"THE DRAMATIC HISTORY OF AMERICAN SEX-ED FILMS"

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"From the outset, films helped lend an air of authority and importance to sex education, which has always been on the defensive in America. Even now, when polls show that more than 80 percent of Americans supportteaching comprehensive sex education, filmmakers creating material for public schools are extremely aware that their every scene will be dissected by political opponents. This century-long fight over the validity of teaching the birds and the bees has shaped the way sex-ed videos are framed, with an overwhelming focus on venereal disease and the benefits of abstinence rather than a more positive approach to sexuality. And, perhaps predictably, they have had a specific tendency to ignore both pleasure and women’s sexuality.

Instead of becoming steadily better in quality over time, the content, messages, and accuracy of sex-ed films have fluctuated with the moral and political forces of each era. What’s especially surprising in looking at the history of sex-ed films is how the medium has changed in its approach to contraception. Condoms, over time, have gone from being framed as a straightforward way to prevent disease to a failure-prone and risky option...

Although sex-ed films are meant to resonate with American students from all walks of life, they have tended, over time, to omit key details. In his research, Eberwein found that mentions of the clitoris as a part of female anatomy were relatively rare in the canon of sex-ed films. No film mentioned how the clitoris relates to female pleasure until the 1980s. Films have been far more likely to discuss male masturbation than to consider that women masturbate and have sexual needs. While educational films that discuss hormone changes in boys often made reference to “nocturnal emissions,” the exploration of girls’ hormone changes focus on menstruation and the emergence of child-bearing hips, rather than on desire.

In addition to erasing female sexual agency, sex-ed films for a long time represented only white children. In early films, people of color were used as “others” whom the presumed white audience would observe. In that significant first film, Human Growth, the main, white teens’ curiosity about how humans develop is piqued by looking at a picture book that featured Native American children wearing loincloths. African-Americans are almost entirely absent from sex-ed films shown in schools until the 1960s, when more films begin including some African-American, Asian, and Latino characters.

Same-sex relationships and happy premarital sex apparently remain taboo topics in sex-ed films—with only a few exceptions, LGBT relationships are absent from sex-ed films and consensual sex among teens is discouraged."

http://feministing.com/2014/06/17/the-dramatic-history-of-american-sex-ed-films/

FB: "Films from the 1970s are distinctly more open-minded and free-form than in other eras. There’s full-frontal nudity as couples romp in tall grass. In one film shown in Sex(Ed): The Movie, 1976’s Masturbatory Story, a country song about masturbation plays while a white guy plays with himself in the tub. “My eyes rolled round, my toes curled under, flashes of lightning, rolls of thunder,” sings the narrator. A girl appears and seems delighted at the situation, but doesn’t touch herself in any way.  There is ample use of kazoo throughout."