The contemplation of my childhood sex-education brought back many conflicting recollections. I was born in 1966, the year Masters and Johnson wrote their book “called Human Sexual Response, which summarized their research on individuals who readily experienced orgasms during sexual activity” (Matlin, 2012, p. 288). This book was almost as revolutionary as the two volume manuscript called the Kinsey Reports, written by Alfred Kinsey in 1948 and 1953, which attempted to explain the sexual behavior of the male and female human being. Subsequently, in 1972 the Joy of Sex a Gourmet Guide which was a popular sexual manual unlike any other of its time, written by Alex Comfort, M.B., Ph.D. At the same time, a resurgence in 1972 of the child rearing
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My school covered all the biological aspects and use of contraceptives in health class; dating, romance, abstinence, date-rape, and homosexuality were covered in a mandatory psychology/sociology class. This comprehensive program was put into effect because of teen pregnancy issues and an outbreak of gonorrhea in the previous years at the …show more content…
296). I evoke the memory of a magazine article, which name eludes me at this time, had in its centerfold a scantily clad picture of a man on one side and a scantily clad picture of a woman on the other side with a question underneath asking “which did you look at first.” This exercise was presumably a method to determine if I was gay or not on the dependence of which model I focused on first. Consequently, I discovered it was the male model that I looked at first and longed for. However, the depiction of married couples on television programs such as reruns of I Love Lucy and The Dick Van Dike Show had husband and wives sleeping separately. This lead to confusion about the concept of intimacy for me, because my parents were free spirited with their sexuality. Needless to say sex and intimacy never seemed to quite intersect because the depictions of sex were always recreational from my perspective.
The common theme that I was exposed to through all of these sources was that heterosexism was the norm. We were not to talk about homosexuality except in an educational setting. I learned that no matter how well one school attempts to be comprehensive with sex-education, the social media, high school peers, and parents may distort the truth. I am grateful
My school covered all the biological aspects and use of contraceptives in health class; dating, romance, abstinence, date-rape, and homosexuality were covered in a mandatory psychology/sociology class. This comprehensive program was put into effect because of teen pregnancy issues and an outbreak of gonorrhea in the previous years at the …show more content…
296). I evoke the memory of a magazine article, which name eludes me at this time, had in its centerfold a scantily clad picture of a man on one side and a scantily clad picture of a woman on the other side with a question underneath asking “which did you look at first.” This exercise was presumably a method to determine if I was gay or not on the dependence of which model I focused on first. Consequently, I discovered it was the male model that I looked at first and longed for. However, the depiction of married couples on television programs such as reruns of I Love Lucy and The Dick Van Dike Show had husband and wives sleeping separately. This lead to confusion about the concept of intimacy for me, because my parents were free spirited with their sexuality. Needless to say sex and intimacy never seemed to quite intersect because the depictions of sex were always recreational from my perspective.
The common theme that I was exposed to through all of these sources was that heterosexism was the norm. We were not to talk about homosexuality except in an educational setting. I learned that no matter how well one school attempts to be comprehensive with sex-education, the social media, high school peers, and parents may distort the truth. I am grateful