Winter: Masturbation: the real safe sex

Saturday, June 16, 2007

I'd give odds that a sizable portion of 15-year-old boys in this country have watched Paris Hilton's infamous bedroom video.

Millions more have seen porn on the Internet or TV, and I bet 99 percent know Britney Spears sometimes doesn't wear underwear.

Why can we live with that but not with discussions about masturbation, a pretty normal and safe act, from everything I've read?

I'm referring to the debate raging about the panel discussion "STDs: Sex, Teens and Drugs," part of the University of Colorado's Conference on World Affairs last month in Boulder.

Four highly credentialed professionals spoke for 80 minutes to classes from Boulder Valley High School about sex and drugs. The panelists, including a psychologist, a drug-policy expert and a storyteller, shared some very personal, thought-provoking and even moving stories and views about drugs and sex, including masturbation.

There's no question that the panelists were liberal. The main charge against them is that they encouraged teens to experiment with drugs and sex. But I'd call that a gross misrepresentation of what they said. (Read the transcript of the discussion at bvsdwatch.org/content/view/9 1/1/ and judge for yourself.)

What's been reported in much of the media is taken out of context. What the panelists told the kids was this: If you're going to experiment, do it responsibly, and here's how that might look.

Now, psychologist Joel Becker did advocate masturbation: "Sex does come with having feelings, and that's what you have to be prepared for," he said. "I'm going to come back to that in a second, but I also just want to just comment on . . . encouraging you to have healthy sexual behavior. . . . When you are 13, 12, 13, 14, certainly one of the most appropriate sexual behaviors would be masturbation. Masturbate. Please masturbate."

Critics in the media are apoplectic. Fox News commentator Bill O'Reilly called it "an educational outrage in Boulder that makes Ward Churchill look insignificant." Local KHOW broadcasters Dan Caplis and Craig Silverman can't bloviate enough about it. Many are demanding the resignations of the Boulder Valley principal, superintendent and school board president.

And they're wrong. Call me crazy, but I would much rather have a child of mine masturbate than have oral or conventional sex. It's much safer.

And if you think your kids aren't having oral sex, you're not looking.

The chief of psychiatry at Children's Hospital in Denver told me seven years ago that "oral sex is huge right now in middle schools." I wrote a column about it, about why it's risky behavior, and how shocked I was that kids that young were routinely engaging in it.

The feedback I got on that column? Zip.

In contrast, I hear from lots of folks when I write about my dog.

The implicit message to our kids seems to be: "Anything is OK as long as we don't know about it."

The only thing you can conclude is that we have odd attitudes about sex, based on emotion rather than reason.

Our culture bombards our kids with messages that casual sex is good. Perhaps you've seen the current hit movie Knocked Up. If you want to attack something for encouraging risky behavior and glamorizing loose values and wildly unrealistic outcomes, attack that movie. Don't attack a panel discussion in a high school given by adults with expertise and sincerely held beliefs.

Or how about this? Boulder Valley sponsors the discussion again, only this time inviting Dr. James Dobson, Phyllis Schlafly, Dr. Laura Schlessinger and U.S. drug czar John Walters. Then you could argue that kids were exposed to both sides of the spectrum. Wouldn't that be fair?

And if that panel tells our kids they'll go blind if they masturbate, I'll say hallelujah and bless this country of ours where free speech is still sacred and all opinions are tolerated.

mwinte@aol.com