article by Kitty Stryker

Ah, school days, school days. As my classes drew to a close, I sat back and thought about the many things I learned and the fascinating classes I had. My notebooks, full of new information, remind me of every three hour class I raptly listened to my teacher.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
That's funny.
Actually, I took Human Sexuality at Laney College, where I was practically the only girl to speak, ever. And I spoke, quite a bit. There were constantly subjects I felt we were breezing through that deserved closer inspection. I can't even imagine what people must think of me...

Teacher: Transgendered genitalia in a male-to-female looks like this, and has this much sexual responsiveness... blah blah blah.
Kitty's hand shoots up.
Teacher: (sighs) Yes, Kitty?
Kitty: Actually, that's not always true. Genitalia and responsiveness can vary.
Teacher: Oh? And how do you know that?
Kitty: I've licked m2f pussy before?
Class is silent.

That was our first day of class. Since then, I quickly catapulted to class freak and sexual deviant. I was surprised that someone didn't come in, their final project on me. My final project was on polyamory and nonmonogamy... something I had to define for the teacher, since she didn't really know what it was. My class had so many questions to ask, I barely got to read through my paper. It was funny to me how the girls, the silent majority, quietly nodded at my answers and spirited counter-arguments to the assumption that monogamy was best, while the guys were shocked. Shocked that women would want to have multiple relationships, shocked that women wanted sex with multiple men, shocked, I guess, that some of us felt the same way about sexuality and relationships as the menfolk. Not everyone wants to get married. I think the most shocking concept was happily married people wanting to have relationships and sex outside of their marriage. You would think I invented polyamory.
Now, it's kind of funny to get to say all this... but it's also incredibly sad, and somewhat scary to me. In 10 or so weeks of class, we spent prolly about 2 talking about gender identity, 7 talking about sex hormones and physiology, and 1 on our projects. We didn't really cover anything else. No fetish, no masturbation, no abortion, little on rape, little on contraceptives, little on homosexuality. I missed the first group of presentations, due to having my wisdom teeth removed... but the second week was appalling! One man had done a report on prostitution, using only statistical data from Chicago. He didn't compare it to places where prostitution is legal, or find out the facts versus the fiction. He based a report on statistics. Another man had done a project on sadism, and started it by defining sadism as "when someone gets sexual satisfaction by inflicting pain on another, like stabbing in the chest, beating, even murder". Say WHAT? I know plenty of sadists who enjoy inflicting pain... when it's CONSENTUAL. They aren't murderers, or even want to be. But to hear this man's report, his "scientific research", sadists are deadly, insane killers who need to be locked away. Even the latest DSM doesn't agree with that.
If this was a class on, say, biology, I'd be ok with a focus on how our bodies work. However, this was a psychology class, and I'm alarmed and saddened for the next round of therapists who will descend upon the world. What will they think if they get a young boy curious about his bisexual urges? What would they say to a genderfluid individual? What about a girl who enjoys sadism with consenting partners, but still feels guilty about it? How will these human sexuality therapists help these people who are not "the norm"?
I'm worried for both the clients and the psych students. Our society is pretty sex negative, and we live in a world where our therapists have therapists. If the classes we take just encourage us to not look at behaviors, but physiology, and refuse to speak of any kind of sexual deviance as ok... how will we grow into a more open-minded society? If you can't talk about BDSM in your human sexuality class, where CAN you talk about it? And for the potential clients- how can you grow into a happy individual when your therapist only knows that kink is Evil and any sexual deviancy from normality is Bad?
This is indicative of greater evils. The evils of Shame, Guilt, and Self-Righteousness. They must be vanquished.
I'm glad I took the class, even though I found it to be terribly boring most of the time. They needed me to be there to ask questions, stir up debate, and ask "why?" of all the things that "people just don't do". People DO do these things, and if it's consensual, who's to say if it's right or wrong?
Apparently, sex-negative society.
But they're just cranky cause they aren't getting well-fucked like the rest of us.

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