Objectify This

In an article in the College Hill Independent from 2002, Ariana Green writes, “TEACHERS of abstinence-only sex ed have successfully followed Bush’s lead: they talk without ever saying anything of value. It’s an especially sad truth, right up there with the state of the economy and the administration’s hunger for war. Bush proposed to increase the budget for abstinence-only programs in 2003 by $33 million so that the government will spend $135 million on teaching abstinence.

And just as tax cuts for the rich make no sense when the nation is struggling to reinvigorate public schools, these shortsighted abstinence-only classes are equally ill-timed, for images around us are becoming more and more highly sexualized, stereotypical, and harmful.

Instead of talking about relationship abuse, abortion, or STI’s, so-called sex educators talk about sinners and antiquated notions of propriety. See no evil, hear no evil, but uh oh, there is evil. “And there is also sexual pleasure, which is even better, and more tempting.

“Abstinence-only sex ed is like a vegetable-only nutrition class. Abstinence, like vegetarianism, has to be a personal choice, for no one can control what we do to our bodies when no one is looking. At a certain point, we’ll need more information, because we may just want to taste a variety of foods, just as we might want to explore a variety of ways to satisfy ourselves sexually.

That real information about sex is getting restricted during the school day, while teenagers on the bus ride home read about how to lure the opposite sex and “keep them interested” any way possible, is a travesty.”

Green notes that the fact that “That many people do not realize the not-so-subtle messages they consume only makes the problem worse. Teenagers watch horror movies in which a woman gets brutally attacked (most likely while she is in her bedroom, the shower, or her skimpy nightgown) and think nothing of the link between sex and violence since they’ve seen it all a million times before in popular culture.

As Hollywood sells us hotter and more tempting sexual ideas, you’d think that more schools would realize the need to turn up the heat. But no. Even in regards to sex ed that acknowledges intercourse, I will venture to say that I’m not alone when it comes to my (negative) experience with sex ed throughout high school.

The teacher was dry in more ways than one; the diagrams were ludicrous (she drew cartoon sketches on the white board); and the class spent so much energy concealing embarrassment that nothing actually got said.”

What do people believe should be learned about sex? Check out the Global Sex Survey 2005 (sponsored by Durex). The clitoris was first recognized by medical literature in the 16th Century by Realdo Colombo (also known as Matteo Renaldo Colombo) was a lecturer in surgery at the University of Padua, Italy, but, according to Wikipedia, more than 300 years later, “the full extent of the clitoris was alluded to by Masters and Johnson in 1966, but in such a muddled fashion that the significance of their description became obscured.” It was not until 1981 that “the Federation of Feminist Women’s Health Clinics (FFWHC) completed this process with anatomically precise illustrations.”

That’s right: the medical profession has known about the clitoris for about 26 years. No wonder it’s so difficult to say anything meaningful about female sexual pleasure.

Scientific researchers wear cultural blinders that direct their conclusions, as in the article “Women fall into ‘trance’ during orgasm” from The London Times Online, which presents evidence from the research team of Gert Holstege of the University of (groan!) Groningen that providing a pair of socks allowed 80 per cent rather than 50 per cent to reach a climax while their brains were scanned.

Mark Henderson reports “In the study, a scanned the brains of 13 women and 11 men using a technique called positron emission tomography (PET), while they manually stimulated to orgasm by their partners. All were heterosexual and right-handed, the latter to ensure that all their brains could be easily compared. The brain “scans show that during sexual activity, the parts of the female brain responsible for processing fear, anxiety and emotion start to relax and reduce in activity. This reaches a peak at orgasm, when the female brain’s emotion centres are effectively closed down to produce an almost trance-like state.

The male brain was harder to study during orgasm, because of its shorter duration in men, but the scans nonetheless revealed important differences. Emotion centres were deactivated, though apparently less intensely than in women, and men also appear to concentrate more on the sensations transmitted from the genitals to the brain.”

According to these researchers, “This suggests that for men, the physical aspects of sex play a much more significant part in arousal than they do for women, for whom ambience, mood and relaxation are at least as important.” Thus, even though the only evidence for a link between female arousal and emotion was that there was less electrical activity in “parts of the female brain responsible for processing . . . emotion” during orgasm.

Let’s review: the fact that male “emotional centres” were “deactivated less intensely” lead the researchers to conclude that women are more emotionally, and less physically, stimulated, even though men’s brains’ emotional centres, are, if we undo the double negative, activated more intensely relative to their baseline state than women’s are, during orgasm? I’m not even going to get into the ambiguity of what ‘emotional centres’ are, or the potential lack of peer review for this article as it was not published in a scholarly scientific journal, but this conclusion seems to confirm that the common idea that cultural bias plays a roll in medical research about sex and gender, and that our cultural gender stereotypes can influence our patterns of behavior.

Therefore, if we want to alter our gender culture, we need to address the elements of our popular culture that are problematic. The movement for sex-positive education has already begun in higher education, which brings us back to Green’s excellent article:

“In the 80s, morning television shows discussed how Brown (picture at left: Brown University President Ruth J. Simmons) was unique in offering co-ed sex ed courses initiated by then Dean Toby Simon. She was radical then, and she made a bold statement with her promotion of masturbation.

Since then, the staff at Health Education has shown its commitment to frank talk (as opposed to George talk). Discussions to address the link between eating disorders and sexual abuse take place, and sexual pleasure has become part of the program in various ways, including discussions, workshops, and the WPC program.

This year in particular, Brown University’s embrace of comprehensive sexual education is going a step further. Brown students are now blessed with an opportunity to confront their own realities, sexuality, desires, confusions, pasts, and futures, because two sexperts who graduated from UC Berkeley are here to facilitate a course called Female Sexuality.

Fem Sex has been going on for over 10 years at UC Berkeley. Over 100 students take it each semester, and it has since been picked up by students at Stanford and other institutions. The course is facilitated, not taught in a typical hierarchal fashion. Once a student completes the course, s/he has the opportunity to facilitate in future semesters. Perhaps because of its focus on females, more women generally take the course, but it is also open to men.

Fem Sex is about empowerment. One self-exploration assignment reads, “Find your cervix or someone else’s cervix.” Students are given a take-home speculum and a mirror to help out.

The course covers anatomy and physiology, portrayals of women, body image, women’s health and menstruation, safer sex, contraception, STI’s, reproductive choices, sexuality, partner sex and communication, open relationships, masturbation and orgasms, pornography and erotica, violence against women, and more. Students also have the opportunity to hear from a variety of guest speakers, including local sex workers, strippers, abortion counselors, midwives, herbalists, porn stars, and other speakers, activists, and educators.

Preview of cumming attractions
Here is an example of what a Fem Sex discussion might analyze: In her book Cunt: A Declaration of Independence, Inga Muscio describes how long ago, prostitutes were venerated. It was an honor to gain admission into the bower of the harlot suprema. Yet somewhere in the mess of so-called civilization, sex and prostitutes got a bad reputation, and Pandora’s sexual box exploded.

What are feminists to think of prostitution? How does treatment of prostitutes shape treatment of women as sexual beings? And as Muscio asks, “Can you be a Porche-tistute?”

During one class, curators from New York City’s Museum of Sex will help us explore these issues. Performances, such as The Sex Workers Art Show, which came to Providence during Thanksgiving break, will also be explored.
The Art Show, for example, focused on the revalorization of sex work and asked that sex work be viewed as a legitimate occupation in a commodity culture. It talked about the hypocrisy of the legal issues surrounding sex work—a “you sleep with us and then you vote against us” statement.

Reading list if you want:
Though the course requires no out of class work (beyond some self-exploration) the following books might get your minds churning. So if you have a chance, treat yourselves to the following texts: Cunt by Inga Muscio, Woman: An Intimate Geography by Natalie Angier, Sex for One by Betty Dodson, Feminist Frontiers edited by Richardson, Taylor, and Whittier, A Hunger So Wide and Deep by Becky Thompson, The Story of Jane: The Legendary Underground Feminist Abortion Service by Lara Kaplan, and Exhibitionism for the Shy by Carol Queen.