So I decided to take a look at the draft, which is available as a pdf here. And I have to say that I’m quite impressed. Before talking about the current controversy, I want to mention some highlights.

First, this document is based on a really thorough analysis of the research. Section 4 (The Evidence Base for Sexuality Education) shows that many comprehensive sex education programs designed to reduce rates of unintended pregnancy and STIs/HIV are effective. Many of the programs have the desired impact (e.g. increased condom use, decrease in number of sexual partners, decrease in sexual risks, etc.), while others had no impact. However, none of the programs increased the behaviors associated with higher risk. For example, they didn’t lead to earlier initiation of intercourse, more partners, or more frequent sex. Clearly, well-designed sex education doesn’t make youth have more sex, despite the rather rabid claims by the abstinence-only crowd.

Speaking of which, the authors also looked at the research on abstinence programs and found that they have no significant impact on condom use, age of intercourse, or the other factors that are associated with sexual risk taking. There are some methodological difficulties that make assessing them challenging. It’s almost as if the people who promote abstinence-only miseducation don’t want to admit that it doesn’t work.

I’m also really pleased with the assumptions that the authors made when writing the Review:

• Sexuality is a fundamental aspect of human life: it has physical, psychological, spiritual, social, economic, political and cultural dimensions.
• Sexuality cannot be understood without reference to gender.
• Diversity is a fundamental characteristic of sexuality.
• The rules that govern sexual behaviour differ widely across and within cultures. Certain behaviours are seen as acceptable and desirable while others are considered unacceptable. This does not mean that these behaviours do not occur, or that they should be excluded from discussion within the context of sexuality education.

While these seem pretty obvious to me, it’s worth noting that sex education is often presented as if it isn’t affected by someone’s assumptions. When that happens, sex is discussed in a conceptual vacuum. We often do that in order to create some intellectual and emotional distance, perhaps in order to avoid sensitive or controversial topics, or because we believe that distance equals objectivity. In fact, all distance creates is distance and nobody is “objective” when it comes to sex.

I prefer to make my assumptions explicit than pretend that they don’t exist since to do otherwise is to give them more influence over the process. And anyway, when we make them explicit, we model the ways in which we can assess our assumptions, decide which ones we want to keep, and work them into our decision-making. My experience is that that’s much more effective than pretending to be objective, so I’m really pleased that the Review does the same.

It’s also really amazing that the Review includes a whole lot of learning objectives for 23 different topics (divided among 6 Key Concepts such as “Relationships” and “Sexual and Reproductive Health”). Not only that, but they offer age-appropriate objectives for 4 different age ranges (5-8, 9-12, 12-15, 15-18+), so there’s a lot to work with. They don’t offer curricula, since they need to be created in culturally-mindful ways by individual program developers. Since effective sexuality education, like every other topic, is most effective when it’s repeated over time with increasingly complex material, there’s a lot to work with here. (For another look at how this might work check out the Our Whole Lives curricula developed bu the Unitarian-Universalist Association.)

Clearly, I’m quite impressed with the Review and even though this is still an unfinished draft, I think that everyone interested in sexuality education should read it. And as always, not everyone agrees.

According to the NY Times, some anti-sex folks (mostly in the US) are attacking the document, claiming that discussions of homosexuality and letting people know that abstinence is “only one of a range of choices available to young people” who want to reduce their risk are morally wrong. They also think that telling 5 year olds about masturbation is wrong. Given that many kids discover how good it feels when they touch themselves, it only seems reasonable to me to talk about it. And here are the key ideas that have these folks worked up:

• Most children are curious about their bodies
• It is natural to explore and touch parts of one’s own body
• Bodies can feel good when touched
• Touching and rubbing one’s genitals is called masturbation
• Some people masturbate and some do not
• Masturbation is not harmful, but should be done in private

These seem pretty reasonable to me and they’re consistent with what we know about children and masturbation, but apparently this is too scary for some folks. And given that abstinence is, in fact, one of a range of choices that includes using condoms or engaging in less-risky behaviors, it’s pretty clear to me that what’s really working these folks up is that UNESCO is talking about sexuality in an honest and authentic manner, rather than promoting an erotophobic ideology that doesn’t fit the real world..

I’m also intrigued by the concern voiced in the NY Times article that sexuality education programs “remove responsibility from parents.” First off, just how well does it seem to be working to have parents be the sole source of sexuality information? As a general rule, not too well. And second, in what way does having a school-based program take responsibility away from parents? Why does a school program mean parents can’t talk about sex with their kids? If anything, the in-school discussions could facilitate talking at home, making it easier for parents to address their kid’s concerns and questions.

Here’s another quote from the NY Times:

“If you ever have a situation where kids need to be taught earlier than their adolescence, this is not the way to do it,” said Colin Mason of the Population Research Institute, an anti-abortion organization based in Virginia. “It’s very graphic and encourages practices like masturbation, which conservative Christians and others feel are wrong.”

So instead, he’d rather keep people ignorant until they become teens. But we know that lots of young people start exploring sex long before their parents know about it. We also know that young children are curious about their bodies, relationships, making decisions and other topics that are related to or part of age-appropriate sex education. If you want to help kids make better decisions, keeping them ignorant doesn’t work.

I’m willing to give most folks the benefit of the doubt and say that I believe that they want to keep young people safe. (I also recognize that there are many other reasons that people fear sex, especially when it comes to young people having sex.) And when you look at the research, when you look at what actually works, it’s clear that comprehensive, age-appropriate education is the best tool we have.

When facts conflict with your beliefs or ideas, you can either ignore the facts or change your mind (once you’ve checked the facts, of course). We know what the facts are. Now, we just need to act on them.

These stats are especially important because having kids at a young age has significant and fairly obvious impacts on one’s ability to go to school or get a job. According to the researchers, some of the barriers that teens face when it comes to contraception use are lack of access, unpredictable or irregular sexual activity (when compared to older women), and less information about correct use. In addition, teens have higher rates of contraceptive failure, in part because they tend to use methods that are less effective.

While I find the research fascinating, especially because it includes participants from around the globe, it seems to me that there’s at least one factor that they’ve left out of the discussion. For most people, the ability to make optimal decisions doesn’t really develop until the early to mid 20’s. Anyone who’s ever spent time with a teen has seen this up close and it’s even become part of the dialogue around teaching driving skills.

Of course, folks like Planned Parenthood and other organizations have been saying that safer sex and contraception information needs to be provided in age-appropriate ways for years. So I find it a bit surprising that in an otherwise excellent bit of research about the contraceptive challenges that teens face, the authors left out the fact that simply from a developmental perspective, young women have a barrier that their older counterparts don’t. And that seems like it would some pretty obvious consequences when it comes to contraceptive use.

But all in all, it’s a valuable piece of research and I hope that it can inform sex education practices.

Related Products at Good Vibrations:
Sexual Education & Parenting Issues Book Category
Third Base Ain’t What It Used To Be, by Logan Levkoff, M.S.
S.E.X., by Heather Corinna

There are plenty of anti-porn folks out there who make lots of sweeping statements about the experiences of women in porn. Of course, they almost always ignore the experiences of men in porn and the existence of gay porn, which they justify by saying that their focus is on the experiences of women. Which is all well and good, although I’d suggest that they need to coin a new term to describe what they’re talking about since the word “porn” actually refers to a larger phenomenon than the one that they discuss.

What I find most frustrating about their discourse is that they don’t usually include the voices of women who are actually in the business. Instead, they’ll tell talk about what they think these women experience and present it as fact rather than interpretation. Or they’ll interview someone in the biz and then misrepresent what they said. (Check out Ernest Greene’s report on how this happened to Joanna Angel.)

Given how many women there are/have been in the business, I’m surprised that they can’t find a few who are willing to be interviewed. Granted, someone currently working in the biz might be unwilling to speak up since it might make it harder to find work but there are plenty of former porn folks who don’t have that concern. Whatever the motivation for not including the voices of these women in their research, it certainly makes it questionable.

On the other hand, there are the women who make porn and genuinely enjoy it. Sasha Grey, Madison Young, Lorelei Lee, Joanna Angel, to name a few of the current folks and there are plenty of folks who no longer show up in movies but enjoyed their careers. But while these women can stand up and tell us that their experiences are different from the caricature that anti-porn folks present, we don’t have any real way of knowing whether positive experiences are common or rare. Please note- I am not questioning the authenticity of these women’s stories. I’m simply wondering how many women are in this group, as compared to the number of women in porn.

What’s missing from both sides of this is any real data about the experiences of women in porn. We have anecdotes, but the plural of anecdotes is not data. This is especially important to remember because people are prone to “confirmation bias,” which is the tendency to interpret new information in ways that confirm preconceptions and avoid or ignore information that contradicts our beleifs. The best tool that we have for overcoming confirmation bias is the scientific method since it gives us ways to minimize the effects of our biases. (For a great read on confirmation bias and other pitfalls of how people process information , check out the book “Mistakes Were Made.”)

Every now and then, a grad student approaches me and asks if I have suggestions for a research project. So here’s what I’d like to see: a qualitative analysis of the experiences of women in porn. I’d suggest using Grounded Theory since it’s a well-validated method that lets the interpretation emerge from the data. It requires that the researcher make their biases explicit as a way to limit how they influence the process and allows the voices of the people being studied to drive the project.

This is an ideal topic for a dissertation and it would finally give us some real information about the experiences of women in porn. That would make it easy to follow up with some quantitative analysis to discover how many women have which sorts of experiences.

I don’t see this as likely to happen, though. It can be really difficult to study anything about sex or porn, what with the lack of academic and financial support. Plus, there are people who have built their careers on each side of this debate and it seems to me that many of them would resist any research that might question their stance. Unfortunately, what that leaves us with is propaganda masquerading as science and lies that pretend to be journalism.