[nabs-l] Sex Ed, and Missing Visual Info
Beth
thebluesisloose at gmail.com
Fri Jul 13 04:10:59 UTC 2012
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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