Sunday, March 21, 2010

Masturbation Classes in Spain

You have got to love Spain, people. Some time ago, the government of Extremadura instituted classes that teach using your body for sexual pleasure (including masturbation) for schoolchildren 14 years of age and older. Before long, the government of Andalucia expressed its support for this program and vowed to introduce it as soon as possible in its schools. The campaign is called "The Pleasure Is in Your Hands."
As if that weren't funny enough, a conservative organization began an alternative campaign, fighting for the sexuality and masturbation classes to be abolished. This campaign is titled "Clean Hands." For now, all they have been able to cause is a lot of chuckles.

Spain's progressive attitude to sexuality is all the more surprising if we remember that until 35 years ago it was a Fascist Catholic dictatorship. It's truly striking how fast and how well the people of Spain have been able to overcome their heritage of repression and move on to a healthy attitude towards sexuality. In the US, where in most high schools you can't even show a condom to 17-year-olds without a bunch of old, repressed idiots having a conniption over it, Spain's example sounds like something out of this world.

6 comments:

Clarissa said...

Thanks to this post, my blog now comes up as a "masturbation blog" on search engines. :-)

It has also been coming up as a "gay porn blog" for a while. I still haven't really figured out why. :-)

Tom Carter said...

Geez. I don't remember needing any instruction on this particular topic when I was a kid, and no other kid I knew needed it, either. Maybe it's a girl thing, but I doubt it.

I read recently that the World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts, along with Planned Parenthood, has distributed brochures about masturbation and other topics to girls at a UN meeting. Here's a Catholic website that disapproves -- big surprise!

I didn't hear anything about the Boy Scouts getting that kind of information.

Anonymous said...

Maybe it's a way to promote chastity?

Anyways, with the internet kids desperately need sexual educaton these days.

Ol.

Clarissa said...

At least, that's a better way of promoting chastity than the US one. :-)

Clarissa said...

I meant better in the sense of "more progressive."

NancyP said...

Tom Carter - yes, girls can be less informed, because many or most girls are given varying degrees of shaming at a very early age for touching their pink bits, whereas for boys, it is seen as inevitable. Also, there is the cultural tendency to consider anything short of male orgasm as "not really sex", so it comes as some surprise to some women that there is such a thing as female orgasm and that it differs in pacing from male orgasm and has more variability among women than does male orgasm among men.