It’s nice when something you’ve been shouting at the top of your lungs for a decade and everyone ignored is finally, suddenly, magically, touted as genius when a guy says it in a comedy routine. And by nice I mean, unbelievably important and exciting for the cause, but rather deflating for my professional self-efficacy.
But my ego aside, I’m so glad Oliver shined light on the embarrassing disgrace that is sexuality education in America, and I’m thrilled mainstream media is at least pretending to give a shit about the crisis (and it is a crisis). He did an astounding job examining the intricacies of the problem.
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The part where he discussed fear-ridden, misogyny-focused, and often Christian-based abstinence-only sexuality education lies and misinformation programs that liken women who have sex before marriage to old shoes, chewed up gum, and dirty tape was especially important to me for a few reasons:
First, the dirty tape program is the “sex education” program I sat through as a high schooler. It did so much damage, it is in part why I decided I wanted to become a sexologist when I was 15. I wrote about the horrible experience in my book, and in my college program “Virgins and Sluts” where I talk about the harm of the virgin/whore dichotomy, I reenact the lesson with the students and have them unpack and examine, frankly, how utterly fucked up these messages are.
Second, I know despite many people being vocal about these horrible programs, including me, and Elizabeth Smart, who has been quite outspoken about how she was made to feel like a “used up piece of chewing gum nobody wanted” because she’d been raped, the chewing gum, dirty tape, and a new one (prickly rose stem with the petals all gone) lesson plans are STILL promoted by private Christian organizations, and STILL being taught to teenagers in PUBLIC school classrooms, including my high school, to this day.
Oliver in 21 minutes hit on a number of truths in the tragic state of sexuality education. These include:
– The disproportionate power of one Puritan parent to cause a ruckus, get the media and the school district to throw the teacher under the bus, and ruin the opportunity for every other student to have access to medically accurate information about their bodies, health, and sexuality. This happens with parents of college students (read: ADULT STUDENTS) too, which I’ve written about here, and here. I also talk about this phenomenon in my college workshop “Sex Ed in America”.
– Ridiculous, embarrassingly cheesy, outdated, shame-filled, and/or fear-based sex education videos that continue to be played in classrooms. I play some examples for the audiences in my Safer and Sexy college workshops to provide context for the very different way I teach about pregnancy and STI prevention, and you can view a few clips of them here (starts at :27).
– The total lack of cohesion in sex education mandates. Some states don’t have any sex education, some states do, but don’t require the material to be medically accurate (HELLO!!!), and the experiences of sexuality education varies so widely from district to district, school to school, and even teacher to teacher. All of these decisions about whether to have a sex ed curriculum, and if so, what subjects lies to include are, sensibly, made by people who have absolutely no training whatsoever in human sexuality.
– The correlation between states without sex education and souring teen pregnancy rates. It’s infuriating how many people willfully ignore such thorough science and data because “I have *feelings* and sex is icky!”. Actually, it’s criminal that people charged with educating and preparing youth can so spectacularly fail, withhold life saving and life changing information from students, ignoring all evidence, and still have jobs and get funding for their programs of lies and shame.
– The cleverness and resourcefulness of sexuality education professionals who find ways to impact students despite a lack of funding, lack of support from the district and state, and the ever looming fear of a rogue parent ruining your career. I’m happy Oliver played the clip of the educator who wasn’t allowed to discuss condoms teaching students how to properly “roll a sock on a foot and then put the foot in the shoe”.
– The rampant homophobia and slut-shaming, both subtle and egregious, that are in programs offered at schools.
– An across the board failure to have meaningful discussions about consent, and consent lesson plans that focus on a heterosexual context of girls’ “no” being dismissed because it wasn’t “firm enough” instead of focusing on, ya know, training all parties to value autonomy and only engage in sex with an enthusiastic “yes”. And when you promote, fund, and allow this flawed message to be taught to students, as Oliver pointed out, “you are abetting and already troubling culture where a bunch of frat guys can march around Yale feeling completely comfortable yelling out “NO MEANS YES, YES MEANS ANAL”.
His summation line, “There is no way we’d allow any other academic program to consistently fail to prepare students for life after school, and human sexuality, unlike calculus, is something you actually need to know about for the rest of your life” I thought was especially on point.
And then Oliver produced a star studded sex ed video for the people who have been failed by the system. It checks off quite a few of the items that I think need to be included in any good sex ed program:
– clitoris!
– pleasure, fun, exploration, and toys (including lube!)
– it’s OK to say no to sex, and it’s OK to say yes to sex, and if anyone wants ridicule you about either choice, they’re “assholes”.
– contraceptives exist to help protect against unwanted pregnancy and infections, but you may have already experienced either, and this doesn’t make you a bad person.
– practice and skill building
– humor!
– consent in myriad ways, including stopping mid sex act, and saying yes to some sex acts but not others
– sexual language (”if you call it a who-ha, you’re not ready for sex”)
– general sex-positivity and normalizing of sexuality.
There are a few things I would have liked to have seen be different:
– OMG IT’S A VULVA, NOT A VAGINA
– mention of sexual identities
– a blurb about what the clitoris actually does
All in all, well done
To John Oliver- thank you!
To the news media- remember this the next time an outraged parent wants you to run a story about how, GASP, their kid is learning that genitals do more than piss, and these other things are kinda fun.
To those reading this who agree with all of this- we need you to do more than “like” this! Find out what is being taught in the schools where you live. If they don’t have sex ed, or have “girls are chewed up gum” type of sex ed, voice your concern! Write to your representatives about stopping abstinence only education and funding comprehensive sexuality education. Tell the school board you want the to hire a professional sexuality educator to develop a curriculum for the district.
We need to reframe this conversation from “Tonight at 6, a parent is outraged about a poster in a classroom that lists SEX ACTS!” to “Tonight at 6, the community is outraged that Christian moralizers are paid millions from tax dollars to tell girls in public school they’re worthless if they have sex or are raped. The entire city, except two parents, are calling it ‘scandalous and disgraceful’ that professional sexuality educators and scientists are being cast aside while preachers are granted unvetted access to children to indoctrinate them medically-inaccurate lies about their bodies that data demonstrates can lead to disease and/or a lifetime of mediocre sex, as well as instilling shame about their sexual identities, and contributing to a culture of sexual violence”.
Ok I literally never blog about the Whedon family farm cluster fuck of a bad decision but I’d like to point something out.
These two gifs. Try your best to ignore the glory that is Tony, and awkward turtle that is Bruce, for a moment and look behind them at the wall. More specifically the pictures. Every single one of them are a silhouette. There’s not a single family portrait anywhere. No school pictures. No wedding portrait. No candid moments of the kids outside playing, or baby pictures on the fridge. Which is instead covered in art work (if my memory serves me right i’ve only seen the film once so i could be wrong). Being a mom of one and an aunt of five that’s bullshit right there. There’s a least one picture somewhere on your fridge of ur kid(s). I don’t care how much artwork you’ve got to display.
Anyways back on topic. The pictures behind Tony – They are all profile cut outs. Right next to (look directly behind Bruce’s head for this one in the second gif) what appears to be a vintage picture of a circus poster. This entire house, (memory wise) is completely staged. And they (marvel) didn’t even try to hide that fact.
Marvel doesn’t make accidental errors. (ie if they error they meant to do it. point in case my muse.) To position Tony right in front of these pictures with the lines he has, they gave themselves a way out…these two lines and two split frames gave them a way to allow the russo brothers to clean up Whedon’s cluster fuck. But that’s just my two cents. The anger over this insertion will never go away. I’m as mad about as I am about the decision to use my favorite Avenger as a god damn tragic backstory tool.
Marvel you’ve given yourself wiggle room to correct both of these bad decisions. Fucking fix your shit.
I’m jumping all up on board of the Clint was Tahiti’d when they were trying to ensure he was clear of Loki’s brainwashing, to keep him able to work and be an uncompromised asset and keep him from going crazy like Selvig.
This paired with the analysis of Tasha’s expressions and body language during these scenes have me sold.
Also jumping in bc I’m OTP trash but this would tidily explain why clint and the rest of the avengers don’t know that Phil is alive.
Insomnia adds to the conspiracy theory:
Clint is Tahiti’d and whole family is Life Model Decoys.(unless they are brainwashed too, or indeed agents)
This has been done in comics! In some non-616 arc (does anyone remember which?) Steve Rogers was brainwashed to believe he is a regular joe and given LMD wife and kid(s). Other Avengers and FF were somehow altered, too…?
Anyhow, like many LMDs, Laura and kids might consider themselves real people. How handy that family is such a secret – makes sense then that nobody knew about them, and that would make it reasonable for all the medical checks and maternity care to be provided by SHIELD – no civilians poking around possibly noticing something weird. And secrecy makes it also sensible they might move frequently, thus have not much connections or keep in touch with friends or relatives… Like witness protection, really. Indeed handy if these people didn’t exist until few years ago and don’t have any childhood friends or family even if they have memories of such.
Thank you guys, so much. I know I’m a mutli-fandom multi-shipper but Sherlock is what really got my started with the fanfiction and I’d bet it’s still the majority of my blog.
Look, I don’t want a giant pile of wank pointed my way, but I’m going to put this out here and say it once:
I’m so tired of this fandom. Not all of you, of course, not even most of you. I know the vast majority of us just want to ship whatever we ship, delight over the show we love, discuss and create what we want.
But there’s also a reason that people stay out of it. My best friend enjoys the show, but says that she’s ‘not in the fandom’. Because she’s seen how much shit goes on over here and wants no part of it. And that’s sad. It puts up a wall. If all someone sees of a fandom or a group is shitposts and infighting, then why the hell would they want to be part of it?
I know I haven’t been writing as much. Part of that is time and stuff going on with me, part of it is the show, and part of it is fandom. It’s difficult for me to write anything with the show where it stands now. I don’t mind writing stuff going back in time or AUs, or other pairings, but my Johnlock feels kind of broken and I don’t know how to get that back.Hopefully S4, whenever we get it, will fix some of that.
I’m lucky in that I joined fandom when I did. It was the late summer of 2013, things were still vibrant, everyone was still puzzling over Reichnbach and I was able to write and grow and get so much positive feedback and meet so many amazing people that my life was literally changed.
But something has happened over the last year. Maybe it’s just part of a fandom’s lifecycle. Maybe we’re all just trying to deal with s3. Maybe the more strident voices in this fandom are driving out those of us just trying to do what we do. Well, that one isn’t a maybe, that has certainly happened. And it makes me sad when we lose those voices, when people are so fed up and tired of this fandom that they stop participating. Sure they’re still writing and creating other things, turning their attentions elsewhere (for the most part), but I can’t blame them for wanting out of this. Even if they aren’t a target of the wank themselves, how much are they willing to have on their dashes, how much are they willing to tolerate?
I don’t like bullying, in any form. I was bullied far too much as a kid to tolerate it as an adult. Even if you’re self-righteously convinced that yours is the only way, that what you’re doing is best for other people, I would plead with you to think about what you’re doing, and who you’re hurting in an effort to ‘correct’ things.
I’m not going anywhere, I don’t think. I’m still here, in my own little corner. But I’m also posting this because even though I’m a nobody I’m still afraid to post it, still afraid this will make me a target. And that’s not right.
