Alyssa Wulf, a linguist and co-founder of Real Reason, presented a provocative final plenary at the …
Alyssa Wulf, a linguist and co-founder of Real Reason, presented a provocative final plenary at the AASECT conference last week. (AASECT is a professional association of sexuality educators, counselors and therapists.)
She began by showing how we use conceptual metaphors to make mental shortcuts, such as describing “ideas” with references to “food”:
* Half-baked idea
* Digest information
* Chew on a thought
She then explained how she investigated why people don’t push for Comprehensive Sex Ed, since most people say they want it in our schools. What’s the disconnect? Why don’t parents and community members vote for it, fight for it, and advocate more for it?
Alyssa and her colleagues evaluated speeches, curricula, political cartoons, pamphlets, etc about teenage sexuality and found that the two most common conceptual metaphors were sex as “contaminant” and sex as “opponent.” Even sex-positive sources often refer to sex with words like: “risk,” “threat,” “consequences,” “protect from,” “avoid,” “arm with information,” etc.
Opponent…
Contaminant…
Threat…
These metaphors are scary, so it makes perfect sense that parents react emotionally and feel the need to protect their kids from sex.
Is there another way?
Yes, there is. We can talk about sex in way that people relate to – sex as “personality”:
* An ever-present part of every person
* Stable, yet evolves and changes over time
* Crucial to one’s identity and self-hood
* A venue for reaching our potential
If we can commit to talking about sex in this way, we can move past the war of words and find a place of common ground.
She began by showing how we use conceptual metaphors to make mental shortcuts, such as describing “ideas” with references to “food”:
* Half-baked idea
* Digest information
* Chew on a thought
She then explained how she investigated why people don’t push for Comprehensive Sex Ed, since most people say they want it in our schools. What’s the disconnect? Why don’t parents and community members vote for it, fight for it, and advocate more for it?
Alyssa and her colleagues evaluated speeches, curricula, political cartoons, pamphlets, etc about teenage sexuality and found that the two most common conceptual metaphors were sex as “contaminant” and sex as “opponent.” Even sex-positive sources often refer to sex with words like: “risk,” “threat,” “consequences,” “protect from,” “avoid,” “arm with information,” etc.
Opponent…
Contaminant…
Threat…
These metaphors are scary, so it makes perfect sense that parents react emotionally and feel the need to protect their kids from sex.
Is there another way?
Yes, there is. We can talk about sex in way that people relate to – sex as “personality”:
* An ever-present part of every person
* Stable, yet evolves and changes over time
* Crucial to one’s identity and self-hood
* A venue for reaching our potential
If we can commit to talking about sex in this way, we can move past the war of words and find a place of common ground.
Tags: abstinence, communication, ed, media, sex
Comment
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Comment by amanda on May 26, 2009 at 11:06am -
Becky,
This is a very interesting idea - and I definitely agree that certain words and terminology absolutely affect the nature of a subject we are talking about.
With sex especially, I feel like there have been negative associations for even longer than these negative terms have been around. The shame and quietness around sex seem to come from something internal and primitive. Maybe we could trace this negative association back to evolution. Perhaps if our ancestors talked too much about sex with other people - it could have compromised their own ability to 'do it' and reproduce with the best mate? Just a guess.
But I'm not sure what that has to do with teaching our children. Since our very beginning we've always had the responsibility to teach our children everything (how to take care of themselves, eat, protect themselves from predators, etc). But did this include sex education? Were our earliest ancestors as shameful as our more recent ancestors? (I have a feeling they were not as shameful - since people did not live in secluded houses or even wear clothes!)
I was watching The History of Sex on the History Channel last week and it was covering the Victorian Era (the most uptight and forcefully virginal of all eras). It shed a lot of light on some of our uptightness regarding sex. Women were not educated at all about sex and certainly not allowed to enjoy it, for example Queen Victoria told a woman to "think of England" when consummating her marriage for the first time. Men were also very repressed - in high culture it was considered proper to be virginal for both sexes (though this certainly couldn't be upheld and it gave rise to prostitution).
It's no surprise that the places where the most sexual crime seems to happen (America, Japan) are where sex is also taboo, looked down upon, and nearly forbidden. We've got a lot of work to do to reverse this deprivation = obsession thing.
I think reassessing our words and associations with sex is a great start. If we start speaking positively and factually about sex (especially when teaching sex ed) - eventually we will be able to impact future generations to associate differently than our relatives have.
Yesterday, I actually had a pretty in-depth sex ed talk online with my younger brother. I felt it was my duty to be frank and honest with him (especially because I knew he wouldn't be comfortable talking to my parents - and they might not be comfortable talking to him - which is sort of the way it seems to be in religious households). It was a difficult conversation to have. I felt myself almost saying all of the stereotypically 'negative' words just because, you're right - those words somehow go together! I tried to avoid scare-tactics and simply inform him. I was also texting with my mom at the same time - so I made sure to include some of her ideas and questions into the conversation. Hopefully the conversation will stick with him as he continues to date girls and go to college/be on his own. But it was kind of scary to be a sex teacher! How much do you say without saying too much? How do you make them have a healthy association with sex without actually encouraging too much sexual experimentation? That balance is really important. I had a lot of shame about sex when I was younger (ever since I can remember, the word 'sex' or 'body' or 'naked' were like swears to me. Haha. Sad, right?) But I give a lot of credit to those who teach this stuff to masses of people. Thanks for sharing this!
-Amanda
© 2009 Created by Marie
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