I’ve been pondering virginity again recently. A couple of things have come up, directing my attention there.
First, I was contacted not once, but twice within the same week by authors of new books on virginity, asking me to review their books (reviews are in coming posts - this is a multi-post issue if I ever [...]
Archives for adolescent sexuality
The virignity issue
Suicides and tears
Today was a very emotional day in my college class. The topic was sexual orientation, which is generally a fun, thoughtful day where we pick apart the differences in ways of defining and understanding sexual attraction. Today I raced us through that part of the class so I could devote a substantial portion to a [...]
I might have saved someone’s life today. So can you.
But the thing is, you might not ever know it.
Young people kill themselves because of harassment, torment, bullying, and immense internal pain. You can be the person who stands between them and suicide, but you might never know it. Ideally, none of us would ever know because the someone we’ve influenced has a happy life, [...]
What is the purpose of (sex) education
In his back-to-school speech yesterday, President Obama had this to say about education in general:
But the truth is, an education is about more than getting into a good college or getting a good job when you graduate. It’s about giving each and every one of us the chance to fulfill our promise; to [...]
Why Middle School comprehensive sex ed?
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 [...]
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 [...]
