"Parents aren't sex education experts just because they are parents." PEPPER SCHWARTZ
By Alex P. Vidal
I personally don't see anything wrong if we allow students even in religious campuses to read The Hite Report. Although it is seemingly archaic, its contents about female sexuality are still very much relevant in today's debates among the pros and cons of sexuality education.
But the late chemist and preacher Edwin Almendras won in his call to support the stand of a Catholic school in Iloilo to ban The Hite Report from its campus and to dissuade both the teachers and students from reading the book "in order not to corrupt their young minds and to discourage sexual subordination."
"The book promotes sexual promiscuity and lesbianism," Almendras protested. "If we hope to educate the young about sex, encouraging them to read The Hite Report should be our last recourse."
The Hite Report on Female Sexuality actually challenged the sexual status quo and defied male dominance. It became a worldwide publishing sensation, and even turned its author into a hate figure among some men.
CONTRADICT
There are articles in the book that contradicted the research done by famous sexologists, Masters and Johnson, which incorporated cultural attitudes on sexual behavior, observed Almendras.
Masters and Johnson sustained the argument that enough clitoral stimulation to achieve orgasm should be provided by thrusting during intercourse, and the inference that the failure of this is a sign of female "sexual dysfunction."
Society must understand the cultural and personal construction of sexual experience to make the research relevant to sexual behavior outside the laboratory, insisted Shere Hite, the book author. She offered that limiting test subjects to "normal" women who report orgasming during coitus was basing research on the faulty assumption that having an orgasm during coitus was typical, something that her own research strongly refuted.
Almendras' call gained support from Jesuit priests who run the school. Another school in Negros Occidental associated with the Iloilo-based Catholic school, adopted the ban and cited Almendras for helping "remove a disease, abscessed appendix, from the learning of the students." The school was not only against The Hite Report, it was now also against sex education to be tackled in school.
'ERRONEOUS'
Almendras and his backers, one of them a St. Therese Parish priest, called as "completely erroneous" the idea that if we remove sex education, it will create a vacuum in the educational process since it is an integral part of teaching and learning.
They argued that "sex education is not like reading or writing or other essential skills that have to be taught. Nature never intended for children to go to school to learn how to mate. And nature never intended that children should be taught from a book how to feel affection."
(The Washington Times, in an article written by Thomas Sowell dated May 17, 1988, reported that "What makes 'sex education' a fraud is that its whole thrust is not science but propaganda for new sexual attitudes and lifestyles. It would not take a week, much less a semester, to teach young people the basic biological facts of life. What takes so much time is slowly but steadily undermining the values their parents have taught them and replacing these values with new attitudes that accept adultery, abortion, homosexuality and the rest of the secular religion that calls 'sex education'.")
There are opinions, however, that consider sex education as "beneficial". School-based sexuality education programs conducted by specially trained education can add an important dimension to children's ongoing sexual learning, theorized Debra Haffner and Diane deMauro of the Sex Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS).
APPROPRIATE
They suggested that programs should be developmentally appropriate and include such issues as self-esteem, family relationships, parenting, friendships, values, communication techniques, dating and decision-making skills. Programs must be carefully planned by each community in order to respect the diversity of values and beliefs present in a classroom, they argued.
Meanwhile, the author's biography detailed some revealing information: "Feminist and sexologist Shirley Diana Gregory -- better known as Shere Hite -- grew up in America’s bible belt, but her research into sexuality scandalized the whole country. In her report, she posited a radical and utterly far-out theory: that women didn't need men to give them an orgasm. From the time of Freud, it was widely accepted that women could only climax through penetrative sex -- 'the great male thrust' -- and if they couldn't, there must be something wrong with them. For frustrated women faking orgasm, the report was a godsend, alerting women to their own sexual power, and informing men of the existence of the clitoris."
No comments:
Post a Comment