Welcome to my blog post series making a case for sex education (you can catch up and read part 1 here, part 2 here, and part 3 here). In this post I’ll analyze how concepts of gender and sexual activity intertwine in contemporary American culture, and how accurate sex education can help.* Since I just […]
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Syphilis in the Social Sciences Classroom
A lot of the work I do as a sex educator is in the college classroom. I haven’t taught a Human Sexuality class yet, or done a campus Sex Week yet, but in designing and teaching classes in anthropology, gender studies, and folklore programs, I emphasize many basic themes and topics in sex education, such as […]
And Then I Brought Up Flesh Hooks.
One of the topics I discussed with my fall 2013 college-level class on non-monogamy is BDSM and kink. I deliberately introduced the topic at the end of the semester, when we’d already studied sexual and gender configurations around the world, past and present, with an eye toward how gender, sexuality, and relationship models inform one […]
Because Teaching Sex Ed Is Not Encouraging Sex (The Case for Sex Ed Part 3)
Time for another post in my series on why we need sex education! Feel free to catch up on part 1 and part 2 if you haven’t already. While perusing my Twitter feed, I came across Rebecca Zamon’s Huffpost Canada blog supporting the new Canadian (specifically Ontario) curriculum for health and physical education. Why? Because, among other […]
Intrinsic or Extrinsic? The Importance of Figuring Out What Makes You Tick
Do you know what makes you excited, motivated, and eager? Psychologists tend to distinguish between two main types of motivation: intrinsic and extrinsic. In this post I’ll discuss some relationship-oriented examples of each and encourage you to figure out your own motivation map. Funnily enough, the idea for this blog post came about while I was procrastinating […]
The Joys of Talking About Sex
I don’t talk about my sex life in print or in public very much. It’s not because I’m ashamed of what I do (though shame is a very pervasive force in Western conceptions of sexuality), but rather because I feel that I reach people better as an educator when I’ve got a bit more distance […]
Why I’m Silent About My Sexuality (For Now)
This is a topic that weighs heavily on me and is not easy to write about. I’m massively in favor of providing shame-free sex education, of oversharing as a political act, and of creating sex-positive learning environments. And yet I feel unable to talk about my own sexuality publicly or in print. In a way, this […]
Cognitive Dissonance & Abstinence-Only Education (The Case for Sex Ed Part 1)
I’m kicking off a new blog post series called “The Case for Sex Ed.” In it, I’ll devote each post to a facet of the larger argument in favor of comprehensive, evidence-based sex education. This first post is about the cognitive dissonance inherent in abstinence-only educational programs (not to lose sight of the fact that these […]
Asking for Sex vs. Asking about Sex
Wow. This is humbling. Just now, I created a tag called “sex ed learning moments” for precisely this kind of post, wherein I admit that learning to be a sex educator is a lifelong process, and I just caught myself doing something that I need to change. Or in this case, my husband caught me […]