In this episode Jessy and Rebekah speak with a couple of special guests! The ladies welcomed Olivia Samios (@olivia_ky) and Maya Layne (@mayalayne) into Kill Room Studios to talk about the work that they do with a group called Adolescent Sexual Health Awareness (ASHA) at their college, Wesleyan University. Take away? The kids are alright. Then Rebekah and Jessy talk about their own high school sex education, or lack thereof. And then your favorite hosts have the first of many conversations about the state of sex education in our country. Friends, it is bleak as fuck. This is going to be a recurring theme here on the WTMV Almost Famous Podcast so be sure to tune in and shoot us any questions you may have so we can address your concerns!
- 01:30: Meet Olivia and Maya! The two ladies fill us in on themselves, their own experience with sex education growing up and why they got involved with ASHA! As per this article in the Wesleyan Argus, ASHA is a student group that educates youth on sexual health, consent and communication. The group’s primary focus is teaching their curriculum to high school students around Connecticut, but they also recently started conducting workshops on campus, specifically focused on sports teams, Greek organizations and first-year students.
- 07:15: Oh my god ASHA teaches their high school students communication phrases to help make them feel more comfortable in sexual situations and to help them express what they want to express. SWOON.
- 07:40: Jessy brings up a really good point: it is, of course, so very important to teach people how to express what they want and don’t want, but how about teaching people to read and understand enthusiastic consent. We have read a lot of comments and articles in which men state that in this post #metoo movement they are afraid to even be alone with women (eyeroll), but what we have taken away from that is that there has for a long time been a breakdown in communication between the sexes about what consent is and how it’s expressed. Olivia breaks it down for us: if you think maybe you should ask, you should just ask.
- 11:00: If anyone knows where ASHA’s wooden dildos are, please email us at welcometomyvagina@gmail.com or you can email the organization directly (with us cc’ed because we’re so curious) at asha.wesleyan@gmail.com
- 13:00: Maya talks about how ASHA teaches high school students about building all kinds of relationships, not just romantic ones. Friendships are complicated, too, and it’s important to learn how to build a healthy partnership with all the people in your life.
- 13:20: Take the love language quiz here! Learn how you express, and prefer to receive, care!
- 18:22: Rebekah asks Maya and Olivia about violence in same sex relationships. This is something that is not often discussed since partner abuse is generally framed as a heterosexual issue, and specifically as one in which men abuse women. Here is an article from The Atlantic from 2013, one from The Washington Post from 2016 and another one from The Guardian from 2017 that discuss intimate partner violence (physical, sexual, emotional) within same sex relationships.
- 21:00: Here is some information from RAINN on bystander intervention.
- 23:00: Curriculum ideas? Information about the missing dildos? Send it all to asha.wesleyan@gmail.com
- 24:00: “The Crowning,” a WTMV production starring Jessy Caron and Rebekah Frank coming to theaters near you.
- 28:55: It’s not just pigs and dolphins that enjoy having sex! Also bonobos and Japanese macaques! Oral sex occurs between primates, spotted hyenas, goats, sheep and short-nosed fruit bats! There is also a study of two captive brown bears in Croatia who were observed engaging in 28 acts of oral sex. Animals have sex for fun, too!
- 29:15: Here is activist mommy. She uses her platform to confront the “lies of abortion, feminism, Islam, and the homosexual agenda with wit and snark like only she can.” AKA she is garbage. Enter her site at your own peril.
- 33:00: Here is a brief history of Planned Parenthood from their website and another one from Business Insider that, among other things, talks about Margaret Sanger’s insistence that biologists develop a birth control pill. And here is a screenshot of a relevant page from the Encyclopedia of Women’s History in America which we didn’t even know was a thing but now MUST HAVE.
- 33:23: Most of us know The John Birch Society as, in the words of John Savage in Politico, “that far-right group founded in the thick of the Cold War to fight communists and preach small government.” But this (unfortunately still active) group is not just about small government! Oh no! They also organized around keeping sex ed out of schools. Cool.
- 33:50: According to a report in the September, 2017 issue of the Journal of Adolescent Health, abstinence-only education is ineffective and unethical. Read about the report here.
- 34:00: According to this fact sheet from the Guttmacher Institute, at the middle-school level 50% of schools taught that abstinence is the most effective method to avoid pregnancy, HIV and STDs. Only 26% taught about contraceptive efficacy and 10% taught students how to correctly use a condom.
- 35:00: Here is the current iteration of the Title X (Public Health Service Act) Family Planning Program.
- 36:00: And here is some info on why it is that women are generally more effected by STIs than men.
- 38:00: Reagan was a dick. But Clinton, who was a dick in his own way but maybe less so than Reagan?, mostly defunded the Adolescent Family Life Act.
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