As a child of the 1980’s, the playground was rather unfortunately the place many people went for sex ed — the kind of sex ed that wasn’t taught in classrooms. Kids would ask each other what it was like to touch a woman’s breast, and what the experience was to do all kinds of things that most kids didn’t do at that age. If it wasn’t from the playground, it was from older brothers, who seemed to always know what they were saying but were often just as misinformed as their younger brethren.
In the age of always on Internet connections, the place to go seems to be various advice web sites. What could be easier — you don’t have to tell anyone who you are and you can find out, fairly quickly, the answers to your questions about the opposite sex and what you can expect to encounter in sexual situations.
The problem with this is manifold, as one can see when looking at the fifteen most ridiculous sex questions on Yahoo Answers as rated by the staff at Buzzfeed. The first major problem is that although the questioner may be quite sincere in their motivation, some of the questions are so absurd and seemingly beyond hope that they invite mockery and disdain instead of actual help. The seventh question, for example, asks what percentage of women use sex as a weapon and the most highly voted answer (and hence the one most likely to be seen by the person asking) is a parody of the question instead of a real answer.
Another drawback of going to sites such as Yahoo Answers is that the people asking the questions may themselves be completely insincere and looking for a laugh rather than a way to educate other people. They are the kinds of questions that make you think that the person asking has never ventured outside of their home and that they have to be joking or trying to get a reaction out of people — but this is exactly what internet trolls do best.
The best recourse is to only seek advice about serious matters such as sex from real human beings in person, be they teachers or doctors or even parents. It may be a little more embarrassing to approach someone about the sensitive subject matter but it certainly is better than going online to ask how many different types of sex there are to be found — and get a joke answer.
Good advice. This is one of the good things about anonymity on the internet. You can ask an embarrassing question and get an honest answer from the right people if you can find them.
How do you know who the right people are, and which are the honest answers?
If one knows how to ‘rightly divide’ information…..
the internet has started unnecessary evils, and been a friend of knowledge. As much as guns, cars, and eating utensils. 🙂
and in Bloomberg’s case: straws.
Well put, Lillian! Is that a ‘straw man’ argument? 🙂
Great post, I hope it reaches the right people. even worse than yahoo answers is inevitably, typing anything about sex into a search engine will most likely lead you to a very scary place certainly not the kind of place you would want your kids to try and learn about “normal”, healthy sexuality.
I hope so as well! 🙂 Thank you for the kind comment.