Yeah, it's pretty clear to tell when someone's trying to fuck with us and when its a genuine chatter. And, unless their failing at the English language was part of what made it amusing, I cleaned up the writing a bit for most of them. Rush hit the nail on the head with why it really isn't that crazy that people would be so uninformed about sex health. Even if there's not a religious/political/cultural element to it, it's not uncommon that health classes are part of what gets cut or downsized when schools are dealing with budget issues. A lot of the time sex ed is really temporary, or optional, or the only option is something after school or a peer-education-based system. A lot of kids will come to talk with us because they just had their annual Planned Parenthood assembly where people from a center come in and that's the one day a year they learn about pregnancy and birth control and STDs. And it's not like the majority of parents are super comfortable having The Talk with their kids or even want them to have that information, so it's not like they're making up for it outside of school. I know this board is full of sex positive sluts and all, but there's still a prevailing shitty attitude about sex in this country and that results in shitty attitudes about/lack of sex education.
This. One of my coworkers is a pretty sexually, let's call it free, person. Her parents were swingers for quite awhile so that is the kind of environment she grew up in. She has a child who is turning 10 and on the cusp of hitting puberty in a really big way. The woman is embarrassed to have the talk with her own child! It is clear that, while still an innocent child, her daughter is becoming very sexual. She's walked in on her masturbating with a back massager, found make out tips in his web history on her kindle, and has been lashed out at in a hormonal, angry tears fury. She managed to have the "this is what a period is" talk with her because she knows that is not far off, but what about sex? She says she will probably just have her mom (kid's grandma) have the talk with her. Yeah, this is going to end well.
Just in case anyone has preteens/teens and are interested, these books are awesome despite their dorky titles: Deal With It Our Bodies, Ourselves It's Perfectly Normal You don't even have to talk! Just put leave them out on their bed to find when they get home from school and maybe mumble a halfhearted offer to talk about anything they're curious about after reading them, just like my dad did. edit: URLS ARE HARD
Two questions: 1. Have you found that the blogosphere has over exaggerated the amount of protests outside of planned parenthood and other clinics? Because if the Internet is to be believed every clinic is constantly assailed by angry hordes of protesters angrily screaming at and physically assaulting anyone that works in them, goes in them a or even passes by them. 2. On the political flip side of that question. Have you ever encountered a person who used abortion as a form of birth control? And, if so how common is this? Because once again if certain advocates are to be believed this is an epidemic.
I just kind of stared blankly at this recommendation for a few moments before clicking on the link and realizing there have been several editions of this book since the first one from the seventies that my mother has and that I read when I was a kid.
I put some choice quotes from my all-time favorite chatter on the Tumblr, but she had the following concerns: She gave her boyfriend a blowjob, swallowed, then farted a few minutes later, and was worried that the sperm in the fart got into her vagina from there and get her pregnant. She was also on the pill. And after a little more talking with her, we realized that how the pill worked was that, every time she had sex, she became pregnant immediately and the pill would make her shit out the baby. So that's why she kept having diarrhea. It was such a clusterfuck of not only having zero understanding of sexual health, but the digestion system and just how her body was put together in general. I had to talk her through why it was not possible to poop out babies. She was 19.
This kind of thing makes me glad I went to private school and grew up in the late '80s during The Great AIDS Scare and our sex ed was comprehensive enough that I was forced to watch my principal put a condom on a cucumber.
1. Well, there are hundreds of centers across the country, so it's not like I can vouch for every single one. I haven't even been to the ones in NYC. There used to be one in my hometown (in New York) and the one in Boston is right by the T and I'm pretty sure I've never seen protesters there. I know that, instead of the usual image of clinic protesters, the center in Brooklyn is in a big building where it's not really advertised that it's Planned Parenthood to try and dissuade protesters, but they opened a crisis pregnancy center on a different floor and planted people in the lobby who go up to girls who enter the building asking if they're there for PP and, if they say yes, say it's on the floor of the CPC instead. So many people were not realizing they'd been tricked that PP started needing to have people stand on THEIR floor to ask them if they were really looking for PP and, if so, let them know where it really was. But, Boston and New York City are not exactly pro-life supercenters. It's not like those ideas of what clinic protesters do are made up. In a previous version of the program I work for, we used to be involved with the centers in North Carolina, D.C, Maryland, Virginia, and Pennsylvania, and I know people had to deal with protesters pretty regularly there. I just don't know to what extent. Centers need escorts to help their patients get inside for a reason. Centers do get bombed and the staff do get killed - rarely, but it happens. 2. No.
We're not talking on the phone, so we are laughing - and yelling - all the time. It is the one thing that preserves the shred of sanity I have left.
Yeah, we do try to emphasize that they can find a lot of information on the website, and direct people to pages they can turn to on their own, like the basics on how pregnancy happens or what to do if they massively fuck up their birth control. (It is astounding how many ways people can fuck up their birth control.)
I'm not. The Bible is pretty clear that if you're preserving your purity, you're fine. Butt's already impure, so it's a no-brainer.
Do you guys have any input on policy? Like can you suggest what goes into a sex ed program based on what you deal with? Also, is there a reason none of this is conducted over the phone? Is that a separate center? I remember being in one of the abstinence-only high schools and it was a fucking joke. We had a coach tell a bunch of teenagers that were already trying to fuck anything that swished past us that "condoms are only effective 90% of the time". The other part of that sentence in the head of every 15 year old who heard it was, "so why use them?". I'm not surprised by how unsure kids are about this stuff, because here's what happens: kids lie about the sex they've had, kids they know get pregnant from a tempting glance across the dinner table, and kids are told how fucking awful it is to have a baby at 16. I would have amputated a leg to avoid getting a girl pregnant and given how young we were when we started, a regular, controllable cycle isn't something discussed between partners if it even happens. The sad part is, I grew up using the internet and we still had these problems. I can imagine that now, with even more information, it's actually worse.