[nabs-l] Sex Ed, and Missing Visual Info

[Arielle Silverman]

Hi all,
I agree with the opinion that blind students don't really need a
special sex ed curriculum just for us, any more than we need a
specialized math or geography or biology curriculum. Instead, we
should have access to the materials given to sighted students in an
accessible format, and we should be able to find books about sex in
Braille and to find Internet resources we can browse privately if we
have questions or concerns.
While we have probably talked this particular issue to death, I do
think this discussion brings up some important and controversial
questions about how we should cope with all the visual information we
don't routinely get that sighted people get. It is quite clear that
sighted people observe lots of things around them visually that blind
people don't automatically observe. However, it is also quite clear
that blind people can function well in society, get an education,
work, have hobbies, marry, raise kids and generally do all the things
sighted people do, without all this incidental visual info. And blind
people are no less intelligent than sighted people simply because of
this lack of exposure to the visual world. It makes me wonder, How
much of that visual info is really critically necessary for us to
function? How much effort do we really need to put in to get access to
all that visual info? In my experience, I believe part of being a
successful blind person is figuring out what visual info is really
critically important for a given job or task, getting access to that
critical info and just not spending too much effort on those things
that aren't critically important. Sitting around mourning all the
visual info we miss out on, by itself, doesn't get us very far.
To give an example that moves this topic back to academics, I earned a
bachelor's degree in biology in 2007. I have been totally blind my
whole life and I haven't a clue what most plants, animals and fungi
look like. I only vaguely know what a cell or a chromosome looks like.
Nevertheless, I earned my biology degree and I dare say, got higher
grades than many of my sighted classmates. It turned out that knowing
what living things look like is not very important for understanding
biology. What does matter is understanding what part of the cell does
what function, the steps of photosynthesis, cellular respiration, and
DNA replication, and how genetic traits are inherited. So I learned
these things and just didn't worry about all that visual stuff. If any
of it had turned out to matter, then I would have gotten some tactile
diagrams and worked with someone to ensure I understood what these
things looked like. But it didn't matter and so I didn't worry about
it. I could have chosen not to study biology because of concerns that
the curriculum for sighted students is so visual, but instead of
focusing on what I was missing, I found myself able to focus on what I
could process with my mind like everyone else did, and I was fine.
Similarly, with sex, it's true that we often don't know what a lot of
things look like, but again, in my experience this hasn't put me at a
significant disadvantage. I don't know what a diaphragm looks like but
I do know how it is supposed to be used and what the benefits and
disadvantages are of this particular birth control method. I did not
know exactly what the male sex organs look like until my first sexual
encounter when I was 21, but that really had no effect on my
participation in sex. I have not seen couples making out on the
street, or engaging in sexual acts, but I learned how to do these
things through a combination of experience and the instinctive
knowledge we share with other animals in this area. I can't really
think of any way my current sex life would have been improved if I had
had access to all this visual info. Regarding sexual education, I
think the most important information is about the various forms of
birth control and how it can be obtained, and about safer sex options.
Given all that, I do think the blind can face a real disadvantage when
it comes to flirting and dating. This is not just because sighted
people don't always feel comfortable around us, or don't think of us
as sexual beings, but also because we can miss signals that someone is
interested or don't know how to send appropriate signals when we are
interested in someone else. Unfortunately there aren't easy solutions
to many of these issues, because no matter how much training we might
get, we still can't see the signals others are sending us. But there
are some strategies we can use to meet people and to build friendships
which might eventually evolve into romances. I do think having
discussions about dating etc. as part of blindness training for teens
and young adults is a good idea.
Best,
Arielle