Sex Ed

Last semester Me, Dave, and Ken were discussing how immature all the students were. The way they relate to each other especially when it comes to anything about sex or dating is just stunningly immature for college students. Dave joked that we should give a lecture on sex education. I thought it was impossible since even the mention of dating results in endless giggles from my class, I though talking about sex would make their heads explode. I always thought that the only reasons there was so many negative ideas about sex was because of religion. I couldn't imagine that anything besides religion was strong enough to get people to suppress their basic biology and put a high value on odd things like virginity. But in China they seem to accomplish almost the same exact thing through cultural pressure. The result of this is that people in China don't talk about sex at all which can lead to some weird ideas. I read one news story about a couple in rural China who went to the doctor to find out why the woman wasn't getting pregnant. It turned out that they were only sleeping in the same bed and thought that that would be enough.



This semester Connie told us that we would all have to give lectures as part of some oddly put together English festival. We were each assigned specific times, not that many of the students were told about this, but the topic was up to us. I couldn't decide on what I wanted to do for a long time until finally when Connie called me to ask me for a topic I just decided to do a lecture on sex ed. You may be surprised that the school was OK with this but honestly as long as the lecture wasn't about Tibet I don't think they cared much what I did. I had heard that they had Power Point so I prepared some slides that I hoped would take a long enough time. I also went and got some condoms and a banana. As far as I can tell I can't attach a file to this blog but if anyone wants I can e-mail them the Power Point slides I came up with. I decided to focus mostly on the sort of stuff they cover in a Junior High sex ed course. The basic mechanics of sex along with a section on STDs and on condoms. I also tried to look up some general sex myths I could refute.



I went to the building where I was supposed to give my lecture early but when I got there the room it was supposed to be in was locked. I called Connie who told me that I was in the right place but she would call around to find out what was up. After a while of standing there wondering if the school had canceled my lecture Connie called me back and told me that the room had been changed. The result was that I was no late instead of early. I finally got to the right room which had a pretty good crowd of about 80 or so students and set up to give my lecture. I had a microphone which at first didn't work well so I just tried to talk really loudly but it was eventually fixed. As soon as I started I noticed a call from Steve, my phone was on silent, and while I was sure he was trying to figure out where the lecture had been moved to I didn't want to stop since I was already late, though in China stopping a speech to take a phone call is perfectly acceptable.



I started out with a section on biology which didn't get much of a response. The section on sex myths got some reaction, but by far the biggest reaction was for the condom demonstration. Even when I pulled out the pack of condoms there was a huge reaction from the students. When I pulled out the banana they were shocked. I did the condom on the banana bit three times just to be sure they got it, and because I was running a little short. People's reaction were varied some were just whispering with their friends, some were sort of scowling at me, but some were furiously taking notes. I heard afterwords about some of the reactions. Apparently one girl isn't willing to eat bananas anymore, I think I ate the one from the demonstration, and one girl was glad she learned if a condom went on a man or a woman. At the end I passed out some sheets of paper to have people write down some questions. Most of them were pretty basic stuff one person wrote down "Why do so many fags get AIDS" which I just parlayed into a discussion of drug use and AIDS, which is how AIDS is mostly spread in China. The best question though was "Would you be surprised if the girl you married was not a virgin?" I told the students that actually I would be pretty shocked if the girl I married was a virgin, and then tried to explain about cultural differences. I think overall it went pretty well. I put my e-mail address up if people had more questions but the only messages I got were just from people who wanted to practice English. In the end I just hope that at least some one learned at little more and that maybe they'll be more willing to talk about it in the future.