Young people are more likely to accept gay couples

— And to identify as gay

A sign outside the House chamber at the Statehouse in Indianapolis on Monday.

By

As it does regularly, Gallup asked Americans last year if they identified as straight, lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender. About 7 percent of Americans said they identified as one of the latter four categories, essentially the same percentage as identified that way in 2021.

There was an interesting divide, though. When Gallup broke out responses by age, it found that younger Americans were much more likely to identify as LGBT (the Gallup poll excluded “queer,” so no “Q”) than older ones. Only about 2 percent of those in the Silent Generation (born during or before World War II) identified as LGBT. By contrast, about 20 percent of Gen Z (should be known as Lockdowners) chose one of the LGBT options.

This phenomenon is not new. The divide between older and younger Americans on self-identification has been a subject of debate for some time and is often cited in rhetoric targeting the perceived liberalizing effect of education and culture. As Florida considered legislation passed last year that limited discussion of same-sex relationships in schools, the dangerous idea that kids were being actively encouraged to be gay became prevalent in right-wing rhetoric.

There is a simpler explanation, one that grants adults the agency of their choices. Decades of hostility to same-sex relationships loosened in recent years, and younger Americans grew up in a country that was less hostile to gay relationships than it used to be. And, therefore, they’re more comfortable expressing their sexual identities openly.

We can see the trend in acceptance of same-sex relationships in the General Social Survey (GSS), a national poll fielded every two years. (The 2020 survey was postponed to 2021 because of the pandemic.) Since the early 1970s, respondents have been asked how they view sexual relations between members of the same sex. After rising slightly in the 1980s — no doubt influenced in part by the AIDS epidemic — there has been a steady decline in the percentage of Americans who say same-sex relationships are always wrong. Importantly, that decline has been seen in every generational group, even those who haven’t attended elementary school in half a century.

We only have good data for members of Gen Z and younger groups in the past two GSS polls. Since only a relatively small group of members of that generation were surveyed in 2018, there’s a greater margin of error for that year. That probably helps explain the seeming jump in the 2021 figure.

Importantly, there is a correlation between the extent to which generations view same-sex relationships as always wrong and the extent to which members identify as LGBT in Gallup’s data. Gen Z is least likely to view those relationships as wrong (the dot farthest to the left on the graph below) and most likely to identify that way (highest). (The graph also indicates where the Gen Z dot would be using the 2018 GSS data. It’s visible as a light red dot behind the “G” in the label for the vertical axis.)

In the abstract, this could be seen as evidence in favor of the idea that young people were being trained to view LGBTQ relationships as acceptable. But this does not account for the downward shift in opposition to same-sex relationships among members of other generations.

It also ignores other lessons from American history. In 2015, The Washington Post presented this graph, showing how identification of children as left-handed rose during the 20th century and then plateaued at about 1 in 8 kids.

Kids weren’t being groomed to be lefties. Quite the opposite: When my mother was young, she was told to learn to write with her right hand. Over time, that idea fell out of favor and lefties could simply be lefties. The percentage of the population that is left-handed stabilized.

Perhaps what’s happening with LGBTQ identification is analogous. Perhaps the change isn’t that kids are being encouraged to be gay when they aren’t; perhaps it’s that they feel free to identify that way if they are — a freedom older Americans didn’t enjoy. A freedom some still see an unacceptable for themselves or in their peer groups.

Maybe what Gallup is doing, then, is simply more accurately measuring reality.

Complete Article HERE!

Pompeii’s House of the Vettii reopens

— A reminder that Roman sexuality was far more complex than simply gay or straight

The atrium of the House of the Vettii, Pompeii.

By

As Pompeii’s House of the Vettii finally reopens after a long process of restoration, news outlets appear to be struggling with how to report on the Roman sex cultures so well recorded in the ruins of the city.

The Metro opened with the headline “Lavish Pompeii home that doubled as a brothel has some interesting wall art”, while the Guardian highlighted the fresco of Priapus, the god of fertility (depicted weighing his oversized penis on a scale with bags of coins) as well as the erotic frescoes found next to the kitchen.

The Daily Mail, on the other hand – and arguably surprisingly – said nothing about the explicit frescoes and instead centred its story on the house’s “historic hallmarks of interior design”.

As a scholar who researches modern and contemporary visual cultures of sexuality, I was struck by how the heavy presence of sexual imagery in the ruins of Pompeii seems to confound those writing about it for a general audience.

Rethinking Roman sexuality

As a gay man and a researcher on sexuality, I am all too familiar with the ways modern gay men look to ancient Rome in search of evidence that there have always been people like us.

It is now clear among the research community that such straightforward readings of homosexuality in classical history are flawed. That is because same-sex relations among Romans were lived and thought about in very different ways from our own.

Roman sexuality was not framed in terms of the gender of partners but in terms of power. The gender of a free man’s sexual partner was less relevant than their social position.

A room with walls coloured in colourful frescos of nude men and women.
Frescoes from the House of the Vettii.Courtesy of the Archaeological Park of Pompeii

Socially acceptable Roman sexuality was about power, power was about masculinity – and Roman patriarchal sex cultures were assertions of both. An adult free man could have sex as the penetrating partner with anyone of a lower social status – including women or slaves and sex workers of both genders.

Despite this, I understand how politically important and strategic it was for the early homosexual movement to invent its own myth of origin and to populate history with figures that had been – they thought – just like us.

The flip side of modern notions of homosexuality being read into Roman history, is the way in which the widespread presence of sex in ancient Roman (including in the graffiti and visual culture preserved in Pompeii) has been disavowed or – at least – purified by mainstream modern culture.

Pornography in Pompeii

This phenomenon started when sexually explicit artefacts were first discovered in Pompeii, propelling archaeologists to preserve them due to their historical value, but to keep them hidden from the general public in “secret museums” on account of their obscene content.

Indeed, the coinage of the word “pornography” was a result of the archival need to classify those Roman artefacts. The term “pornographers” was first used to designate the creators of such Roman images in Karl Otfried Müller’s Handbook of Archaeology of Art (Handbuch der Archäologie der Kunst), from 1830.

The god Priapus is shown wearing a tunic that doesn't contain his cartoonishly large penis.
A fresco of Priapus in the House of the Vettii showing the god’s oversized penis.

The news coverage around the reopening of the House of the Vettii is one such example of mainstream modern culture sanitising Roman history.

When focusing on the fresco of Priapus, for instance, news outlets are quick to claim that the god’s oversized penis was merely a metaphor for the wealth accumulated by the men who owned the house. The pair had made their fortune selling wine after being freed from slavery.

This reading of the fresco, while not necessarily incorrect, overlooks the more complex – and for that reason, more interesting – role of phallic imagery in Roman culture.

As classicist Craig Williams writes, the images of a hyper-endowed, hyper-masculine Priapus that were widespread in Roman culture functioned not only as a source of identification but also as an object of desire for Roman men – if not to be penetrated by the large phallus, then at least to wish it was their own.

Priapus, with his large manhood and unquenchable desire to dominate others through penetration was, Williams tells us: “Something like the patron saint or mascot of Roman machismo.”

What’s missing from the story?

News coverage of the erotic frescoes found in a smaller room of the house has been similarly too straight forward in claiming them as evidence that that room was used for sex work.

While some scholars have certainly argued that perspective, others believe it unlikely. Some academics suggest that the erotic frescoes in that room (which probably belonged to the house’s cook) had more likely been commissioned as a gift to the Vettii’s favourite slave and very much fit the wider aesthetic of quirky excess that marks the house as a whole.

A light beautiful courtyard surrounded by columns.
A courtyard in the House of the Vettii.Courtesy of the Archaeological Park of Pompeii

In a culture where sex was not taboo but instead promoted as a sign of power, wealth and culture, it is fair to suggest that erotic images wouldn’t just belong in brothels. Sex was everywhere in Rome, including in literary and visual arts.

When reading the recent news stories, I could not help but think that their interpretations, while not wholly wrong, were too skewed into presenting the explicit frescoes as either metaphors for something more noble, or as something that was restricted to a specific site of Roman life – the brothel.

Perhaps these readings are privileged over others because we’re reluctant to accept that sex in ancient Roman culture – a culture we so often mythologise as our “origin” – was performed in ways that we are uncomfortable with.

Complete Article HERE!

Love and sex in 2022

— The five biggest lessons of the year

Shedding binaries, shaking off taboos and more – in a year with big events and changes, love and sex looked different, too.

By Jessica Klein

The ways we think about sex and love are always evolving, constantly influenced by cultural, political and global happenings. 

This year was no different. Much of that influence particularly spread online, especially in communities by and for those who identify across the LGBTQIA+ spectrum. Meanwhile, ripple effects from the self-reflection undertaken throughout the Covid-19 pandemic continued to rock the wider dating world, resulting in more intentional practices. People thought more about who they wanted to date, and how they wanted to do it. 

In 2022, this meant more folks openly moved away from both gender and attraction binaries. We saw people rely even more on the internet to find potential partners, for better and for worse. And daters got increasingly vocal about exploring different types of relationships, from solo polyamory to platonic life partnerships.

People are moving away from long-held binaries

In Western culture, relationships, gender and sexuality have long been defined by binaries. Either a couple is dating or they’re not; a person is attracted to women or men; a person is either a woman or man. Throughout the past several years, however, these binaries have grown steadily less entrenched, as more people are looking at sexual orientations and gender identities in different ways. And this was especially pronounced in 2022.

As far as sexual orientation, a person’s gender has become less relevant for many people when looking for a partner; this is especially the case for many millennials and Gen Zers navigating intimate relationships. For some, it’s even ended up at the “bottom of the list” in terms of what they desire in a partner. That’s particularly true for people who identify as queer or pansexual, meaning their romantic and/or sexual attractions don’t hinge on gender.

As 23-year-old, London-based Ella Deregowska put it, identifying as pansexual has allowed her to “fluidly move and accept each attraction I feel without feeling like I need to reconsider my identity or label in order to explain it”. Experts say the increased openness towards non-binary attractions, in part, is linked to increased representation in popular media – from television shows such as Canada’s Schitt’s Creek, in which Dan Levy plays the pansexual David Rose, to celebrities like Janelle Monae, who’ve identified with pansexuality.

It’s not just sexual orientation that’s felt a shift from binaries this year. More young folk (and celebrities) have also moved away from binaries to describe their gender. Identifying as non-binary or gender fluid lets many people express themselves more genuinely, since that expression may not inhabit one black-or-white category. “One day I wake up and feel more feminine, and maybe I want to wear a crop top and put earrings on. And then there’s times in which I’m like, I need my [chest] binder [to minimise the appearance of my breasts],” says Barcelona-based Carla Hernando, 26.

Even with more people breaking down sexual and gender binaries, however, dating can still be a minefield for those who identify as non-binary. From dating apps enforcing gender binaries, to partners pushing non-binary daters into gendered roles, not all parts of society have caught up with the movement away from binary gender norms.

In 2022, binaries grew less entrenched, as more people looked at sexual orientations and gender (Credit: Getty)
In 2022, binaries grew less entrenched, as more people looked at sexual orientations and gender

We’re increasingly challenging relationship taboos and traditions

Relationships among young daters have increasingly bucked entrenched norms this year.

Gen Z is has particularly embraced the grey area of dating by purposefully entering into ‘situationships’. These connections satisfy needs for close companionship, intimacy and sex, but don’t necessarily hinge on long-term relationship goals – instead existing somewhere between a relationship and a casual hook-up. Per Elizabeth Armstrong, a sociology professor at the University of Michigan, US, who studies these types of relationships, Gen Zers feel that “the situationship, for whatever reason, works for right now. And for right now, ‘I’m not going to worry about having a thing that is ‘going somewhere’”.

Overall, openness towards many kinds of non-traditional relationships has gained visibility, too. Ethical non-monogamy has been all over TikTok, often in the form of polyamorous relationships, in which more than two committed romantic and sexual partners cohabit. Then there are open relationships, which can look like anything from partners who hook up with other couples together, to those who have separate relationships with others outside their primary partnership. There are also poly people who prefer to live solo, embracing a ‘solo polyamorous’ lifestyle, through which they live alone but engage in multiple, committed relationships. Others to choose to cohabit with platonic partners, forming lasting relationships and even buying homes and planning futures with close friends rather than lovers.

Yet despite all this, plenty of relationship taboos and myths have endured, and likely will continue to. Single shaming, for instance, has been going strong since the start of the pandemic, when a survey by dating service Match showed 52% of UK-based single adults had experienced shaming for their (lack of) relationship status. And people still judge Leonardo DiCaprio and friends for their wide age-gap relationships. Meanwhile, myths like the idea of ‘opposites attracting’ endure, even though they often don’t.

Splitting became both easier and harder in 2022; divorce coaches thrived even as finances trapped couples together (Credit: Getty)
Splitting became both easier and harder in 2022; divorce coaches thrived even as finances trapped couples together

Breaking up is hard to do – and Covid-19 and the economy make it harder

The increased comfort around different ways to date hasn’t made break-ups any easier. Plenty of couples who blossomed under Covid-19 restrictions felt this acutely in 2022 – having started dating in ‘couple bubbles’ during lockdowns, many are struggling to adapt to relationships under more normal conditions. Some couples who thrive in solitude, it turns out, don’t cut it in the real world.

Yet in 2022, we’ve seen solutions for couples teetering on the edge of a break-up. “Life-changing” divorce coaches can help married couples navigate the mental health struggles of their break-ups, from the UK to Canada. These coaches represent a shift towards the normalisation of both seeking therapeutic aid in times of great stress, and of divorce overall. “It is no longer seen as a flaw of character, or a failure in one’s own life to divorce,” says Yasmine Saad, a clinical psychologist and founder of Madison Park Psychological Services in New York City. Hiring a divorce coach, therefore, is as natural as “wanting financial advice before investing your money”.

Or, couples who want to go the distance can try a gap year – an extended break that doesn’t signify the end of their relationships. Relationship therapists report seeing more of this in the wake of the pandemic, as couples who felt cooped up together over the last couple years want to explore life solo without breaking up.

Yet for couples set on splitting, the latest economic downtown has trapped some in joint living situations. Living alone these days, after all, isn’t cheap, and neither is buying an ex-partner out of their share of a joint dwelling. As Chantal Tucker, 37, who co-owns a London property with her ex-partner, put it, “I knew that I would never be able to afford to buy property again, and the prospect of renting in London forever was increasingly unpleasant.”

Some millennials struggled with 'dead bedrooms' in 2022 (Credit: Getty)
Some millennials struggled with ‘dead bedrooms’ in 2022

People are trying to make the increasingly bleak world of dating better 

For those who are single, meanwhile, navigating the treacherous waters of dating apps has still been hard.

It’s undeniable that dating apps have become the primary way for younger daters (millennials and Gen Z) to meet, with thousands of online dating sites in existence and 48% of 18 to 29-year-olds in the US using them. Unfortunately, bad behaviour on these apps is abundant, ranging from people using them to engage in infidelity or even harassment, the brunt of which female-identified users receive. It’s no wonder many people have become totally burnt out on online dating. Daters of all genders report being overwhelmed by the choices available on dating apps, saying it feels more like playing a numbers game than engaging with real potential partners.

“I feel burnt out sometimes when I feel like I have to swipe through literally 100 people to find someone who I think is moderately interesting,” says Philadelphia, US-based Rosemary Guiser, 32, but it’s almost impossible to avoid using apps to meet someone. “You could compare [their supremacy] a little bit to Amazon or Facebook,” says Nora Padison, a licensed graduate professional counsellor in Baltimore, US.

But because of the pandemic, people have become used to meeting online as an initial encounter. That pre-screening, for many, has been viewed as a safer, smarter way to decide to go on a real-life date, and it’s still the way many singles are engaging in more “intentional” dating. Another way is by doing it sober. A 2022 trends survey by dating service Bumble showed 34% of UK users were more likely to go on sober dates since the start of the pandemic, and 62% said they’d be more apt to form “genuine connections” when doing so.

Some bedrooms are ‘dead’, while others are booming

While the pandemic gave people time to explore and even reconsider their sexualities, it also definitely took a toll on people’s sex lives, specifically millennial couples. Data from 2021 shows US-based, married millennials reporting the most problems with sexual desire that year, often attributed to exhaustion from heavy workloads, mental health issues and financial stressors.

This year, we learned millennial couples seem to be arriving at sexless relationships faster than their older counterparts – as San Francisco, US-based sex therapist Celeste Hirschman noticed, it used to take her coupled clients around 10 to 15 years to stop having sex with each other. “Now, it’s maybe taking three to five,” she says.

But while many married millennials have struggled with sexless marriages, Baby Boomers may be having the best sex of their lives – their experience and patience having resulted in more bedroom skills and better communication. Gen Z – who  have a reputation for not having sex enough – are really just engaging in it more pragmatically. Their focus isn’t on settling down for the sake of it, but on getting their own lives together before bringing in a committed partner or thinking about starting a family.

Regardless of the type of sex anyone is having, there’s good news. Embracing a positive, growth mindset can make your sex life better. New Year’s resolution, anyone?

Complete Article HERE!

How I Get Strangers to Talk About Their Sex Lives

— I stop people on the bus, ask my cashier at CVS, or even beg my next-door neighbors.

By

My boyfriend held a cigarette in one hand and a Diet Coke in the other and said, “Are you fucking serious, Lys?” A few moments earlier, while lounging around a wicker table in his flowery backyard, I had flipped open my laptop and instructed him to tell me about all the women he’d slept with that week — or hooked up with, flirted with, even jerked off to. I told him to talk fast. My Sex Diaries column was due by EOD.

We were in an open relationship, insofar that I was pregnant via an anonymous sperm donor and he was a sexpot who could not be tamed. It was the only open relationship I’ve ever been in, and for that period of my life, it worked for me.

We banged out his diary together. I filed it. My editor had very few notes. The readers actually liked him, and all was good. It may sound strange, but I was happier producing such a vivid — and frankly, hot — diary than I was unsettled hearing about the multitudes of beautiful women my guy was going down on when I wasn’t around.

All this is to say that for the last eight years, Sex Diaries has come first. I mean, my children come first. My partner, Sam, whom I’ve been with ever since that guy, comes first. My parents and sister come first. But beyond all that, the weekly column always takes priority.

Normally, I don’t need to recruit friends or lovers for the column, but sometimes I do. The copy is due every Wednesday night — which sometimes means Thursday morning — so if I haven’t found a diarist by early in the week, I have to hustle.

Most of the time, I’m already engaging with a handful of potential diarists who’ve emailed me at sexdiaries@nymag.com with some info about themselves, hoping I’ll invite them to actually write one (which I almost always do). After that, I have to hope that they won’t flake or wind up being fraudulent or scary and that they’ll deliver something interesting, or at least coherent, for me to shape into a column. The diaries don’t pay, so there’s only so much pushing and probing I can do in good conscience. After all, no one owes me anything. In the end, about two in every five emails leads to an actual, publishable diary.

On the weeks when no one has emailed in or a diarist gets cold feet at the last minute, I stop strangers on the bus, at a local bar, or on the street — if they seem like passionate, horny, or simply authentic human beings — and ask them to sit with me for a half hour and entrust me with their stories.

“Hi. Sorry to bother you. I know this sounds ridiculous, but I write this column for New York Magazine called Sex Diaries — it’s pretty popular, honestly — where I profile someone’s love and sex life, or lack thereof, for a week. You can write it yourself, and I’ll clean it up for you. Or you can tell me everything here or later on the phone, and I’ll do the rest. We can disguise whatever you want in order for you to feel comfortable. But you have to remember that once it’s out there, I can’t take it offline, so you need to be okay with that … are you in?”

Occasionally, it works. Most people say that they have nothing remotely interesting going on — which, I’d argue, is still interesting! Other people are just too busy or private. Recently, a salesperson at CVS whom I approached thought I was hitting on him, and being a religious man and married, he was so offended and freaked out that he demanded I leave the store immediately. As I rushed out of there, pushing my son in his stroller, I actually started to cry.

Sometimes, I have to beg my neighbors, mom friends, or old high-school pals from my Facebook page to anonymously dish with me about their marriages, divorces, or affairs. And almost every week, I post something somewhere on social media, searching for random humans who will document their love and sex lives for me — for no good reason at all other than, perhaps, creative catharsis.

However it plays out, I try to make the experience as easy as possible for the diarists and to handle them with care. I make sure to protect their trust, and above all else, I never judge anything they tell me. When you tell me you’re having an affair, I will assure you that you’re not evil. When you tell me you’re hurting, I will share that I’ve been there too. When you tell me you’re weird, I will tell you that you’re cool as hell. And I will mean it all. Our relationships last only a few days and are driven by very direct questions and blind faith that we won’t lie to each other, then they’re over.

To understand my devotion to this column is to understand how it came to be mine and the freedom it has afforded me over the last eight years. In 2015, I decided to have a baby on my own for a lifetime of reasons you’ll have to buy my book to understand. I had always managed to make a decent living as a freelance writer, but at this point, there was no dependable work coming in, as I’d spent years trying to “break into Hollywood,” which wasn’t happening and slowly crushed me one disappointment after another. But I was pregnant, a marvelous thing, and I had faith that work would take care of itself somehow.

Out of the blue, an editor at The Cut asked me if I wanted to revive the column, which I had never heard of, explaining that it would be a weekly assignment with a steady paycheck. The work didn’t sound easy, but it didn’t sound hard either. Mostly, I saw the column as a gift. From New York, the media crowd, karma, or whatever. And I never stopped looking at it through that prism. Sex Diaries sustained me as I began life as a single mom. It solidified my role at The Cut, where I loved the people. And it gave me some writerly empowerment when I was feeling otherwise unwanted.

Sure, the column stresses me out sometimes. It’s a grind finding diarists every single week. I’ve only skipped two deadlines in all these years, and both were because I had preeclampsia with my pregnancies and was too out of it from the magnesium drip to resume work right away.

In the fall of 2019, we learned that HBO wanted to turn the Sex Diaries column into a docuseries, in which we’d document a week or two in someone’s sex life on film in the same spirit as we do in the column. This was fabulous news. I’d been chasing the TV scene for years, and it felt like this opportunity was another cosmic gift that I would never take for granted. But I knew that in the entertainment business, you had to fight every single day for a seat at the table. I had no reason to believe I’d be pushed out of the project, but I knew that I had to emphasize my value to the docuseries. To anybody who would listen, I said, “Let me handle the casting. You will never be able to cast this without me. No one knows how to find a Sex Diarist like I do.” Did I come across as too aggressive? Who cares! It was true.

So at 44 years old, my work life became unbelievably exciting and excruciatingly hard. My second child was still a baby, still breastfeeding, when we started casting and filming. A month later, COVID hit. Around this time, I got a book deal with a tight deadline and absolutely nowhere to write or think in peace. Politically, the world was burning down. My amazing kids, never amazing sleepers, kept us awake every single night. One of my best friends, the woman who taught me to advocate for myself, died of cancer — I cried for her all night, every night for many months. The weekly column was always due. The Zoom calls for the docuseries took up hours of my day despite the fact that no one even knew when we’d come out of this pandemic let alone feel romantic, sexual, or adventurous again.

Like all working moms, I was tired. But I had to cast this series, as promised. I revisited thousands of diarists I’d worked with throughout the years and asked if they’d be open to doing a diary without any anonymity and with cameras following them. Of course, the response was often “um, yeah, no.” I frantically called friends of friends who had cousins with roommates who were polyamorous, slut-positive, or simply lovestruck. I roamed the city, double-masked and desperate, sleuthing around for anybody who might be interested in talking about the sex they weren’t having with the lovers they weren’t seeing and the lives they weren’t living. I must have slipped into a thousand random DM’s per day, hunting for anybody who would indulge me. Instagram kept blocking my account, which would last only a few hours, thank God. I tracked down New Yorkers who belonged to sex clubs, posted provocative hashtags, or showed any sign that they were creative souls or open books. Our dream was for the cast to mirror an NYC subway car in terms of diversity. Eventually, with the help of the show’s amazing director and producers, we found our stars. Eight New Yorkers agreed to let us film their sex lives. None of them needed any convincing. They were all born for this moment. I did nothing, and they did everything.

Every week for what feels like forever, I’ve buckled down to “do a Sex Diary.” And because of that continuity — the ritual of it all — the column has unintentionally grounded me through the good and the bad. My tears are in those diaries. My hormones are in those diaries. A miscarriage is in those diaries. My childbirths are in those diaries. When I met Sam, my love, I was on deadline. When Biden won or our kids had COVID or we closed on our first house, I always had a diary to tend to.

My diarists have ranged from artists to engineers, sex workers, CEOs, and soccer moms, but they’ve all shared part of their lives with me, and through them, I’ve been afforded a healthy and effervescent work life that defies the drudgery of almost every other job I can imagine. To my mistresses, fuckboys, cougars, pillow princesses, and everyone in between, thank you. And to anyone curious about the column, email me, please.

Complete Article HERE!

How Sex Changed the Internet and the Internet Changed Sex

— An Unexpected History

By Samantha Cole

Samantha Cole has been a journalist for over 10 years, spending the last five reporting on tech, sexuality, gender, and the adult industry. She is a senior editor of Motherboard, the science and technology outlet for VICE.

Below, Samantha shares 5 key insights from her new book, How Sex Changed the Internet and the Internet Changed Sex: An Unexpected History. Listen to the audio version—read by Samantha herself—in the Next Big Idea App.

How Sex Changed the Internet and the Internet Changed Sex: An Unexpected History By Samantha Cole

1. The internet was built on sex.

Early modes of internet communication were predicated on, and popularized by, a desire for sex and romance. Bulletin Board Systems, the digital equivalent of public cork boards, were quickly popularized as places to access porn online. With names like SleazeNet, ThrobNet, and Pleasure Dome, many subscription-based bulletin boards were for trading images scanned from porn magazines or photos uploaded by amateurs.

But they weren’t all just for smut; they were also hubs of harm reduction, especially during the AIDs crisis and as a way for queer and marginalized people to find community and care in a time when coming out was even more dangerous than it is today.

On Usenet, a decentralized messaging system, people debated concepts of safe spaces and moderation. They fought over whether men should be permitted in women’s-only threads, and kept long-running threads about everything from politics to how have sex on a scuba dive.

In text-based multi-user domains, or MUDs people roleplayed as fantasy versions of themselves, and found love and loss. In one classic MUD legend, someone playing as an evil clown sexually assaulted other members of the chat, which threw the entire community into chaos.

“People fell deeply in love within these online spaces, met in person, got married, or got their hearts broken.”

In these systems, people grappled with how to define consent, abuse, and harassment. People fell deeply in love within these online spaces, met in person, got married, or got their hearts broken. Ex-lovers emailed administrators to ask to be removed from the chats, since seeing their former partners even through a screen was too emotionally charged. The desire to be seen and understood permeated these earliest predecessors of social media, and naturally, they often turned to the sexual.

2. The tech we take for granted was pioneered by sex.

Much of the technology used today was developed to build an internet devoted to sex and sex work. Browser cookies and user tracking were developed by online dating entrepreneurs and porn webmasters who wanted to keep track of who visited their sites so that they could advertise more effectively. Affiliate marketing, which makes a lot of the internet run today, was popularized by porn site owners who needed to make money from the thousands of people visiting their sites every day.

The JPEG was developed using a photo of a playboy centerfold named Lena, and her photograph was used as the test to standardize image processing for decades.

Webcams and web conferencing software were popularized by the earliest generations of cam models, who set up sites to sell a peek inside their bedrooms. Lifestreamers, who streamed their lives 24/7, no censorship, paved the way for today’s Twitch and Tiktok stars. Tech that was once used mostly for sexual intrigue we now use for business calls every day.

“Online sex tech pioneers are still crafting new ways to express themselves and capitalize on the internet’s insatiable desires.”

The founder of Web Personals, which was one of the very first online dating websites, claims to have invented the shopping cart and the tech that tracks users from page to page within a site.

Site subscriptions, members-only content, online credit card transactions, and advertising models—the list goes on, and online sex tech pioneers are still crafting new ways to express themselves and capitalize on the internet’s insatiable desires.

3. The internet transformed the porn industry.

The adult industry used to work very differently. Pre-internet, it was based on a studio system, where you typically had to have an agent, know a producer, or be located somewhere like LA or the San Fernando Valley. The production companies or the studios owned the rights to your images as well as all the video you shot with them.

This system also meant that buying porn required finding a store, browsing the shelves, and buying or renting a tape or magazine. These shops were very male-dominated spaces.

All of that changed with the internet and inventions like the webcam and user-generated content platforms like clip and cam sites. Suddenly anyone could break out and carve their own niche, retain ownership of their own content, vet clients through safer means, and work on their own terms, often without leaving home.

4. The internet transformed the sex toy industry.

The 70’s saw a revolution in women’s pleasure: people like Dell Williams, the founder of Eve’s Garden in New York City, and sex educator Joani Blank pioneered the notion of sex toys and orgasms as something healthy and worthwhile. Hitachi magic wands were sold at Macy’s and buying one is what inspired Dell Williams to open her own shop.

“More people than ever could safely browse, comparison shop, read reviews and chat about their interests, kinks, and fetishes.”

But when the World Wide Web came along in the late 80’s, the internet did for sex toys what it had done for porn: took an experience previously isolated to socially stigmatized spaces (like sex shops or adult video stores) and brought the shopping experience home. A wider variety of people could now access sex toys that were once out of their grasp. More people than ever could safely browse, comparison shop, read reviews and chat about their interests, kinks, and fetishes.

There has been a big destigmatizing effect as well. It’s a lot less awkward than it used to be to buy a sex toy, and it’s a lot less weird to talk to strangers about your kinks.

5. The future of sex online depends on us.

On the modern-day internet, sexual speech—including sex work, sex education, and expressions of sexuality outside of the heteronormative—are increasingly suppressed. Bad legislation like FOSTA (Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act) or SESTA (Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act), which passed into law in 2018 and conflated all sexual speech as trafficking, made it harder for anyone working in these industries or trying to build communities around sexual identity to exist online. Anti-sex groups are pushing for increased censorship and discrimination by mainstream platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, under the guise of saving women and children from exploitation. Demonizing sex doesn’t solve abuse online—it makes it worse.

The pessimistic view is that things will continue to get more sterilized and censored online. The reality is that things aren’t getting more welcoming to sex, they’re getting more hostile.

If we want a future where sexuality, innovation, and safety co-exist, then we have to stand against discrimination of sex workers and marginalized people, and take control of how we want to exist online.

Complete Article HERE!

23 new gender and sexuality terms added to the dictionary in 2022

By

  • In 2022, Dictionary.com and the Oxford English Dictionary added 23 words to describe gender and sexuality concepts.
  • New gender-related words include “enby,” “nounself pronoun,” and “pangender.”
  • New sex and sexuality words include “throuple,” “sixty nine,” and “simp.”

As people’s understandings of gender and sexuality shift, whether due to cultural changes or scientific findings, so do the words we use to describe them.

Language is a major factor in how to shape our identities and view ourselves, and using words that people relate to can break down taboos and allow them to feel understood.

This year, Dictionary.com and Oxford English Dictionaryadded new gender and sexuality words and phrases to their pages, giving readers more options to describe who they are, what they desire, and how they show up in the world.

Words that are already popular slang, like “simp,” made the cut, as did the verb form of “sixty nine.”

Oxford English Dictionary additions include ‘TERF,’ ‘stealthing,’ and ‘sixty nine’

  • Anti-gay (adjective): Opposed or hostile to homosexual people (sometimes specifically gay men) or homosexuality
  • Condomize (verb): To put on a condom; to use a condom during sexual intercourse, either as a contraceptive or to protect against infections
  • Demisexual (adjective, noun): Involving ambiguous or amorphous sexual characteristics or activity
  • Enby (adjective, noun): A person who has a non-binary gender identity; non-binary
  • Hypersexualize (verb): To make (a person or thing) pervasively, excessively, or inappropriately sexual; to imbue or permeate with intense sexual or erotic
  • Multisexual (adjective): Characterized by sexual or romantic attraction to, or sexual activity with, people of different sexes or gender identities
  • Pangender (adjective): Designating a non-binary person whose gender identity encompasses multiple genders, which may be experienced simultaneously or in a fluid way
  • Sixty nine (verb): To engage with a partner in simultaneous mutual oral stimulation of the genitals for sexual pleasure; to participate in a sixty-nine”
  • Stealthing (noun): The action or practice of removing one’s condom during sex (or occasionally of intentionally damaging it prior to sex) without the knowledge and consent of a partner
  • TERF (noun): Transgender-exclusionary radical feminist; typically derogatory term for a feminist whose advocacy of women’s rights excludes (or is thought to exclude) the rights of transgender women

Dictionary.com added ‘simp,’ ‘aromantic,’ and ‘throuple’

  • Aromantic (adjective): Noting or relating to a person who experiences little or no romantic attraction to other people
  • Bachelorx party (noun): An inclusive pre-wedding party, often on the night before or in the days leading up to the wedding, and ranging from a night of drinking to a destination vacation (used in contrast to bachelor party and bachelorette party, and intended to be welcoming for wedding participants and guests of any gender)
  • Demisexual (adjective): Noting or relating to a person who is sexually attracted only to people with whom they already have an emotional bond
  • Feminine of center (adjective): Noting or relating to a person, especially an LGBTQ+ person, who is more feminine than masculine on a spectrum of gender expression
  • Hegemonic masculinity (noun): A socially constructed masculine ideal, defined chiefly in contrast to or as the opposite of femininity, and held up as the most prestigious form of manliness in a heteropatriarchy
  • Heteropatriarchy (noun): A hierarchical society or culture dominated by heterosexual males whose characteristic bias is unfavorable to gay people and females in general
  • Masculine of center (adjective): Noting or relating to a person, especially an LGBTQ+ person, who is more masculine than feminine on a spectrum of gender expression
  • Neopronoun (noun): A type of gender-neutral pronoun, coined after 1800, and used especially by nonbinary and genderqueer people, as in English ze/hir/hirs,e/em/eirs, or xe/xem/xyrs
  • Nounself pronoun (noun): A type of invented gender-neutral pronoun used by some nonbinary and genderqueer people in place of gendered pronouns such as he/himself or she/herself to express a spiritual or personal connection to a specific concept: the nounself pronoun is derived from a word, usually a noun, that is linked to that concept, such as the use of star/starself by people who feel a connection to celestial objects or bun/bunself, derived from bunny, by people who feel a connection to rabbits
  • Simp (noun, verb): A person, especially a man, who is excessively attentive or submissive to an object of sexual attraction; To be excessively attentive or submissive, especially to an object of sexual attraction
  • Sologamy (noun): The practice or state of marriage to one’s self
  • Throuple (noun): Three people who are engaged or 
 married to one another, or involved 
 as romantic partners
  • Unlabeled (adjective): Noting or relating to a person who does not name their gender or sexuality

Complete Article HERE!

Americans’ support for transgender rights has declined.

— Here’s why.

A sign outside a restroom in Durham, N.C., in May 2016.

The culture war over transgender rights is part of a fight over competing notions of gender and sexuality, including issues like abortion and sex education

by Kelsy Burke and Emily Kazyak

During the 2022 midterm election campaign, Republican public officials targeted transgender rights in what NPR and other news media have called the new front in the culture wars. Last month’s Public Religion Research Institute’s American Values Survey appears to offer confirmation, finding increased polarization on all measures of LGBTQ rights. In particular, Americans’ support for transgender rights has declined.

Public opinion on ‘bathroom bills’

Take one measure: whether laws should require transgender people to use bathrooms that correspond to their sex assigned at birth, not their current gender identity. In 2016, only 35 percent of all Americans favored these “bathroom bills,” the first of which was proposed that year in North Carolina. In 2022, after numerous other states proposed similar laws, the number of Americans supporting them rose to 52 percent.

The jump was especially pronounced for White evangelicals and Republicans. In 2016, only 41 percent of White evangelicals and 44 percent of Republicans supported the requirement that transgender people use bathrooms that aligned with their sex assigned at birth. By 2022, that number doubled to 86 percent and 87 percent, respectively.

Other groups also increased their opposition to transgender rights, but the rise was less dramatic for Democrats and Americans who are unaffiliated with religion. Only 27 percent of Democrats favored bathroom bills in 2016, compared with 31 percent in 2022. Among nonreligious respondents, support for requiring transgender people to use the bathroom that aligns with their sex assigned at birth increased from 21 percent in 2016 to 34 percent in 2022.

These numbers suggest that transgender issues are increasingly being lived out in polarizing ways among Americans — in other words, that the “culture wars” narrative holds true. As sociologists, we have sought to dig deeper than the quantitative findings to understand why Americans hold such diverging beliefs.

Gender logics

Using Nebraska as a case study, we asked residents to explain their views about transgender bathroom use in their own words.

The random sample of 938 mostly cisgender Nebraska residents who completed the mail survey were evenly split across this issue, with a slight majority (51 percent) saying transgender people should be required to use bathrooms that align with the sex they were assigned at birth. Like the latest PRRI national data, our respondents who were politically conservative and White evangelicals were more likely to oppose transgender rights on bathroom use.

In analyzing the 623 respondents who answered open-ended questions about “bathroom bills,” we found that support or opposition hinges on beliefs about the nature of gender itself. Sociologists have described these as believing in “static gender” (assigned at birth and unchanging) or “fluid gender” (can change over the life course and can manifest differently for different people).

Supporters of transgender rights believe in gender fluidity and take transgender people’s experiences seriously. These respondents reasoned that “people should live their lives as the way they identify themselves.” They argued that to deny transgender people the ability to use the bathroom aligned with their gender identity is “disrespectful,” “discriminating,” and “exposes them to needless humiliation.” Some supporters questioned why social life is organized around gender at all, and suggested gender-inclusive restrooms as an option that would allow everyone, transgender or cisgender, to “pee in peace,” as one of our respondents wrote.

In contrast, opponents of transgender rights see gender change as illegitimate and privilege cisgender people’s experiences. Respondents reason that “you cannot choose gender” and that “society should not be forced to recognize other categories than male and female.” Opponents also take for granted that social life should be organized by gender and position transgender people as threats to both the status quo and to cisgender people, especially women and children. To allow transgender people the ability to use the bathroom aligned with their gender identity is “dangerous to our children” and “an invasion of our privacy,” two respondents wrote.

The PRRI survey finds that Americans overall are more likely to view gender as static than as fluid (59 percent of adult Americans surveyed), dividing sharply along political and religious lines. In 2022, 87 percent of White evangelical Protestants say they believe there are only two genders, man or woman, compared with 68 percent of White mainline Protestants, 76 percent of Black Protestants, 70 percent of White Catholics, 51 percent of Hispanic Catholics, and 45 percent of nonreligious respondents. Eighty-eight percent of Republicans believe there are only two genders, man or woman, compared to 66 percent of independents and 36 percent of Democrats. These data reflect the broader political landscape, with White Protestant Republicans pushing anti-trans legislation.

The stakes of the culture wars

Though these findings obviously relate to transgender people, they implicate cisgender people, too. The culture war over transgender rights is part of a war over competing notions of gender and sexuality, and how those should be regulated in the social world. Thus, in 2022, we have observed simultaneous political attacks on transgender people, reproductive freedoms, and sex education. Americans are divided because we have fundamentally different vantage points over whose identities deserve protection and which experiences are to be prioritized and believed.

Complete Article HERE!

A history of the horny side of the internet

In a new book, journalist Samantha Cole digs through the rich history of sex on the internet, from BBS to FOSTA

By Russell Brandom

From the very beginning, people on the internet have been obsessed with sex.

That’s the argument laid out in a new book by journalist Samantha Cole, How Sex Changed the Internet and the Internet Changed Sex. Cole digs through early internet history to show how sexual content and communities were part of the internet from its earliest days and had a profound effect on how the online space deals with identity, community, and consent. From identity play on early bulletin board sites to the rise of online pornography as an industry unto itself, Cole makes the case that you can’t make sense of the internet without sex — even if today’s major platform companies would like to.

Content note: This interview describes multiple sexual practices in straightforward language. Readers who are uncomfortable with these topics should use discretion.

The book makes the case that sex was a fundamental part of the internet from the very beginning. Why do you think that is?

It’s just such a part of human nature to want to connect as deeply as possible to other people, whether it’s online or not — and the internet opened up a new venue for that. Suddenly people could be whoever they wanted to be. They could take on these personas that were different from who they were away from the keyboard. They could express themselves in a way they never had before. For a lot of people, that branches out into sexuality almost immediately.

“What level of reality do you want to experience through the internet?”

It’s interesting reading those old message boards where people describe themselves as mythological creators or blobs or whatever they wanted to be. Then they would have these really deep, interesting, philosophical conversations about love and sex and relationships. In many cases, they would meet up and go on dates after that. Sometimes they got married and had kids. I say in the book, there are real people walking around who only exist because these bulletin board systems connected their parents.

There’s an immediate security concern there because you have people adopting pseudonyms to share information that’s otherwise really private. But it seems like, at this stage, the internet didn’t have a ton of tools for keeping your identity private.

Right — just to get in the door of a BBS like this, you had to call someone on the phone and give them your name and credit card info. So it was tangibly personal between you and the admin. Once you were inside, a lot of them would let you use whatever name you wanted, but there were other communities that would demand you use your name. Others would have you put your email address at the end of every post so people could contact you directly. It’s an interesting divide: what level of reality do you want to experience through the internet? But the more sexualized communities really emerged when people were using the internet to pretend to be something they wished they were or wanted to try.

How much does this change when you get into the contemporary internet, built on companies like Google and Facebook that are able to treat sexual content very differently?

It gets really complicated when you go from a single person running their hobbyist bulletin board scanning Playboy pictures to this huge machine of moderators making decisions. People can get really frustrated not having a central person to talk to about what’s happening on this platform that is a big part of their life. So that definitely has been a huge shift. We have these huge monopolies that are just running the show for us now, and it’s hard not to feel like you don’t have any of that control left.

“The conversation is getting more heated because everyone has a stake in it.”

At the same time, these companies are now beholden to payment processors and banks, and so they have to push all of this stuff off of their platform, in many cases, because of those financial obligations. So just seeing that change, it’s hard not to imagine the internet is going to keep getting more sanitized and less sexual.

You describe a lot of early moments of sex panic in a way that seems very similar to what we see now — but then, in other places, the internet seems to have made people more accepting. Do you think the conversation over moderating sexual content is changing?

People are definitely more aware of the legal landscape. If you asked the average person in the late ’90s if they knew about something like the Communications Decency Act, they would have no idea what you were talking about. But now, lots of people have real opinions about Section 230 and are really read up on this stuff. It’s all a lot more visible, and the conversation is getting more heated because everyone has a stake in it. You have so many more people relying on the internet for their jobs, sexual or not. So people are paying attention now in a way that they haven’t been in previous decades

What about the second part of the title, how the internet changed sex? All through the book, you can see people getting turned on to new things or exploring themselves in ways that wouldn’t have been possible offline. Do you think the internet has made our sex lives more specific or extreme?

I think having access to communities of like-minded people can really be world-changing. I researched a lot about fetish and kink communities, and for a lot of people, before they found those communities, they thought they were the only ones. So it’s been really interesting to see that grow up with the internet. Suddenly, you have thousands and thousands of people reading forums about their specific fetish and talking about what they’re into and why they’re into it.

One thing that really surprised me was these forums about how to suck your own dick. People were just trading tips and advice about how to do it, exercises to do. You would never have access to that kind of information without the internet because, first of all, you would never say it out loud to someone, just hoping they were into it. But suddenly, you have access to all these people all over the world who are like, “Yes, I want to trade advice about how to suck my own dick.”

That one was actually too vulgar for the book.

Do you think the internet is creating these desires or just making it safe to express them?

It can be hard to tell. You can definitely discover something new that you didn’t know you were into. Or you might realize you were into it all along, and you didn’t know it.

One of the stories I wrote recently was about people who were into blueberries and blueberrification. A lot of them were into this because they had watched Charlie & the Chocolate Factory when they were kids and said, “Oh, that made me feel a way,” and carried that with them for years without telling anyone. Then they get online, and they see there are a lot of people who also feel this way. That’s a transformational change. It’s not just, “I found this thing I didn’t know I was into,” but also “Now I can really express myself and buy a blueberry suit because I see other people are doing it, too.”

Having that community makes you feel less weird. It’s less isolating. I think that’s a huge part of why people have so much shame about their sexuality and their porn use. They feel like they’re the only one who wants this. When you find out you’re not the only one, that can be revolutionary.

Complete Article HERE!

Exploring the ornate and provocative at NYC’s Museum of Sex

The entrance to Super Funland, an erotically themed amusement carnival at the NYC Museum of Sex. The museum describes its mission as intending to “preserve and present the history, evolution and cultural significance of human sexuality.”

By

“I hope you leave feeling different than when you came in!” a cheery museum attendant calls to a group of people as they exit a small theater labeled “Tunnel of Love,” having just finished experiencing a “four-dimensional, abstract, artistic rendition of an orgy.”

Equal parts education, art and entertainment, the Museum of Sex draws attendees in with its playful advertising and taboo subject nature, with an interior that sparks thoughtful conversation about a wide range of topics. Queer identities and inclusion, the entertainment industry, pregnancy, abortion and sexual exploitation are all explored through historical artifacts, film and art. The museum describes its mission as intending to “preserve and present the history, evolution and cultural significance of human sexuality.”

The museum spans four floors and is cyclical in nature, both beginning and ending in a large gift shop. After entering through the store, there is a staircase that leads to the first floor, which is made up of a large room full of historical paraphernalia housed behind little windows. There seems to be no categorical order to the items, which include adult toys and clothing, anatomical models, OBGYN tools and explicit “how-to” guides. Many of these items were donated to the museum from personal collections of important activists in queer and sexual liberation scenes. All items are accompanied by notecards that not only explain the inventions and functions of the artifacts themselves, but also the historical and political context of the time they were made and any controversies that may have arisen due to their creation.

NYC’s sex museum invites you to take a risqué ride through history!

The second floor is an art gallery currently showing an exhibit titled “F*ck Art: The Body and its Absence.” The exhibit showcases pieces of art that explore themes of sexuality and identity from artists of many different cultural backgrounds, including works by Native American 2Spirit, Latinx, African American, Asian, Caribbean and Queer and Disabled artists. Many of these artists are also native New Yorkers. The gallery includes sculpture, painting, photography, mixed media and film pieces that display a variety of attitudes towards sex and sexual liberation.

The third floor currently houses an exhibit called “Porno Chic to Sex Positivity: Erotic Content & the Mainstream.” This exhibit explores the history of sex and sexual exploitation in American media starting from the 1960s, all the way up to that of the current day. The room begins with walls of magazine advertisements and props from television commercials with notecards that detail the sexual controversy that followed their airing. The tales of outrage were spurred by anything from the sexual exploitation of women to the placement of women in traditionally male positions of sexual power.

Past these artifacts there is a theater proudly displaying a banner with the words “Scandalous Scenes of Cinema” printed across it. Inside the theater, visitors are welcome to sit and watch both implicitly and explicitly sexual clips from mainstream movies that have scandalized audiences since their airing. Along the back wall of the room, behind the cinema, is a series of tall stalls labeled respectively with a decade. Aiming to present the evolution of sex as heard in music, visitors can step inside a stall to listen to music and watch the accompanying music video from each decade. The final wall of the room is dedicated to artifacts, much like the first floor, but relating to sexuality specifically within the music industry.

The third floor serves not only as the final floor of the museum, but the first floor of “Super Funland,” the accompanying amusement to the museum and the reason so many bachelorette parties frequent the building. Super Funland echoes the three-floor nature of the museum, but flowing down the stairs instead of up. To enter Super Funland, visitors are guided down a hallway featuring old carnival pictures and mirrored dioramas depicting the underground, risqué history of carnivals while they wait to be seated for the next showing of a six minute film about the history of the carnival, starting from ancient Greek times all the way up to today. After the film, the museum’s very own “Erotic Carnival” begins.

After exiting the film there is a large hallway with kaleidoscopic video footage from Coney Island that leads to a room of traditional carnival games — with a rather provocative twist. In Skee-ball visitors are assigned a different “God of Sex” as their icon, claw machines contain sperm and eggplant shaped pillows, the bounce house is fashioned out of balloons shaped like female breasts, and the entrance to the “Tunnel of Love” promises viewers an incredibly unique, four dimensional experience.

Going down the stairs to the second floor, one will immediately be welcomed by a spinning sign that says “Pornamatic,” where budding stars can step into a photo booth to see their faces on the — X-rated — silver screen. This room is perfect for couples, with a machine that dispenses wedding vows and rings, as well as a game where couples who kiss for at least thirty seconds can spin a wheel to win prizes. Most of the room is dominated by a collection of pink posts that you can climb up to reach a slide, with the entrance fashioned to look like a red-painted mouth.

The slide is long, winding and contains rainbow multicolored lights that blink wildly as you slip down to the first floor. The first floor contains the museum’s bar, as well as several themed photo booths and a few more carnival games. Exiting will bring you back into the same gift shop that houses the entrance, though with a renewed sense of wonder at all of the items within.

Overall, the Museum of Sex does a wonderful job of balancing “business and pleasure,” ensuring an educational, but never dull, experience for its attendees. Tickets include both museum and Superfunland admission, as well as one round of each carnival ride and game. It’s easy to win little knick-knacks for free as souvenirs, in case a friend asks you what you were up to this weekend. The elevator is currently non-operational due to ongoing repairs, so anybody in need of accessible accommodation is encouraged to call ahead to ensure a smooth experience. Admission is solely for those 18 and up.

Complete Article HERE!

After Roe, teens are teaching themselves sex ed, because the adults won’t

From left: Alyson Nordstrom, Lily Swain, Emma Rose Smith and Paige Buckley, all 17, formed a group called Teens For Reproductive Rights in Tennessee in response to Roe’s fall.

By

Sweating in the sun, two dozen teenagers spread themselves across picnic blankets in a grassy park and prepared to discuss the facts of life they never learned in school.

Behind them on a folding table, bouquets of pamphlets offered information teachers at school would never share — on the difference between medical and surgical abortions, and how to get them. Beside the pamphlets sat items adults at school would never give: pregnancy tests and six-packs of My Way Emergency Contraceptive.

Emma Rose Smith, 17, rose from the blankets, tucked her pale-blonde hair behind her ears and turned off the music on a small, black speaker. She faced the assembled high-schoolers, all members of her newfound group, Teens for Reproductive Rights, and began talking about the nonprofit Abortion Care Tennessee. Her words hitched at first, then tumbled in a rush.

“A little bit about them,” Emma Rose said, “is they’re an organization that funds people’s abortions if they can’t afford it. Also, by the way, there’s another organization that we can also talk about later, when we give you guys, like, resources, that actually does free mail-in abortion pills.”

Twelve days after the teens’ picnic, abortion would become illegal in Tennessee, a measure made possible by the Supreme Court’s June decision, in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, overturning Roe v. Wade. The students wouldn’t hear anything about it in school: State law does not require sex education, and it holds that schools in areas with high pregnancy rates must offer “family life education” focused on abstinence.

Listen to the Tennessee teens describe their experiences of sex education.

Post-Roe, the teens in the park had decided, this lack of education was no longer acceptable. They are part of a burgeoning movement of high-schoolers nationwide who, after Roe’s fall, are stepping up to demand more comprehensive lessons on reproduction, contraception and abortion — and who, if the adults refuse, are teaching each other instead.

In Utah, high-schoolers rallied outside a courthouse in May to call for accurate education on sex and abortion. In Texas, a group of teens held a virtual protest on the gaming website Minecraft to urge the state to start giving middle-schoolers lessons on birth control. Over the summer, that group — Fort Bend Students United for Reproductive Freedom — began sharing mini-sex-education lessons to its Instagram account for the benefit of peers; recent posts include “Endometrial Ablation,” “Pap smears” and “WHAT IS PCOS?” (polycystic ovary syndrome).

And in Virginia, 15-year-old Rivka Vizcardo-Lichter is organizing demonstrations outside school board meetings to pressure the Fairfax County district to offer students information about reproductive health clinics, more detailed lessons on contraceptive methods other than abstinence (it already includes the basics, but she wants more) — and access to contraception.

“Teenagers are teenagers, and some teenagers are going to have sex,” she said. “They need to be educated on how to protect themselves from unwanted pregnancies and STIs [sexually transmitted infections] and sexual risk — especially if we’re removing the right to … choose whether or not you’re having a baby.”

Twenty-nine states and the District of Columbia require that students receive sex education at school, according to a tracker maintained by the nonprofit Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS). Thirty states demand that schools emphasize the importance of abstinence, and 16 states mandate “abstinence-only” sex education.

What students actually learn in the classroom varies by district and even by teacher, said Laura Lindberg, a public health professor at Rutgers University who has studied sex education in the United States for three decades. But it is often “too little too late,” she said. Her research suggests that less than half of U.S. teens receive instruction on where to get birth control before having sex for the first time, and she noted that the teen birthrate in the United States — 16.7 births per 1,000 females in 2019 — is consistently among the highest in the developed world, though it has been declining in recent years.

In the Tennessee park, Emma Rose scrolled her thumb down her phone screen, squinting at the glare, to read off details of upcoming advocacy: An outdoor concert to raise money for pro-abortion groups. A protest at the Tennessee Capitol on the day the state’s abortion ban takes effect.

Then she shared how she and the group’s three co-founders, Alyson Nordstrom, Lily Swain and Paige Buckley, all 17, see the future.

“We want to start getting groups structured in different parts of Tennessee,” Emma Rose said. Each spin-off chapter would be located at a different high school throughout the state.

Then those teens, too, could start teaching each other.

‘Alone and ignorant’

In some parts of the country, teens teaching teens sex ed is not a new idea.

That includes Park City, Utah, where Carly McAleer started high school four years ago having received a sex education that “basically amounted to scaring students with really grotesque photos” of sexually transmitted infections. Utah law requires sex education in all schools but prohibits “the advocacy or encouragement of the use of contraceptive methods or devices,” instead mandating that schools “stress the importance of abstinence.”

By sophomore year, Carly, who is now 18 and uses they/them pronouns, began searching for a way to become better informed — and discovered the Planned Parenthood Teen Council program. The initiative, begun in 1989 in Washington state, trains teens to teach other schoolchildren sex education, then partners with willing private schools, school districts or community groups to host peer-led lessons on topics ranging from consent to contraception, depending on state law and school policy. Since its founding, it has expanded to 15 states, and last year 300 teens volunteered on 31 councils, according to Nadya Santiago Schober of Planned Parenthood.

Carly applied, was accepted their junior year, and was soon walking into middle-school classrooms — feeling more than a bit nervous — to lead classes on STIs and healthy relationships. Carly found that most students, starved for information, were intensely curious.

And Carly came to love moments that demonstrated the difference they were making — for example when they asked students what kind of lubricant is okay to use with condoms, “the room went silent, and so I told them a silicone-based or water-based lubricant.”

The end of Roe appears to have driven more interest in the Teen Council program, which is poised to expand, Santiago Schober said: “We are seeing an increase in the size of our groups for the year ahead.” In Utah, said L-E Baldwin, a community health educator with that state’s Planned Parenthood chapter, “we have had interest from rural parts of the state in ways we have not previously.”

Lindberg, the Rutgers professor, said the upsurge in young people advocating for comprehensive sex education is admirable, if unsurprising in a generation known for its activism on climate change, gun control and reading freedom. She cautioned that it is important would-be student-teachers pick out correct information from the plethora of misinformation available online.

“Young people can now access information in places that a generation ago weren’t an option, whether that’s a YouTube video or a Tik Tok or something on Instagram,” she said. “But they have to be careful.”

And, she warned, anyone pushing for more sex education will face stiff opposition from mostly conservative parents and lawmakers who argue that it is inappropriate and will lead students to become promiscuous — despite a large body of research that shows providing sexual health information and services to students is not linked with increased sexual activity, and the fact that a majority of American adults across political lines support sex education in schools.

Since the 1980s, when sex education became widespread in America as a means to fight HIV infection, conservatives and the religious right have steadily chipped away at the availability of sex ed nationwide, Lindberg said. And they’re especially fired up now, post-Roe and amid raging education culture wars that have delivered new laws restricting what teachers can say about race, racism, sexuality, gender identity and LGBTQ issues. As Charles Herbster, an unsuccessful gubernatorial candidate in Nebraska, put it at a rally alongside former president Donald Trump in May: “We’re going to take sex education out of the schools and put it back in the homes where it belongs.” (Herbster did not answer requests for comment

An ascendant parents’ rights movement is also working to limit what students learn in school about sex — partly through measures that increase parental control over students’ in-class reading choices and outlaw sexually explicit texts. Tiffany Justice, co-founder of the national parent group Moms for Liberty, said in an interview that “comprehensive sex ed has no place in school.” She said school districts everywhere should convene groups of parents to determine what is “age appropriate” for children to learn.

She had a message for students advocating around sex ed: “The teenagers are being pushed by activist organizations, whose purpose is making children politically literate rather than actually literate so they can become social justice warriors. That’s what the union is trying to do,” she said, referring to teachers organizations, which Justice said are pushing communist doctrine on America’s children.

In Virginia, Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin — who won his office by campaigning on education issues — this spring signed a law that requires school districts to notify parents whenever sexually explicit material is included in lessons, and to offer students non-explicit alternatives if parents request them.

Rivka, the Fairfax County teen, believes this law imperils students’ access to sex education. She is all the more determined to persuade her school district to expand its sex-ed curriculum by teaching about more contraceptive options and reproductive health clinics, as well as offering students free contraception. Her sex-ed experience was “abstinence 100” percent of the time, she said.

Fairfax sex ed comprises “an abstinence-based … curriculum, meaning that both abstinence and contraception are included in instruction,” district spokeswoman Julie Moult said in a statement. “Contraception is included in instruction in grades 8-12,” she added, pointing to teachings about “barrier, hormonal, and surgical contraceptive methods,” including condoms. Parents can remove their children from the program if they wish.

Moult said the district mentions Planned Parenthood as a resource for “students experiencing unintended pregnancy” in 10th grade. But she said “inclusion of reproductive health clinics could be considered” by school officials in the future.

Moult previously told The Washington Post that giving students access to contraception would be “outside the scope and purpose” of sex ed. The Fairfax County School Board this spring voted to delay a series of proposed changes that would have expanded the topics covered in sex ed and ended gender segregation in some classes, an idea Rivka supports.

“We have millions of men who don’t know how a period works,” Rivka said, recalling conversations with male friends who were clueless about things like tampons and pads. “Teens are just going out into these waters alone and ignorant.”

Teens wonder: Could we do better?

In Tennessee, Alyson Nordstrom had never so much as joined a march when Roe came under threat

But on May 3, feeling the angriest she had ever been, she tapped out an Instagram message to Emma Rose Smith, who had helped organize a 10,000-strong protest after the killing of George Floyd: “I don’t know if you saw the leaking of the Roe v Wade draft opinion from the Supreme Court but me and some of my friends [are] wanting to put together something in protest of that … I was wondering if you wanted to work together.”

Emma Rose responded: “I would love too!”

The girls each brought in their friends, Lily Swain and Paige Buckley, and Teens for Reproductive Rights was born — although they didn’t finalize the name until a coffee-shop confab, when they also created an Instagram profile. Their first event was a May 7 march in Nashville Public Square Park for abortion rights; their second, a music concert in late July that raised $5,000 for Abortion Care Tennessee.

At that point, the girls started to rethink what they might accomplish. The foursome had initially thought the group was “a one-time thing,” Lily said, “but then we started hanging out and getting to know each other.” Soon, their minds turned to sex education.

Alyson, who wants to become a lawyer, recalled the lessons she sat through: “It was just, like, ‘Don’t have sex,’ [and] the guys goofed off the whole time.” Emma Rose, who wants to major in English and political science, had similar memories: “In fifth grade, they just said your boobs might grow and you might get your period. … In ninth-grade, they showed pictures of STDs [and] said this is what you’re going to get if you have sex.” Paige remembered the teacher letting the boys go to the playground while the girls learned about periods. And Lily, an Irish history buff, said what stuck out most was that her sex-ed teachers clearly didn’t want to answer any questions.

That fits with Tennessee law, where sex education cannot include instruction that encourages students to engage in “non-abstinent behavior,” and teachers could face a $500 fine if they fail to comply.

The four teens began to wonder: Could we do better?

The two-hour picnic on a superhot Saturday afternoon this month attended by about 30 students — mostly girls but a handful of boys, too was a trial run. The girls spoke briefly about issues they want to cover more later, including the implications of new state antiabortion laws. But a lot of the conversation was loose, just teens talking.

“It’s like you’re going back in time,” one girl said of Roe’s end.

“I think my concern is bringing more kids into this world,” said another. “The foster-care system is terrible.”

A boy recounted a recent chat with his devoutly Christian mother and shared advice for approaching antiabortion family members: “It can be scary. But it’s definitely worth talking with people about.”

Much of the afternoon had the vibe of a hangout, with boxes of pizza and gentle music. The teens played games of Ninja and Zap. A boy who rode up on a bike, training for his high school cycling team, offered to wear a Teens for Reproductive Rights sticker on his racing helmet.

As the clock inched to 5 p.m., Alyson sought everyone’s attention one more time. She had homework to assign.

“There’s a documentary on Netflix,” she said, raising her voice. “It’s called ‘Reversing Roe.’ It talks about, literally from early 1900s to recent — I think it came out right before the actual reversing.” She added that the film traces how abortion “became politicized, which it wasn’t originally at all.”

Teens sprawled on blankets bent their heads over phones and pamphlets to take down the name.

Complete Article HERE!

How music fuelled the sexual revolution

The wildly romantic love affair of Serge Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin

By

The sexual revolution of the 1960s was founded upon a simple but radical idea: women had the same sexual appetites as men. Following the publication of Alfred C. Kinsey’s landmark study, Sexual Behaviour In The Human Female, feminist thinkers began arguing that single women should have the same sexual freedoms as men, opening the doors to the possibility that homosexuals and transexuals should be afforded the same sexual rights as everyone else in society.

By the end of the 1960s, the frequency of premarital sex in America had doubled by over 20% since World War I. By the 1970s, less than half of people were virgins by the time they were married. Indeed, conventions like marriage became increasingly unpopular and were looked upon as anachronisms. On both the college campus and in the community, alternatives to marriage like cohabitation were becoming normalised. For feminists, these were the first steps in the fight for sexual empowerment. For the establishment, this increase in promiscuity represented the destruction of long-held values, sparking much moral panic. The Pill, which had been introduced in 1950 and allowed women greater contraceptive control, quickly became a go-to scapegoat. But there was another important influence on the change in sexual attitudes following the Second World War: pop music.

In the 1950s, the dancefloor became one of the few places where sexual desire could be expressed freely. This shouldn’t come as much of a surprise; ‘rock ‘n’ roll’ was originally a slang term for sex, after all. In the early years of the ’50s, dances were still fairly straight-laced affairs. Elvis helped change all that by making his sexual theatricality an essential part of his act. It’s possible that he was building on something he’d learnt from watching Gospel music performances. According to Jon Stratton, Gospel had long been founded on expressions of divine ecstasy. In Coming to the fore, he suggests that artists like Elvis, who grew up listening to gospel, may have picked up on this and simply reinterpreted these vocal and physical representations of religious ecstasy (the groaning, the chaotic dancing) to convey carnal ecstasy instead.

The King’s hip-thrusting caused quite the stir when he appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show in 1956. While the young woman in the audience couldn’t have been more pleased, critics for The New York Herald Tribune saw fit to label his performance “untalented and vulgar”. Indeed, CBS found Elvis’ dancing so controversial that they ordered he be filmed from the waist up should he be invited back. Frank Sinatra, the embodiment of middle American taste at the time, was also worried about the influence rock ‘n’ roll music was having on the young and innocent. “His kind of music is deplorable, a rancid smelling aphrodisiac,” Sinatra said of Elvis’ performance. “It fosters almost totally negative and destructive reactions in young people.”

But the revolution was already underway. By 1964, Beatlemania was in full swing. As Barbara Ehrenreich, Elizabeth Hess, and Gloria Jacobs observe in Beatlemania: Girls Just Want To Have Fun, “Beatlemania was the first mass outburst of the ’60s to feature girls, who would not reach adulthood until the ’70s. In its intensity, as well as its scale, Beatlemania surpassed all previous outbreaks of star-centred hysteria. For those who participated in Beatlemania, sex was an obvious part of the excitement. The Beatles were sexy; the girls were the ones who received them as sexy.” In other words, Beatlemania reversed the traditional gender roles, allowing women to take on the role of the pursuer.

This change is reflected in the music – and especially the lyrics – of the countercultural era. In a study of 13 rock hits released between 1968 and 1972, nine were initiated by men and four were initiated by women. However, in the period 1973-1977, the report finds that “females became more aggressive, 26 times compared to the male 22.” Like The Beatles, whose tracks were often devoid of gender specifications (“Help, I need somebody“), these songs seem to have offered a vision of sexuality as opposed to the idea that women were disinterested in sex. That’s not to say that male musicians always viewed female sexuality in a positive light. Indeed, a paradox of the sexual revolution is that women were simultaneously encouraged and punished for engaging in sexual activity. But they did normalise the idea of women having the same sexual appetites as men.

One of the most controversial celebrations of female sexuality is Serge Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin’s ‘Je t’aime … moi non plus’. Released in 1969, the Gainsbourg-penned track was originally recorded with Brigitte Bardot, who later ordered the masters be destroyed out of fear for her reputation. When the French press managed to get hold of the original tape, they reported that it was an “audio vérité”, a recording of Gainsbourg and his amour on the cusp of orgasm. “The groans, sighs, and Bardot’s little cries of pleasure [give] the impression you’re listening to two people making love,” France Dimanche wrote.

This is where the relationship between music and the sexual revolution becomes a little bit more complicated. In the case of Je t’aime … moi non plus’, it’s hard to tell if it’s music fuelling the sexual revolution or the other way around. The controversy surrounding the track saw it banned in numerous countries throughout Europe, although it still became a hit in the UK. Gainsbourg was a notorious button-pusher, but one wonders if his attempt to set the female orgasm to music was also an attempt to boost his profile. Similarly, there’s nothing to say that Elvis’s sexually-charged moves weren’t simply a response to the prevailing mood of the day. Sex sells, as they say, and Presley may have understood this very well. Either way, one thing remains clear: music provided space for the sexual evolution to play out.

Complete Article HERE!

The pendulum is swinging back

— reversing hard-won sexual freedoms and civil rights

Handing out pamphlets about birth control in 1916 on Union Square in New York City.

By Rebecca L. Davis

The leaked Supreme Court opinion by Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., which would overturn Roe vs. Wade, marks a devastating setback for reproductive justice in the United States. It also highlights how bound up the right to abortion is with other fundamental sexual freedoms and civil rights. Whatever happens in the wake of this likely decision, we are already witnessing the undoing of more than a century of successful efforts to expand and protect individual rights to sexual and gender self-expression.

A decision nullifying Roe could threaten protections for other sexual rights. The majority opinion in Roe in 1973 relied on a right to privacy first established in Griswold vs. Connecticut (1965), which lifted a state ban on contraceptive access for married people. Recognition of a right to privacy also underpinned the court’s decision in Lawrence vs. Texas (2003) to overturn state anti-sodomy statutes. The majority opinion in Obergefell vs. Hodges (2015) likewise cited a right to privacy among its reasons for requiring all states to legalize marriages for same-sex couples. All those cases marked wins for individual liberty, human rights and civil rights.

Whether or not federal protection for abortion rights disappears this year, the erosion of sexual freedoms is already well underway. Although a majority of Americans support abortion rights, several states have passed extraordinarily restrictive abortion laws. School boards have banned books with LGBTQ content. And state legislatures have authorized retaliation against transgender people and their allies — even investigating the parents of children who receive trans-affirming healthcare.

It is not a historical accident that a likely Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe has coincided with these other assaults on sexual freedom and gender identity. The legal right to abortion is but one issue — if a critical one — at the heart of a much larger struggle for sexual autonomy.

That struggle took shape in the wake of another devastating attack: the passage of the Comstock Act in 1873, championed by Anthony Comstock of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice. Officially the Act for the Suppression of Trade in, and Circulation of, Obscene Literature and Articles of Immoral Use, the law prohibited sending “obscene, lewd, or lascivious” items through the U.S. mail or across state lines. The act defined reproductive technologies and all printed material about contraception as obscene.

Many states had started to outlaw abortion procedures in the 1850s, often due to pressure from (male) physicians determined to undermine a measure typically provided by (female) midwives. The Comstock Act made even the possession of abortifacients a federal crime.

Prudish, sanctimonious and often cruel, Comstock was a “fire and brimstone” Protestant who considered any sex outside of marital reproduction to be sinful. He succeeded in convincing the federal government to impose his religious values on all Americans.

But Comstock’s law did not affirm the status quo. It sought to thwart increasingly permissive sexual values.

Contrary to caricatures of the era, the 19th-century United States was not prudish about sex. A prolific pornography industry enjoyed unprecedented success. Bigamy and divorce had become more common, and Indiana served as the “divorce mill” that Nevada would become decades later. Same-sex couples and queer people lived openly in communities where what mattered was not whether someone conformed to a strict sexual morality but whether they caused any trouble for their neighbors. Most people placed a high premium on privacy.

When Comstock and Congress determined that they had the authority to decide which kinds of sex were moral, and which were not, they upended that equilibrium by authorizing agents of the state to police Americans’ erotic and reproductive lives.

A century of activism defending the individual’s right to sexual self-expression followed. Across multiple movements and battlegrounds, activists have made clear that an overwhelming majority of Americans wanted to make their own decisions about their sexual desires and relationships.

Birth control activists distributed informational pamphlets and opened clinics in defiance of Comstock’s bans on contraception. Lawyers and advocates gradually won carve-outs for physician-directed birth control and the sale of condoms. Bar owners and LGBT activists fought back in court and in the streets against liquor boards and vice squads, eventually refuting the idea that a gathering of LGBT people was by definition obscene. Filmmakers, publishers and others challenged the government’s censorship powers. And by the 1960s, activists took direct aim at laws that criminalized abortion, insisting that sexual freedoms were meaningless if women could not make decisions about whether to carry a pregnancy to term.

Many of us who have benefited from those movements have grown to adulthood expecting to be able to express our gender identities, our sexual desires and our reproductive decisions according to our own consciences. The revelation of the draft opinion to overturn abortion rights should animate anyone in the U.S. who values sexual freedoms. The decision would impose a minority’s interpretation of Christian morality on the nation and render all non-marital non-reproductive sexual expressions vulnerable to policing and prosecution.

The activism that undid the Comstock Act transformed American culture. It ingrained values of sexual autonomy across our social institutions, laws and popular culture. Americans today overwhelmingly support marriage equality, access to contraception, comprehensive sex education and abortion, and they consume sexually explicit material in staggering quantities. In a country where we have grown so accustomed to seeing our sexuality as a core part of our humanity — and as an arena of freedom and expressiveness — we can only hope that it will require far less than a century to undo the damage of an end to Roe.

Complete Article HERE!

Sex Ed Is the Opposite of Grooming

Some pundits say that talking with little kids about sex and gender primes them to be taken advantage of. Sex-ed researchers say that the opposite is true.

By Olga Khazan

If you ask some (okay, many) conservative pundits, Democrats are “groomingchildren. As in, grooming them to be abused by pedophiles. Some Republicans have even accused Democrats of being pedophiles themselves.

The grooming charges lump together concerns that kids are being introduced too early to sexually explicit material, to the existence of transgender people, and to non-heterosexual sexual orientations. In March, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed what critics have dubbed the “Don’t Say Gay” bill, a measure that discourages teachers from discussing gender identity or sexual orientation in classrooms. Versions of the measure have been proposed in at least a dozen other states. Referring to the bill, DeSantis’s spokesperson Christina Pushaw tweeted, “If you’re against the Anti-Grooming Bill, you are probably a groomer or at least you don’t denounce the grooming of 4-8 year old children.” A pastor even organized an “anti-grooming” rally at Disney’s headquarters in California.

This type of rhetoric is damaging in its own right. As the commentator David French writes in his newsletter, “Throwing around accusations of pedophilia, sympathy for pedophilia, grooming, or sympathy for grooming is a recipe for threats and violence”—an assessment that some historians endorse. This latest pedophilia panic overlaps with the false beliefs of the QAnon movement, which fueled the Pizzagate incident in 2016.

But bills such as Florida’s are also likely to have a chilling effect on comprehensive sexual education in schools, with deleterious effects. Comprehensive sex ed doesn’t just help prevent bullying; it helps kids have healthier relationships of all kinds, improves their communication skills, and even boosts their media literacy. Compared with abstinence-only sex education or no sex education at all, comprehensive sex ed helps reduce teen pregnancy rates. One meta-analysis found that European countries, many of which offer comprehensive, mandatory sex ed, including for young children, tend to have the lowest rates of child sexual abuse in the world. Sex education is “the exact opposite” of grooming, says Nora Gelperin, the director of sexuality education at Advocates for Youth, a sex-ed nonprofit. “Sex education, even when started in the earliest grades, has shown to be protective for kids, especially around child sexual abuse.”

A 2020 study that examined three decades of research on sex education found that comprehensive sex ed that begins in elementary school can help prevent child sex abuse, among other benefits. “Stranger danger”–type language isn’t recommended these days; about 93 percent of child sexual-abuse victims know their abusers. Instead, these programs help children identify the difference between appropriate and inappropriate touching, the difference between “tattling” and keeping unsafe secrets, and how to identify abusive situations. In other words, sex ed isn’t grooming—it helps protect kids from grooming.

Modern sex ed also seems to give kids a sense of empowerment, including by teaching them the correct names for their own genitals. “Predators are less likely to select a child who can accurately talk about those body parts,” Gelperin says, “than a child that is ignorant of what those body parts are actually called.” It also makes kids less likely to victimize one another: One program for eighth graders, called Safe Dates, was associated with lower rates of physical and sexual dating violence four years later, compared with a control group.

Experts recommend starting sex education as early as kindergarten and teaching it the way you would math. Five-year-olds don’t tend to learn geometry, but they do learn about numbers and shapes. Similarly, experts say kindergartners don’t need to be told about, for example, orgasms, but they are encouraged to understand what their body parts are and how to protect themselves from unwanted touching.

One of the best-regarded American sex-ed curricula is “Rights, Respect, and Responsibility,” or the “3Rs,” developed by Advocates for Youth and available for free online. For kindergartners and first graders, the lessons focus on preventing bullying, setting boundaries about touching, and learning what types of things make babies (elephants, but not pizza). The most explicit section covers the proper names of genitalia, including an explanation that most girls have a “hole” called “the vagina that is used when a female has a baby.” The use of correct anatomical terms is meant to ensure that kids are understood if they ever report abuse. But also, “this is your body and you have a right to know what the different parts are called,” the curriculum explains.

The first-grade lesson plans also include a section about gender identity, in which teachers are encouraged to say something like “You might feel like you’re a boy even if you have body parts that some people might tell you are ‘girl’ parts. You might feel like you’re a girl even if you have body parts that some people might tell you are ‘boy’ parts. And you might not feel like you’re a boy or a girl, but you’re a little bit of both. No matter how you feel, you’re perfectly normal!”

Though this message does not exactly comport with a socially conservative worldview, it hardly amounts to “grooming” children to be molested by pedophiles. The argument for providing information on sexual orientation and gender identity in elementary school is that children are likely to encounter these concepts in the wild. Between 2 million and 4 million American children are being raised by a non-straight parent. Some children might either be transgender themselves or have a parent who is. Advocates of this type of curriculum say these concepts can be explained more accurately in school, and help make kids who are not straight or cisgender feel welcomed.

But just because the “3Rs” curriculum is recommended doesn’t mean it gets taught. Far from it: Sex ed, like all lesson plans, varies dramatically by school district, and usually reflects the values of the surrounding community. For example, Texas, which has more children than almost any other state, does not require high schools to teach sex ed. As of 2017, most Texas schools districts took an abstinence-only approach to sex ed, and though the state has recently introduced some discussion of contraceptives in middle school, abstinence must be emphasized. Instruction on gender identity and sexual orientation is not currently offered in Florida from kindergarten to third grade, the ages targeted by the “Don’t Say Gay” bill.

Most European countries do provide comprehensive sex ed in every school, however. Experts link Europeans’ superior sexual-health outcomes—lower teen pregnancy rates, lower rates of sexual abuse, and lower STD rates among young people—to better, earlier sex ed. In Western Europe, sex ed tends to be mandatory and blunt, and start before kindergarten; it’s like the “3Rs,” but more graphic.

In the Netherlands, sex ed begins before many kids can read. “From age 5, children are taught about reproduction, about pregnancy and birth of a baby,” says Elsbeth Reitzema, the sexuality-education program officer at Rutgers, a Dutch nonprofit that helps run the country’s sex-ed programs. “They also learn the main physical differences between boys and girls, about the genitals and their functions. By the end of primary school, children have learned about reproduction, pregnancy, and birth. They know that a woman, if she is fertile, can become pregnant through sex in the manner of penis-in-vagina sex.” They also learn about being intersex, transgender, and nonbinary. When they’re 11, kids learn about masturbation.

One popular Dutch sex-ed curriculum explains to fourth graders that “the clitoris is a very sensitive place. Touching it can give a nice feeling,” according to Beyond Birds and Bees, a 2018 book in part about the Dutch approach to sex ed by Bonnie Rough, who has written on the same topic for The Atlantic. “It is not customary for parents to take their children out of the lesson,” Reitzema told me. “Should parents object to the lessons, then the school will explain what the content of the lessons is. This usually removes the parents’ resistance to the lessons.”

In Sweden’s mandatory sex-ed program, 7-to-9-year-olds learn “about all body parts, and discuss gender,” Hans Olsson, the country’s senior adviser on sexuality education, told me. “School has a duty to counteract limiting gender patterns, already at [the] preschool level.” Also in preschool, kids learn about bodily integrity and name their sexual organs. Rather than the proper terminology, though, Swedish kids use snopp, which is like “willy,” and snippa. (“Don’t know the equivalent word in English,” Olsson said.) Starting in fourth grade, Swedish kids learn about LGBTQ issues.

Sara Zaske, the author of the German comparative-parenting book Achtung Baby, told me that her 7-year-old daughter’s class in Berlin read the children’s book Mummy Laid an Egg without asking parents’ permission first. The picture book, which was originally published in English, features cartoon drawings of “Daddy’s tube” and “Mummy’s hole,” along with the ways “mummies and daddies fit together.” Unlike in the United States, Zaske writes in her book, “German kids learn much more about sex than conception.” German schools cover STD prevention, yes, but also masturbation, orgasms, and homosexuality. Zaske quotes one doctor in an article on the city of Berlin’s official website as saying, “Sex education cannot begin early enough.”

Rough and others don’t see these types of lessons as “giving children ideas” about sex and sexuality. After all, adults openly do things—drink alcohol, use the stove, drive—that kids can’t. Kids understand when an activity is for adults only. She and other advocates reject the notion that telling kids about different sexual orientations or gender identities “turns” kids gay or gender-nonconforming. “Teaching about the topics is not creating new LGBTQ students,” says Elizabeth Schroeder, a sexuality educator and co-author of the “3Rs” curriculum.

But most important, early sex ed opens up lines of communication between kids and responsible adults. “If we start giving off the impression that sex is a topic that when you ask me a question … that I’m going to start acting weird and funny and dishonest about it, they quickly pick up that this is something off-limits,” says Emily Rothman, a health-sciences professor at Boston University. “So they’re either gonna think, Well, I can go to my friends or I can go to the internet.” By which she means: to porn.

The larger point of this kind of instruction is what the Dutch call “sexual assertiveness”: “If somebody is saying or doing something that makes your body feel uncomfortable, you’ve been taught how to notice that and what to do next,” Rough told me. One aim of communicating freely about sex with a teacher or another trusted adult is the “development of a trusting, trustworthy relationship with a grown-up who has the child’s best interests at heart.”

Meanwhile, only a quarter of U.S. public schools report that students practice communication, decision making, goal setting, or refusal skills as part of sex ed, Rough writes in her book. Instead, some American children learn about sex through porn, through experimentation, or, tragically, from an abuser. Because so much of American sex education treats sexual activity as dangerous or shameful, kids who are victimized by adults may feel that they have to keep it secret. European children who learn about their body, and are warned about inappropriate touching, can better protect themselves. There, Rough writes, “those who prey on children can no longer benefit from their ignorance.”

Complete Article HERE!

Banning classroom talks about gender identity, sexual orientation aren’t helpful to kids or adults

Roberto Abreu, assistant professor in the psychology department at the University of Florida, discusses Florida’s “Parental Rights in Education” bill and its banning discussions of sexual orientation or gender identity in classrooms with young children

Florida Rep. Michele Rayner delivers an impassioned speech vowing to challenge the controversial “Don’t Say Gay” bill passed by Florida’s Republican-led legislature during a rally March 12 on the front steps of City Hall in St. Petersburg, Fla.

By Lisa Deaderick

One of the sections of Florida’s “Parental Rights in Education” bill, passed by the state’s House and Senate, prohibits any discussion of sexual orientation or gender identity in primary grade classrooms. Supporters say the bill will allow parents more participation and control around the discussion of topics they deem “sensitive” or “inappropriate” for young children; opponents, who have dubbed the legislation the “Don’t Say Gay” bill, find this reasoning both illogical and hypocritical.

“This bill is clearly an anti-LGBTQ bill,” says Roberto Abreu, an assistant professor in the psychology department at the University of Florida whose research focuses on the intersection of LGBTQ people of color in their families, parenting and community. “What really gets me about all of this is that parents already make comments in very heteronormative or cisnormative ways that bring up sexuality and sexual orientation and gender” pointing to widely practiced gender reveal parties and casual remarks about children and their classroom crushes.

Abreu, who holds a doctorate in counseling psychology and looks at parent-child relationships of parents of color and their LGBTQ children, took some time to discuss this legislation, how to have these conversations with young children in ways that are appropriate for their age and level of development, and what adults can do to overcome the homophobia and transphobia these bans are rooted in. (This interview has been edited for length and clarity.)

Q: Florida’s “Parental Rights in Education” bill prohibits classroom discussions about sexual orientation or gender identity for students in primary grades or in ways that aren’t considered developmentally or age-appropriate for those students. In your experience, what would be an appropriate age to begin having conversations with children about sexual orientation and gender identity?

A: As soon as children bring it up you can start talking about it. Of course, children will bring it up in developmentally appropriate ways and our response should be in developmentally appropriate ways, right? We have research to show that children start to understand their gender as early as 3 years old, so once they bring it up, those are conversation openings. We shouldn’t be waiting for ‘the big talk’ in adolescence. We should start bringing up those conversations in a developmentally appropriate way as early as possible because the interesting thing is that parents are already bringing these things up. For example, statements like, ‘What girl/boy do you think is cute in your classroom? He/she may have a crush on you.’ Comments about sexual orientation and gender identity are made around children all the time, we just do it in very heteronormative and cisnormative ways. Nothing gets to me more than gender reveal parties where people are revealing gender, biology, chromosomes and genitalia. That’s what we’re doing, is revealing genitalia, so clearly people don’t have a problem talking about this unless it’s in the context of trans and queer folks. Also, shouldn’t we trust teachers, who are trained educators and have experience with youth and development, to have these conversations? We trust them to teach everything else with our kids.

Q: How is that different from assessing a child’s developmental readiness for these kinds of conversations? What is typically used to determine whether a child is developmentally ready to have these kinds of conversations?

A: I don’t know that I see a difference. Thinking developmentally, we should be thinking this way when we introduce any concepts in a classroom, not just when it comes to LGBTQ issues. It’s important, for example, to talk to children in elementary school about the proper and appropriate names for their body parts. I don’t necessarily think that there’s a formula here. The other interesting part about this bill is that it’s almost couched in a way for people to say that they just want to make sure that they’re talking about these things in the right way, and that these aren’t appropriate topics for children this young; but they are appropriate topics because we’ve been talking about them already. In that context, we shouldn’t even be having conversations with children about liking another girl or boy their age because that should also be deemed inappropriate.

Q: What are some examples of what a developmentally or age-appropriate conversation about sexual orientation or gender identity would sound like? What would be covered in that kind of discussion?

A: I’ll use an example from my own personal life. My husband and I have a 7-year-old and he got home one day last year and said, ‘Most of my friends have a mom and a dad.’ How can I have that conversation? (Teachers should also be addressing this in ways that are developmentally appropriate for any child to see their family represented, and know that their teacher cares to have this conversation about their family structure that might be different and maybe isn’t the norm.) Most children won’t have two dads or two moms, but teachers and schools and parents should be having these conversations. With the language of this bill, these kinds of conversations can never happen because how do you explain to a child that they have two dads, without bringing up sexual orientation? Children have questions. You don’t have to talk about romantic relationships at that point, but how do you talk about two men raising a family for a child who has two dads, or two moms, without naming who they are? Books that are being read in classrooms can show a range of people and families. This is just another aspect of diversity, and LGBTQ students deserve to be seen, heard and cared for.

The first thing I do, is I affirm or dispel any myths the child might have heard. In this specific example, I affirm that ‘Yeah, you are correct. Most of your friends don’t have two dads. Your dads are gay, meaning that we are attracted, we are in love, we like to form relationships and families with two men. Your friends’ parents might be heterosexual, or maybe they’re bisexual, but they have a mom and a dad.’ You’re putting the context into words that the child is using themselves. I think it is appropriate to be honest, direct, frank, and to use the language and wording that the child is using.

Q: Why do you think people seem to be so uncomfortable with the idea of educating children about their bodies in ways that include informing them about topics related to sex?

A: I think we’re a very conservative society. I think we can also question why we don’t teach sex-positive education in high school. Why don’t we talk about woman-identified individuals making decisions for their own bodies? Power and control is one explanation. Another could be about adults’ own projection of erroneously thinking that children aren’t ready to have these conversations. They need to be age-appropriate, but I think adults’ own projections about their own discomfort about these topics is part of it. Honestly, though, at the root of it, I think it’s about transphobia and homophobia. These bills are not happening in a scattered manner, and a lot of attention to this bill has been around sexual orientation, but it’s also about gender and legislators trying to erase trans youth. It is about completely erasing groups of people who we do not see as worthy of personhood and humanity, from physical spaces, from history, from books, from everywhere. I think that is the real reason, that it’s the discomfort about trans bodies and queer bodies existing fully and free, and as their authentic selves in society.

Also, society is contradictory. Sex is everywhere: on TV, in the movies, in advertising; but let’s not talk about it with our kids? There is a real dichotomy there. We are OK with lots of displays of sexuality, but not this? Kids need information about sex, and they need it from educators and parents. The problem is most parents are not equipped to talk about it, or simply do not know how. Also, for some kids, school may be the only place where they are accepted.

Q: What are the best ways to think about and approach equipping children with this kind of information?

A: Everyone might have their own reasons, but I think people should get help, and I don’t mean that in a condescending way. As an adult, you should do your own work. If you feel discomfort about talking about these topics — although there is a wealth of literature and evidence and Google — I understand. I understand that people might be uncomfortable, and I’m not mad at anyone’s discomfort, but don’t project that onto other people or pass that on to children or use children as pawns in this. Do your own work, do your own therapy, and equip yourselves with materials and resources, and learn about these topics. I think working on yourself is important, and a great place to start. Here are some examples where you can find age-appropriate LGBTQ books for kids.

Complete Article HERE!

Space sex

— The trouble with joining the 62-mile-high club

Whether NASA likes it or not, humans eventually will be having space sex.

By Ross Pomeroy

According to NASA, no humans have ever had sex in space, but with the swift ascent of private space tourism, you can bet that humankind will soon join the 62-mile-high club.

This impending achievement, coupled with renewed efforts to populate Earth orbit, build a colony on the Moon, and travel to Mars, lay bare the urgent need for scientific research into all aspects of sex in space, a team of Canadian researchers from Concordia University and Laval University argue in a paper just published in the Journal of Sex Research.

The team, led by Simon Dubé, a Concordia University PhD candidate in psychology specializing in human sexuality, sextech, and erobotics, calls for space programs to seriously explore “space sexology,” defined as “the comprehensive scientific study of extraterrestrial intimacy and sexuality.”

Don’t ask, don’t tell

Until now, space agencies like NASA have ignored the topic of sex almost entirely, perhaps fearful of generating a controversy that could jeopardize their funding. When queried about sex, NASA officials have brushed the matter aside. Astronauts are apparently prohibited from having sex or developing intimate relationships onboard the International Space Station.

But, again, as humankind increasingly begins to embrace the prospect of colonizing low-Earth orbit and beyond through private missions, disregarding research into a basic human drive is growing less tenable. Dubé and his co-authors outlined a number of potential risks related to space sex that merit study.

Space sex matters

For starters, ionizing radiation could interfere with sexual reproduction by altering the DNA of sperm cells, egg cells, and even human embryos (though one study suggested that mammal embryos can develop normally in space). Moreover, microgravity could make sex both difficult and messy — a big problem in a setting where cleanliness is paramount. Space habitats are also cramped, remote, and not always private, making sexual needs hard to satisfy. Thinking even farther into the future, small settlements with limited intimate partners will undoubtedly breed stress, conflicts, and even sexual harrassment or assault. The further people are from Earth and the longer they are in space, the more likely that sexual and relationship-related problems will arise, Dubé and his colleagues write.

They make the case for researching solutions to these risks right away. “As technology makes extraterrestrial life and travel more accessible to the public, the people who go into space in the future — from scientists to tourists — may not have to undergo the same kind of stringent training or selection process as current astronauts,” they argue. “Producing quality science and implementing systemic changes take time, so why not start immediately, rather than wait for problems to arise?”

Dubé and his co-authors have already fleshed out a few potential areas for research. The first is designing systems and spaces that allow for eroticism to be safe, private, and hygienic. This effort may also include preliminary planning for delivering babies in space and treating any sex-related health issues. The second is creating training programs that prepare space travelers for intimacy, sexual activity, and any social problems that may arise. The third is engineering sexual technologies like toys or robots that permit clean and satisfying sexual experiences.

Ultimately, if properly researched and planned for, “intimacy and sexuality — like leisure — could help endure and normalize life in space by making it more enjoyable and less lonely,” the researchers say. Sexual activity relieves stress, lowers blood pressure, and helps with sleep, among many other benefits.

“Facilitating intimacy and sexuality in space could improve the life of astronauts and future space inhabitants,” Dubé and his colleagues add. “Intimate and sexual activities can arguably help people adapt to space contexts and normalize spacelife.”

Complete Article HERE!