What My Parents Told Me (How I learnt about sexuality) Essay

What My Parents Told Me (How I learnt about sexuality) - Essay Example That solely depends on one’s experiences. The experiences of one who has been sexually abused in the childhood or at the hands of a spouse can never be compared to those experienced by one who has always seen healthy romantic and sexual relationships. Love or hate about sex depends on how one perceives sex, and how one experiences sex in life. I have always been deprived of proper sexual education right from my adolescence into my adulthood, which led to my suffering from fear of sex, and HSSD later on in life. In this paper, I reflect upon how I learned about sex and sexuality when I was an adolescent, and how the lack of parental support and sex education led to my deteriorated concept of sex. I would also reflect upon why there is a need for a full fledge program regarding sexual education in schools. I would also describe what HSSD is, to explain what I was going through. To me, sex had always been a taboo. My parents had never spoken to me openly about sex and sexual issu es. When I stepped into adolescence, sex became a mystery thing for me. With no sexual education at home or in school, I thought about sex as a dangerous activity. Aunt Sally was there to guide me a bit. She had told me to go to her if a boy approached me or tried to lure me into sexual activities. She said, â€Å"When you start feeling like you want to be kissed by a boy come to me first, you and I will discuss birth control.† She wanted to tell me about birth control; however, her warning struck me in a negative sense, so I started fearing the word of sex and thought of it as a harmful activity. I was 12 at that time. My mother had told me her stories of horrible experiences about sex, and thus, I was unconsciously fearful about the whole thing. She was sexually abused at the hands of my step-father, and for her, sex was all about a dick and getting fucked. This story got validated when I was myself raped at the age of sixteen by my boyfriend. I had become pregnant, and I l ost my child five months later. This deteriorated the concept of sex and romantic love in my view. I had my first alive child when I was eighteen, in California. Even that did not improve my concept of sex. I was afraid to indulge in sexual activities or have a partner. I lost interest in sex, which proved that I was suffering from Hypoactive Sexual Desire Disorder (HSSD). My body stopped responding to physical stimuli regarding sex. I never felt like advancing to solicit sexual desires, and I cringed when the sun would set. I gained no sexual knowledge from the media. Actually, I loathed media for exposing my and many others innocent children to a wrong perception of sex. When I reflect upon my life experiences about sex, I become convinced that United States should have a national policy on sex education (Lindberg & Maddow Zimet, 2012). Many advocates are working in collaboration with individuals from health sector and sexuality education, to bring forward national sexuality educa tion standards. The main objective of these national standards and policies is to offer understandable, reliable and simple assistance on the sexual education, which is right for the age and developmental phase of students belonging to Grades K–12. There is need for such a national policy that addresses the issue of minimum core content. In other words, educators and parents need to decide what minimum level of sexuality should be taught to what age. Should a second grader be taught what AIDS means and how it is transmitted? Should a third grader be made familiar with the birth control programs? There is need to devise such a policy that fosters age-appropriate sex education. Without such a national policy, it is very likely that our children will keep on getting indulged in

Sheri Tepper Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Sheri Tepper - Essay Example The author describes the totally utopian world, over which Damocles' sword of threat hangs, since men's rule would destroy the universe completely with their nuclear weapon. To ensure the survival of all humanity, women and a few selected men have to cooperate and make constructive decisions. Women's Country a collection of villages and towns, consists mostly of women, while men life far away in warrior garrisons, which resemble Spartan encampments where life is composed of the 'meaningless' demonstrations of 'honor', or, as Tepper implies, aggression and might. The author, showing her scorn to militarism, depicts another category of men - 'the servitors' , who decide to leave the garrison and join Women's country, and whose main function is impregnating women and thus continuing the life chain on the Earth. Women's Country is the source of strict order in this post-apocalypse world, since it shows some kind of organization and even bureaucracy. Whereas the men are demonstrating their ridiculous honor and decorating their garrison with ribbons, banners (and having no access to novel technologies of the women) , the women are reorganizing civilization, discovering again everything which was lost during the war. On the other hand, life is not exactly perfect in Women's Cou ntry, but its inhabitants are living their long range plan for civilizing existence and the species, and finding a refreshing attitude towards the life.That is to say, Tepper in her book is really interested in binary oppositions, such as 'war -peace' , 'man- woman', 'desctructivism - constructivism'. For instance, she casually narrates how Women's Country has got rid of homosexuality, since it was "caused by aberrant hormone levels during pregnancy" (Tepper, 1988, p.81). Tepper illustrates men and women on the opposing sides of barricade, since gender is a most strict binary in the world. Tepper makes an effort to cover over a number of controversies by calling the controlling women's assembly the Damned Few (ibid, p.11). To my view, this 'label' has its explanation - these women are 'damned' since they attempt to rebel against their social roles (and, presumably, against their femininity), which have been existing for ages and destroy the inner world order.As for me, Tepper in her book illustrates the evil of war, using, among other tools, a powerful device of 'a ply within the narrative', dealing with Trojan War in the play 'Iphigenia at Ilium'. The author clearly shows the status of woman at the times of Ancient Greece: Iphigenia is sacrificed for the sake of good sailing weather, Polyxena dies at the tomb of Achilles, Hector's little son is killed only because he is the son of the defeated political leader. Thus, the play is the reflection Tepper's personal attitudes towards war and cruelty., which are hard to explain in depth because of the complexity of human nature. On the other hand, 'Iphigenia at Ilium' can be seen as a representation of the values attributed to women of the Women's Country as well as to men of the encampments. As the plot of the novel develops, one might see changing structure of the society, values and emotions, which are parallelized to those from 'Iphigenia at Ili