Your Kids Need to Masturbate

A teacher in Utah (figures!) is under fire for "crossing a line" in her 8th grade sex-ed instruction. While the school won't give any details about the alleged misconduct, a parent is quoted as saying his kid learned about "anal sex, oral sex, masturbation, mechanical instruments to enhance masturbation and historical instances of self-abortion with a hanger." Are 14 year olds too young to hear any of this? Recent statistics have shown that oral sex amongst junior high students has risen meteorically in the last decade; so they're already familiar with the concept. And even when I was in junior high there was always the girl that was kind of slutty and did things other girls wouldn't. Don't you think that if kids (especially girls) were taught the truth about the exchange of sex for power they would be less likely to make bad decisions? They might be less likely to try to keep that hot guy by objectifying themselves and giving away the cow for free, so to speak.

Now, I'm not really sure why the discussion of anal sex would come up in 8th grade, other than to tell the girls that it's not true that women like it or that it's not really sex. This "not really sex" attitude can be directly tied to the proliferation of abstinence-only education, by the way. Telling teenagers that intercourse is a sin and will either saddle you with a baby or give a disease that will make your parts fall off only leads their underdeveloped brains to think, "Well, then, I'll avoid real sex, but stick whatever I want wherever else I want and it doesn't count!" And if the majority of this country is so hot and bothered to reduce the number of abortions women get, wouldn't historical instances of the terror of illegal abortion help them make up their minds about risky sex? If they were getting proper birth control education, also, we would have a real chance to reduce abortion rates. Instead you get idiot girls who just learned to shave their legs having babies that are doomed to grow up and repeat the cycle. These are the people who end up on Maury Povich, you know.

And the masturbation information? AWESOME. Boys get a crash course from the minute they hit puberty, obviously; but girls are left twisting in the wind when it comes to honest discourse about their bodies and what we're built for. Masturbation is just as important to girls and it has been to boys since time immemorial--more so, I think, since girls are usually the ones prostrating themselves for approval and using sex to get love. If all teenagers spent more time fondling themselves at home instead of groping in a car or wherever they do it nowadays, we'd all be better off.

Originally written 6.08