a little hint of biological information at that point.

My other big worry was caused by feminine hygiene commercials. I saw them pouring that blue fluid on absorbent pads, and assumed that adult women were randomly incontinent.

-- Anonymous, June 23, 2000

From age 3 onward, I got lots and lots of information about intercourse from my mother and from well-connected friends with certain books in their personal libraries. (Anyone else familiar with "What's Happening To Me?") In retrospect, I do wish I had access to information about *alternatives* to intercourse. I mean, maybe not fisting, but certainly oral sex. I gave way to sex much too young (14) because I didn't know what else to do with a boy. I had heard of blowjobs but I wasn't about to give one... I didn't have the first idea how. I didn't know how to give a handjob. Oh, and this is sad: until age 17 I had no idea that a boy could go down on a girl. I have Prince to thank for that little tidbit. (An old boyfriend used to refer to miscellaneous nuns as "Sister Mary Cunnilingus" [I dunno; it sounds like Latin] and I never had any idea why that was supposed to be funny.) Anyway, I just think I could have saved myself from sex and all of its complications for a few years longer if I had just known what *else* you could do.

-- Anonymous, June 25, 2000

I wish my parents had actually discussed sex, instead of asking "You know how babies are made, right?" That was about it. Until we pretty much forced them into talking.

I lost my virginity just before I turned 14 (got pregnant my first time, what a lesson I am). I learned about sex from friends, from boyfriends (all older), from porn, not from school or my parents. The sex education in high school, was to little to late. Hell, by the time they got around to teaching it, there were already 4 Moms in my class, plus several more who had miscarried or aborted.

Children need to know what sex is. They need to know all the terms, not just "procreation only".

-- Anonymous, June 26, 2000

Poor Jarvis. The only person on this thread who dared to express reservations about sex ed. It's really a touchy subject no matter how you slice it.

Here's the thing: I imagine I'm a parent (which, hoo boy, is a big stretch, but let's go for it). Naturally I would prefer to be the one to tell my kids about sex. And since I'm a reasonably aware parent and I know what schools are like, I know that age has got to be earlier than some might think ... because the average kid starts receiving serious misinformation (not just vague gossip and rumors) from his/her peers around age fourteen or so. Sometimes earlier.

I don't think that telling kids about sex is going to necessarily make them want to go out and have it (a twelve-year-old's response to what mommy and daddy do together is still fairly likely to be "Ewww!") However, I will not conceal, when talking to my kids, that I think sex is fun. I won't lie to them about that. That causes more trouble than it's worth later.

These days kids have sex younger and younger. I'd like to roll back that tide as much as anyone else (I first had sex after I was 25, so I'm obviously on the conservative side here), but I do not think withholding information is going to push back that tide. Frankly, I'm cynical enough that I don't think GIVING them the information is going to push back the tide either - a lot of it is our culture, the advertising and the pressure to mature faster.

But, given a choice between a reasonably well-informed kid having sex at fifteen or a kept-in-the-dark kid having sex at fifteen, which is more desirable to society as a whole?

Contraception and sexual health (that means avoiding diseases) are the primary things I want to teach kids. The rudiments of missionary sex they manage to figure out for themselves, alarmingly so. Unusual or variant practices ... well ... if they ask about it, then I'll give them a straight answer and that's that. Most of those things seem unappealing anyway (fisting, for example, strikes even a lot of adults as a really unpleasant thing to contemplate) and they just want to know whether their peers are pulling their legs about what the words mean.

By the by, another interesting health trend is that oral sex is WAY on the upswing in high schools. It is seen by a lot of kids, especially girls, as a way to solve the pressure to have sex without actually having sex. Not saying I agree with that assessment, but it's interesting to see this conclusion being reached.

-- Anonymous, June 26, 2000

That's an interesting riff on the 1950s style of having teenaged sex, which was basically to fool around in your parents' car until both parties were too frustrated to think straight (er, think "properly"), and then call it a night and go home.

Personally, I think oral sex is a MUCH better solution.

-- Anonymous, June 26, 2000

The only question about sex I had as a teen was, "Please-- tell me where I can find someone who'll have sex with me?"

Anything else was irrelevant.

I'd read enough books-- biology and erotica --by fourteen or fifteen to know exactly *what* to do, plus all about French chateaux and leggy girls in leather cocktail gowns and what you could do with ice and champagne... What I *needed* to know was where to actually get a girl...

And, yes, at 14 or 15 I knew what fisting was.

But nobody bothered to tell me how to go about putting my theoretical knowledge into practice.

-- Anonymous, July 10, 2000

The questions I had when I was a teenager primarily revolved around inquiring about the sex lives of my friends and aquaintences. I wanted to know who, who with, where, and all the kinky details.....i.e., the the rich anorexic from high school really liked being "submissive"
It was more natural curiosity and a tendency towards gossip rather than any voyeristic leanings.

-- Anonymous, July 13, 2000