Hold up! Before you read on, please read this...

This post was published more than 16 years ago

I keep old posts on the site because I often enjoy reading old content on other people's sites. It can be interesting to see how views have changed over time: for example, how my strident teenage views have, to put it mildly, mellowed.

I'm not a believer in brushing the past under the carpet. I've written some offensive rubbish on here in the past: deleting it and pretending it never happened doesn't change that. I hope that stumbling across something that's 16 years old won't offend anyone anew, because I hope that people can understand that what I thought and felt and wrote about then is probably very different to what I think and feel and write about now. It's a relic of an (albeit recent) bygone era.

So, given the age of this post, please bear in mind:

• My views may well have changed in the last 16 years. I have written some very silly things over the years, many of which I find utterly cringeworthy today.
• This post might use words or language in ways which I would now consider highly inappropriate, offensive, embarrassing, or all three.
• Factual information might be outdated.
• Links might be broken, and embedded material might not appear properly.

Okay. Consider yourself duly warned. Read on...

As a medical student, I have to do a Community Placement. One placement I could be put on is teaching Sex Ed to local school kids . I was discussing with a couple of friends today (both female, as it happens) how you’d go about teaching it. We decided we’d look at some websites. And we were collectively shocked.

I know things are being dumbed down, but really, no wonder teenage pregnancy rates are so high considering some things that people apparently need teaching. Here are some of our findings…

One website, under common condom mistakes, lists “The condom was put on too late”
• On the subject of lube – “Lubricant goes on the outside of the condom”
• On an agony aunt style site – “Can I get pregnant from having a shower with my boyfriend? Rachel, 15”. The answer provided was “Yes”. I would personally suggest that the chances of this are minimal.
• “It is a good idea for a boy to wash his testicles and penis…after he has had a wet dream.”
• “Sanitary towels…are worn by a girl inside her panties.”

By far the most disturbing thing we found described homosexuality as “A sickness that was not like smallpox but no less dangerous and contagious. A sickness of the mind.” The only thing comparably disturbing was sites pedalling the fact that condoms do not prevent HIV (an opinion publicly held by the Pope, too, as it happens). Shocking.

Originally posted on The LBSC