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Every year, I get dozens of calls and emails from university groups, professors, fraternities and sororities, and residential assistants, asking about sex education presentations. I send trained educators to them to talk about sex-positivity, the physiology of pleasure (as compared to “reproductive anatomy”), safer sex, body image, sex toys, sexual diversity, relationships and communication, and many other topics. It’s a valuable part of our mission to provide accurate, non-judgmental information about sex, pleasure, and relationships to young adults.

So I was curious to read Margaret Brooks’ article ‘Sex Week’ Should Arouse Caution Most of All, in which she raises both questions and fears about these sorts of programs. (Update: here’s the full text of her article.) For example, she starts off her piece with this:

Sex-toy raffles and giveaways? Workshops featuring graphic, violent pornography and simulated sex techniques? Teaching about polyamory but not about monogamy or abstinence?

All those events have transpired recently on campuses across the country—perhaps unbeknownst to many parents, alumni, and even professors.

What a marvelous way to spark a moral panic! Parents, administrators- beware! Brooks manages to make it sound like this is some clandestine gathering. It almost sounds to me like you need to have the secret password to get in, even though these events are well-publicized. This isn’t the first place in her article that Books tries to inspire fear but she sure does get it in early.

Brooks also seems to have a problem with teaching people about sexual pleasure:

Judging from the program descriptions, the emphasis of most Sex Week programming seems to be more on providing entertainment and promoting pleasure, rather than teaching students about sexual health and safety.

After years of abstinence-only propaganda, college students are thirsty for the knowledge they need to navigate through relationships and sexuality. Having been a speaker at these sorts of workshops, I can tell you that college-age people (who are almost all legal adults) have been denied the information they need and have been scared and shamed into silence and secrecy.

In this context, talking about pleasure is an important part of helping them develop the skills they need. For example, Good Vibrations offers a workshop called Sexy Safer Sex because one of the barriers to safer sex is the perception that there’s no way to do it that isn’t a mood-killer. Our participants are always amazed at how easy it is to have sex that is fun and safer, which makes it more likely that they’ll actually use condoms, lubricants, and gloves. We couldn’t do that if we didn’t talk about pleasure.

When it’s done right, sex education (for adults) integrates these two pieces. So I have news for you, Professor Brooks- it’s not an either/or. And in any case, what exactly is wrong with teaching people how to have sex that brings them pleasure? One of the biggest tragedies that results from our erotophobic culture is that so many people don’t know how to experience sexual pleasure. Despite the myths, it doesn’t always happen when “nature takes its course” and a little information can avoid years of heartbreak and shame.

Further, if you take a look at the topics which were covered, you’ll see that subjects like sex & disability, communication, transgender issues, healing from sexual assault, and safer sex were all part of the event. These are all very important aspects of human sexuality that get short shrift in our culture and get no mention at all in standard high school “health” classes, much less the abstinence programs that have been the standard for several years. So when Brooks complains about a “lack of balance,” what she’s really taking issue with is actually one attempt to bring balance back to sex education for young adults.

As Brooks notes, there has been some controversy around these events. Among other occasions, she mentions that:

And in March, the Foundation for Intellectual Diversity, a nonprofit organization founded by five Brown alumni, publicly questioned the use of university funds for Brown’s Sex Week and the lack of other points of view being presented during the event.

If you go to the Foundation for Intellectual Diversity post on the Brown event, you’ll see that the reason they had a problem was that:

During Sex Week, for example, most of the events seemed to focus on extolling the virtues of alternative, non-heteronormative sexual lifestyles and activities. We wanted to know why there wasn’t an event that discussed the benefits of abstinence and chastity

Perhaps the reason that Brown Sex Week didn’t include these topics is that they’re already very well-known to pretty much everyone. Almost everywhere you look, you’ll see messages of heteronormativity. When was the last time you saw a billboard, a movie, or a sermon about anything other than heterosexuality (unless it was specifically targeting LGBTQ folks)? And after years of ineffective messages around abstinence passing for sex education, do college students really need more? Actually, if someone wanted to offer the facts and research about abstinence, that’d be great, but I don’t think that’s what they’re suggesting.

Now, I have to say that I agree with Brooks around some things. Concerns about privacy, student safety, the qualifications of the presenters and their ability to address the full range of concerns and questions people have- these are all important topics.

I also agree with her that universities need to be more proactive about oversight of outside speakers. But I take issue when she says things like, “Ideally, sex education should be taught entirely by the college’s permanent faculty or staff.” Most college professors or staff are no more qualified to teach about sex than I am to teach about fixing motorcycles. If you want a sex educator, then hire a sex educator. Yes, “many people claim to be ‘sex educators’ nowadays” and it’s a real problem. So how about bringing in someone who is certified by the American Association of Sexuality Educators, Counselors & Therapists? Or someone with other credentials and experience?

And does she really need to end with this?

It is clear that many people and organizations claim to be experts in the field of sex education and are eager to gain access to the hearts, minds, and yes, perhaps even the bodies of our college students.

Have there been any situations of a presenter trying to “gain access to the bodies of college students,” or is this simply another fear-mongering tactic? Brooks has made it sound like sex educators are all sexual predators who are looking to get into your children’s pants.

So there you have it. While Brooks raises some important points, she bookends her piece with not-so-subtle messages of fear. That should tell you more about her agenda than anything else.

Over on the Ms Magazine blog, there’s a post exploring whether porn is racist, which was sparked by some of the things that Gail Dines has said about the industry. And in among the various comments, Dines herself includes a link to the chapter in her book on race and the porn industry. Since I believe in both giving different perspectives a fair shake and not talking about things that I haven’t checked out myself, I read through it. She also has another sample chapter on the topic of growing up female in a culture influenced by porn.

At the risk of saying something that may surprise some folks, I actually agree with quite a bit of what Dines says. I know that there’s racism in the porn industry, both from my own observations and from talking with people of color who work as porn performers. I agree with Dines when she says that the shift towards hypersexualizing young girls (both legal adults and minors) is a serious problem because it skews their perceptions of what sexual choices are available to them, among other things. Like her, I’m really concerned with the way that alcohol and pluralistic ignorance lead to young adults having sex that they don’t necessarily want to because they believe that “everyone else is doing it,” rather than because it is an expression of authentic desire.

So yes, I think that Dines has some really valuable things to say. And I also think that she goes awry in some unfortunate ways.

For example, Dines clearly has a view of sex that leaves little room for sexual diversity.On page 105, during her discussion of Sex and the City and  how it presents  unhealthy views of male sexuality, she writes:

Porn-type sex is a fixture on the show, which regularly features plotlines about men who like to watch porn as they have sex, men who are aroused by female urination, men who want group sex, men who can only get aroused by masturbating to porn, men who are into S&M, men who want anal sex, and men who are only willing to have hookup sex and not a relationship.

Notice how she takes behaviors that would be more likely to have implications for someone’s mental & sexual well-being, such as being unable to get aroused without porn, and lumps them together with behaviors that have never been shown to be inherently symptomatic of any real problem, like anal sex, group sex, or BDSM. These latter activities can be an expression of unhealthy sexuality and they can be done in ways that don’t support the pleasure and well-being of the people involved, but there is nothing about them that is inherently problematic. It’s a question of why and how you do it, not that you’re doing it.

When Dines describes behaviors that have been part of human sexuality for as long as there have been people (that is, before porn became so common), when she denigrates and demonizes sexual activities that plenty of people do in ways that are fun, pleasurable, intimate, and grounded in consent, she’s tapping into and using erotophobia. But then, Dines uses disgust and shame to reinforce her claims and that is a real pity.

It also shows that, in fact, Dines doesn’t know very much about sex. If she wanted to write about how engaging in these sexual practices in healthy ways differs from the ways that they are often presented as porn fantasies, that’d be great. If she wanted to talk about how accurate, non-judgmental sex education would make it so that people weren’t using porn to get sex information, that’d be wonderful. But instead, she attacks sexual practices that many people experience in positive ways and states (both directly and indirectly) that they are dangerous or harmful. This is how sexual shame and sex-negativity are used to control people. Using shame simply isn’t going to move us towards a more healthy sexuality.

In her chapter on race in porn, Dines does some similar things. For example, when she talks about the ways that race is marketed, she writes:

In all-white porn, no one ever refers to the man’s penis as  “a white cock” or the woman’s vagina as “white pussy,” but introduce a person of color, and suddenly, all players have a racialized sexuality, where the race of the performer(s) is described in ways that make women a little “sluttier” and the men more hypermasculinized.

First, I agree- the way that race is often (although not always) marketed in porn follows this trend. But Dines conveniently neglects to include in her analysis the fact that in US culture in general, whiteness is assumed unless we are told otherwise. Many people, and especially white people, use “white” as the default unless they hear otherwise. Similarly, people are often assumed to be male, cisgender, heterosexual, and able-bodied unless a qualifier is used. It’s deeply unfortunate and it reinforces privilege and oppression in big and small ways, every day.

To not include that frame, to ignore the fact that this mechanism is one that existed in the larger culture well before any of these porn performers or producers used it, is to try to make it seem as if porn is the only place that you’ll see it. Yes, it’s racist when porn uses language like ghetto to signify Black people. And it’s the same mechanism when politicians and newspapers use inner city. Dines’ critique of these practices leaves that foundation out, which skews her argument and makes it seem as if porn is doing something that doesn’t happen everywhere. If anything, porn is simply a more accurate reflection of some of the dynamics that most of the “polite” world refuses to acknowledge.

This absolutely does not change the harm that these things do. And it absolutely does not absolve porn producers of their responsibility for contributing to racism and race-based inequities among performers. At the same time, it’s disingenuous to write as if these things exist in a vacuum.

Where does this connect to shame? When Dines criticizes porn for something that exists completely separately from it, she’s using the standard tactic of “blame and shame.” Now, I fully support developing an analysis of porn, of sexual practices, and of culture that takes a good look at the patterns of behavior and points out the places in which we’re doing things that are unhealthy. It’s part of improving things and it’s important. At the same time, we have to do it in ways that reflect and describe things accurately. We need to not make it seem like the problems only exist in this one setting. And we need to do it in ways that don’t increase the amount of sexual shame people experience. Otherwise, our solutions are going to fail.

Of course, some folks might argue that, as a writer, Dines had to choose what information to include in her book and there’s always going to be something left out. However, when her decisions result in her misrepresenting the issues, I can only conclude that she wants to promote a specific agenda rather than offering accurate information and analysis.

Although some people in sex-positive communities might disagree with me, I think that our cultural obsession with sex is a sign of our deeply rooted shame. Just as people with eating disorders obsess over food, while those with more healthy relationships with food don’t (unless they’re really hungry), I think that our tendency to use sex to sell, the performance-based model of sexuality, and our fixation on sex are manifestations of hundreds of years of sex-negativity, erotophobia, and shame. But the solution to shame isn’t to keep shaming people. The answer is to try to help people find a healthy balance. When Dines uses shame to try to promote her agenda, she reinforces the roots of the problem that she says she wants to fix. It’s about as effective as blaming someone who has an eating disorder- all you’re going to do is make it worse.  And I don’t see how that helps.

Although I suppose it means she sells more copies of her book.