Share this
Twitter
Myspace
Digg
Del.icio.us
Reddit
Slashdot
Furl
Yahoo
Technorati
Newsvine
Facebook
Export PDF
Print
E-mail
Tags
BY SUSIE WILSON
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
SEX MATTERS
Assemblyman This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it (R-Morris) wanted his fellow members of the New Jersey State Assembly to join him in opposing a bill that would, if passed and signed, restore $7.5 million dollars to family planning organizations across the state.
The funding would be used to provide counseling and services to uninsured, poor women who want to avoid pregnancy and receive other reproductive health services, such as mammograms and Pap smears.
To persuade his colleagues to vote against the measure, Webber rose on the floor at the height of the debate, and, according to press reports, "stunned colleagues by reading from a Planned Parenthood International brochure: ‘Healthy, Happy, and Hot – A Young Person's Guide to Their Rights, Sexuality, and Living with HIV.'"
Once he got his colleagues' attention, Webber continued reading:
"[It] goes on to urge adolescents to ‘have fun, explore, and be yourself. ... [M]any people think sex is just about vaginal or anal intercourse, but there are many different ways to have sex and lots of different kinds of sex," he read.
Assemblyman Webber didn't just want to persuade his colleagues. He wanted to scare them into voting against the bill.I know a "scare tactic" when I see one. I can smell one from a long ways off. I heard my first in the early '80s when I was a member of the New Jersey State Board of Education. The State Board was considering whether to adopt a policy that, if passed, would require all elementary and secondary schools in New Jersey to develop "family life education" with a sexuality education component. An open public meeting was convened to give citizens the chance to offer testimony, because of the controversial nature of the policy.
I will never forget one speaker among many who testified that day. In the middle of his remarks, he looked directly at us and said, "This policy will require teachers to teach kindergarten students how to masturbate!"
This zinger statement astounded me, because I had never heard this word used aloud in public. Then it dawned on me that I had just heard my first "scare tactic" about sex education. Its purpose was to turn Board members into jelly and have them back off from passing the policy.
I realized that this "scare tactic" would make the headlines in all the state's newspapers, giving fuel to opponents of the policy.
"Scare tactics" are to sex education what American appetites are to apple pie. We are prudish and uncomfortable when we have to deal with sexual topics in public, even though we use sex to sell everything and our society is awash with sexual images and sensational stories.
The use of the word "masturbation" in a public setting today probably wouldn't raise many eyebrows, but it had an effect on policymakers 30 years ago.
Suddenly the legislature began to look more closely at the State Board's policy, and we became locked in a protracted struggle with legislators. The Board had to make concessions to the Senate before the policy was passed, and I still think the concessions started with the "scare tactic" about teaching about masturbation.
Of course board members knew that the statement was laughable and the charge ridiculous. A staffer from the State Department of Education who was sitting behind me leaned forward and whispered, "No one has to teach kindergarten students about masturbation. They come to school already knowing how to do it."
But I wouldn't have dared challenge the speaker, and neither did any of my fellow board members.
Scare tactics, ironically, intimidate proponents as well as opponents of sex education, especially in a public forum. We bend over frontwards, backwards, and sideways to assure our opponents that there cannot possibly be any truth to the statement hurled against us.
The executive director of the Planned Parenthood Affiliates of New Jersey quickly moved to counter Assemblyman Webber's statement by saying that she had never seen the brochure, and "no state money subsidizes Planned Parenthood International."
She was entirely correct, but I felt she missed an opportunity to speak truth to power. By agreeing to an extent with Webber, she seemed to be washing her hands of the situation and implying that there was something inherently wrong with the brochure's content. I don't believe there was.
I think the director of the Affiliates should have defended the contents of the brochure rather than offering the excuse that it was directed at young people outside of the United States and therefore was not material to the discussion.
The truth of the matter is the brochure is probably directed at HIV-positive young people who want -— and have the right — to be sexual. Is it wrong or incorrect to acknowledge that adolescents, with or without HIV, are sexual and entitled to "have fun, explore [their sexuality], and express [themselves]" through it? Would legislators have preferred that the brochure use shame, guilt, and fear to dissuade adolescents from being sexual and expressing affection? Would they have been more comfortable with a listing of all the negatives about being sexual and therefore more inclined to vote for the appropriation?
Perhaps Assemblyman Weber never had a good sexuality education course that stressed the importance of enjoying one's sexuality. Perhaps he didn't know that many young people in many of the developed nations begin to have sex around age 17 and need advice about how to enjoy sex and keep themselves safe from diseases and unplanned pregnancies.
If sex educators truly believe in our mission to help develop sexually literate young people, we are going to have to be bolder in refuting "scare tactics." We need to counter them with truth.
Fear is a powerful motivator, but proponents of sex education need to dispel it more clearly, if we are going to get the programs and funding that people need to live safe and responsible lives.
The journey of a thousand miles does begin with a first step. Enough Democrats in the Assembly and the Senate ignored Webber's effort to scare them into defeating the bill and instead passed it, restoring the $7.5 million.
I call that progress. I hope that it will encourage other legislators to know a "scare tactic" when they hear one and encourage sex educators to step up to the plate and tell the truth about the real needs of people, here and around the world, for information and services.
Susie Wilson, former executive coordinator of the Network for Family Life Education at Rutgers University's Center for Applied and Professional Psychology (now renamed Answer), is a national leader in the fight for effective sexuality and HIV/AIDS education and for prevention of adolescent pregnancy. She can be reached at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
ALSO BY SUSIE WILSON
Graeme McDowell’s victory produced a lingering image
The ‘Girl with the Dragon Tattoo' hits close to home
Tipper and Al: (No longer) perfect together
The Pill that changed the world turns 50
The plight of Faith Kramer, and teaching honestly about sex
‘Don't ask, don't tell' from a different angle
Yeardley Love and George Huguely: A lesson in what love is not
Kudos for another Jersey Girl: Because gender matters in politics
The eternal allure of Judy Blume, a Jersey Girl
Saved by a nose: A recent book recounts a flight from genocide
A message about rape for New Jersey from a Florida highway
Pity the kids in Texas and elsewhere, too
Grandmotherly advice about sex education and grandchildren
What Regan Hofmann can tell us about HIV, AIDS ... and life
Sex and Consequences: The giant condom and the SI swimsuit issue
Oprah Winfrey's words of wisdom about sex
Taking Issue with 'Sex Ed in Washington'
America's Sexiest Man vs. Plain Jane: Sexism and the Massachusetts U.S. Senate election
Sex and the budget director: The tale of Peter Orszag
On John F. Kennedy's Profiles in Courage after N.J.'s same-sex marriage vote
Some good/bad news about sexuality as 2010 arrives
From N.J. to D.C.: How — and why — I lobbied to stop the Stupak Amendment
Two African-American teens prove ‘We Shall Overcome' applies to individual lives, too
A Thanksgiving grace for sexuality education
The Kennedy brand of theology is missing from the debate on health care reform
An open letter to Democratic New Jersey Congressman John Adler on the health care reform bill
Scary stories from far away and close to home
The First Lady Michelle Obama, and the lessons 'Double Dutch' can teach our youth
Report details the sexual health of New Jersey teens
Time for a campaign against child sexual abuse
Coming to N.J.: A ‘Top Tier' teen pregnancy prevention program
It's All about Prevention: Part II: A call for a national health education test
It's all about prevention: The purpose of sex education
Hey, New Jersey, ready to talk about sex?
Mr. Webber was certainly seeking to villify family planning by reading from a pamphlet out of context. To their credit, other members of the committee were not easily duped by this distraction. In fact, Assemblywoman Joan Quiqley interrupted Mr. Webber to say she was offended --- not at what he was reading --- but for employing this distraction as a pretense to deny poor women access to basic health servics.