Stop back in next week for a review of Unhitched by Judith Stacey

Sexual education isn’t sex, and sex education isn’t anti-modesty. It’s education. How can you claim to know that you’re against sex ed when you haven’t participated in it? Opting out just prohibits knowledge. And I don’t think that parents should be able to pull their kids out of 10th grade Bio on the days the teacher is talking about evolution, either. Some shit needs to get learned.

You give Shalit far more credit than I could extend her, anna.

As bluebears pointed out, the one saving grace of this book, IMO, is that it’s a protest against the hypersexualized, choose-my-choice strain of third-wave feminism on college campuses. I’m totally down with that. Of course, not all campus culture is like what Shalit experienced at her extremely liberal elite New England private university—I went to a conservative Southern public university whose campus culture was entirely different (and fairly typical of many universities, especially in the South). That radicalized me in the opposite direction from Shalit. I was positively longing for some sex-positive feminism by the time I got out of there, even the stupid, SATC-watching kind. It was another way that Shalit took her own experience and unsuccessfully tried to make it one-size-fits-all.

Baraqiel is also correct in noting the creepiness of the Orthodox Jewish approach to modesty, which is based in patriarchy, not in women’s bodily autonomy. Although it’s not discussed overtly in this book, Shalit is a ba’al teshuva, a Jew raised non-Orthodox who returned to Orthodoxy (sort of the Jewish equivalent of a born-again Christian, and often just as annoying). She very deliberately chose to live within the strictures of Orthodox practice, which is inherently non-egalitarian and somewhat obsessive about women’s modesty. It may be that Orthodoxy seemed like a good fit to her because she already was on the modesty bandwagon, but whenever I read her work, I’m always reminded that it’s underpinned by very conservative religious views on women’s roles.

As for sex ed, the discomfort kids feel is a result of the poisonous atmosphere surrounding sexuality in this country. Our bodies should not be cause for shame or embarrassment. And to my mind, it is irresponsible as a parent not to see that your kids are well-educated about their bodies by the time they go out into the world (and preferably a lot earlier than that). We don’t give our kids a chance to opt out of biology class because they don’t want to do dissection. We expect that they’ll take driver ed if they want to get a driver’s license.

I agree that parents should give information based on the child’s expressed interest and intellectual level, but if you have a kid who’s entering adolescence and hasn’t asked at least a couple of questions, you as the parent should raise the matter. Kids have to know that it’s safe to ask their parents about sex and that their parents want them to make safe, informed choices. They should get the message that sexuality is a healthy, enjoyable part of life for many, if not most, adults. If sex ed classes made Shalit feel embarrassed, something went grossly wrong with her upbringing.