Jamie_L

lpetrich,

I hadn't really thought about that much, to be honest.

The first priority is to supply information kids need to make safe, responsible choices. Performance tips would be a secondary thing. And, at some point, there does have to be some respect for people who do have moral objections to some aspects of sexuality.

At a minimum, sex ed needs to teach: this is how it works, these are the risks, and these are how the risks can be reduced or eliminated. Of course, one could argue that masturbation is the functional equivalent to abstinance when your talking about protecting yourself from risks. So, you could argue that teaching about masturbation as an option helps kids avoid risk.

Teaching pleasure pointers to school kids is not likely to fly in the U.S. anytime soon. As an elective course at college, however, maybe.

That would be a fun lab.

Jamie

Derec

Ok. But I do not see a reason why someone should be compelled to move from B to A (aren't the Bs the sexually active ones?) if the information is factually presented. Stressing that absistence is the only way to 100% avoid risks associated with sex is misleading and can easily scare teenagres. Why? Because that point is true for any concievable human activity but is usually not stressed. Stressing it for one signle activity (sex), an activity that is already stigmatized by society would, in uninformed teens, lead to the preception that sex carries a much greater risk than other activities.


Ok.

True. Yet you agree with the above premise. I however disagree with it inasfar as that a) applies equally to any and all human activities and b) there are many activities that carry much higher risks than sex.

True. If we are not aware of the risks we will not do anything to avoid it.
However, all activities carry risks. Therefore risks should be presented factually and not being inflated, either explicitly or by employing the tactics I illustrated above.

There are certainly lower for an exclusive relationship, be it marriage or not. Furthermore, a 16 year old couple, where both are virgins, has a much lower risk of STDs than a 25 year old couple where one or both partners have had several sexual partners before.

[QUOTE}
They include primarily disease and unwanted pregnancy. And, although there is nothing wrong with sex, it does happen to be true that abstinance reduces all these risks to zero.
[/QUOTE]

However, that is a tautology, as it applies to anything. The hypocrisy is that it is stressed for sex only. That leads to the misimpression that sex somehow carries a larger risk than other activities.

Shall we teach them also that
- if they want 0 risk of falling down and breaking their neck in the shower they should not shower
- if they want 0 risk of traffic accidents they should not participate in traffic (either as drivers or pedestrians or ...)
- many more
It should be common sense that no activity carries 0 risk. C'est la vie. And btw, risk of getting infected with HIV or otherSTDs is not quite 0 if you abstain from any sexual activity. And if we observe all infectious diseases (without arbitrarily singling out STDs) than the abstinence point becomes even ore moot.

As does not leaving your house is a superior method of avoiding accidents than watching the road is

Later
UglyManOnCampus

[ October 11, 2002: Message edited by: UglyManOnCampus ]</p>