Sex Ed Super Mario Style

This is making the rounds on gamer blogs a lot this week. An interesting edit from Saturday morning cartoons of the Super Mario Brothers with a safer sex / sex education message. Bound to get kids' attention more than many of the materials that are being used, and it might get some conversations opened for some more detailed sexualities education discussions.

Text messaging sex ed questions

An innovative partnership between Fiesta Condoms (run by by the DKT Indonesia Foundation, the local chapter of a Washington-based charitable organization) and the Singapore-based multimedia health platform Love Airways launched a free service where people can text-message their questions about sexual health and get a response by a health professional. The hotline is a response to a study that found Indonesian youth were alarmingly unaware of accurate information in regards to sexual health, with almost half of young people getting their sexual knowledge from porn.

The hotline service allows teenagers and anyone with access to a mobile phone from all over Indonesia to send their queries to a panel of Indonesian doctors by text messaging to +65 94 DRLOVE (+65 943 75683) anonymously, allowing plenty of privacy and freedom to enquire about a topic that is largely a social taboo. "All questions are welcome and no question is too outrageous," said founder of Love Airways' "Dr. Love" aka Dr. Wei Siang Yu, who also set up the world's first wireless sex education initiative in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, in 2002. He also pioneered a similar wireless campaign in Singapore, which is said to have received up to 8,000 queries daily. Although not all questions will be able to be answered due to insufficient resources, questions received in the next month will be compiled into a 20,000-point database that will not only help map out the most common questions Indonesians have about sex, but will also be converted into Indonesia's first interactive digital avatar, "Nova", at http://www.loveairways.com/.

Kudos to the organizations in Jakarta for championing this initiative. Too often, studies are conducted time and time again that suggest that young people are not having access to the information that they need to be sexually healthy, and nothing is done. Here in Canada, the Canadian Council of Ministers of Education conducted a massive study in 2003, duplicating one that been done accessing the knowledge of youth in the mid 1980's, and found that almost half of kids in grade 9 thought that HIV/AIDS is curable, and that the number of youth having unprotected sex had risen substantially. Sadly, four years later, the government has not responded in any proactive or urgent way to the study's findings, which have largely been shelved and educational activism around sexual health has been left primarily to activist agencies and organizations who pick up the cause.

(source: The Jakarta Post, July 19, 2007)

HPV Vaccine - A parent blogs about their choice

The following is a blog posting by Disappearing John on the choice he and his wife made about getting their daughter vaccinated with the new-ish HPV vaccine. I thought this was an insightful post, and that it might inspire some interesting commentary, and appreciate his honesty in the way he thought through some of the issues he discusses below. (Reprinted with permission of the author)

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Why is this a difficult choice?

I seem to be on an ethics role lately, but my wife and I ran into a question at our pediatrician's office last month, and I was surprised by all of the discussions I have gotten started just by bringing it up with others...We have a 13 year-old daughter. (okay, when she's hormonally challenged, I say my WIFE has a 13 year old daughter but, none the less). We took her to our doctor to look at a mole that has begun to change on her back to get referred to a dermatologist.

While there, we found out she was due for some immunization boosters, so, over our daughter's staunch objections, we said, "let's get them today, too!"It was then the pediatrician sat down and said, "We have a new vaccine available that is not mandatory, but we recommend it... The HPV vaccine. It is a series of three shots, given two months apart..." My wife and I were both familiar with it, and said, "certainly, let's give that as well!"The pediatrician breathed a sigh of relief, and said, "You would not believe how many parents have been offended that I have suggested it, or yelled at me for suggesting their daughter might be sexually active or advocating that kids this age be sexually active. I am saying nothing of the sort, but this vaccine works best if given before sexual activity begins."

My wife and I have had many frank and open conversations with all of my kids, and they all know our moral positions and beliefs, and know they can talk to us about anything. We explained to our daughter what the shot was for, and reinforced why we were getting her immunized, and that it was not "our blessing" for her to be sexually active. I talked about this at work the other night, and was surprised that a couple of the nurses I work with were opposed to giving their daughters this vaccine. These are emergency room nurses who see pregnant 14-15 year old girls all the time!

To my wife and I, it was a no-brainer. We faced a similar dilemma 6 years ago when our oldest daughter had a severe bout of ovarian cysts, and the best course of treatment was low-dose birth control pills. Deciding to put your 15 year old daughter on birth control pills is a hard choice for a man (any parent, I guess) to make, but it did help open many important conversations.I guess it underscores the current confusion with sex education in America, which is not where I wanted this post to go, but in my humble opinion, closing our eyes and pretending that if we don't tell our kids about sex, birth control and STD control, that they won't become interested in sex and experiment sexually is pretty stupid.It amazes me that people think that getting their kids an immunization is equivalent to saying, "Okay, go have sex now!"

Tarot for Sex Ed! A note from the moderator of this blog

Hi everyone,

As you may know, sex education was essentially removed from the curriculum in Quebec in January of 2005. Stunning, since this province has one of the highest rates of youth having unprotected sex and sexually transmitted infections going. Head and Hands, a community group I work with is going into the schools this fall and will be teaching sex ed in several local high schools through their SENSE Project. As an innovative fundraiser, they are inviting you to help support sex education and have a little fun as well. For a donation of $10 (or more if you can do so), you can get an online tarot reading over Facebook to answer one of life's burning questions!

Here's how: Add Channing Rodman as your friend. You can find her by typing her name in the facebook search bar or by going to the Head & Hands group page Send her a message saying you are interested in the tarot reading. She'll answer your question, send you pictures of your cards... Karma will give you a big smooch for doing your thing for sexual health!

To pay, go to Head and Hands and click on "Canada Helps" (this is an online donation method and requires a credit card.) It is an easy step-by-step donation process that will take less than5mins to complete. You'll get an email tax receipt for your donation to H&H from Canada Helps. This is an excellent and reputable organization, and they are really needing our help right now... Jump on the karmic bandwagon, and do your thing, woooo :-)

If you are NOT on facebook, email me (link on my profile) and I'll set the reading up for you with Channing. I see the future, and it has SEX ED in it!

Trojan Ad - It's good to be sure

A clever Trojan condom ad... (though what is this guy drinking while driving that fancy car?)

Sex Ed in the UK

15-year-old Katrina Mather has calculated that the opening hours of her local sexual health clinic in the UK give each young person in the area access for under 15 seconds per month.


A survey by the UK Youth Parliament (UKYP) of over 20,000 young people published today highlights that more than 50% have never been taught about pregnancy in school and wouldn’t know where to find their local sexual health clinic. Effective condom use is also not being taught to more than half of the students in the UK, and most find their sex education to be disappointingly inadequate.Findings from the survey are published in a report entitled “Sex & Relationships Education – Are You Getting It?” being launched today at the House of Commons. Other findings echo those found in other studies across the globe: that we aren't teaching youth about relationships, the things they find meaningful and that most young people find their sex education to be woefully inadequate. When will we start to believe them, when they have been telling us for more than a decade that we are doing it wrong?


source: UKyouthparliament.org

Brazil's Commitment to Sexual Health

(photo by Andy Caulfield)

The Christ over Rio de Janeiro is showing profoundly more compassion for the people of Brazil than Pope Benedict has of late, but thankfully, the government of Brazil is doing a much better job. Brazil joins other progressive mostly Catholic countries in developing a plan to promote sexual health in its citizens : it has handed out more than 250 million free condoms, and just announced that it will provide birth control at 10,000 pharmacies across the country for only $2.40 a year. It already provides a limited number of free vasectomies, and will be increasing the number substantially as well. The Pope has publically spoken out against the move by Brazil and other countries that are following suit.

As Marty Klein over at Sexual Intelligence notes: "Increased access to contraception invariably enhances everyone's health, lowers infant mortality, increases lifespans, and raises incomes. " It's time for the church to recognize the harm it is inflicting on people's lives with its rigid, outdated and dangerous social policy in regards to sexuality and reproduction.

Brazil has 21.2 million people between 12 and 18 years of age, representing 12.5 percent of its 174 million inhabitants, according to A Voz dos Adolescentes (The Voice of Adolescents), a report by the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF). Clearly specific strategies need to be adapted to address the needs of this population, and this is an important step in creating a sexually healthy population.