Curled up in bed reading a new novel about Vanessa Bell and Virginia Woolf called Vanessa and Her Sister, I came to a section about Bell’s pregnancy in which she is instructed by her doctor to wear a corset and drink champagne. In the middle of navigating my own pregnancy, I laughed out loud. Indeed just like all the…
Chances are you were told in school that you could get pregnant any time you have sex so don’t have sex. But that’s mostly a lie to get you to keep it in your pants—it’s actually not that easy to make a baby.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has published a list of 16 topics it says should be taught in high school sex education courses. The health bureau also recently found that less than half of U.S. high schools are properly teaching the topics.
Is it reasonable to take middle-schoolers to a sex toy shop? Is it harmful to start teaching your toddler the word “vulva” before she can remember her sister’s name? Is it good to expect teenagers to be celibate and teach them abstinence exclusively? Will it scare elementary-age children to know about fluid gender…
A new study from the Centers for Disease Control shows that middle and high schools in the United States are doing an almost universally terrible job teaching sex ed. Schools are especially struggling with teaching students how to get and use condoms; teenagers are less likely to use one today than they were a decade…
These days, if you want to be delivered unto marriage with a sexual blank slate, it takes a village full of abstinence-only educators working overtime—and then some. Today, information about the most obscure kinks is a Google search away, there are detailed diagrams available for positions that would daunt a…
On This Week Tonight, John Oliver lavished a full 21 minutes on American sex ed, with a special emphasis on abstinence-only curriculums. The segment comes complete with clips from dreadful videos with titles like “No Screwin’ Around” and programs comparing girls who’ve had sex to used tape, chewed-up gum, and stinky…
When I came back to school at 29, after spending most of my twenties as a civilian, one thing I noticed was that it’s fun to laugh there. It’s fun to laugh in a classroom setting.
The campaign is titled Penis Can Surprise You and can only be described as “modern avant-garde creepy-as-fuck.” But what else can you do to get noticed, asks a Norway sexual health charity, when the people who most need your advertisement about chlamydia aren’t paying attention to more traditional forms of public…
Welcome to Loser Sons of Politics, a new column where members of the Jezebel staff recall with fondness the antics of the loser sons of politicians. Today, with considerably less fondness, we bring you Alaska State Senator Pete Kelly, who believes birth control is for loose women and whose son, Devin, was just charged…
Congratulations to Radiohead’s Thom Yorke, who has expanded his ever-impressive resume by accidentally modeling for Marital and Sexual Problems in Men, a sexual education book found in Iran.
We may never crack this case: a small school district in West Texas that offers no sex education whatsoever is experiencing a large outbreak of chlamydia. How could this possibly have happened?
Last week, a Reddit user pointed out that curious prom posters—approved by the principal—had begun appearing on her high school’s walls. The posters, which featured a woman made out of words suggesting good qualities, reminded young men that prom was “a night to protect her character.”
Recently, we all had a good laugh at an inappropriately upbeat PSA from the early 70s, warning America that VD is for everybody. But it seems downright contemporary compared to this 1944 special message to women, in which a VERY disappointed family physician informs a young woman that she has gonorrhea.
The Internet is full of unexplainable, contextless, amazing detritus. For instance! These dating rules from a not-at-all unnervingly calm Christian dad wearing a very sophisticated patterned shirt, who uses the term "date mate" and warns that, "Sex may be fun. But now sex can kill."
There is a lot to dislike about the 1,600-page, $1 trillion spending package up for a vote in Congress today, but one of its most obviously counterproductive provisions may be the new pathway for states to access a new stash of federal funding if they implement criteria for abstinence-only sex ed (a phrase that should…
In ninth grade, I took a summer class on health education. In it, we learned how to put on a condom, that being gay is okay and that trans people aren't freaks. My parents didn't bat an eye (except when I brought a lube sample home). Parents in Lafayette, CA, however are hopping mad that their kids learned how to say…
Parents in a California school district are freaking the fuck out because their kids are learning about sex from Planned Parenthood.
Parents in Fremont, California want a textbook pulled from the ninth-grade health curriculum, because they're unhappy with its frank discussions of sex toys, sex games and sexual fantasies.
Many American educators will be shocked to learn that the best way to encourage safe sexual practices is not to cover your eyes and pretend that the youths won't grope each other dirtily 'til marriage if you vehemently insist that they shouldn't. In fact, a new study shows that teaching kids about sex before puberty…
