Well shit, dude. How dare people tell Califia they are acting out....infantalization is hurtful and rarely helps to solidify the opposing sides’ argument. “I believed that if adults would listen, children were capable of telling us what kind of attention they wanted or when something harmful had happened to them” (page 55 of Public Sex).
Califia knows how to do statistics effectively, I can already tell. He gives a year, and the facts and his own reflections on it instead of merely listing stats that are really not helping their argument (sorry again, Levine). Mass produced and purchased child pornography was not as common as the moral panic would suggest. The panic brought the public’s eye away from possibly the most commonly harmful institution- the nuclear family. No need to go over specific numbers, but it’s well known now that children are/were much more likely to be sexually abused by someone they know/knew than to be involved with a child pornographer.
People between the ages of 12 and 18 are most likely not asexual. Having the age of consent laws set at 18, Califia argues we make adolescents vulnerable to exploitation, but at the same time, deny them their sexuality. Abstinence only sex education continues to be rampant in America, despite the rate at which teens are sexually active. More teens are sexually active than know about proper forms of birth control and contraceptives. Ill informed youth are obviously not benefitting from their lack of education. Abstinence only sex education is especially harmful when it is commonly known that the group of teens being educated is already sexually active. Not to make light of the situation, but too little too late, much? What concerns me is that abstinence only sex education is most often based on a set of morals, not health or (forgive me for saying this), science and biology. Abstinence education is most often preached, not taught, and when kids lack fundamental understanding of their own biology, unintended pregnancies occur at staggering rates.
When they don’t understand “the parts” and their functions, how the hell can we expect them to make decisions about sex? They can and have to make conscience choices about sex, regardless of the form of sex education. Why not be honest about it, treat teens as adults and sexual beings? It’s already been proved over and over that pretending sex doesn’t exist or telling youth “just don’t do it. Wait until marriage, until God approves” way of educating youth does not work. Pregnancies, STDs, abortion and everything else the self-righteous right-wing-nuts fear happen regardless of the message sent to youth. And as I implied above, the abstinence only message most often comes from some sort of Christian point of view. This wouldn’t bother me if it were in their church; church is kind of one of those more optional things. If you don’t like the one you’re in, find another one or decide it’s not for you. You can’t do that with public schools with ease; there’s no school hopping if you don’t like the teachers or some stupid rule the administration has put in place, and social services tends to frown upon parents allowing kids to just opt out of school altogether. (Up to a certain age, then the youth is on his/her own. Which makes sense, but that’s another entry.) Christianity or God have no place in a public school that claims to treat everyone the same. If students or their parents don’t want youth knowing the facts of biology, they should be given the opportunity to opt of the classes, but schools should have no right to push a set of religious values on its students. Youth shouldn’t have to change where they go to school (which isn’t easy for multiple reasons) because they aren’t getting taught the facts about sex.
That’s right, Peter, I said it. The facts, the truth, the real and actual biological function of what happens within the body should be heard by the students who are willing to listen. Telling them how eggs and sperm move, or how sperm are produced and the function of the fallopian tubes will not make kids have sex or encourage them to do so. Biology class or even “sex education” isn’t an instruction manual teaching kids how to have sex. (Can you imagine? “So that’s where that goes?! And just how do you think it’s going to... oh. I see now.” Or “You’re doing it wrong! Refer to figure 4.23 in the book and try again. Never mind, I’ll do it myself. ”)
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