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

[Beth]

Well said, Arielle.  I would say that there are guys who send me 
the wrong signals themselves and they are sighted.  I think 
animals have the same instinctive knowledge we do as you said.  
I'm a bit of a visual learner myself, so looking at cells is out 
of the question when it comes to biology.  I wouldn't mind if 
someone showed me a diagram, but doing experiments with cells and 
cellular things is just not my thing.  I wanted to study marine 
biology, and pulled an A in my high school bioogy class.  Boy, 
the teacher was tough!  As for the sex ed stuff, you're right.  
Who needs all that visual info?  But there's a way to do safe 
sex, and I learned that with my current and past boyfriends.  
Honestly, I should know about safe sex, and the things we know 
about safe sex are limited to us because people think we're 
"neutered."  I have a book about sex and disability that has a 
great introduction to it.  Lots of couples share their stories in 
the book, and there's a section about blindness in it that might 
be interesfting if you want me to copy and send it to you via 
email.  There's some interesting stuff that some blind people 
actually think about sex, and they say it's a feast for the 
senses.  I don't know, but I think sex ed is important, and yes, 
this book covers safe sex options and then reproductive options 
if the couple wants kids.
Well done, Arielle,
Beth

 ----- Original Message -----
From: Valerie Gibson <valandkayla at gmail.com
To: National Association of Blind Students mailing list 
<nabs-l at nfbnet.org
Date sent: Thu, 12 Jul 2012 20:51:36 -0500
Subject: Re: [nabs-l] Sex Ed, and Missing Visual Info

Well said, Arielle, as always. :)
On Jul 12, 2012, at 8:17 PM, Arielle Silverman wrote:

 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

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