things my child learned about gay women in school this week

It took me awhile to process the "Woman to Woman" brochure.

At first, reading through all the the hand-anal touching folderol, my primary reaction was: ewwwww. (A pal of ours, coming to the hand-anal passage in the middle of a conversation about the instructional leaders of our schools, said, "That's what they do inside their offices all day.")

So that was my first thought. Ewwww.

My second thought was: huh?

Gay women need to use dental dams, Saran Wrap, or "a square cut out of a latex glove or condom" in order to have safer sex?

Safer than the highly dangerous "unprotected" sex they were having?

Now that seemed wrong.

I distinctly recall, at least I think I distinctly recall, joshing with gay friends - that would be gay female friends - about lesbian sex being safer than heterosexual sex. Also, I distinctly do not recall hearing tell of epidemic levels of HIV in gay women.

Naturally, this led me to think I needed to Google up a fact or two about the health concerns of gay women. At first, I resisted the impulse. I resisted because I am tired of spending my time Googling facts to counter the many non-facts purveyed by the instructional leaders of my high-performing school district.

Inevitably, however, my inquiring nature got the better of me, and within minutes I had discovered the CDC Fact Sheet on HIV/AIDS among Women Who Have sex with Women. It was just as I suspected.

This post to the Irvington Parents Forum resulted:

The “Woman to Woman” flier raises another issue, which is that the district has provided students with “information” that is misleading at best, damaging and false at worst. To my way of thinking, the Woman to Woman brochure is hurtful to gay women.

Here is the CDC on the subject of female-to-female sexual transmission of HIV:

To date, there are no confirmed cases of female-to-female sexual transmission of HIV in the United States database (K. McDavid, CDC, oral communication, March 2005).

I will copy this to G.F., who I’m sure had no idea IMS and IHS were planning to teach students that gay women should use dental dams and Saran Wrap to protect themselves from HIV.

Personally, I would strongly prefer that the middle school say no more on these subjects. Here at home, my husband and I will explain to our son that this material amounts to scaremongering at the expense of gay women and nothing more.

One last thing.

I talked to my sister, who was taught sex education in the 1970s in her Masters Program.

She said that a brochure like the Woman to Woman flier will cause children of a certain age -- children whose mothers are gay, or children whose friends' mothers are gay -- to think, "Mommy's going to die" or "My friend's mommy is going to die."

She's seen this reaction many times in children learning about cigarette smoking at school. Kids whose parents smoke are scared to death; if their parents don't smoke, but their friends' parents do, they're frightened for their friends.

So this is U.S. public education, K-12.

Can't teach math, can't teach the disadvantaged kids.

But scaring children and filling their heads with images of dripping, discharging penises and gay women frolicking in Saran Wrap..... that's a go.

Thanks, guys.


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things my child learned about gay women in school this week
also playing in a parallel universe
email to the principal, part 2
further
ktm-2 readers make up a word problem for IMS
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new talent at the forum
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