So they know what they are approaching.
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Sex Education For Kids
- Thread starter Rival
- Start date
I think sex education ought to begin very early introducing relationships, very early grades and when age appropriate sexual relationships.
stvdv
Veteran Member
Age 4 I did not find sex embarrassing
My parents found it embarrassing though
Depends on the kids, I'd estimate based on my own experience 8 or 9, possibly a year earlier in some cases, but unfortunately it's one size fits all
ImmortalFlame
Woke gremlin
What's wrong with teaching children that LGBTQ people exist and that it's normal?
Often, children form ideas about normalization based on education rather than experience, and by wilfully omitting something from education you are effectively saying that this thing should be considered outside the realm of acceptable discourse. If we're going to talk to kids about sex, why not gay sex too? What harm would it cause?
I think part of the problem here is that what exactly "sex ed" is. To most people, it basically means explicitly talking about how intercourse works and basic stuff about contraception. That's fine, but it's hardly the full breadth of the subject. Personally, I think the biological aspects of sex are better taught in a science classroom, while sex ed classes should focus more on sociological aspects and essentially be something that is taught from a young age and into adulthood, covering a wide variety of topics at different age-appropriate intervals. For me, sex ed shouldn't be this one, monolithic event that happens for one very awkward afternoon to a bunch of giggling ternagers - it should be its own field of study that is continuous and potentially lifelong.
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This is not what I'm saying at all. This is where folks are misunderstanding me.
Don't bother telling them, because when you tell them you create a mental divide, a new group of people, the 'LGBTQ' people. Just drop the labels, the groups and the whatnot, and just let it be a thing like heterosexuality is. No-one has to explain straight couples, so don't explain gay ones either. 'Two people can fall in love' is good enough. Don't introduce words like 'hetro/homosexual'. Don't give them that dichotomy to begin with.
ImmortalFlame
Woke gremlin
I like your sentiment, but I just don't think this is realistic or reasonable. You have to use terminology, and I think it is better to normalize that terminology. By refusing to use it, you ARE creating a divide by suggesting that the use of the nomenclature itself is outside of reasonable discourse. For many people, discovering and adopting those labels ALLOWED them to embrace who they were, because now they suddenly could put a word to their sexual/gender identity. I don't think it divides people. If anything, it just allows people the ability to accept themselves.
And, to be clear, I'm not saying that schools should be teaching "here is the range of sexualities or genders that exist, please pick the one that fits you and we'll sew the appropriate flag on your uniform". I'm saying that we should simply make kids and teens aware that these labels/groups exist and how they generally identify, so that those who WOULD identify that way finally understand it and can embrace it if they wish, and those that WOULDN'T identify are at least aware and informed about it. Again, I think "sex ed" should be a lifelong education.
I think your attitude is kind of similar to lot of attitudes I have heard about religious education lessons. Sure, I would have a problem if RE classes were used to indoctrnate or divide people, but I see no problem with an RE class which simply informs children on various religions beliefs, practices and history in the interest of simply increasing awareness and understanding. That is how we increase unity between groups.
But why? Why must a sexuality be a part of one's identity at all? Why must being gay all of a sudden mean you're part of a group of gay folks who have likely nothing else in common other than their sexual preferences? I'm a bisexual, but I don't feel the need for flags or groups or an identity as a bisexual. I just couldn't care less.
These labels were only invented in the early 20th c. No-one needed them before this.
ImmortalFlame
Woke gremlin
It doesn't have to be. But some people want it to be part of their identity, and I see no problem with that. We all define ourselves by all sorts of different things: by class, by job, even by hobbies and interests (I'm a gamer, by the way). The labels are only harmful when we attach harmful ideas TO them. For most people who identify, it is far less about creating a distinction between them and the out-group, and far more about simply having a frame of reference with which they can accurately identify and express themselves.
My best friend is currently going through this. About a year and a half ago, they came out as non-binary, and we have talked at length about the impact that simply adopting that label has had on them. They have become less depressed, less socially anxious, more expressive, more creative, and they have found not only an NB community that embraces them, but further avenues which have lead them to such things as drag, which they have been participating in for well over a year now and have been finding it a huge source of creative and personal fulfillment. They have told me how simply acknowledging themselves as NB has actually solved a huge, conflicting aspect of their self-identity and largely alleviated them of a lot of mental health issues.
Nobody is REQUIRED to label themselves, but the label itself is not bad. In fact, it can be a huge positive for people who discover that there is a word for what they are.
I did very explicitly state that this is not an intrinsic part of using labels in my previous post. Just because a person identifies as gay doesn't mean they HAVE to be "in a group". It's just nomenclature that is used to self-identify, not a patch you stitch into a jacket. I get that a lot of people DO use it that way, but that is their choice and they have the right to make it.
That's also your choice. Most of my bisexual friends don't bother with it either (ironically, the friend I mentioned above is one of them). But some do.
No, they just didn't EXIST before this. That doesn't mean that those labels could not have actually provided a tremendous help to a lot of people.
In any case, this is a nonsensical argument. Just because something is relatively new doesn't mean it doesn't have tremendous social import and is worth learning about.
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exchemist
Veteran Member
But Oscar Wilde got put in gaol for being voile et vapeur , around that time.
As I see it, the problem is that faced by all minorities. The majority, or a segment of it, is likely to view the minority as abnormal, perhaps distastefully so. It is very easy for a subculture to develop that stigmatises and victimises minorities. One sees this especially in school, actually, as it is a time when people are searching for an identity and membership of various groups, in terms of tastes, dress, choice of friends etc. tends to preoccupy them. It also makes for an uphill struggle for those who feel they are, or might be, members of one of these minorities. Am I normal? Is what I feel OK, or is something wrong with me?
It seems to me better to normalise these minority preferences by explaining they are a thing, they are normal, there is nothing to hide - and woe betide anyone who bullies somebody for their preference.
Yes, this is fine, but I think there comes a point when one needs to outgrow the flags and the bracelets. Put sexuality in the bedroom where it belongs.
I still don't see why this requires a label, but we're clearly at odds on this so I'm not really bothered either way.
exchemist
Veteran Member
What flags and bracelets?
As I say, at my son's school it is just not an issue. At all. Nobody parades anything. They just get on with it. But that's because the school culture is open about it.
ImmortalFlame
Woke gremlin
Again, nobody REQUIRES it, but it CAN be helpful.
Do you remember the part in 1984 where Orwell mentions how, under Big Brother, the dictionaries kept getting smaller? Their intention was pretty explicit:
“‘Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thought crime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it.’”
Imagine being a gay man in a world where the word "gay" or any words even relating to it didn't exist. How much more difficult do you think it would be to come to terms with what you are in yourself, much less for other people to do so? By narrowing the range of language, you are not just limiting people's ability to talk about - and therefore understand - it, but you are limiting people's ability to even comprehend or coneptualize that thing in their own mind.
Words are a powerful social apparratus that not only allow us to bridge gaps in knowledge between ourselves and others, but to create and broaden the knowledge we have of ourselves.
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Because I wouldn't feel the need for a label since I wouldn't concieve of myself of 'being' anything. My concept is I have a certain desire towards a certain group of folks. For me it's based on what I want to do and with whom, not on what I am. This was also the approach of many gay folks pre mid 20th c.
Sex and Gender in the Victorian Era - The Atlantic
"Wresting the Victorians from the prison of dour, prudish stereotypes to which their children and grandchildren consigned them is a project that has occupied scholars for more than a few decades now. Goldhill, a professor at Cambridge, has produced an insightful contribution to that effort. But even more resonant for our own times of sexual and gender heterodoxy—when ambiguity is the new frontier—is what the Bensons can tell us about the prehistory. As a great deal of queer history has by now demonstrated, the strictly defined categories of “homosexual” and “heterosexual” are relatively new: bright lines drawn across the late-20th-century sexual landscape that made “coming out” a dichotomous choice.
For the Victorians, the situation was much more fluid. A woman’s romantic interest in another woman could be seen as excellent preparation for marriage. Though sex between men was a criminal offense (in Britain, lesbianism was invisible before the law), there was, as yet, hardly a homosexual identity defined by same-sex desire. Until the early 1950s, a man could have sex with another man without thinking himself in any respect “abnormal”—as long as he steered clear of the feminine dress or behaviour that marked a so-called pouf or queen. To pry off the Benson roof is to ask the question: What was it like to live before and during the invention of modern sexuality?
...
If all of this sounds bewildering, that, for Goldhill, is precisely the point. Absolute as Victorian moral certainties appeared to be, they nonetheless permitted a great deal of ambiguity in matters romantic and sexual, even in the most respectable of families.
...
Writing in 1930, Fred thought the much-deplored “Victorian reticences and secrecies” needed defending in an increasingly confessional era. They were “profitable as well as prudish.” The same year, Virginia Woolf (who had both a husband and a female lover) lamented the erosion of sexual ambiguity. Unlike Fred Benson, she was unsentimental about her Victorian upbringing, yet as the dichotomy between homosexual and heterosexual solidified, she could see what had been lost: “Where people mistake, as I think, is in perpetually narrowing and naming these immensely composite and wide flung passions—driving stakes through them, herding them between screens.
...
Sandwiched between the fluidity of the Victorian years and the proliferating sexual and gender identities of the new millennium, the late 20th century’s straight-gay paradigm looks decidedly old-fashioned—maybe even a little stodgy.”
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Twilight Hue
Twilight, not bright nor dark, good nor bad.
That sounds about right.
Altfish
Veteran Member
Sex education needs to start as early as possible.
You don't start with the mechanics; you start by teaching about 'relationships'.
You teach kids what it is alright for Uncle Ernie to do to the four year old girl. Inappropriate touching.
You teach kids to talk to their parents or teacher if anything happens to them that they were uncomfortable with.
ImmortalFlame
Woke gremlin
And that's fine. The problem arises when you start prescriptively stating that simply USING or idetifying as a label necessitates grouping-off, or denigrating people for doing so.
The Victorian approach to sexuality says basically nothing about the positive impact that modern nomenclature has on people. I mean, I don't think you'd ever wish to say that things were actually BETTER for gays, lesbians or bisexuals in Victorian England, would you?
oldbadger
Skanky Old Mongrel!
Yep. Fair enough.
Maybe younger kids should be introduced to Nature education which would include reproduction in various animals?
Parents need to be educated to help with their kids sexual education about reproduction, identity, etc
I'm not saying it was better; I'm looking at the two different approaches. One uses labels and the other doesn't. The one that doesn't allows for more fluidity and vagueness, 'just be there doing that', as they say.