Coming to Terms With Your Own Sexuality First ~~~
Sol Gordon, PhD
The following article is condensed from Dr. Gordon’s presentation at the ASHA 52nd Annual Convention, Dearborn, October 1978.
We have many problems in this country, and one of the most tragic is the one million pregnancies among teenage girls. The incidence is increasing by 10% each year. Why so much promiscuity? There are two reasons: One, (it is said) because there is sex education in the schools. Name one school system in the entire country that has a good sex education program. There are isolated, brave people who have developed good programs, but please don’t tell anyone who they are. Most of the sex education classes in our schools are programs in plumbing - a relentless pursuit of the Fallopian tubes. The second myth is that the Pill is making girls promiscuous. Less than 20% of sexually active teenagers are regularly using the best contraception. If they were using contraception, how could there be a million pregnancies? And the most important dilemma: Did you know that virtually all opposition to sex education is based on the assumption that knowledge is harmful? Please think about that statement. So before I talk about sex education, I want to help most of you come to terms with your own sexuality. Mind you, I said come to terms. I didn’t say be comfortable because the first proposition of my presentation is that nobody is comfortable about anything anymore and certainly not about sexuality. Nobody is comfortable with his or her sexuality. Sexuality is an area of excitement, of mystery; and there is no reason to ask anybody to be comfortable about it. I say you don’t have to be comfortable. That doesn’t mean you have to be paralyzed. You have to come to terms with it, with the excitement, the uncertainty, the mystery of it - but not be comfortable. MAY 1979
So let’s begin by talking about masturbation. Everybody knows that it’s okay to masturbate, so why is it the number one dilemma in the United States today? Because the average parent will say to the child, “Honey, it’s okay to masturbate. . . if you don’t do it too much.” How much is too much - once a year, twice a week, after every meal? That is the dilemma. What is this nonsense about masturbation? It’s a normal expression of sexuality at any time, at any age; and it’s a problem only if it’s guilt-ridden. Once is too much if you don’t like it. If you don’t like it, don’t do it. And now we have to talk about the female orgasm the topic of our time in magazines and discussions among men and women. It has reached the point of such absurdity that if a man and woman have sex, the first thing he says to her is, “Did you have one?” What kind of conversation is that? Is there no tomorrow? Before Freud, women weren’t even supposed to have one; and then he came along and said vaginal ones were okay; and then Masters and Johnson said those are not good anymore, and the women switched from vaginal orgasms to clitoral orgasms. And now somebody has said they are not good any more. Women must have thousands of them. So we have now reached the age of multiple orgasms, and soon someone will be saying those are not good anymore either. It will be necessary to have them simultaneously with your partner. Where is love? Where is the caring for another human being? We’ve forgotten that. We have allowed sexuality to degenerate into a kind of gymnastics. We need to pioneer and re-introduce love into our concern and thinking. We cannot allow others to decide for us what we mean by sex. We don’t mean how to do it. We know that one of the few things young people do know is how to do it. I wish they didn’t know unless they were taught. We are talking about caring, about intimacy, about love; and that is why Shere Hite’s work is so important. THE JOURNAL OF SCHOOL HEALTH
247
Some people say it is not scientific. I say it as “scientific” as the work of Freud or Erickson. It is not scientificin a strict sense, but it is one of the great breakthroughs of our time because she revealed and popularized the idea that women care more than anything else about intimacy, love, conversation and caring. Of the ten most important things in a relationship, I would say love and caring for another human being is number 1. Number 2 is a sense of humor. Without a sense of humor, it is difficult to survive in this grim world. The third most important thing is communication. Learn to communicate; talk to each other. The ninth most important thing in a relationship is sexual fulfillment, and the last (number 10) is sharing household tasks. Those are the ten most important things in a relationship. Have you noticed that 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8 are missing? Well, we need to leave those for curriculum development. I admit that sex might be number 1 the first week of a relationship and number 2 the second week; but by the ninth week, it becomes number 9 and remains number 9 if it is a mature relationship. We have this absolutely absurd notion about the role of sex in our lives. Sex is number 9 in a relationship. There are good reasons why young people shouldn’t have sex; and I am talking about sexual intercourse, because we are all sexual beings. They should not have sex because they are too young; they are too inexperienced; they are too vulnerable; they don’t have ready access to birth control; they are too readily available for exploitation; and they don’t know that first sexual experiences are usually pretty grim. I think there is a great difference between being 13 and being 19. Parents have a right to say, “We don’t want you to have intercourse.” Parents have that right; and it is incumbent upon us as adults to say, “We don’t think you should have sex because there are very good reasons.” But in the 25 years that I have been working in this field, no teenager has ever asked my consent. If someone should ask me, I am not going to say, “Well, it depends on your level of maturity and your value system.” I will say “No.” The fact is, they are not asking their parents; they are not asking counselors and health workers. They are having sex whether we like it or not and whether they like it or not. Peer pressure is so enormous. On the other hand, a large number of young people have asked me if it is normal to wait until marriage. They are not asking if it is normal to have sex; they are asking if it is normal to wait until marriage. A young man came to see me and said, “I am a homosexual.” “DOyou want to be a homosexual? Have you ever had a homosexual experience?” “Certainly not, what do you take me for?” “Have you ever had a heterosexual experience?” “Of course not, I’m a 248
THE JOURNAL OF SCHOOL HEALTH
homosexual.” I said, “SO far, the diagnosis is antisexual.” He replied, “Since I was 12 or 13, I have had dreams of making it with other guys. I knew there was something wrong with me; and the more I thought about it, the more it repeated itself.” And here he is at 20, a confirmed homosexual. I said, “Idiot! Don’t you know that all dreams, all fantasies, all wishes, all thoughts are normal. If you feel guilty about a thought, you will have that thought over and over again because guilt is the energy for the repetition of unacceptable thoughts. ” That is one of the most dynamic concepts in psychology. To considerably reduce anxiety, tension and dysfunction in our society, the concept that all thoughts, dreams, wishes and fantasies are normal must be accepted. Behavior can be abnormal, but not dreams, wishes or fantasies. But to return to the young man. What does he do to search out his identity? He looks up homosexuality in a psychiatric textbook. It doesn’t exactly describe him, so he checks out an advanced psychiatric textbook and finds latent homosexualitydescribed therein. So now he is fully diagnosed and he hasn’t done anything yet. I say that latency is the figment of a psychiatric imagination. It might as reasonably be said that all women are latently pregnant. We are all latent everything there is. We are all latent homosexuals; we are all latent bisexuals, and we are even all latent trisexuals. What is a trisexual? Somebody who tries everything. Why can’t we help people to understand that the best definition of homosexuality is a person who in their adult life has and prefers sexual relations with members of the same sex. A few homosexual experiences don’t make a person a homosexual any more than a few drinks make a person an alcoholic. Do you know that this knowledge can be lifesaving? I read of a suicide center visited by one 17-year old boy who had a single sexual experience with another young boy. Now he thinks he’s homosexual and wants to commit suicide. He actually attempts to do so. We have allowed young people to self-diagnose their problems because we have not provided them with the information they need - that a few experiences, that thoughts and fantasies don’t make a person homosexual. As far as we know, a person’s sexual identity is determined before they are five years old, even before they go to school. We don’t know why people become homosexual. We have no idea. We used to know. We knew that a child who had a strong mother and a weak father would become a homosexual - until we discovered that 80% of American families consist of weak fathers and strong mothers. The only thing we know for certain about homosexuality is that the homosexual was probably born to a heterosexual couple. MAY 1979
We have collected and tabulated 20,000 questions from teenagers all over this country. We know what kids want to know. Don’t go into a school and give your birth control lecture. Circulate index cards and ask them for their questions. Kids want to know about masturbation, about homosexuality, their thoughts. They want to know about things that are specifically excluded in most health and family life classes. Tomorrow’s family will consist of a husband and wife of similar education who marry for love and who will both spend most of their lives working outside the home. I expect tomorrow’s family to be more stable and healthier than ever before. In the good old days, we had compulsory pregnancy; and women frequently died in childbirth. Women didn’t have a choice of divorce or separation. Is that the good old days we are hankering after, the traditional family life? I say, “Never, never again back to the traditional family.” We have to progress toward the egalitarian family. We have to work toward women’s liberation, and we have to bring it right down to the junior and senior high schools and the little kids, too. We cannot allow the opposition and the lunatic fringe to define what we mean by the women’s movement. Women are said to be aggressive. Women don’t want to have babies anymore; they don’t want to stay home all the time anymore. Women are so aggressive that men are becoming impotent all over the place as a result (it is said). I say, for every impotent man arising from the women’s movement, 10,OOO men have been liberated. And where do I get those statistics? I made them up. They make up theirs and I will make up mine. Women are assertive these days; and if they don’t get their legitimate rights, they become aggressive. The real meaning of the women’s movement is equal rights, equal pay for equal work, equal opportunities for career choices and leisure and equal responsibilities. That’s the true meaning of the women’s movement. It has nothing to do with whether a woman stays home with the kids or works outside the home. And we better stop putting guilt trips on women who work outside the home. Do you know that each year we have about one million cases of child abuse; 100,OOO children are so brutalized that they require hospitalization, and 4,000 children are murdered by their parents. Do you know that many of these abusive parents are at home with their children? I’m not, of course, saying that women can’t take care of the children and stay at home; but let’s stop putting this guilt trip on women who work outside the home. I know from personal experience. When I got married 25 years ago, I thought women were born cleaning ladies. I married a professional woman, and we both worked full time. But she did all the cooking and cleaning and shopping and taking care of our kid - I MAY 1979
was busy. Until one day when my wife came to me and said “I’m busy, too. How would you like to have a divorce?” It took me five minutes to rearrange my schedule. Now I’m doing some of the cooking and cleaning and shopping, and I don’t like it. But now 1 know that women don’t like to clean and men don’t like to clean, and even cleaning ladies don’t like to clean. The women’s movement is the great hope for society today. We have to stop exploiting each other and playing games with each other. We have to get these messages across to young people. College students are more knowledgeable. They are not getting pregnant; they are not available for exploitation; they are not spreading venereal disease (that much). But among teenagers, we had one million pregnancies. Fifty thousand were among children 15 years of age last year. A teenage girl who gives birth has 90% of her life’s script developed for her. Most will drop out of school. Many will never marry. Most of them will remain on welfare; and there is a direct correlation between every index of pathology and being born to a teenage mother - whether it’s alcoholism, depression or a victim of child abuse. We know there is a connection between poverty, racial discrimination and teenage pregnancy; but we have to, somehow in the present crisis, stop glorifying teenage pregnancy; stop thinking about alternatives to abortion and think more about prevention. We must try to prevent the teenager from becoming pregnant in the first place. And we have to stop all these fantasy interpretations as to unresolved Oedipal complexes. I say a teenager gets pregnant because she has had sexual intercourse. We have to understand that we live in a sexist society. Boys are supposed to have sex, and the girls are not supposed to have it until they are married. So how do we get a million pregnancies? The girl gets pregnant because she is seduced, overwhelmed, raped, but mainly because she doesn’t prepare herself for sexual behavior. We have to say that sex itself is not romantic. Love and caring is romantic. Holding hands is romantic. Looking in each other’s eyes is romantic. But the actual sexual experience is not romantic unless birth control is used. Boys use lines and we have to help the girls with some replies. Don’t we know that the best oral contraceptive is still “No”? Sex is never a test of love. Write that down. The boy says, “If you really love me, you will have sex with me.” Again, sex is never a test of love. That is why I developed my book called, You Would if You LovedMe. It is a collection of lines that boys use to seduce girls; and if girls read it, they would be able to hesitate for 30 seconds and say, “That’s a line.” Book stores don’t want to sell a book that sells for $1.25 not enough profit. Ask your book store to sell it THE JOURNAL OF SCHOOL HEALTH
249
anyway. You would if you loved me. We have to help girls with some replies. We are going to have to play it rough sometimes because, as far as we know, only girls get pregnant. I have never heard of any male dying of an unresolved erection. Until people begin to communicate with each other and respect each other, the girls are going to have to become adept at some of the games the boys have been playing for thousands of years. My final segment is about what I think we need to do about sex education in the schools. We are the ones who are pro-life and pro-family. We had better talk about family life education; we had better talk about preparation for parenting. We believe in strengthening family life because we feel that children should be wanted; children should be born only to couples that care about them and want them. That is the very essence of family life. And so, we have to introduce programs into our schools that talk about self-concept and self-affirmation because people who feel good about themselves are not available for exploitation, nor do they exploit others. We have to have psychology courses and parenting courses. We must have family life that focuses on selfaffirmation, on equality of the sexes, where things such as love are discussed. Plumbing must be left to biology and not introduced into family life because it is an entirely different subject. Our subject matter is love, communication, caring for another person, morality. Values are a part of every subject. I say that attempting to teach sexuality without morals is bankruptcy. It’s tempting to introduce this subject in a moralistic fashion; however, it’s not only illegal, but also unethical and morally corrupt. Moralistic means you try to impose your point of view on others, your religious or idiosyncratic point of view on everyone. That is being moralistic. That is wrong. That violates separation of church and state. But there is nothing wrong with being moral. We are all God’s children. Nobody is inferior. If only somehow we could get the message across to young people that nobody can make you feel inferior without your consent and cooperation. Now I would like to read you a favorite poem from the “You” book. This book has the world’s longest title: The Psychology of Surviving and Enhancing Your
250
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Social LVe, Love LVe, Sex Life, School Life, Work Lfe, Home Life, Style of Life, Life. You know, there’s nothing else. And it says: Life is not a meaning - it is an opportunity. It’s an opportunity for meaningful experiences. You have to find yourself right where you are and then have a good time. The poem is called “Random Thoughts” and it continues as follows: We all have some areas of vulnerability. Not everything in life can be understood or resolved. Just about everything in life involves some risk and some sacrifices of time, energy and patience. I suspect that really meaningful experiences are of brief duration - albeit repeatable and rarely occur on schedule. Even tragic events offer us opportunities for review and renewal. Some people are strange. If they don’t understand something, if they haven’t heard about something, they think either it doesn’t exist or isn’t worthwhile. If God wants to test you, what will you do? SELECTED PUBLICATIONS Gordon S: You - A Survival Guide for Youth ed2. New York, Times Books, 1978. Gordon S : You Would If You Loved Me. New York, Bantam Books, 1978.
Gordon S , Everly K,Scales P:The SmalAdofescent.North Scituate, M A , Duxbury Press, 1979. Gordon S: Psychology For You. New York, Oxford Book Co, 1978. Gordon S, Wollin M: Parenting - A Guide for Young People. New York, Oxford Book Co,1975. Gordon S , Gordon J: Did the Sun Shine Before You Were Born? Charlottesville, VA, Ed-U Press, 1977. Gordon S : Facts About Sexfor Today’s Youth. Charlottesville, VA, Ed-U Press, 1978. *All publications available from Ed-U Press, 123 4th St., N.W., Charlottesville. VA, 22901.
Sol Gordon, PhD, Director, The Institute for Family Research and Education, 760 OstromA venue, Syracuse, NY 132210. A transcription of Dr. Gordon’s entire presentation (17pp) at the ASHA 52nd Annual Convention in Dearborn is available by writing ASHA National Office, P.O. Box 708, Kent, Ohio 44240. Please enclose a check or money order for $2.00 to cover handling and postage.
MAY 1979
Sol Gordon, PhD
The following article is condensed from Dr. Gordon’s presentation at the ASHA 52nd Annual Convention, Dearborn, October 1978.
We have many problems in this country, and one of the most tragic is the one million pregnancies among teenage girls. The incidence is increasing by 10% each year. Why so much promiscuity? There are two reasons: One, (it is said) because there is sex education in the schools. Name one school system in the entire country that has a good sex education program. There are isolated, brave people who have developed good programs, but please don’t tell anyone who they are. Most of the sex education classes in our schools are programs in plumbing - a relentless pursuit of the Fallopian tubes. The second myth is that the Pill is making girls promiscuous. Less than 20% of sexually active teenagers are regularly using the best contraception. If they were using contraception, how could there be a million pregnancies? And the most important dilemma: Did you know that virtually all opposition to sex education is based on the assumption that knowledge is harmful? Please think about that statement. So before I talk about sex education, I want to help most of you come to terms with your own sexuality. Mind you, I said come to terms. I didn’t say be comfortable because the first proposition of my presentation is that nobody is comfortable about anything anymore and certainly not about sexuality. Nobody is comfortable with his or her sexuality. Sexuality is an area of excitement, of mystery; and there is no reason to ask anybody to be comfortable about it. I say you don’t have to be comfortable. That doesn’t mean you have to be paralyzed. You have to come to terms with it, with the excitement, the uncertainty, the mystery of it - but not be comfortable. MAY 1979
So let’s begin by talking about masturbation. Everybody knows that it’s okay to masturbate, so why is it the number one dilemma in the United States today? Because the average parent will say to the child, “Honey, it’s okay to masturbate. . . if you don’t do it too much.” How much is too much - once a year, twice a week, after every meal? That is the dilemma. What is this nonsense about masturbation? It’s a normal expression of sexuality at any time, at any age; and it’s a problem only if it’s guilt-ridden. Once is too much if you don’t like it. If you don’t like it, don’t do it. And now we have to talk about the female orgasm the topic of our time in magazines and discussions among men and women. It has reached the point of such absurdity that if a man and woman have sex, the first thing he says to her is, “Did you have one?” What kind of conversation is that? Is there no tomorrow? Before Freud, women weren’t even supposed to have one; and then he came along and said vaginal ones were okay; and then Masters and Johnson said those are not good anymore, and the women switched from vaginal orgasms to clitoral orgasms. And now somebody has said they are not good any more. Women must have thousands of them. So we have now reached the age of multiple orgasms, and soon someone will be saying those are not good anymore either. It will be necessary to have them simultaneously with your partner. Where is love? Where is the caring for another human being? We’ve forgotten that. We have allowed sexuality to degenerate into a kind of gymnastics. We need to pioneer and re-introduce love into our concern and thinking. We cannot allow others to decide for us what we mean by sex. We don’t mean how to do it. We know that one of the few things young people do know is how to do it. I wish they didn’t know unless they were taught. We are talking about caring, about intimacy, about love; and that is why Shere Hite’s work is so important. THE JOURNAL OF SCHOOL HEALTH
247
Some people say it is not scientific. I say it as “scientific” as the work of Freud or Erickson. It is not scientificin a strict sense, but it is one of the great breakthroughs of our time because she revealed and popularized the idea that women care more than anything else about intimacy, love, conversation and caring. Of the ten most important things in a relationship, I would say love and caring for another human being is number 1. Number 2 is a sense of humor. Without a sense of humor, it is difficult to survive in this grim world. The third most important thing is communication. Learn to communicate; talk to each other. The ninth most important thing in a relationship is sexual fulfillment, and the last (number 10) is sharing household tasks. Those are the ten most important things in a relationship. Have you noticed that 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8 are missing? Well, we need to leave those for curriculum development. I admit that sex might be number 1 the first week of a relationship and number 2 the second week; but by the ninth week, it becomes number 9 and remains number 9 if it is a mature relationship. We have this absolutely absurd notion about the role of sex in our lives. Sex is number 9 in a relationship. There are good reasons why young people shouldn’t have sex; and I am talking about sexual intercourse, because we are all sexual beings. They should not have sex because they are too young; they are too inexperienced; they are too vulnerable; they don’t have ready access to birth control; they are too readily available for exploitation; and they don’t know that first sexual experiences are usually pretty grim. I think there is a great difference between being 13 and being 19. Parents have a right to say, “We don’t want you to have intercourse.” Parents have that right; and it is incumbent upon us as adults to say, “We don’t think you should have sex because there are very good reasons.” But in the 25 years that I have been working in this field, no teenager has ever asked my consent. If someone should ask me, I am not going to say, “Well, it depends on your level of maturity and your value system.” I will say “No.” The fact is, they are not asking their parents; they are not asking counselors and health workers. They are having sex whether we like it or not and whether they like it or not. Peer pressure is so enormous. On the other hand, a large number of young people have asked me if it is normal to wait until marriage. They are not asking if it is normal to have sex; they are asking if it is normal to wait until marriage. A young man came to see me and said, “I am a homosexual.” “DOyou want to be a homosexual? Have you ever had a homosexual experience?” “Certainly not, what do you take me for?” “Have you ever had a heterosexual experience?” “Of course not, I’m a 248
THE JOURNAL OF SCHOOL HEALTH
homosexual.” I said, “SO far, the diagnosis is antisexual.” He replied, “Since I was 12 or 13, I have had dreams of making it with other guys. I knew there was something wrong with me; and the more I thought about it, the more it repeated itself.” And here he is at 20, a confirmed homosexual. I said, “Idiot! Don’t you know that all dreams, all fantasies, all wishes, all thoughts are normal. If you feel guilty about a thought, you will have that thought over and over again because guilt is the energy for the repetition of unacceptable thoughts. ” That is one of the most dynamic concepts in psychology. To considerably reduce anxiety, tension and dysfunction in our society, the concept that all thoughts, dreams, wishes and fantasies are normal must be accepted. Behavior can be abnormal, but not dreams, wishes or fantasies. But to return to the young man. What does he do to search out his identity? He looks up homosexuality in a psychiatric textbook. It doesn’t exactly describe him, so he checks out an advanced psychiatric textbook and finds latent homosexualitydescribed therein. So now he is fully diagnosed and he hasn’t done anything yet. I say that latency is the figment of a psychiatric imagination. It might as reasonably be said that all women are latently pregnant. We are all latent everything there is. We are all latent homosexuals; we are all latent bisexuals, and we are even all latent trisexuals. What is a trisexual? Somebody who tries everything. Why can’t we help people to understand that the best definition of homosexuality is a person who in their adult life has and prefers sexual relations with members of the same sex. A few homosexual experiences don’t make a person a homosexual any more than a few drinks make a person an alcoholic. Do you know that this knowledge can be lifesaving? I read of a suicide center visited by one 17-year old boy who had a single sexual experience with another young boy. Now he thinks he’s homosexual and wants to commit suicide. He actually attempts to do so. We have allowed young people to self-diagnose their problems because we have not provided them with the information they need - that a few experiences, that thoughts and fantasies don’t make a person homosexual. As far as we know, a person’s sexual identity is determined before they are five years old, even before they go to school. We don’t know why people become homosexual. We have no idea. We used to know. We knew that a child who had a strong mother and a weak father would become a homosexual - until we discovered that 80% of American families consist of weak fathers and strong mothers. The only thing we know for certain about homosexuality is that the homosexual was probably born to a heterosexual couple. MAY 1979
We have collected and tabulated 20,000 questions from teenagers all over this country. We know what kids want to know. Don’t go into a school and give your birth control lecture. Circulate index cards and ask them for their questions. Kids want to know about masturbation, about homosexuality, their thoughts. They want to know about things that are specifically excluded in most health and family life classes. Tomorrow’s family will consist of a husband and wife of similar education who marry for love and who will both spend most of their lives working outside the home. I expect tomorrow’s family to be more stable and healthier than ever before. In the good old days, we had compulsory pregnancy; and women frequently died in childbirth. Women didn’t have a choice of divorce or separation. Is that the good old days we are hankering after, the traditional family life? I say, “Never, never again back to the traditional family.” We have to progress toward the egalitarian family. We have to work toward women’s liberation, and we have to bring it right down to the junior and senior high schools and the little kids, too. We cannot allow the opposition and the lunatic fringe to define what we mean by the women’s movement. Women are said to be aggressive. Women don’t want to have babies anymore; they don’t want to stay home all the time anymore. Women are so aggressive that men are becoming impotent all over the place as a result (it is said). I say, for every impotent man arising from the women’s movement, 10,OOO men have been liberated. And where do I get those statistics? I made them up. They make up theirs and I will make up mine. Women are assertive these days; and if they don’t get their legitimate rights, they become aggressive. The real meaning of the women’s movement is equal rights, equal pay for equal work, equal opportunities for career choices and leisure and equal responsibilities. That’s the true meaning of the women’s movement. It has nothing to do with whether a woman stays home with the kids or works outside the home. And we better stop putting guilt trips on women who work outside the home. Do you know that each year we have about one million cases of child abuse; 100,OOO children are so brutalized that they require hospitalization, and 4,000 children are murdered by their parents. Do you know that many of these abusive parents are at home with their children? I’m not, of course, saying that women can’t take care of the children and stay at home; but let’s stop putting this guilt trip on women who work outside the home. I know from personal experience. When I got married 25 years ago, I thought women were born cleaning ladies. I married a professional woman, and we both worked full time. But she did all the cooking and cleaning and shopping and taking care of our kid - I MAY 1979
was busy. Until one day when my wife came to me and said “I’m busy, too. How would you like to have a divorce?” It took me five minutes to rearrange my schedule. Now I’m doing some of the cooking and cleaning and shopping, and I don’t like it. But now 1 know that women don’t like to clean and men don’t like to clean, and even cleaning ladies don’t like to clean. The women’s movement is the great hope for society today. We have to stop exploiting each other and playing games with each other. We have to get these messages across to young people. College students are more knowledgeable. They are not getting pregnant; they are not available for exploitation; they are not spreading venereal disease (that much). But among teenagers, we had one million pregnancies. Fifty thousand were among children 15 years of age last year. A teenage girl who gives birth has 90% of her life’s script developed for her. Most will drop out of school. Many will never marry. Most of them will remain on welfare; and there is a direct correlation between every index of pathology and being born to a teenage mother - whether it’s alcoholism, depression or a victim of child abuse. We know there is a connection between poverty, racial discrimination and teenage pregnancy; but we have to, somehow in the present crisis, stop glorifying teenage pregnancy; stop thinking about alternatives to abortion and think more about prevention. We must try to prevent the teenager from becoming pregnant in the first place. And we have to stop all these fantasy interpretations as to unresolved Oedipal complexes. I say a teenager gets pregnant because she has had sexual intercourse. We have to understand that we live in a sexist society. Boys are supposed to have sex, and the girls are not supposed to have it until they are married. So how do we get a million pregnancies? The girl gets pregnant because she is seduced, overwhelmed, raped, but mainly because she doesn’t prepare herself for sexual behavior. We have to say that sex itself is not romantic. Love and caring is romantic. Holding hands is romantic. Looking in each other’s eyes is romantic. But the actual sexual experience is not romantic unless birth control is used. Boys use lines and we have to help the girls with some replies. Don’t we know that the best oral contraceptive is still “No”? Sex is never a test of love. Write that down. The boy says, “If you really love me, you will have sex with me.” Again, sex is never a test of love. That is why I developed my book called, You Would if You LovedMe. It is a collection of lines that boys use to seduce girls; and if girls read it, they would be able to hesitate for 30 seconds and say, “That’s a line.” Book stores don’t want to sell a book that sells for $1.25 not enough profit. Ask your book store to sell it THE JOURNAL OF SCHOOL HEALTH
249
anyway. You would if you loved me. We have to help girls with some replies. We are going to have to play it rough sometimes because, as far as we know, only girls get pregnant. I have never heard of any male dying of an unresolved erection. Until people begin to communicate with each other and respect each other, the girls are going to have to become adept at some of the games the boys have been playing for thousands of years. My final segment is about what I think we need to do about sex education in the schools. We are the ones who are pro-life and pro-family. We had better talk about family life education; we had better talk about preparation for parenting. We believe in strengthening family life because we feel that children should be wanted; children should be born only to couples that care about them and want them. That is the very essence of family life. And so, we have to introduce programs into our schools that talk about self-concept and self-affirmation because people who feel good about themselves are not available for exploitation, nor do they exploit others. We have to have psychology courses and parenting courses. We must have family life that focuses on selfaffirmation, on equality of the sexes, where things such as love are discussed. Plumbing must be left to biology and not introduced into family life because it is an entirely different subject. Our subject matter is love, communication, caring for another person, morality. Values are a part of every subject. I say that attempting to teach sexuality without morals is bankruptcy. It’s tempting to introduce this subject in a moralistic fashion; however, it’s not only illegal, but also unethical and morally corrupt. Moralistic means you try to impose your point of view on others, your religious or idiosyncratic point of view on everyone. That is being moralistic. That is wrong. That violates separation of church and state. But there is nothing wrong with being moral. We are all God’s children. Nobody is inferior. If only somehow we could get the message across to young people that nobody can make you feel inferior without your consent and cooperation. Now I would like to read you a favorite poem from the “You” book. This book has the world’s longest title: The Psychology of Surviving and Enhancing Your
250
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Social LVe, Love LVe, Sex Life, School Life, Work Lfe, Home Life, Style of Life, Life. You know, there’s nothing else. And it says: Life is not a meaning - it is an opportunity. It’s an opportunity for meaningful experiences. You have to find yourself right where you are and then have a good time. The poem is called “Random Thoughts” and it continues as follows: We all have some areas of vulnerability. Not everything in life can be understood or resolved. Just about everything in life involves some risk and some sacrifices of time, energy and patience. I suspect that really meaningful experiences are of brief duration - albeit repeatable and rarely occur on schedule. Even tragic events offer us opportunities for review and renewal. Some people are strange. If they don’t understand something, if they haven’t heard about something, they think either it doesn’t exist or isn’t worthwhile. If God wants to test you, what will you do? SELECTED PUBLICATIONS Gordon S: You - A Survival Guide for Youth ed2. New York, Times Books, 1978. Gordon S : You Would If You Loved Me. New York, Bantam Books, 1978.
Gordon S , Everly K,Scales P:The SmalAdofescent.North Scituate, M A , Duxbury Press, 1979. Gordon S: Psychology For You. New York, Oxford Book Co, 1978. Gordon S, Wollin M: Parenting - A Guide for Young People. New York, Oxford Book Co,1975. Gordon S , Gordon J: Did the Sun Shine Before You Were Born? Charlottesville, VA, Ed-U Press, 1977. Gordon S : Facts About Sexfor Today’s Youth. Charlottesville, VA, Ed-U Press, 1978. *All publications available from Ed-U Press, 123 4th St., N.W., Charlottesville. VA, 22901.
Sol Gordon, PhD, Director, The Institute for Family Research and Education, 760 OstromA venue, Syracuse, NY 132210. A transcription of Dr. Gordon’s entire presentation (17pp) at the ASHA 52nd Annual Convention in Dearborn is available by writing ASHA National Office, P.O. Box 708, Kent, Ohio 44240. Please enclose a check or money order for $2.00 to cover handling and postage.
MAY 1979
