My school covered all the biological aspects and use of contraceptives in health class; dating, romance, abstinence, date-rape, and homosexuality were covered in a mandatory psychology/sociology class. This comprehensive program was put into effect because of teen pregnancy issues and an outbreak of gonorrhea in the previous years at the …show more content…
296). I evoke the memory of a magazine article, which name eludes me at this time, had in its centerfold a scantily clad picture of a man on one side and a scantily clad picture of a woman on the other side with a question underneath asking “which did you look at first.” This exercise was presumably a method to determine if I was gay or not on the dependence of which model I focused on first. Consequently, I discovered it was the male model that I looked at first and longed for. However, the depiction of married couples on television programs such as reruns of I Love Lucy and The Dick Van Dike Show had husband and wives sleeping separately. This lead to confusion about the concept of intimacy for me, because my parents were free spirited with their sexuality. Needless to say sex and intimacy never seemed to quite intersect because the depictions of sex were always recreational from my perspective.
The common theme that I was exposed to through all of these sources was that heterosexism was the norm. We were not to talk about homosexuality except in an educational setting. I learned that no matter how well one school attempts to be comprehensive with sex-education, the social media, high school peers, and parents may distort the truth. I am grateful