Personally, one woman’s opinion, but I cannot see why any woman would ever WANT to be married. I really don’t know why I ever did, though I never planned for it to be a lifetime thing. (and obviously it wasn’t). A young woman of, say 25, who says “Until death do us part” in August 2009 has (assuming increasing life expectancy), the possibility of being with the guy for 70 years! The Goddess hasn’t yet made the man (or for that matter, the woman!) that I myself would want to share my life with for that long! Look around, sisters…one out of every two marriages is ending in divorce. Marriage as a demonstration of commitment? That’s a joke.

The only advantages to the institution of marriage are those legal and financial incentives that are offered by-guess who-the government! Why do they offer them? Because heterosexual marriage is necessary to maintain the patriarchy and the patriarchy is necessary to maintain power, especially power over things feminine. That’s also why the patriarchy opposes gay and lesbian marriage…gay and lesbian marriages by their very nature do not reinforce the patriarchy…in fact they tend to prove that long-term relationships can thrive without the male-female tension that exists in every heterosexual marriage I’ve ever seen, even the ‘perfect’ ones.

Marriage might have been a viable institution when no one ever traveled more than 25 miles from their little village or farm, and 40 was a ripe old age. We’re driving on the Interstate using a relationship model designed for oxcart paths. It needs overhaul in both a legal and cultural sense, but I doubt I’ll live to see it.

You sisters who are married (or wish you could be) and enjoy your relationships by now have probably “hit the roof”, but know that I respect your choice. I am all for a woman’s right to choose, and if spending a whole lifetime with a single individual works for you, go for it!. I just oppose any effort by government and/or our culture to push what I consider a tool of patriarchal oppression as being the preferred option over the several others that exist.

Having grown up with a mother who never even told me about menstruation, I can safely say I’m another product of this sex-talk-shaming stuff that parents feel. I had to do so much research on my own — on anatomy, sexuality, intimacy, physiology, and care products (tampons, midol, condoms, etc). A lot of that research was done online.

So it surprises me that the government website is not geared toward parents AND preteens/teens…the internet was a useful tool for me in finding this information and was not beyond my reach. The site is written as if that is the case — maybe to make parents feel more comfortable about their inadequacy about educating their children.

Also, the mime thing creeps me out. You don’t have to show them what it looks like — you don’t have to act it out! No pelvic thrusting in the air, here!! You just have to give them reliable resources and be open to their questions. It shouldn’t be as hard as 4Parents paints it to be. It’s as if the commercial is reinforcing the idea that the sex talk is totally brutal, so that the parent and child make a pact to avoid it!

What I DO have a problem with is the insinuation that sex can only occur between a man and a woman, that only heterosexual families are real families and that people who do wait until they are married are somehow these horrible sex depraved miserable beings. Life is about choices whether someone chooses to wait or chooses to hit the ground running they shouldn’t be slut or virgin shamed.And no one should be shamed or made to feel as though their seual orientation is somehow invalid or not “real.”

1) does not include a space to leave one’s name or contact information,

2) limits comments to 150 words, but doesn’t tell you this until you’ve already tried to “send,” and

3) doesn’t work (“gateway timeout”).

Seriously, fuck them.

Oh, look, they DID remember the gay kids! Excuse me while I punch things.

Conveniently enough, the “Contact us” page of the site offers only a snail-mail address and a phone number. I’m sure this is because the administration just hasn’t discovered e-mail yet, not because they’re eager to make it as cumbersome as possible to tell them how full of shit they are.

(It was mentioned above, but here’s the online form they’ve hidden in the tiny print: http://www.hhs.gov/feedback.html)

That’s a huge risk for a babysitter to take, actually. Some parents would be liable to fly off the handle and accuse a person of sexual abuse over something like that. It’s clearly *not* sexual abuse, but any caregiver for a young child is vulnerable to accusations like that (especially the more distantly their relationship to the child), and some parents really would see it that way.

I have to confess that I don’t remember when I learned about “the parts”! My parents weren’t shy about it, but they also didn’t make a big production out of it either. I feel like I gleaned a little bit from a lot of different sources, but even into my twenties I am still being educated about sex. In my second year of university, a professor of mine asked our class, “What does consensual sex look like?” and it was a huge perspective-shift for me (it was a sociology of deviance class, ftr).

Sex education goes so far beyond just “the parts” that to boil it down even further, as this commercial suggests, is horrifying. Parents absolutely need to be comfortable and informed when talking about sex, and what they need are resources to help them with that, not shaming.

Hell, nowadays I’m the one giving the sex talk to my recently-divorced mother, especially after meeting a woman demographically identical to my mum who became HIV+ when she began dating after her divorce. No one ever taught her (just like no one ever taught my mum) how to (and why to) insist on using condoms. PSAs don’t cut it — people need to be taught and talked to directly.

My sex ed came from fanfic, mostly. Which teaches pretty good sexual ethics, as things go: “Women have sex drives too. Being gay, bi or asexual is totally awesome. Sex is fun. Kinky sex is even more fun. Sex with people you love is the best. If it’s not enthusiastic, it’s not consent. Remember to use protection.”

But I’m a nerd with a really good bullshit detector, which are traits not shared by the majority of humanity. So unless you really want your daughter to get her sex ed from people writing stories about Harry Potter, TALK ABOUT THE PARTS.