sexuality education – Yet Another Unitarian Universalist

Sex ed in poetry

One of the sessions in the Our Whole Lives comprehensive sexuality education curriculum for grades 7-9 involves inviting a couple with a baby to visit the class. The couple tell the teens what it’s like to have a baby in the house. Topics that usually come up include parent sleep deprivation, the sense of tremendous responsibility, and of course how much work it takes.

With that in mind, here’s a poem by William King (1663-1712).

The Beggar Woman

A gentleman in hunting rode astray,
More out of choice, than that he lost his way,
He let his company the Hare pursue,
For he himself had other game in view.
A Beggar by her trade; yet not so mean,
But that her cheeks were fresh, and linen clean.
“Mistress,” quoth he, “and what if we two shou’d
“Retire a little way into the wood?”
      She needed not much courtship to be kind,
He ambles on before, she trots behind;
For little Bobby, to her shoulders bound,
Hinders the gentle dame from ridding ground.
He often ask’d her to expose; but she
Still fear’d the coming of his Company.
Says she, “I know an unfrequented place,
“To the left hand, where we our time may pass,
“And the mean while your horse may find some grass.”
Thither they come, and both the horse secure;
Then thinks the Squire, I have the matter sure.
She’s ask’d to sits: but then excuse is made,
“Sitting,” says she, “’s not usual in my trade
“Should you be rude, and then should throw me down,
“I might perhaps break more backs than my own.”
He smiling cries, “Come, I’ll the knot untie,
And, if you mean the Child’s, we’ll lay it by.”
Says she, “That can’t be done, for then ’twill cry.
“I’d not have us, but chiefly for your sake,
“Discover’d by the hideous noise ’twould make.
“Use is another nature, and ’twould lack
“More than the breast, its custom to the back.”
“Then,” says the Gentleman, “I should be loth
“To come so far and disoblige you both:
“Were the child tied to me, d’ye think ’twould do?”
“Mighty well, Sir! Oh, Lord! if tied to you!”
      With speed incredible to work she goes,
And from her shoulders soon the burthen throws;
Then mounts the infant with a gentle toss
Upon her generous friend, and, like a cross,
The sneet she with a dextrous motion winds,
Till a firm knot the wandering fabrick binds.
      The Gentleman had scarce got time to know
What she was doing; she about to go,
Cries, “Sir, good b’ye; ben’t angry that we part,
“I trust the child to you with all my heart:
“But, ere you get another, ’ten’t amiss
“To try a year or two how you’ll keep this.”

Now you can see why this poem reminded me of a sex ed lesson. The beggar woman just taught the gentleman that there’s more to sex than he knew.

Early birth control activist

An excerpt from a book I’m writing about early Unitarian congregations in Palo Alto, Calif., 1895-1934. It’s also part of my series of posts on obscure Unitarians. The first biography is of Sylvie Thygeson, an early birth control activist. Birth control activists in the early twentieth century deserve greater attention, and hopefully her biography helps expand the amount of information in this area. Sylvie’s daughter Ruth was also a birth control activist, but since her life was short and outside the scope of my main research, I only have a brief biography of her.

N.B.: This supersedes an earlier post on Thygeson, and includes substantial additional research.

Sylvie Thygeson and her daughter Ruth

Sylvie Grace Thompson Thygeson

An advocate for woman suffrage, and an early birth control activist, she was born June 27, 1868, in the small town Forreston, in north central Illinois. Progressive activism had a long history in her family. Even her name “Sylvie,” a French name, came from the family’s activism. Her paternal grandfather, a Presbyterian minister, and her grandmother were abolitionists and conductors on the Underground Railroad. When Sylvie’s father was a boy, he met an African American girl named Sylvie who was part of a family of fugitive African Americans escaping from slavery in Louisiana. When his own daughter was born, he named her after that African American girl.

Late in her life, Sylvie told the story that even though her paternal grandfather had been a Presbyterian minister, in the town she grew up in “we were the only family that were atheists.” Although their precise beliefs about the non-existence of God are unclear, they apparently had no formal religious affiliation.

She entered high school at age twelve and graduated at sixteen, after which she taught in a country school. But her teaching career only lasted for a month, until her father died. After his death, she was sent to live with an uncle in St. Louis, Mo. Her uncle, an appellate judge, gave her a job as a stenographer. She later recalled her time in St. Louis as a broadening experience, one that made up in part for her family’s inability to send her to college. As it happened, her uncle also gave her the beginnings of a solid legal education, and she learned enough about law in her two years in St. Louis to later gain her admission to law school as a second-year student.

Charles Knowlton, sexuality education pioneer

Back in 1832, a Massachusetts physician named Charles Knowlton published a pamphlet on sexuality education, including instructions for contraception. Titled The Fruits of Philosophy: The Private Companion of Young Married People, Knowlton wrote his pamphlet for young married couples. He printed it privately (and anonymously), and distributed it to his patients.

Knowlton, a freethinker who didn’t attend church services, apparently got to know the famous freethinker Abner Kneeland. Kneeland published Knowlton’s pamphlet for wider distribution, this time placing Knowlton’s name on the title page. However, the laws of the time classified information about contraception as obscene, and Knowlton was tried and convicted. He had to spend three months in jail. But he never repudiated his pamphlet.

[Researching Knowlton led me to an interesting website, The Embryo Project Encyclopedia. Produced by Arizona State University, this website contains peer-reviewed articles on “the science of embryos, development, and reproduction.” Included are basic science articles, but also articles on bioethics, people (such as Charles Knowlton), and more.]

Is your identity set in stone?

If you’re reaching sexual maturity today, you have a wide array of sexual orientations with which you might identify. There are the old categories of straight, bisexual, gay, and lesbian. There is a continuum from asexual through graysexual to allosexual, though it’s not a linear continuum since it also includes demisexual and aspec and other identities. The old continuum of gay/lesbian to straight (where if asked “how gay are you?” you might reply “a Kinsey 6”) now must include more than two binary genders. Thus, in addition to gay or straight, we now have pansexual, omni sexual, polysexual, etc.

In my observation as a sexuality educator, this plethora of sexual orientations can be both freeing and confusing for young adolescents. Some young adolescents, including the ones who have felt they are somehow different than the norms shown in popular culture, are relieved to find that there are other people out there like them. Other young adolescents, including those who may feel that they don’t fit into pop culture norms, may not see themselves reflected in any of the existing categories, or may see themselves reflected in more than one category. Even young adolescents who fit into one of the old categories (one they don’t have to explain to their parents) find the need to understand the new plethora of sexual orientations, as friends and acquaintances identify with other sexual orientations.

I think it’s helpful to introduce young adolescents to the concept of sexual fluidity. Back in 2014, social psychologist Justin Lehmiller wrote:

“Over the last decade [i.e., prior to 2014], the concept of sexual fluidity has drawn great attention from both scientists and the general public alike. In case you aren’t familiar with it, the basic idea behind sexual fluidity is that some of us have the capacity for a ‘flexible’ erotic response, which can lead to significant variability in one’s pattern of sexual attraction, behavior, and identity over time. In other words, someone who is sexually fluid may experience fluctuations in who they are attracted to, who they sleep with, and what labels they identify with multiple times over the lifespan.”

In other words, your sexual orientation can change over time. I feel this is a useful corrective to a culture that seems to want to put us into a limited number of essentialist categories — we are gay or straight (but not something in between), black or white (but not biracial), Democrat or Republican (but not socialist or communist).

There’s a theological point here. Existentialist theology suggests that humans don’t have a pre-existing essence. We define our essences ourselves, through our actions in the world. By contrast, essentialist theologies insist that humans have defined essences from their beginnings. Essentialist theologies include both conservative Christian theologies (“man is sinful”) on the one hand, and atheist theologies (“humans are programmed by their biology”) on the other hand.

While some Unitarian Universalists do espouse essentialist theologies, mostly essentialist atheist theologies, I’d like to think that most of us do not fall into the essentialist trap. Instead, we assert that humans can change over time. Where others try to place humans into little boxes of essentialist identities, as existentialists we know that we have the ultimate freedom to define our own essence through our actions.

Obscure Unitarians: Sylvie Grace Thompson Thygeson

This post has been superseded by a new post on Thygeson which contains substantial additional research.

An advocate for woman suffrage, and an early birth control activist, Sylvie Grace Thompson was born June 27, 1868, in the small town of Forreston, in central Illinois. Progressive activism had a long history in her family: her name “Sylvie,” a French name, came from a girl that her father had met when he was a boy; his parents were active with the Underground Railroad, and this girl was one of a family of fugitive slaves escaping from Louisiana.

Her family had no religion, and was the only family in town that were atheists. When interviewed at age 104, she stated that she had never had any religion, though as we shall see she associated for a brief time with a Unitarian church.

She entered high school at age twelve and graduated at sixteen, then taught in a country school for a month until her father died; thereupon she went to live with an uncle who lived in St. Louis, Mo. She worked for her uncle, an appellate judge, as a stenographer. She later recalled that time in St. Louis as a broadening experience, one that made up in part for her family’s inability to send her to college. After two years in St. Louis, she rejoined her mother and younger siblings, who were then living in St. Paul, Minn.

She married Nels Marcus Thygeson, a lawyer, in 1891. They had children including Ruth Adelaide (b. April 9, 1895, Minn.), Elling Henry McKee (b. Feb. 26, 1898, Minn.), Phillips Baker (b. March 28, 1903, Minn.), and Mary Ellen Baker (b. May 26, 1906, Minn.).

While living in St. Paul, Sylvie became active both in the suffrage and birth control movements. Her suffrage work in St. Paul was centered in the Women’s Welfare League, of which she was the First Vice President. The Women’s Welfare League also financially supported birth control efforts. Around 1915, working with two other women, Sylvie started a birth control clinic in St. Paul. Margaret Sanger came to speak to them, and they found two (male) physicians to work with them, to actually provide the “birth control instruments.” Birth control was illegal, so while they arranged public lectures on the topic, actually providing birth control was done in secret, relying on word-of-mouth referrals.

In 1917, Nels died after a long fight with cancer, upon which Sylvie and her four children moved to Palo Alto — after a brief stop in Old Orchard, Maine — so the children could attend Stanford Univ. By 1920, Sylvia was widowed and living with Elling, Phillips, and Mary in Palo Alto; Sylvie gave her occupation as “none”; Nels’ death apparently did not cause her financial hardship. In Palo Alto, Sylvie was active with the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILF) — as were Annie Tait and Marion Alderton, who were both members of the Unitarian Church of Palo Alto, and may have introduced her to church.

Sylvie was listed in the 1919 parish directory of the Unitarian Church of Palo Alto with her daughter Ruth, and Sylvie appeared on the 1920 membership list. This church would have been a good fit for her; the young adult group called themselves the Humanist Club, and there were many other pacifists and advocates for women’s rights in the church. However, Sylvie’s name was crossed out in the 1921 revision. Fellow pacifists Marion Alderton and Alice Locke Park resigned from the church in June, 1920, in protest against “the attitude taken” by the church in the First World War; Sylvie left the church at about the same time, perhaps for the same reason.

In 1925, Sylvie was still living in Palo Alto with Elling, Mary, and Phillips; Ruth had married in 1918, and had moved to San Francisco with her husband. Mary was the last to finish her studies at Stanford, receiving her degree in 1928, and she and Sylvie were still in Palo Alto in that year. After that, Sylvie moved to Los Angeles. In 1930, she was living there with her mother, her son Elling, a brother and other relatives. In 1940, she was still in Los Angeles, now living with her mother and two brothers. While in Los Angeles, she continued her social activism, and was a member of the Anti-Nazi League. Her mother died in May, 1946. Sylvie returned to Palo Alto in 1955.

Late in life, she expressed her world view as being based on the theory of evolution. She died in San Mateo County, Calif., in 1975, at age 107. At her request, there was no funeral service.

Though she was a Unitarian for only a couple of years, given her strong commitment to women’s rights and her commitment to women’s access to birth control, we should be proud that this freethinker and atheist was willing to affiliate with a Unitarian church for even that brief time.

Notes: 1870, 1880, 1900, 1910, 1920, 1930, 1940 U.S. Census; 1895, 1905 Minnesota State Census; Feminist History Research Project, interviews conducted by Ralda Sullivan, and Sherna Gluck and Mary Shepardson, “Sylvie Grace Thompson Thygeson: In the Parlor,” The Suffragists: From Tea Parties to Prison, Berkeley: Univ. of Calif., 1975; Directory of Palo Alto, Mayfield, Stanford Univ., Ravenswood, and East Palo Alto, Palo Alto: Willis Hall, 1925; New York, New York Passenger and Crew Lists, 1909, 1925-1957, S. S. Majestic sailing from Cherbourg, May 2, 1928; Obituary, Mary Ellen Thompson, Los Angeles Times, May 13, 1946, p. 8; California Death Index.

Risk Reduction Resource Kit

Alex, a friend who works at Health Initiatives for Youth (HI4Y) in San Francisco, told me about their Risk Reduction Resource Kits. These kits contain resources to help teens teens learn about sexuality and safer sex. Alex knows about the OWL comprehensive sexuality education program, and has heard me describe our youth programs, and based on that he encouraged me to put in an application for the last remaining Risk Resource Reduction Kit, and Carol and I went in to JI4Y’s offices to pick up the kit on Monday.

The whole point of the kit is that it’s supposed to be placed where teens can access it without adult supervision, to encourage them to explore the materials on their own. The kit was designed to accompany a sexuality education curriculum developed by HI4Y, but be accessible both to teens taking the curriculum and other teens. So for our congregation, it’s a prefect accompaniment to the OWL unit for gr. 10-12; for those taking OWL the kit will reinforce the curriculum; and it can also serve as an educational resource for those not taking OWL.

The Curriculum Subcommittee of our congregation met the day after I picked up the kit, and we devoted the meeting to talking about the kit. The Curriculum Subcommittee has been exploring ways to be more intentional about our congregation’s implicit curriculum, asking ourselves: How can we structure intentional learning opportunities that are not part of the explicit curriculum, the formal educational programs? We agreed that the kit is a solid addition to our implicit curriculum: Not only does it educate teens about specific sexuality topics, it provides a larger lesson that information about sexuality should be easily accessible and shared without shame or guilt.

Beyond educational theory, we also talked about how best to implement this aspect of our implicit curriculum. Alex had warned us that sometimes the kits get forgotten, and stowed in some obscure corner. So we’re going to provide orientation to the kit for key adults (youth advisors, OWL leaders, ministers, and others) to increase the chance that adults will remember to make the kit accessible. In addition, we’re also going to provide a brief orientation to the kit to teens — both to youth group members, and participants in OWL gr. 10-12 — showing them what’s in the kit, and telling them where it will be located. (When we offer OWL for gr. 7-9 next year, we’ll do another orientation.)

But the real strength of the kit is what it contains. HI4Y came up with some excellent youth-friendly resources, including comics, zines, books, and samples — I’m putting a complete list of what’s in the kit below. The materials are housed in a wheeled nylon case, like airline luggage (actually, it’s a scrapbooking case HI4Y bought from Michael’s art supply). A highlight of the kit is contraceptives samples that youth can examine: condoms of course, but also dental dams, female condoms, and lubricant; HI4Y even has some grant money left to replenish samples when they get depleted. There’s both a penis model (made of wood, not plastic!) for trying condoms, and a vulva/vagina model for trying female condoms. We were able to add one very important thing to this kit: our congregation has a ten thousand dollar bequest that we can use to put books in the hands of children and teens, so we are able to provide copies of the book “S.E.X.” by Heather Corinna that youth can take for their own.

We would not have been able to afford to put this kit together ourselves, and we are grateful to HI4Y for writing the grant and assembling the kit, and to the federal government for providing the grant money. Just in case your UU congregation can find the funding, I’m going to provide a complete list of all the resources in the kit below; at the very least, this list of resources might spark ideas for you.

The Risk Reduction Resource Kit (we added the sign at top).

Here’s what’s in the kit:

Birth control samples and examples:
Dental dam samples
Female condom samples
Female Contraceptive Model (to practice inserting female condoms)
Lubricants samples
Male condom samples
Penis model (to practice with male condoms)
IUD model
The Ring model
The Pill model
The Implant info card
Plan B info card
Birth Control Patch info card
“How Well Does Birth Control Work” info card

Home test kits:
Pregnancy test kits
HIV Home Test Kit information (actual kit is stored separately, per instructions from Health Initiatives for Youth)

Handouts and Miscellaneous:
“Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis” handout
Individual Drug Fact Cards (handouts)
Drug Fact Cards set
Chlamydia Plush Toy
HIV Plush Toy
Youth Clinic Youth Guide to San Francisco and Silicon Valley (list of local clinics that serve youth; includes 1-page summary of California law on youth’s right to treatment)
(We also added handouts from the nearest Planned Parenthood Health Center)

Publications:
“Dr. Rad’s Queer Health Show: Self Exams & Check-Ups” zine by Rad Remedy and Isabella Rotman
“You’re So Sexy When You Aren’t Transmitting STIs” comic zine by Isabella Rotman
“Not on My Watch: Bystander’s Handbook for Prevention of Sexual Violence” comic zine by Isabella Rotman
“100 Questions You’d Never Ask Your Parents” book by Elisabeth Henderson and Nancy Armstrong
“S.E.X.” book by Heather Corinna
“LGBTQ: The Survival Guide” book by Kelly Huegel Madrone
“Birth Control Top Picks” magazine by Bedsider.org

New male contraceptive in development

Jeff, one of the people who is volunteering in our comprehensive sexuality education program this year, pointed me to an article on a new male contraception product now in development: gel is injected into the vas deferens, preventing sperm from leaving the testes. Preliminary trials with rhesus monkeys show minimal side effects with one hundred percent effectiveness. More on this new product, trade-named Vasagel, is available online here, from The Guardian.

One of the challenges of teaching comprehensive sexuality education in the past half decade has been trying to keep up with the many recent developments in contraceptives. As challenges go, that’s a pretty nice challenge to have.

How to fail sex ed

One of the wonderful people who teaches comprehensive sexuality education in our church sent along a link to a post on Imgur headed: “Two years ago today, my then 14 year old sister got suspended for submitting these answers for her sex-ed class. I’m so proud of her.” Then there’s a photo of a worksheet titled “Objections to Condoms.” Kids were supposed to come up with possible responses to various excuses for not using condoms.

So, for example, one of the excuses for not using a condom was: “Condoms are gross; they’re messy; I hate them.” To which this creative girl replied: “So are babies.”

Condoms are messy -- So are babies

Mind you, a couple of the replies are just plain unconvincing, e.g. — Excuse: “I’d be embarrassed to use one”; reply: “Look at all the fucks I give.” Yeah, whatever.

But some of the replies, while very snarky, just might actually work in the real world, e.g. — excuse: “I don’t have a condom with me”; reply: “I don’t have my vagina with me.” This is not a good response to put on a worksheet that a public school teacher has to read; but a snarky early adolescent girl who needs to use a little humor to get through to a boy might find that reply useful.

This brings up an interesting point of educational philosophy. A core element of my educational philosophy is to start where the learner is. Some early adolescents learning about sex and sexuality may be most comfortable using snark and f-bombs to talk about sex. Of course we want to move them to a more reasoned form of discourse, a way of speaking that will allow them to talk about sex with potential partners openly, humanely, and with emotional intelligence. But we may have to listen to their f-bombs for a while before we get them there.

Portrait of a religious education program

This is a portrait of the religious education program at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Palo Alto (UUCPA), where I am the Associate Minister of Religious Education. While I focus on religious education for children and youth in this portrait, I also look briefly at religious education for adults.

While this is way longer than the average blog post, nevertheless I thought some of you might be interested in reading this portrait — both to see what another religious education program looks like, and as an example of one approach to describing religious education programs. I wrote this portrait based on questions asked by Dr. Mark Hicks for the course “Religious education in a changing world.” Continue reading “Portrait of a religious education program”

Why we still need OWL, part II

The school newspaper controversy in nearby Mountain View, which I reported on in this post, got picked up today by the San Jose Mercury News in an article written by Sharon Noguchi: “Mountain View High School newspaper’s sex stories raise parents’ ire”.

The Merc tries to remain objective, but they’re obviously on the side of the student journalists who dared to report on some of the realities of teen life today. In her news article, Noguchi writes: “But the debate also illustrates the gap between adult and teen conversation and mores.” As a columnist, Scott Herhold was able to state his opinion boldly: “A group of parents crawled from their caves to protest that the student journalists had taken things too far — that the stories promoted unprotected sex and imperiled futures. In truth, the articles in the Oracle, the student newspaper, were fairly tame….”

Herhold goes on to point out the heroes of the story, the people who protected the rights of student journalists, and who stood up for what was right instead of caving to intolerant parents and religious views: “The heroes were the administrators and educators who stood up for the paper, led by Superintendent Barry Groves. At the meeting, Groves praised the journalism department and said, ‘There’s nothing I would have taken down.'”

Residents of Los Altos and Mountain View might want to take a moment and write a note of support to Barry Groves. You can find his email address on the school district Web site.

Further reading: You can read the Oracle online here. The Los Altos Town Crier published my letter to the editor on this topic, under the title “Minister supports sex education for teens” (“Look, Mildred, those crazy Unitarians are at it again”), and for the sake of the record I’ll include the full text below the fold.

Continue reading “Why we still need OWL, part II”