A Response: Sex Ed

original post: http://jc-and-pc.blogspot.ca/2012/03/sex-education.html

After reading Jessica’s post on sex education, I completely agree with her view on sexuality and the media. Our culture is one that has no problem using sex as a tool to make money from young people, but seems to have a problem educating them sex. In order to fully comment on this blog, I had to go back to my own sex ed classes in school. This alone was an issue, as I remember there being one brief class in grade 9, none of the information that I got in the brief period is still with me today. This seems crazy, as this is an issue that affects everyone for a majority of his or her lives, yet there is so little focus on it.

Three different cover of Cosmo, all focusing on the same view of sexuality

 When I think about where most of my friends and I get their sexual education from, it is either magazines, the Internet, or each other, none of which are fully reliable or helpful. Using the example of magazines, like Cosmopolitan, most of their covers feature stories like “78 ways to please a man” or “ways to have bad girl sex” or “10 shocking truths about guys and sex” out of 3 of these cover headlines one cover featured the story “5 things to tell your gyno”. The fact that only one measly cover seemed to focus on the health side of sex seemed absurd, as there is no problem listing 78 ways to have sex. I know that it is not the responsibility of magazines like Cosmopolitan to give young people their very own sex ed class, but, then their focus should not only be to use sex as a purpose to sell magazines and make a profit. Furthermore, because we know that young people are exposed to media like this all the time, school boards should feel even more pressure to create effective sex ed for students.