Sup. It's been ages since posting here, I've been busy with my pesky first year report. This PhD thing is quite hard, isn't it? XD
Anyway, I want to make a post. I have a point! Today, when I checked my feed, I came across a post on Bitch PhD which contained a transphobic 'joke'. In the comments, the poster said that she KNEW the joke was openly offensive and she wasn't interested, she'd made it anyway because she wanted to.
I have to say, I think that's utterly awful. It reeks of privilege. I was glad to see so many people jumping on it in the comments, though the number of complaints that were "that joke is old" rather then "that isn't a joke, it's blatantly offensive" was a little disheartening.
Jokes about how disgusting transpeoples bodies are should never be acceptable, because transpeople do not have disgusting bodies, and if you think they do you probably need to check your privilege.
Standing up to these jokes in a public forum is hard, and I can forgive people for not doing that, but actively perpetuating them on their own blog? No.
That is all. Back to the report.
Showing posts with label Feminism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Feminism. Show all posts
Thursday, 16 April 2009
Thursday, 26 February 2009
And today I overheard...
So, this morning I was walking to work and caught a snippet of conversation from behind me. In a male voice talking about an image where a woman was bent over a table. I was like, "Oh shit, what ass-hattery today?". He's describing this image in detail and I'm trying to walk faster to get out of hearing range, then he says "And it was totally demeaning to the women". His friend says "Yeah, it's disghusting". Guy one again "You couldn't even see her face, it was awful. And then there's the advert where..."
Two young men walking down the street discussing a range of adverts in a feminist light.
It kinda made my day.
Two young men walking down the street discussing a range of adverts in a feminist light.
It kinda made my day.
Wednesday, 7 January 2009
I'm back!
I dissapeared like a poof of smoke over the holidays since my laptop got a little bit poorly (this is what I get for naming her after a character with a weak body) so was in limited internet. I'm back and work now and the amazing people at computing services have made her all better again so we're back to work and, thus, back to blogging.
Still not up to date with the backlog of bloggs so I'm probably horribly out of date but there are two things I want to do.
The first is to make a new year's resolution - I am going to comment on blogs. No, really. I'm kind of just sat here at the moment blogging in a corner alone and I'm going to stop that because it's bad for me and start participating. I'm sure nobody will bite me (much).
The second thing I want to do is complain about my mother. Specifically, my mother and my weight. My mother has issues with my weight. My mother wants me to loose weight, despite the fact that she herself has spent most of her life miserably struggling to do the same thing and failing. I've had a lot of issues when I came to university and started to realise I'm not actually grotesque, specifically with my mother and food and my mother and clothes. My mother doesn't eat, or eats very little, the overfeeds the rest of the family. She wonders why we're overweight while forcing more and more food on us. The clothes issue, my mother believes anyone over a size 12 or so shouldn't wear anything that fits, but only things a couple of sizes too big. She likes buying me clothes but only buys them in several sizes larger than I am.
Every time my mother sees me she comments that I've lost weight.
It's incredibly frustrating becasue if I'd actually lost weight every time my mother said I had, I'd not exist any more. The other thing is that she views this as a massive compliment and looks so damn PLEASED that I've supposably lost a couple of stone that I don't have it in me to tell her that I haven't.
The thing is, this time I had. This made it even worse because I couldn't even say "hey, I haven't, you're just remembering wrong". The thing is, though, it's not a deliberate loss. I've not done anything other then eat what I want when I want and go about my life in a normal fashion. The thing is, where I live normally, eating what I want when I want is generally less of healthier foods then my mother gives me and going about my life involves an hours walk to and from work every day. So, yeah, I've lost weight, but it's nothing to be excited about. I'm not trying to loose weight so I don't need to be congratulated on it. I don't see it as a goal or something worth celebrating. It's not something I worked for, even something I desired, it's just a consequence of the different way I live after 3 months of living at home where I don't walk and eat more high fat food more often.
It also helps that, when I'm wearing clothes I pick myself, I look as big as I am instead of two sizes bigger in the mistaken beliefe that wearing bigger clothes will make me look smaller.
I'm trying to reach a point and I guess it's that I'm sick of people congratulating me on weight loss like it's an achievment, a goal. Like it's something real with meaning and value that I've strived for. It's not, and it's never going to be again no matter how tempted I get to find the 'going down a dress size' buzz or how much I convince myself that [object of desire] would love me if only I could drop a few stone.
It's not worth it.
Sorry that was rambly, I'll be better next time XD
Still not up to date with the backlog of bloggs so I'm probably horribly out of date but there are two things I want to do.
The first is to make a new year's resolution - I am going to comment on blogs. No, really. I'm kind of just sat here at the moment blogging in a corner alone and I'm going to stop that because it's bad for me and start participating. I'm sure nobody will bite me (much).
The second thing I want to do is complain about my mother. Specifically, my mother and my weight. My mother has issues with my weight. My mother wants me to loose weight, despite the fact that she herself has spent most of her life miserably struggling to do the same thing and failing. I've had a lot of issues when I came to university and started to realise I'm not actually grotesque, specifically with my mother and food and my mother and clothes. My mother doesn't eat, or eats very little, the overfeeds the rest of the family. She wonders why we're overweight while forcing more and more food on us. The clothes issue, my mother believes anyone over a size 12 or so shouldn't wear anything that fits, but only things a couple of sizes too big. She likes buying me clothes but only buys them in several sizes larger than I am.
Every time my mother sees me she comments that I've lost weight.
It's incredibly frustrating becasue if I'd actually lost weight every time my mother said I had, I'd not exist any more. The other thing is that she views this as a massive compliment and looks so damn PLEASED that I've supposably lost a couple of stone that I don't have it in me to tell her that I haven't.
The thing is, this time I had. This made it even worse because I couldn't even say "hey, I haven't, you're just remembering wrong". The thing is, though, it's not a deliberate loss. I've not done anything other then eat what I want when I want and go about my life in a normal fashion. The thing is, where I live normally, eating what I want when I want is generally less of healthier foods then my mother gives me and going about my life involves an hours walk to and from work every day. So, yeah, I've lost weight, but it's nothing to be excited about. I'm not trying to loose weight so I don't need to be congratulated on it. I don't see it as a goal or something worth celebrating. It's not something I worked for, even something I desired, it's just a consequence of the different way I live after 3 months of living at home where I don't walk and eat more high fat food more often.
It also helps that, when I'm wearing clothes I pick myself, I look as big as I am instead of two sizes bigger in the mistaken beliefe that wearing bigger clothes will make me look smaller.
I'm trying to reach a point and I guess it's that I'm sick of people congratulating me on weight loss like it's an achievment, a goal. Like it's something real with meaning and value that I've strived for. It's not, and it's never going to be again no matter how tempted I get to find the 'going down a dress size' buzz or how much I convince myself that [object of desire] would love me if only I could drop a few stone.
It's not worth it.
Sorry that was rambly, I'll be better next time XD
Monday, 8 December 2008
Why do some dads get more involved than others? Evidence from a large British cohort
Why do some dads get more involved than others? Evidence from a large British cohort
Daniel Nettle
At sciencedirect or New Scientist reports. (I found this article through new scientist but the below is based on what I found from reading the full text via sciencedirect.
Let's start with the data-set. Parental involvement is related by the mother, so relies on her accurate reporting. It is rated on a three point scale, from no involvement to an involvement equal to the mother, with an option to say that the question is non-applicable. The question is taken at one time point, when the offspring in question are 11. They noted that 1 often correlated to a non-resident father and 3 to a father who lived with the family. By referencing this scale against other variables they found.
1. Fathers rated as highly invested in their children were more likely to have skilled jobs whereas fathers rated at less likely to be involved were more likely to have an unskilled job.
2. Men were more likely to be reported as investing more time in sons then daughters.
3. Children with heavily involved fathers have a higher intelligence score in all social classes.
4. Children with fathers in skilled employment who spent a lot of time with them had a greater improvement in 'intelligence' then any other group.
5. Those offspring with high parental investment were more likely to be upwardly mobile through life, the class effect disappeared in this measure.
This is then discussed as evolutionary adaptive.
I have two big issues with this.
The first issue is how I see studies like this being used. This study states that paternal involvement improves outcomes, but it misses a hell of a lot of other variable. It does not take into account any non-traditional family structure. It just presumes a woman's involvement but doesn't measure it. Surely the children in more 'highly invested' groups are getting twice the parental input of the other children, so this could be causing the effect. There's also nothing to show it has to be a father, that it isn't just having significant time invested by two parents as opposed to one. We all know which crowd argues that children need a parent of each gender, don't we?
The second issue I have is the complete failure to consider other variables. There is some suggestion that potential IQ has a genetic component, couldn't this have a role? More intelligent parents having more intelligent children. How does that mother's socioeconomic status play in?
They also attempt to explain why higher socioeconomic class fathers put in more childcare time in evolutionary terms. How about this, these men have more money to spend on their children (buying them books and taking them out, for example), they probably have higher job satisfaction and more control over their own working conditions, so instead of stumbling in at 6, exhausted from hauling crates all day they come in buzzing from settling that deal in Japan and have much more energy to invest in their children. Then, of course, there's the possibility for biased recording. Anyone check if these fathers actually spent more time of if it was just perceived that they spent more time. The authors compare the results to older statistics that show this measure seems to correlate with earlier measures like the amount of time spent reading (again, reported by mother) or amount of time spent on outings (guess who reported it?). It doesn't seem to account for that fact that men of lower socioeconomic class might not read to their kids, but might watch TV with them. They might not take their kids to the zoo but they might take them round to relatives or to friends, particularly children of the same gender.
Then there's the social pressure to have a child who's successful. This pressure doesn't really exist in working class families, in my experience. A child who gets a job on the shop floor at Tesco is seen as a success in the same way one with a degree is whereas in higher status families there is the expectation that the child will enter the same socioeconomic class, so will have a degree. They're also more likely to go to a school which prepares them for university and more likely to have peers who aspire to high things. That HAS to have an effect.
Then there's the casual writing off of the female children, of course he wouldn't invest so much time in a girl. Evolutionarily speaking, males are more likely to give you lots of children. They do, to be fair, give a passing nod to the fact that society values male children more, but does put a lot more emphasis on an evolutionary explanation.
All in all, I remain unconvinced that a person with a penis is needed or even preferential in raising a child. I'll accept that this implies that bi-parental care may have an effect, particularly in large families, but I certainly don't think we can draw any evolutionary conclusions from this and I'd prefer to hold off on drawing any conclusions at all until I see something that accounts for the contribution of the female parent.
Daniel Nettle
At sciencedirect or New Scientist reports. (I found this article through new scientist but the below is based on what I found from reading the full text via sciencedirect.
Let's start with the data-set. Parental involvement is related by the mother, so relies on her accurate reporting. It is rated on a three point scale, from no involvement to an involvement equal to the mother, with an option to say that the question is non-applicable. The question is taken at one time point, when the offspring in question are 11. They noted that 1 often correlated to a non-resident father and 3 to a father who lived with the family. By referencing this scale against other variables they found.
1. Fathers rated as highly invested in their children were more likely to have skilled jobs whereas fathers rated at less likely to be involved were more likely to have an unskilled job.
2. Men were more likely to be reported as investing more time in sons then daughters.
3. Children with heavily involved fathers have a higher intelligence score in all social classes.
4. Children with fathers in skilled employment who spent a lot of time with them had a greater improvement in 'intelligence' then any other group.
5. Those offspring with high parental investment were more likely to be upwardly mobile through life, the class effect disappeared in this measure.
This is then discussed as evolutionary adaptive.
I have two big issues with this.
The first issue is how I see studies like this being used. This study states that paternal involvement improves outcomes, but it misses a hell of a lot of other variable. It does not take into account any non-traditional family structure. It just presumes a woman's involvement but doesn't measure it. Surely the children in more 'highly invested' groups are getting twice the parental input of the other children, so this could be causing the effect. There's also nothing to show it has to be a father, that it isn't just having significant time invested by two parents as opposed to one. We all know which crowd argues that children need a parent of each gender, don't we?
The second issue I have is the complete failure to consider other variables. There is some suggestion that potential IQ has a genetic component, couldn't this have a role? More intelligent parents having more intelligent children. How does that mother's socioeconomic status play in?
They also attempt to explain why higher socioeconomic class fathers put in more childcare time in evolutionary terms. How about this, these men have more money to spend on their children (buying them books and taking them out, for example), they probably have higher job satisfaction and more control over their own working conditions, so instead of stumbling in at 6, exhausted from hauling crates all day they come in buzzing from settling that deal in Japan and have much more energy to invest in their children. Then, of course, there's the possibility for biased recording. Anyone check if these fathers actually spent more time of if it was just perceived that they spent more time. The authors compare the results to older statistics that show this measure seems to correlate with earlier measures like the amount of time spent reading (again, reported by mother) or amount of time spent on outings (guess who reported it?). It doesn't seem to account for that fact that men of lower socioeconomic class might not read to their kids, but might watch TV with them. They might not take their kids to the zoo but they might take them round to relatives or to friends, particularly children of the same gender.
Then there's the social pressure to have a child who's successful. This pressure doesn't really exist in working class families, in my experience. A child who gets a job on the shop floor at Tesco is seen as a success in the same way one with a degree is whereas in higher status families there is the expectation that the child will enter the same socioeconomic class, so will have a degree. They're also more likely to go to a school which prepares them for university and more likely to have peers who aspire to high things. That HAS to have an effect.
Then there's the casual writing off of the female children, of course he wouldn't invest so much time in a girl. Evolutionarily speaking, males are more likely to give you lots of children. They do, to be fair, give a passing nod to the fact that society values male children more, but does put a lot more emphasis on an evolutionary explanation.
All in all, I remain unconvinced that a person with a penis is needed or even preferential in raising a child. I'll accept that this implies that bi-parental care may have an effect, particularly in large families, but I certainly don't think we can draw any evolutionary conclusions from this and I'd prefer to hold off on drawing any conclusions at all until I see something that accounts for the contribution of the female parent.
Friday, 5 December 2008
A friday roundup
An interesting article on the pro-choice movement and disability. Not sure what I think of it. I think abortion in the case of discovery of disability is still valid but I think any reason a woman feels she needs to abort is a valid reason and it's not our place to question her motives. I think saying abortions of disabled fetus are somehow more valid then abortions of able-bodied fetus is wrong, I certainly think encouraging any woman to abort for any reason, even the 'health of the baby' is wrong. I think the problem isn't that we allow women to abort disabled children but the way society treats disability, the way we think about disabled people as inferior, talk about them and treat them like children.
The problem is the presumption that disabled people are somehow living inferior lives that makes the woman want to abort, and I remain unconvinced that forcing the woman to have the fetus against her will is the way to confront this predjudice. It's like the mass female infanticide that goes on with abortion of female fetus in china. It's obviously horrific, like the mass erasure of disabled people in uterus, but stopping the pregnant women aborting isn't going to improve the situation. You've got to change society so they see value in a female child not just a male child, and we have to change society to see people with disabilities are useful, happy, important people and not problems and burdens who'll only suffer.
Caroline Rothstein performs her poem "Fat" at SUNY New Paltz. A poem about eating disorders. May be triggering to some. Very powerful.
And this is just cool. Movement of cells in a fruit fly embryo.
The problem is the presumption that disabled people are somehow living inferior lives that makes the woman want to abort, and I remain unconvinced that forcing the woman to have the fetus against her will is the way to confront this predjudice. It's like the mass female infanticide that goes on with abortion of female fetus in china. It's obviously horrific, like the mass erasure of disabled people in uterus, but stopping the pregnant women aborting isn't going to improve the situation. You've got to change society so they see value in a female child not just a male child, and we have to change society to see people with disabilities are useful, happy, important people and not problems and burdens who'll only suffer.
Caroline Rothstein performs her poem "Fat" at SUNY New Paltz. A poem about eating disorders. May be triggering to some. Very powerful.
And this is just cool. Movement of cells in a fruit fly embryo.
Tuesday, 25 November 2008
Anyone else sick of this story?
Some crazy people force women to be fat!
I've read this story before. I think we all have. It works it's way to the top of the BBC 'most read' or 'most e-mailed' list every so often and we get to learn how disghusting it is that sometimes instead of forcing people to be unhealthily thin to meet a beauty ideal we force them to be unhealthily fat to meet a beauty ideal.
I mean, just take this paragraph -
Now, let's reverse it
Don't tell me you couldn't see someone saying something like that in the west.
Forcing anyone to be any weight that isn't natural for them is bad, that's what size acceptance is all about. However, our culture difeinetley has no right to talk when it comes to forcing women to change their bodies to suit men.
Hope it's a long time before I see this article circulating up again.
I've read this story before. I think we all have. It works it's way to the top of the BBC 'most read' or 'most e-mailed' list every so often and we get to learn how disghusting it is that sometimes instead of forcing people to be unhealthily thin to meet a beauty ideal we force them to be unhealthily fat to meet a beauty ideal.
I mean, just take this paragraph -
She argued that in the end the girls were grateful.
"When they are small they don't understand, but when they grow up they are fat and beautiful," she said.
Now, let's reverse it
"When they are fat they don't understand, but when they grow up they are slamm and beautiful," she said.
Don't tell me you couldn't see someone saying something like that in the west.
Forcing anyone to be any weight that isn't natural for them is bad, that's what size acceptance is all about. However, our culture difeinetley has no right to talk when it comes to forcing women to change their bodies to suit men.
Hope it's a long time before I see this article circulating up again.
Monday, 17 November 2008
Fat Bitch
The other day, a group of my friends were talking about the worst name you could use on a dating website, as a woman looking to attract men. The first thing that popped out of their mouths, "Fat bitch".
Well, I'm a fat bitch. I'm proud to be a fat bitch.
I'm fat. I have the kind of body that, when I go to a doctor, they immediatley start looking shifty and plotting a way to get me on the scales. Even if I was weighed on my last visit just a couple of weeks or even days ago. I get on the scale, they put their number in their magical NHS computer and add my height, then we get the look of doom. Oh no, you're going to die. They look at me, wondering how to tell me. Sorry mame, it's obesity!
In fact, the scenario above has happened so often that it's stopped making me uncomfortable. I've got to the point where I just look at them like they're idiots. Well, no shit. You know, I hadn't noticed. But now, now you say it, it's so obvious! That's why I've been having trouble fitting into my size 10's lately!
I am fat.
But, you know what, I like being fat. I am fat possitive. I love my fat body, I love it exactly as much as I would love a thin body or a 'normal' body or, hell, a body twice as big as the one I've got. This fat body of mine lets me walk and run. My fat body can dance like nobody's watching. My fat body can cycle to work. My fat body can do science and part of this fat body of mine is my fat brain which I like to think is a pretty intelligent little organ. My fat body lets me hug my best friends. My fat body lets me hit things when I get angry. My fat body lets me cry at soppy movies. My fat body gives me orgasms. My fat body looks good and feels good and there's nothing wrong with it.
I'm a bitch too. I'm a bitch because I'm tired of taking shit. I'm only 23 and I've already taken so much shit that I'm past it. I'm sick of casual racism, casual sexism, casual ablism, casual transphobia, casual hatred of all kinds. I'm sick of being told it's funny and it's a joke. I'm not standing for it any more and, if you do, I'm going to call you on it. I'm going to ask why it is you think implying all homosexual men are effeminet is funny. I'm going to ask you what funny about rape or about having a non-standard body or about having skin that's not white.
Furthermore, I won't let you talk over me. If you're a man and you talk over me I'll tell you to shut the fuck up. When you tell me I can't do something because I'm a girl i'll tell you to shut the fuck up. When you try and tell me that rape scene in that manga wasn't a rape scene because the victim totally wanted it really I will tell you to SHUT THE FUCK UP. I will tell you that you are wrong and I will tell you why.
I will not accept that sometimes it's ok to spread hatred because you think it's funny, reguardless of if you're Jeremy Clarkson or my best friend.
So I'm a bitch.
And I'm fat.
I'm a fat bitch.
I'm damn proud of it, too. If that's the worst, least attractive thing you can think of for me to be then I guess I've got it made.
Well, I'm a fat bitch. I'm proud to be a fat bitch.
I'm fat. I have the kind of body that, when I go to a doctor, they immediatley start looking shifty and plotting a way to get me on the scales. Even if I was weighed on my last visit just a couple of weeks or even days ago. I get on the scale, they put their number in their magical NHS computer and add my height, then we get the look of doom. Oh no, you're going to die. They look at me, wondering how to tell me. Sorry mame, it's obesity!
In fact, the scenario above has happened so often that it's stopped making me uncomfortable. I've got to the point where I just look at them like they're idiots. Well, no shit. You know, I hadn't noticed. But now, now you say it, it's so obvious! That's why I've been having trouble fitting into my size 10's lately!
I am fat.
But, you know what, I like being fat. I am fat possitive. I love my fat body, I love it exactly as much as I would love a thin body or a 'normal' body or, hell, a body twice as big as the one I've got. This fat body of mine lets me walk and run. My fat body can dance like nobody's watching. My fat body can cycle to work. My fat body can do science and part of this fat body of mine is my fat brain which I like to think is a pretty intelligent little organ. My fat body lets me hug my best friends. My fat body lets me hit things when I get angry. My fat body lets me cry at soppy movies. My fat body gives me orgasms. My fat body looks good and feels good and there's nothing wrong with it.
I'm a bitch too. I'm a bitch because I'm tired of taking shit. I'm only 23 and I've already taken so much shit that I'm past it. I'm sick of casual racism, casual sexism, casual ablism, casual transphobia, casual hatred of all kinds. I'm sick of being told it's funny and it's a joke. I'm not standing for it any more and, if you do, I'm going to call you on it. I'm going to ask why it is you think implying all homosexual men are effeminet is funny. I'm going to ask you what funny about rape or about having a non-standard body or about having skin that's not white.
Furthermore, I won't let you talk over me. If you're a man and you talk over me I'll tell you to shut the fuck up. When you tell me I can't do something because I'm a girl i'll tell you to shut the fuck up. When you try and tell me that rape scene in that manga wasn't a rape scene because the victim totally wanted it really I will tell you to SHUT THE FUCK UP. I will tell you that you are wrong and I will tell you why.
I will not accept that sometimes it's ok to spread hatred because you think it's funny, reguardless of if you're Jeremy Clarkson or my best friend.
So I'm a bitch.
And I'm fat.
I'm a fat bitch.
I'm damn proud of it, too. If that's the worst, least attractive thing you can think of for me to be then I guess I've got it made.
Friday, 31 October 2008
Bleurgh
I've been ill for a week. It's quite annoying. See, I'm not ill enough to warrant curling up in bed under a duvet with a hot drink and giving up on the day, but I'm not well enough to be able to really concentrate on something as complex as a paper, so the result is that I've spent a good portion of the week sat staring at a paper reading the abstract over and over as if it might give up it's secrets if only I can read it often enough.
Needless to say, week 5 of the PhD thing hasn't been so productive. Will have to do better next week. I have the entire weekend to rest up, in theory. The problem with being a postgrad and hanging out with mostly undergrads is they don't have to get up every morning and you do. We're meant to be off to the pub again tonight, I might fall asleep in a corner if I go.
Anyway, just to prove I haven't been completely out of it this week, some relevant news.
The HFEA bill has been passed. A nice step forward, I like to think. Particularly since most of the arguments against are petty scaremongering. Nobody likes scaremongering. Though I am disapointed on a feminist note that none of the liberalisations of the abortion law that were on the HFE bill were voted in. Asking women to get two doctors approval for abortion is demeaning at best. I wrote an impassioned letter to my MP about it and get a stock reply from his office manager so I'm feeling disilusioned at the moment.
Yeah, that's all I've got. Going to go back to staring at papers and hoping they start to make sense.
Edit - Forgot about this one - How Vampire's learnt to feed on blood alone. Quite interesting :) And, of course, date appropriate.
Needless to say, week 5 of the PhD thing hasn't been so productive. Will have to do better next week. I have the entire weekend to rest up, in theory. The problem with being a postgrad and hanging out with mostly undergrads is they don't have to get up every morning and you do. We're meant to be off to the pub again tonight, I might fall asleep in a corner if I go.
Anyway, just to prove I haven't been completely out of it this week, some relevant news.
The HFEA bill has been passed. A nice step forward, I like to think. Particularly since most of the arguments against are petty scaremongering. Nobody likes scaremongering. Though I am disapointed on a feminist note that none of the liberalisations of the abortion law that were on the HFE bill were voted in. Asking women to get two doctors approval for abortion is demeaning at best. I wrote an impassioned letter to my MP about it and get a stock reply from his office manager so I'm feeling disilusioned at the moment.
Yeah, that's all I've got. Going to go back to staring at papers and hoping they start to make sense.
Edit - Forgot about this one - How Vampire's learnt to feed on blood alone. Quite interesting :) And, of course, date appropriate.
Thursday, 23 October 2008
sex-ed for the uninitiated.
Everyone heard the news about relationship classes for children from age 5?" Good news, yes? I think so.
Kids know a lot more then we like to think, and hiding things from them just makes those things taboo and shameful. People sit around wondering why teenagers, who spend so much time striving to be adults, end up pregnant when they learn at an early age that sex is this big, wonderful mysterious thing that only adults get to do and that you'll get to do too when you're GROWN UP and REALLY IN LOVE.
What we need is sex education that's honest, age appropriate and doesn't segregate or treat kids like idiots. Of course, we shouldn't be teaching five year olds that it's great to be penetrative sex, but what's wrong with teaching a five year old that sex is something that two grown ups who love each other a lot can do together which feels nice? Why can't we teach them that they're allowed to say no if anyone is touching them in a way they don't like? Why can't we teach them to respect each other.
I have a few hopes. The first, which I'm told I'm woefully behind on and basically happens already, is the hope that they stop segregating. My overriding memory of sex education was, at primary school, being taking into the teachers lounge with all the other girls and being explained to, in vague terms, about periods, then given a sanitary towl to hide from the boys. I also remember one of the boys turning around in calss after figuring out what we'd got and telling the teacher it was unfair and if the girls got towels, the boys should get condoms. I only wish I could remember the look on the teachers face.
Anyway, it sets up this entire mystery. This idea that women are ashamed and men are terrified of their periods. That we have to hide them in silly slang terms (it's that time of the month, I'm on, my stomach hurts, rather then just saying I'm having my period) or the men will get upset and offended. At the moment my favourite drunk question to ask when I'm in the presence of men is if it makes them uncomfortable for me to talk about my periods.
The second thing I hope will be different for kids under this system then the one I grew up with is that I hope they stop it being a damn biology lesson. Yes, I am a biologist, I love biology, but we all know the physical changes in puberty are secondary to the emotional upheaval of adolencence. Who cares about a patch of hair under your arms when suddenly every day is a fun emotional rollercoaster. You're coming into all these adult feelings, you've never felt like this before, what good is a video with a cartoon rabbit saying it's ok if you smell a little. How does it make sense that, at 13, I could draw you a disgram of my reproductive system but didn't know the word masturbate.
Kids don't need nuts and bolts education. A litle forwarning is ok but what they really need help with is working out all the psychological and emotional stuff. They can work out where a penis goes, people have been managing that for one hell of a long time, but some lessons in treating your partner like an equal, about respecting others, about dealing with your inexplicable anger towards everything, about being grown up and what it really means rather then what the TV says it means, some actual debate once they get old enough to sustain it about what adulthood is and how to cope with what they're feeling.
That's what I would have appreciated when I started hitting my teenage years, anyway.
Kids know a lot more then we like to think, and hiding things from them just makes those things taboo and shameful. People sit around wondering why teenagers, who spend so much time striving to be adults, end up pregnant when they learn at an early age that sex is this big, wonderful mysterious thing that only adults get to do and that you'll get to do too when you're GROWN UP and REALLY IN LOVE.
What we need is sex education that's honest, age appropriate and doesn't segregate or treat kids like idiots. Of course, we shouldn't be teaching five year olds that it's great to be penetrative sex, but what's wrong with teaching a five year old that sex is something that two grown ups who love each other a lot can do together which feels nice? Why can't we teach them that they're allowed to say no if anyone is touching them in a way they don't like? Why can't we teach them to respect each other.
I have a few hopes. The first, which I'm told I'm woefully behind on and basically happens already, is the hope that they stop segregating. My overriding memory of sex education was, at primary school, being taking into the teachers lounge with all the other girls and being explained to, in vague terms, about periods, then given a sanitary towl to hide from the boys. I also remember one of the boys turning around in calss after figuring out what we'd got and telling the teacher it was unfair and if the girls got towels, the boys should get condoms. I only wish I could remember the look on the teachers face.
Anyway, it sets up this entire mystery. This idea that women are ashamed and men are terrified of their periods. That we have to hide them in silly slang terms (it's that time of the month, I'm on, my stomach hurts, rather then just saying I'm having my period) or the men will get upset and offended. At the moment my favourite drunk question to ask when I'm in the presence of men is if it makes them uncomfortable for me to talk about my periods.
The second thing I hope will be different for kids under this system then the one I grew up with is that I hope they stop it being a damn biology lesson. Yes, I am a biologist, I love biology, but we all know the physical changes in puberty are secondary to the emotional upheaval of adolencence. Who cares about a patch of hair under your arms when suddenly every day is a fun emotional rollercoaster. You're coming into all these adult feelings, you've never felt like this before, what good is a video with a cartoon rabbit saying it's ok if you smell a little. How does it make sense that, at 13, I could draw you a disgram of my reproductive system but didn't know the word masturbate.
Kids don't need nuts and bolts education. A litle forwarning is ok but what they really need help with is working out all the psychological and emotional stuff. They can work out where a penis goes, people have been managing that for one hell of a long time, but some lessons in treating your partner like an equal, about respecting others, about dealing with your inexplicable anger towards everything, about being grown up and what it really means rather then what the TV says it means, some actual debate once they get old enough to sustain it about what adulthood is and how to cope with what they're feeling.
That's what I would have appreciated when I started hitting my teenage years, anyway.
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