The eponymous author at Oh My God, That Britni’s Shameless wrote an interesting post a day or so ago about sex education.  What I like about Britni is that she is not only completely open minded but she has the confidence to say exactly what she thinks.  Which doesn’t mean I agree with everything she says; for instance her assertion “It’s just a natural and accepted thing that men are sexual, so they’re going to talk about sex and masturbation and dick size“.  Well, no, sorry, at least in my experience, men don’t; they’re too uptight – but that may be different for the younger generation.

Britni’s post, while being largely aimed at sex education (and just as applicable in the UK as in America), adds support to my long-held belief that we would all be better adjusted mentally, have a lower rate of unwanted pregnancies, and be in better health generally, if we were less repressed, better educated and more comfortable with our bodies.  As an example the US and UK have the two highest rates of unwanted teenage pregnancy in the western world; compare with the laid-back, free-thinking Dutch who have the lowest.  See this Wikipedia article (though some of the date here is quite old) and the diagram in this article from the Independent; see also, inter alia, here, here and here.

If we are to achieve this change of mindset we have to do two things: (a) restructure the brains of our revered leaders (political and religious) giving them a complete paradigm shift in their thinking on all things sexual, and then (b) investing in much better, more open and more caring sex & health education, vide the Dutch.  Along the way this, of course, will mean a change in attitudes towards nudity.

But of course the status quo is self-fulfilling and comfortable; change is uncomfortable and no-one much likes being outside their comfort zone.  Our leaders are repressed, so the modus operandi follows this, making the (unthinking) populous repressed, and they become or elect our leaders, and so ad infinitum.  I don’t know how we break the cycle.  All people like me can do is to keep expressing our views in the hope that the message does eventually seep into the cracks in a few brains and start that paradigm shift.  So I’m not putting any money on this change happening any time soon, but hope springs eternal.