A couple of weeks ago I interviewed John Styn about his project Hug Nation. One of the points we talked about was how critical physical contact is to us humans – in particular how important hugging is. Then yesterday, the New York Times published an article on teenage hug culture: For Teenagers, Hello Means “How [...]
Archives for May, 2009
Sexual harassment is bad! (Wait…what is it again…?)
Some weeks ago, I wrote a little post where I outlined three topics I wanted to revisit in longer posts, but didn’t have the time at that exact moment to write about. This weekend, someone called me on it and demanded that I write about sexual harassment in middle schools. (Okay, demanded is extremely harsh [...]
Sexuality in the Media - part 3
On Wednesday I described an assignment I give to my college Human Sexuality students where they create a media image that incorporates positive sexuality. I am posting three best projects from my class this semester. On Wednesday, I posted about the blog Avant Garde Bodies, yesterday I put up sexy advertisements that showed real women’s [...]
Sexuality in the Media - part 2
Yesterday I introduced a project I use in my college level human sexuality classes where students learn how to analyze media images for their sexual content (and the quality of that content) and then create a media image of their own.
The second project is from Heather Haygood. She created sexy advertisements for gum and condoms [...]
Sexuality in the Media - part 1
I also, as many of you know, teach human sexuality at the college level. Many of these students come into my classroom with vast misunderstandings of the reproductive system (”Isn’t it true that every time you jump or sit down hard you kill one of the eggs in your ovaries?”) and barely any experience with [...]
Hug Nation
A few months ago I had the pleasure of meeting the dynamic John Styn at SXSW Interactive. I was fascinated by John’s Hug Nation. Schools across the country are banning all physical contact between students - including hugs. I find that teenagers need hugs - they need physical contact. In fact, we all need hugs, [...]
Building a sexual vocabulary
Many Middle School students - okay, let’s face it, many Americans - have a hard time holding a serious conversation about sex using correct terminology. Even among adult, many conversations about sex include a lot of insinuations, a lot of suggestive and knowing glances and meaningless phrases like “Well, he … you know … and [...]
Abstinence-only funding GONE in 2010!
Bam. My world just changed. And so did the worlds of teenagers, preteens, and children across the country.
Instead of abstinence-only, Obama’s 2010 budget puts $173 million into teen pregnancy prevention money. Now, while this is great (GREAT!) news, it’s not quite what I was hoping for. Preventing unwanted pregnancies (teen or otherwise) is only a [...]
So much to do, so little time!
I am so sorry to be so far behind on posts! My presence here has been truly abysmal, but I promise there are good reasons for it - I am currently teaching five regular classes, the occasional one-time class, working on my book, and trying to keep my personal life in some sort of order. [...]
