Most middle school students are not yet sexually active. Many of them are not even on the skinny end of the sexually active bell curve (that is, they don’t have boyfriends or girlfriends yet, they haven’t had a first kiss, they might not have even started their periods or had their [...]
Archives for adolescent sexuality
Those pesky personal questions
There is an article in yesterday’s NYTimes called Q. Did you ever smoke pot? A. It’s Complicated, that is far better than I feared. It’s about whether or not to tell a preteen or teenager about one’s own drug use - either as a doctor or as a parent. Many of the same issues and [...]
It sounds like a joke…
“So a gay, French, teenage school boy walks into a McDonald’s…” But it’s actually a French advertisement by McDonald’s. One they would never, ever air in the US.
I wonder if the father is just unaware of his son’s sexual orientation, if he is in denial about it, or if he is blatantly homophobic? I think [...]
Yearbook Mayhem!!
Welcome to the end of the school year, when everyone from Kindergarten through High School is counting down the days or hours until they’re “Free, free!!!!” If they’re a high school student living in Pflugerville, a little suburb north of Austin, however, they may also be trying to contend with some typical media-caused frenzy over [...]
Nudity
I recently read Live Nude Girl: my life as an object by Kathleen Rooney. The book chronicles Rooney’s experiences in being a live nude model, discusses the history of nude modeling, and delves into the psychology of nudity in general. I quite enjoyed the book.
What I felt was missing completely, and quite a glaring oversight [...]
Media messages about teen parents
Yesterday I showed you the first of this semester’s Sex in the Media projects - and now here is the second!
As part of their Sex in the Media project, my students often investigate how teen parents are represented in the media. It’s a mixed bag, frankly, with sometimes glassy-eyed-approval of the beauty and sweetness of [...]
The low points
My community college sex ed classes ended today. My students took a test on Tuesday and, among other more content-related questions, I asked them about their experiences in the class. I asked for high points and low points and I asked them to be specific. I always ask the question, as an extra-credit question, on [...]
What does prevention mean?
A friend of mine with a 7th grade daughter and I were just talking on the phone, and as we were saying goodbye, she mentioned that her friends with 7th grade children have disparate views on what prevention means. She didn’t have time to into what she meant, but wanted to save the conversation for [...]
LGB…T…QQIA…LMNOP…what?
I’ve been asked to break down these various initials recently by a number of friends and students, so I thought I’d write a bit on them. LGB is a group of initials that most people are familiar with to one degree or another:
Lesbian (women who are attracted to women)
Gay (often referring to men who are [...]
The Widening
I recently had the pleasure of reading The Widening - a novel by Carol Moldaw.
Carol asked me to review her book for this blog, presenting as a “self-contained, close-range, cut-to-the-quick vignettes, and published in the spring of 2008 by a non-profit literary press, The Widening is an edgily erotic novel; darkly comedic, intimate, [...]
