stay amazing <3
Alex

I believe one of the primary challenges facing teenagers today has to do with the increasing numbers of parents naively attempting to shelter them from the challenges and desires of modern society. Most high-schoolers these days actually have had much more experience with issues such as dating, intercourse, birth control, safe sex, alcohol, drugs, and more than their oblivious parents would even believe.

Abdicating their responsibility to educate their teens, many parents today are too timid to speak with them about the young adult issues they are coming to face. Instead of initiating proper discussion and mentoring, they just grasp tighter onto their teenager’s fading youthful innocence and avoid speaking about puberty, sexual issues, relationship advice, alcohol and drugs, and any other difficult subject.
Unfortunately, by doing this, the parents inadvertently create a situation where their children are not only uncomfortable discussing personal issues with them, but even perceive the parents as unconnected and an irrelevant source of guidance. This forces teens to turn to others for advice on these subjects, mostly friends, siblings, and classmates. This circumstance, in turn, can lead to serious misconceptions and falsehoods about these important issues being perpetuated through urban legends, folklore, and just plain youthful ignorance and immaturity.

A VERY DISTURBING trend recently has been the increased spread of so-called “abstinence only” sex education in American schools. This oxymoron-termed form of “sexual education” is a thinly-veiled attempt to replace crucial sex and reproductive health education with conservative ideology and religious propaganda that emphasizes sexual abstinence and actually omits all other types of sexual and reproductive health education, particulary regarding birth control, STDs, and safe sex. This is not hyperbole… this is actually being taught in a significant portion of America’s public schools. This is the direct result of the conservative religous agenda being pushed by President Bush and his intoleranct, self-righteous, evangelical Christian base who wish to use to force their narrow interpretation of a religion onto a modern, pluralistic society. Over $1 billion dollars of your tax dollars have already been wasted on this nonsense.

Thankfully, much research has been conducted, and indeed many peer-review studies have been published showing the total failure of this type of “education” to actually increase abstinence. What this “education” has increased, according to the studies, is the spread of STDs and unwanted pregnancies in students. From my perspective, even a monkey could resolve this anomoly. simple. Teenagers naturally will experiment with sexual behavior. All parents, especially these puritanical, fanato-religious types, need to realize that their teens and young adults, naturally, will at some point most likely engage in sexual activity. This will happen no matter how much effort they expend to the contrary. Starting with this rational premise, it then becomes obvious that not only do all teens need to receive comprehensive education on sex and reproductive health in school, but that communication and guidance from their parent(s) on these vital issues is essential.

At the same time that many are being denied proper education in school, and many if not most are unable to confer with their parents, these already sexually-curious-by-nature teens are being bombarded by overtly sexual advertising, television, music, websites, magazines, and other media in our modern culture. It really doesn’t take a genius to realize that augmenting the potent soup of adolescence, sexual curosity, and hormones with ignorance and a lack of education can make for trouble.

I personally think this is a great webcast, and is entirely relevant to the audience for which it is meant, which they identify as teens and young adults. It provides a humorous and entertaining perspective to practical education on sex and reproductive health which is so sorely lacking in our society. This “big sister” approach looks to be a great way to address these issues, and one which will captivate teens to continue coming back to the website. I really am glad that these type of alternatives exist for teens. Though I’m in my mid 20’s, it seems like yesterday that I was a freshman in highschool watching MTV’s late-night, question-and-answer show, “Loveline with Dr. Drew”. Loveline, in addition to that old Canadian woman’s sex-advice television show, provided many hours of quality, informative, entertainment. I would have loved your website when I was younger!

For christs sake woman, are you so dense that you cannot even recognize blatant sarcarsm? NO ONE is actually equating pedophilia with cancer. Do you honestly understand what sarcasm is?
Sarcasm: the act of stating the opposite of an intended meaning.
The line in the video is funny because two health conditions that are indeed ENTIRELY DIFFERENT are being presented as similar in category, while the viewer knows this is not correct and was expecting the actor to mention something comparable with pedophilia. This “unexpectedness” or “opposite of intended meaning” is what makes this humorous. Am I really having to explaining sarcasm, here?

Nothing about cancer in real life is funny. But we as humans living in the human condition, intermix humor and things such as cancer to reduce the pain of having to experience such terrible things. Alzheimers, other terrible diseases, War, starvation, genocide, etc are no different.

Don’t get me wrong, I think cancer is a horrible disease, and have nothing but respect and sympathy for all those individuals who have to deal with such a nightmare and their families, including yourself.
In the last 4 years alone, I have lost an uncle and a grandma to cancer, and another uncle was recently diagnosed.
I am truly sorry for your situation, but I stand by the writer of this podcast. All the best.

I got the talk growing up, well, the talk about how a man and a woman have sex. My mom gave me the talk. I think she scared me, and that is why I’m gay. Yep. Just a thought.

I’ve told many friends about this site, hecka awesome.