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Sox Shuffle Continues
Stella Foster's column in the Sun-Times continues to defy reason. We know, we know, what do we expect, but:
A RANDOM THOUGHT: Introducing sex education in schools was not a bright idea. . . . it interferes and distracts a young person from thinking about education to just thinking about doing the nasty. Self-esteem classes should be taught instead.
The ellipses is from the column, not us cutting anything out.
It's not a random thought. Foster has run similar musings in at least two previous columns, one in 2004 and one six months ago. But if we're going to use "random" the way the ladies of The Hills do, to mean unpleasant and unwanted, then yeah. Random!
From March 30, 2004:
THE RECENT reports of teens and pre-teens engaging in oral sex is sending shock waves across the country and leaving parents stunned. I ask why are parents so shocked to find out that kids, some as young as 11 and 12, think that as long as it is not intercourse, it's OK?Back in the day, oral sex was considered to be way too much information and very taboo. In these modern times with sex, sex and more sex being talked about and displayed via the electronic media, everyday TV commercials, music videos (like rapper Nelly's new and beyond vulgar music video "Tip Drill"), video games, etc., kids have become jaded and emotionless.
Sex education seems to be a joke in the school system and, in my opinion, interjects sex in children's heads, when they aren't even thinking about it. What do they do for homework?
This society and parents lost control of the moral fiber of kids when it became OK and no stigma attached to a teenage girl having a baby with no consequences and the boy gets away with no financial responsibility.
Maybe the stigma against teen pregnancy briefly disappeared in 2004, by it was back in full force at the end of 2007, particularly at the Sun-Times. From Foster's December 20, 2007:
THE NEWS of actress Jamie Lynn Spears' pregnancy can't be that shocking to America. Jamie, the 16-year-old star of Nickelodeon's "Zoey 101" show and sister of slutima pop tart Britney Spears, has just joined the ranks of the young and unwedded like the 800,000 or more teens that get pregnant every year in this country. So folks . . . don't get your panties or shorts in a bunch . . . because it has been done before. This country pushes sex down kids' throats on a daily basis through reality shows, advertising, music videos, games, etc. And sex education in schools is a total waste of time and money. After all, what do they do for homework?YOU CAN'T expect the Spears girls' parents to really parent. . . . They are way too busy trying to stay in the good graces of their cash cow girls! This country's morals went out the window years ago when parents started accepting that their kids, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, on up, were having sex in school and all over the place . . . and they didn't give them stiff consequences for promiscuous behavior. So, no reason to freak over the Spears' girls being freaks. Yeah, I said it!
Yeah, calling people sluts and freaks--that's not stigma, right?
According to the 2007 "Emerging Answers" report from the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, "Patterns of results across the studies demonstrate two findings very clearly. First, a substantial percentage of abstinence, sex, and STD/HIV education programs significantly reduced one or more types of risky sexual behavior. Second, the programs did not increase sexual behavior among young people, as some people had feared." In other words, sex education works. And it doesn't lead to more sex.
For whatever it's worth, the homework I had to do for sex education involved writing out charts of methods of contraception, making corny videos and posters about safe sex and reproductive health, and memorizing STDs and their symptoms. Other Chicagoist staffers had to raise a fake baby with a class partner, write reports on STDs, and make lists of things to do other than sex. It was about as useful as the rest of the homework kids do in high school--some of if very, some of it not so much.
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Another reason why "Sun-Times" has become synonymous with "mediocre."
STELLA'S COLUMN just inspired me go watch "Tip Drill" on YouTube, and now I want to have anonymous sex with a random skank. So who's REALLY contributing to the downfall of society?
Yeah, I said it!
Obviously not teaching kids sex education is ridiculous, but so is the current zeitgeist, that “If we can just get kids to wear condoms, everything will be okay.” TRY AGAIN. Condoms are about 90 percent effective; birth control, taken imperfectly—as almost everyone takes it—about the same; STDs are RAMPANT and condoms don’t protect against several of them, anyway.
Further, those effectiveness rates are culled from “people using them consistently who nevertheless got pregnant.” So what is the real rate of effectiveness, given that a single act of unprotected sex results in a pregnancy something like 5% of the time? Much worse.
So kids, in fact, need real education… they need to learn that about a third of the population is infected with HSV, which is incurable, and it’s still very possible to get HPV, also widely spread, even with a condom.
Kids are dumb…or ignorant. And lenient attitudes from parents haven’t helped.
Studies about the effectiveness of something nation-wide doesn’t mean anything to the individual in Wyoming who impregnates his girlfriend because he thought he had a fail-safe contraceptive with the pill, or the 20 year old who gets an incurable case of HSV from a one-night stand he thought would be just a good ol’ time because he wore protection.
I understand the columnist’s very clumsily made point, that entertainment, intentionally or simply by appealing to what people want to see, paints sex as being some kind of harmless activity bearing all the consequences of baking a cake…which it is not. It is an act which has the capacity for life-altering consequences at every instance, particularly for the young and unmarried.
"condoms don’t protect against several of them, anyway."
um....like which?
"So what is the real rate of effectiveness, given that a single act of unprotected sex results in a pregnancy something like 5% of the time?"
uh, an unprotected act would not count, that's the point behind the effectiveness numbers of USING condoms...
"gets an incurable case of HSV from a one-night stand he thought would be just a good ol’ time because he wore protection."
how do you propose he gets hsv?
you make a lot of really out there remarks...not sure how you formulated that argument.
at least I agree with your mid-point
"So kids, in fact, need real education"
which, would be real sex ed that doesn't tip-toe around the issues.
"THE RECENT reports of teens and pre-teens engaging in oral sex is sending shock waves across the country and leaving parents stunned. I ask why are parents so shocked to find out that kids, some as young as 11 and 12, think that as long as it is not intercourse, it's OK?"
For the record, teens and pre-teens have been engaging in oral sex since I was in high school, which was a good 20 years ago. The thing that shocked me, when I started teaching in the public schools, was how common anal sex was, and how the girls frequently prefaced it with "only" as in "we're not having sex, we're only having anal sex." When I was in high school Butt Fuck was a place out past Woodfield, not an activity.
For a major newspaper columnist in a global city to write something this ignorant ... just, wow. Lord knows that sex education preoccupies kids with sex. Unlike, say, hormones or the onset of puberty.
She said "stiff consequences"...hehe.
@lulu: lol