The Blue Bird: sex ed

Showing posts with label sex ed. Show all posts

Tuesday, April 19, 2016

Porn - It's not black and white...

Listened to an interesting podcast today with Dan Savage who was tearing apart an article entitled "is porn immoral? It doesn't matter, it's a public health crisis" which makes a lot of claims that are not backed up by science. Dan also ridicules the Mormon funded "Porn Kills Love" campaign and cited this article in the atlantic which lists some interesting studies that have been done about porn usage and it's impacts on crime etc.

OWL sexual health education

Just learned about this program for teaching sex ed, might have to investigate it a little more but sounds intriguing! http://www.uua.org/re/owl

Sunday, April 17, 2016

Quickly loosing all respect for Mainstream hip hop...

Yet another article about how porn, and also the sexually explicit nature of the culture including music videos is giving boys and young men a warped idea of what sex and sexuality are. EEk. Tough time to be a young person in this world. I have been working a lot in the high school the last few weeks and have been impressed, perturbed, surprised and awed but the spectrum of youth and where they are at as they try to navigate this wild west media landscape. The article makes mention of a recent Lil' Wayne and Drake video, watching it kinda made my blood boil. I've poster the lyrics below. For a song like this to be called "Love Me" it's no wonder young men are confused. When I look at the content here it seems to me that the men making this music men have no concept of what Love is, and are the last people who young people should be learning about it from in my humble opinion.

Here are the Lyrics:

Lil’ Wayne and Kanye lyrics to “Love me”

Monday, April 4, 2016

Frightening stories on the effects of boys growing up in "pornland"

Yikes! A friend just sent me a link to this article with stories from girls, mostly from Australia - poor them - in my experience Australian men can be sexist to begin with, but it seems that perhaps things have gotten even worse in the Aussie male department since I lived in Whistler which was crawling with them. At any rate it paints a pretty bleak picture of the sexual landscape of young women. http://www.collectiveshout.org/growing_up_in_pornland_girls_have_had_it_with_porn_conditioned_boys

Sunday, April 3, 2016

Challenging the period Taboo one marathon at a time

Pretty impressed by this rad M.I.A. drummer lady who ran the London Marathon without a tampon to challenge the stigma and bring awareness about the shame that even people who can afford tampons, pads and menstrual cups live throughout their reproductive lives. To read more check out this blog http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/heres-why-i-ran-the-london-marathon-on-the-first-day-of-my-period-and-chose-not-to-wear-a-tampon-10455176.html where Kiran wrote about her experience. Pretty powerful.

Saturday, April 2, 2016

Is Porn Addictive?

Here is a great video by my favourite sex positive vlogger. This is a tricky subject and I think she does a great job tackling this question. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EBSG98qzaPc

Banned Birth Control Books

Thanks to Yoyo for sending me a link to this great story about an information book published by University students in Montreal in the 60's.

http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-illegal-birth-control-handbook-that-spread-across-college-campuses-in-1968?utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=atlas-page

Monday, February 22, 2016

Is there such a thing as Feminist Porn?

I have been teaching lately and trying to weave in more info about the potential impacts of watching porn as I have been learning about how there are people, according to an English study, approximately 1 in 4 young men in Britain who can't maintain an erection without porn after growing up with it. I heard that on a CBC Ideas podcast called porn generation, which I would encourage others interested in this to take a listen to. Another stat I heard recently was that 1 in three women watches porn (or at least those are the ones who will admit it). So I wondered what is the feminist stance on pornography? Is all porn bad? Where can a person go to find "good" porn and as Lacie Green points out in this video, how much is too much? Studies claim that "moderate use" of porn does not seem to have negative or lasting impacts on the brain, but how much is moderate? Once a week? Once a month? Once a day? Once a year??? There is so much research yet to be done, and fortunately there is a new porn Journal which aims to study some of these questions and more and in the mean time, I am pleased to have stumbled across the feminist porn awards which give a good run down of porn that may have some value, or at the very least be less full of the shocking de-humanizing and mysoginist images that are the mainstay of free, cheap internet porn like red tube porn hub. I was pleased to see when scrolling through their list of award winners, films by Dr. Carol Queen, who writes the sex advice column for Bust Magazine which I quite like. So anyways, lots of questions about the future of our brains, the future of porn, and the beginning of a quest to find porn that might just be able to be educational, and not just a degrading shame fest that leaves us feeling not much better that a scrunched up ball of kleenex by the end. I also really loved the movie Don Jon as it deals with these themes in a really clever way.

Tuesday, December 29, 2015

I Don't Owe You

Really like this new poster campaign http://avaloncentre.ca/campaigns/i-dont-owe-you/

Tuesday, November 24, 2015

New fave - animated organs

Just discovered a great new website that sells amazing organs and body part related arts, crafts and plashes. It's called I heart guts and reminds me a bit of my other fave stuffs the Giant Microbes, which I think I've probably mentioned on here before, but just in case...Here they are, too cute!!

Monday, November 23, 2015

Son, It's OK if You Don't Get Laid Tonight.

Here is a link to a great letter written by a mom to her teenage son. Can you imagine if all parents actually had these kinds of conversations with their kids!? It would put me out of a job!! I also really like this cartoon which, like the tea example I posted a while back, shows some great metaphors for consent.

http://angieup.tumblr.com/post/64577581035/son-its-okay-if-you-dont-get-laid-tonight

Wednesday, October 28, 2015

Stuff You Should Know...about PUBERTY!

I love the guys from Stuff You Should Know. I learn all kinds of things from them! Recently they did 2 great podcasts about puberty which I thought were pretty great. Have a listen. Here's Male Puberty, and here's Female Puberty. One thing I noticed on the female puberty episode is that they use the word "discharge" which I think it gross and I prefer to use the term "fluids". Other than that pretty top notch!

Saturday, October 10, 2015

Teaching Kids About Sex? There's an App for that.

Just downloaded this a great app. Check out this video which shows how it works and read this great article from the Tyee including references from our lady of Sexual Health Meg Hickling.

Monday, September 14, 2015

4 Ways We Unwittingly Teach Kids That Consent Doesn't Matter- And How to Change That

Tuesday, June 30, 2015

Norway Is Waaaay Ahead, as Usual.

A friend just sent me a video, one of many amazing ones coming from Norway's Newton's Puberty series. This lady's Line Jansrud is my new inspiration. Her hair is a lot like mine too, and while the videos are more graphic than I could ever be in a classroom, they are very informative, fun, cute and shame free! Here is a nice little article that sums up some of what this amazing sex educator get's into. http://www.deathandtaxesmag.com/248465/norway-puberty-sex-ed-tv-show/

Friday, May 29, 2015

Two Spirit Folks

Great little Video shared by Call our and Out in Schools about what "Two Spirit" means.

Intersex Folks

Someone sent me this fabulous little short film. I think it does a great job at clarifying what this manifestation of biological sex means. I will probably use this in some of my future sex ed classes as people are often confused about this.

Thursday, April 16, 2015

The Genderbread person - the gender spectrum brilliantly explained in pictures.

Came across this wonderful info graphic recently and have been sharing it with all kinds of people in hopes of helping to shed light on the many facets of sexuality that kids, and all of us sometimes have a hard time grasping. I like how this speaks to the fact that there are spectrums of all these aspects of gender, and while a majority may appear to fall into one end or the other, in fact it's all pretty nuanced. One in 1000 babies is born intersex, with a mix of male and female genitals and more and more people are speaking up about the fact that their biology does not necessarily line up with their venter identity, or how they think about themselves. Despite being a country that is fairly progressive in terms of it's laws on homosexual marriage etc, we still hear "that's so gay" and I still have kids telling me "it just means happy". No it doesn't kid, so let's talk more about what it does mean.

Porn Sex V.S. Real Sex, the Differences explained with food

A great video that helps us get real about some of what we see, versus the reality, with great british narration. Good facts too. I showed this to some grade 10 girls this week and one said it may have ruined Nutella for her...so be warned.

Tuesday, March 10, 2015

A brilliant metaphor to explain how consent works.

A friend just sent me this, so SMART!! Yesterday I used this concept, but with the idea of ice cream with a grade 6/7 class. Pretended to offer some of them ice cream, totally worked.

http://www.theloop.ca/this-woman-just-explained-consent-with-the-most-perfect-metaphor/

Also here is a great video version complete with funny stick person animation if you want someone to read it to you. https://vimeo.com/126553913