How many politicians have we seen in the news who never got that lesson?

July 9, 2021 6:52 AM

Sex educator Justine Ang Fong has been hounded out of her position [NYT] at Dalton, a Manhattan private school, by corporate shill, Richard Berman. [Alternate link]
posted by jacquilynne (23 comments total)

Ugh Richard Berman that turd. Best thing he ever did was give us David Berman (RIP)
posted by bxvr at 7:06 AM on July 9, 2021 [10 favorites]

The Know Nothings win another one.
posted by Bee'sWing at 7:19 AM on July 9, 2021 [2 favorites]

It always starts with assertions that "they're showing your kindergartners how to masturbate!" and goes from there.

It's such bullshit.

There's so much willful blindness around the fact that sexuality is part of your child's life, that ignorance doesn't protect them, and that good parents owe their kids the knowledge of how bodies work and why consent is important and all the rest.
posted by emjaybee at 7:36 AM on July 9, 2021 [31 favorites]

of all the weird things to enrage me this morning.. there is so much worse going on in the world, but this particular flavour of smallness.. meanness.. ignorance.. utterly disgusting. how much wrong can you fit into a little news item?
posted by elkevelvet at 7:41 AM on July 9, 2021 [7 favorites]

I feel it is important to mention the role played by the NY Post, the incredibly willing bullhorn of cynical conservative grifters, in this faux controversy. They are practically stenographers for the very worst people in society.
posted by srboisvert at 8:10 AM on July 9, 2021 [42 favorites]

I came across an episode of Does Not Compute on how white supremacy can be seen as a long-term disinformation campaign, pointing to the connections between racism and conspiracy-theory thinking, and ever since I've been hearing every message coming from the right as a set of conspiracy theories that spits out hyperbolic disinformation to attract more anxious, angry white people into their fold. The more mean, ignorant, and petty the attack, the better.
posted by zenzenobia at 8:13 AM on July 9, 2021 [23 favorites]

Well that's depressing. Her curriculum sounds great.

I've been trying to develop a comprehensive sex education program for our public elementary school (Still working on funding...)

I've been going back and forth on calling it CSE vs. "consent education." Probably gonna stick with the latter. :|
posted by mrgrimm at 8:30 AM on July 9, 2021 [3 favorites]

Funny that the Times is not confident enough to excerpt some of the material in question for their article. The Post is.
posted by save alive nothing that breatheth at 8:37 AM on July 9, 2021 [1 favorite]

How can it be that Berman has never been targeted for the same kind of harassment that he so gleefully inflicts on others? It's not like he's an anonymous internet troll.
posted by 1adam12 at 8:38 AM on July 9, 2021 [1 favorite]

America was founded by and still dominated by members of a religion with some profoundly twisted views of sexuality. Remember that time the president was forced to fire his Surgeon General because in response to a question she opined "I think [masturbation] is something that is a part of human sexuality and it's a part of something that perhaps should be taught." The perverts decided she meant specific techniques or something, funny how their minds always go to inappropriate and explicit sexual interactions with children.

I particularly like Fong's idea of teaching porn literacy to 16+ year olds. I like my online porn too but I worry about teenagers getting some really messed up ideas about healthy sexuality from Internet porn. Why not engage with the media they are consuming? High school juniors and seniors are totally capable of that.
posted by Nelson at 8:42 AM on July 9, 2021 [32 favorites]

I don't trust the New York Post to quote anything except selectively so as to misrepresent it to suit their own agenda. If you can't provide adequate context for an excerpt, the responsible thing to do is not excerpt it at all. I don't think a short news article can necessarily provide adequate context for this divorced from its place in an educational curriculum. The Post publishing selected excerpts isn't confidence, it's arrogance.
posted by biogeo at 8:49 AM on July 9, 2021 [4 favorites]

I don't trust the New York Post
posted by biogeo

That's all you need.
posted by Splunge at 9:31 AM on July 9, 2021 [4 favorites]

The Times does quote this:

“It’s OK to touch yourself and see how different body parts feel, but it’s best to only do it in private,” the narrator tells viewers.

posted by RobotHero at 9:33 AM on July 9, 2021 [1 favorite]

A friend who works at one of those schools told me about it around the time of Fonte's resignation. The ugliness that came up when I searched her name was astounding.
posted by mandymanwasregistered at 9:58 AM on July 9, 2021 [2 favorites]

I'm kind of glad that I'm unable to access the NYT article. Based on the comments here, what I know about Berman, and 44 years of living in the U.S., it just sounds so depressing and ugly and mean; there are so many targets of the right-wing white supremacists in this story: an Asian-American woman, education, sexuality, children... it's just too much to take right now.
posted by Saxon Kane at 10:13 AM on July 9, 2021 [1 favorite]

"The Post linked one of its sources to an Instagram account called @SpeakUpCGPS, which was created in May and has more than 100 posts targeting “diversity, equity and inclusion” and critical race theory. Earlier this month, the account’s Instagram bio included a link to a petition for parents, students, donors, trustees, alumni, faculty and staff at the school.

The petition complains about “programming that uses the oppressor-oppressed narrative and that employs collective guilt to shame white students.”"

Why am I not surprised...
posted by Hairy Lobster at 10:48 AM on July 9, 2021 [5 favorites]

I get mad whenever I see the argument that parents ought to be given a veto over sex education, given most child rape and sexual assault happens in the child's home, and so many LGBTQ+ children and teens become homeless after their parents find out about their sexuality. Just because someone is a parent, it doesn't mean they know what is best for any child, including their own. Children are not their parent's possessions -- they deserve a truthful and non-harmful education as a human right.
posted by EllaEm at 10:50 AM on July 9, 2021 [44 favorites]

I really wish Bill Clinton had stood up for Jocelyn Elders in 1994. It probably wouldn’t have changed much, but it might have discouraged a few people from going into a full moral panic whenever the idea of teaching children something about sex other than abstinence comes up.
posted by TedW at 1:14 PM on July 9, 2021 [6 favorites]

There's so much willful blindness around the fact that sexuality is part of your child's life,

Fortunately, masturbation does not cause blindness!
posted by Melismata at 2:12 PM on July 9, 2021 [6 favorites]

Reading all of this a huge lightbulb went off in my head and I realized that with these patriarchal abstinence-only sex ed policies that it's not *really* about the sex or the masturbation - it's about bodily autonomy and teaching the doctrine to children (but especially girls) that their bodies are *not* their own. That's the goal, to present it as there being no choices.

I'm probably a little late to this particular party, I just never saw the through-line quite so clearly.
posted by ApathyGirl at 2:29 PM on July 9, 2021 [20 favorites]

I feel like I'm going to keep repeating this mantra for a long time. Not that I think anyone doesn't get it and there is definitely a need to vent among like minded people. I just keep thinking to myself:

The cruelty is the point.
posted by treepour at 11:31 PM on July 9, 2021 [1 favorite]

(Showing you non-white/rich/straight/Christian/male whatever tf you are that we have) The (power to inflict) cruelty (upon you) is the point.

I'm allowed to say the quiet parts of that out loud, yes?

It always strikes me as ridiculous that these parents actually think that they have 100% control over whether or what their kids learn about any kind of sex, or have it, or touch themselves, or look at porn, or experiment with each other. Why don't they ever remember what they did when their parents weren't looking, or how they and their friends talked when they were young? Why doesn't anyone ever go Jane Elliott on these parents and ask them what they think is going to happen when their kid is out of the house and doesn't know anything? If I recall correctly from my adolescence and young adulthood, the most tightly controlled kids were the ones who went BUCK WILD and got in trouble as soon as the opportunity presented itself because no trusted adult explained ANYTHING to them about sex and their bodies, except that they were "bad", and they were sinful for having sexual feelings.

It always boils down to control with these people, of their kids, of their communities, the nation, the world (never themselves, though; they can always somehow justify why they don't have to follow the rules they make for others). Their Stalin-like refusal to accept their actual lack of control over how people think, feel, and behave seems disturbed to me. That they don't seem to understand that no matter how many dissidents they "shoot", there will always be someone ready to tell them to go fuck themselves makes me wonder if they think they're some sort of god-like creatures for whom consequences don't apply.

And Richard Berman is a troll for money. He may believe what he shills, but he's a troll nonetheless. That he still has a nominally respected public platform is yet another pathetic example of how sick US society really is.
posted by droplet at 10:12 AM on July 10, 2021 [1 favorite]

The Post article I found didn't mention @SpeakUpCGPS but did quote "a spokesman for FAIR, the Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism" and then didn't elaborate who this organization is or how they ended up as a relevant source. But if you search elsewhere, of course they were expressly started to oppose critical race theory, and I guess they're branching out into other things they don't want kids to learn.
posted by RobotHero at 6:56 AM on July 12, 2021 [1 favorite]