Do you think minors teaching a group of adults about porn is “best practice” or “research-based”?
Below is a link to yet another article from a non-Oregon resident who attended last month’s Adolescent Sexuality Conference. As you read this, keep in mind that many students and teachers from around the state attend via grants and scholarships. One popular grant is the W.I.S.E. Grant (Working to Institutionalize Sexuality Education), which is promoted by the Department of Education’s “Sexuality Specialist”, Brad Victor.
Teens teach porn class to adults at Oregon Adolescent Sexuality Conference
This article originally appeared in this issue of the WSR: 2013-05-15
When I walked into this year’s Oregon Adolescent Sexuality Conference in Seaside, Oregon, one of the first things I encountered was a table manned by three young teen boys. On the table was a collage that included many depictions of totally bare female genitalia—obviously pornographic and, one would think, illegal.
The collage included a drawing of a woman circa 1950 declaring, in the most base terms, what a woman’s private parts should smell like. It also included a drawing of a pigtailed little girl riding on a tricycle with the word “Vagina!” written above her, and another drawing of a young female child standing by a rose, with the word “Vagina” written below her on a chalkboard.
“Everyone can come inside” are the words visible along the outer edge of the piece, which appeared to be a decoupaged plate.
The boys smiled nervously as hordes of teens, who had arrived for what some described as a field trip, passed the display table. Planned Parenthood was on the steering committee of this conference.
The booth belonged to Youth for Education and Prevention of Sexual Assault (YEPSA), a supposedly teen-led initiative from Eugene, Oregon. At a booth whose stated mission was the prevention of sexual assault, I could only wonder why the teen boys would be manning a table containing graphic pictures of female genitalia, suggesting that “everyone can come inside” a pigtailed little girl on a tricycle.With that question in mind, I checked on the Internet and found that the group puts on performances, the first of which was The Vagina Monologues. The students stated they just finished a run of a play that they wrote about the life struggles of a transgendered woman. They have a transgender education panel coming up, and they do art shows around teen sexuality and gender.
Day two of the conference found me very reluctantly attending a workshop led by YEPSA entitled “You Say Porn, I Say Porn!”
The program description did not even begin to touch the stark reality of the session. “To porn or not to porn, that is the question. YEPSA will be leading the masses through the very exciting world of pornography.” The session was held in a large room, filled with teens and adults. It started with a soft porn video commercial.
About 10 teen facilitators lined up across the front of the room and introduced themselves. They gave their names and the pronoun they prefer (“I prefer ‘she,’” “I don’t have a preference but I identify as male,” etc.). This was in keeping with a theory emphasized over and over at the conference—that gender is fluid and is determined only by the person in question and how that person feels at that particular time about his or her gender. In others words, biology has nothing to do with gender.
That was evidenced by a teen boy who attended lunch the first day dressed as a woman, complete with wig, pearls and dress. He soon put aside the outfit, and was once again looking like a teen boy the next time I saw him. Another young man was decorated with glitter on his face and a lilting voice, both of which he shed later in the day.
It was pointed out at the beginning of the conference that there were unisex bathrooms available for those who preferred to use them. There were separate male and female bathrooms available as well.
Getting back to the session, the facilitators asked everyone in the room to work on a group definition of porn. Since they said it wouldn’t be possible to come up with a real definition that everyone agreed on, we just needed to make it “pornish.”Some of the pornish ideas were: Main purpose is to stimulate arousal. You learn different ways to have sex from porn. It has commercial purposes. It is an exaggerated depiction of fantasy. It is a beautiful thing. It objectifies people. It is whatever promotes a sexual response. It tries to get people thinking about sex.
Next, the room was divided into nine groups. The youth facilitators went from group to group, individually or occasionally in pairs, talking about different aspects of porn to the mixed groups of teens and adults.
One of the young teen female facilitators was very scantily dressed, with her entire midriff showing and wearing a very tight miniskirt. She literally bounced rather than walked. The young teens would come into these groups of mixed adults and teens and ask questions like: “How is porn different from real sex?” “How might watching porn from a young age affect you?”
A major discussion about how tragic it is that porn stars refuse to use condoms ensued in our group, with much wondering about why this is so. An adult male, who seemed to have way too much knowledge on all things pornographic, said it is because of lack of stimulation.
Most of the facilitators were teen girls. Much of the response to these young girls’ queries and the discourse about sex and pornography came from two older men in our group.
When one particularly thin girl finished questioning our group and left, I heard one of the men say to the other, “That was sexy. What do you do?” To which the man who knows too much about porn replied: “I work with teens.”
He had been discussing with the teens a social media outlet where one can post photos for just a few seconds, or as long as wanted, and then the pictures disappear, he said.
One teen facilitator asked whether it was okay for girls to send nude pictures to their boyfriends, and the adults generally agreed it was fine as long it was a boyfriend, but not to strangers. One woman finally pointed out that those pictures can go anywhere once they are sent and don’t disappear when the relationship dissolves.
The session was a dirty old man’s delight. These teen facilitators were probably high school age, some very young high school, with some appearing to be possibly middle school. Several of them were awkward and visibly uncomfortable with their role in this debacle, while others seemed far too seasoned and comfortable with the situation.
This is just a sampling of the plan that Planned Parenthood has for our teens. Check out our website at www.stopp.org, where I will be writing for several weeks on the unbelievably inappropriate materials and scenarios that were presented at this conference.
Oregon Education Department “sexuality education expert” Brad Victor prides himself on the fact that Oregon has the “most progressive sex education laws in the nation,” and brags about how he easily slid Oregon’s explicit Administrative Rule under the radar as a consent item at the state board level. The plan is that other states will follow suit. Many are already deeply embroiled in Planned Parenthood’s sex education. Those who are not embroiled are targeted.
But as we pointed out in our last edition of The Wednesday STOPP Report, Brad Victor also demonstrated that if parents will speak out at every level, sex education can be easily derailed in a school district—even one where the programs are already firmly in place. The sooner parents start their challenges, however, the better.
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