Sisters
git yr/blk/asses
out of that re/
volution/
ary's
bed.
that ain't no revolutionary
thing com/munal
fuck/ing
ain't nothing political
bout fucking.
that's a white/
thing u doing Sisters.
and that so/
called/brother there
screwing u in tune to
fanon
and fanon
and fanon
ain't no re
vo/lution/
ary
(31, 1st part of poem)
Homecoming
Sonia Sanchezhey.
Sisters
git yr/blk/asses
out of that re/
volution/
ary's
bed.
that ain't no revolutionary
thing com/munal
fuck/ing
ain't nothing political
bout fucking.
that's a white/
thing u doing Sisters.
and that so/
called/brother there
screwing u in tune to
fanon
and fanon
and fanon
ain't no re
vo/lution/
ary
(31, 1st part of poem)
Homecoming
Sonia Sanchez
On Nov 2, 6:44 pm, Hetty ter Haar <oldave...@googlemail.com> wrote:
> America's problem with sex education
>
> Given the comic failure of abstinence-only - 95% of Americans have
> premarital sex - isn't it time the US got over its hangup?
>
> Daniel Denvir
> Wednesday November 2 2011
> guardian.co.uk
>
> http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/nov/02/americ...
>
> Though most American youth continue to learn about sex most everywhere
> but in school, there is some good news: according to a recent report
> from the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United
> States [http://www.siecus.org/index.cfm?
> fuseaction=page.viewPage&pageID=1339&nodeID=1] (SIECUS), the
> Obama administration and Congress in 2010 eliminated two thirds of
> federal funding for abstinence-only-until-marriage education, and, in
> a historic shift, allocated close to $190m for comprehensive sex
> education.
>
> At the local level, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced [http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/10/nyregion/in-new-york-city-a-new-mandate-on...]
> the implementation of a comprehensive citywide sex ed program this
> spring. Previously, whether a child received science-based sex ed or
> nothing at all was an enrollment roll of the dice: some principals ran
> good programs; others did not.
>
> The proposed curriculum has sparked a rightwing backlash [http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/blogpost/post/go-ask-alice-sex-ed-site-d...]
> (flames fanned, in part, by the New York Post). Some parents are
> apparently angry that one approved website discusses pornography,
> swinger clubs and (dear Jesus) foot fetishes.
>
> Bloomberg, for good policy and for ill, is a steamroller. But other
> cities lag far behind, including school districts that don't preach
> abstinence-only.
>
> Last month, I reported that Philadelphia public schools utterly fail
> [http://www.citypaper.net/news/2011-10-20-philadelphia-schools-sex-
> education.html?viewAll=y] to provide comprehensive sex education. When
> students are taught what little they are about condoms, it rarely
> happens before high school. And by then, it's often too late: 15% of
> Philly teens lose their virginity before age 13. Pennsylvania state
> law includes only a vague requirement that students be educated about
> HIV/Aids prevention.
>
> The Republican presidential candidates would like to keep it that way.
> They are stalwart critics of science-based and medically accurate sex
> education, and frequently demonstrate that they never received it.
>
> Texas Governor Rick Perry, when asked by a reporter to cite research
> supporting his position (he presides over a state with the nation's
> fifth highest rate of teen pregnancy), would say only that [http://www.austinchronicle.com/news/2011-10-28/just-say-no/)] "from my own
> personal life, abstinence works".
>
> Governor George W Bush implemented abstinence-only in Texas, and after
> he moved to the White House, his successor, Perry, benefited from a
> big increase in federal abstinence-only funding. Texas, according to a
> recent story in the Austin Chronicle, has taken in $23.3m in federal
> abstinence-only funds in the past four years alone.
>
> And it's not just Christian wishful thinking translated into public
> policy. Governor Perry's position on sex education is rather more
> cynical: he supported a vaccine for HPV touted by his former chief of
> staff, then working as a lobbyist for vaccine-maker Merck. The move
> prompted fierce accusations from evangelical Christians [http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/14/us/politics/republican-candidates-battle-o...],
> including from GOP presidential rivals Michele Bachmann and Rick
> Santorum, that the vaccine encourages promiscuity.
>
> The Republican need for remedial sex ed is widely apparent. Michele's
> husband, Marcus Bachmann, runs a clinic that has been accused of
> offering "cures" for homosexuality [http://gawker.com/5820437/marcus-
> bachmanns-big-gay-mess">has been accused of offering "cures] (a charge
> Bachmann denies); Newt Gingrich, searching for a clean slate like some
> inverted Henry VIII, philandered his way from Protestantism to the
> Catholic Church; Mitt Romney, in his role as bishop to Boston-area
> Mormons, tried to stop a woman [http://jezebel.com/5851050/the-curious-
> case-of-mitt-romney-an-abortion-and-eliza-dushkus-mom] from getting a
> life-saving abortion; Herman Cain now confronts sexual harassment
> charges; and poor Rick Santorum, a man who does not understand the
> difference between being gay and bestiality, has earned a comeuppance
> from columnist Dan Savage who rebranded his surname to mean [http://
> spreadingsantorum.com/] "the frothy mixture of lube and fecal matter
> that is sometimes the by-product of anal sex".
>
> Ignorance is no excuse. Neither is it blissful: Choosing the Best, a
> popular abstinence-only curriculum, compares people who have sex
> before marriage to chewed-up gum: it "isn't as appealing as when it is
> unwrapped and new". The South, beacon of Christian virtue, has,
> according to SIECUS, the highest concentration of abstinence-only
> education and also the riskiest teen sexual behavior.
>
> Not that sexual illiteracy is limited to the political right: take
> Anthony Weiner [http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/
> 2011/jun/10/anthony-weiner-sexting]. It's an American epidemic: a self-
> enforced Victorian morality play amid ubiquitous and crassly
> commercialised mass eroticism. The stakes of sexual ignorance extend
> far beyond preventing pregnancy and disease. Young people now
> frequently text ("sext" [http://articles.philly.com/2010-06-24/news/
> 24962245_1_sexting-nude-photos-naked-pictures">"sext]) intimate self-
> portraits to romantic interests with very little understanding of the
> psychic and social damage that a sexually explicit photo gone viral
> can inflict. Instead of school districts teaching about the brave new
> world of sex and technology, however, prosecutors have threatened to
> charge the unfortunate and underage models under child pornography
> laws.
>
> And this is about more than sex. As Dana Goldstein writes at the
> Nation, "a person's position on sex ed is a proxy for a deeper set of
> questions":
>
> "whether or not one supports the changes in gender and economic norms
> that have brought women into the workplace, delayed the average age at
> marriage and allowed couples to experience sex without the burden of
> pregnancy, through the use of hormonal birth control."
>
> And yet there's less and less time for such critical thinking in the
> classroom: health concerns are squeezed by religious fanaticism at one
> end, and corporate productivity measures at the other. As I reported
> in Salon [http://www.salon.com/life/education/index.html?story=/news/
> feature/2011/09/14/denvir_school], the high-stakes standardised
> testing regime has decreased time for everything from history to
> recess. Forget about sex. Though, to be sure, Americans haven't. While
> abstinence-only classes encourage students to take a "virginity
> pledge" [http://www.siecus.org/index.cfm?
> fuseaction=Page.ViewPage&PageID=1202">"virginity pledge], an
> estimated 95% of Americans end up having premarital sex [http://www.guttmacher.org/media/nr/2006/12/19/index.html]. It's time to make
> sure that sex is safe - and, perhaps, even fun.
>
> guardian.co.uk Copyright (c) Guardian News and Media Limited. 2011
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