Sex ed
Marcia Segelstein - OneNewsNow Columnist - 7/29/2008 7:00:00 AM
The premiere issue of Townhall magazine featured a tribute to Dr. Miriam Grossman for her book, Unprotected: A Campus Psychiatrist Reveals How Political Correctness in Her Profession Endangers Every Student. It is a shocking, frightening look at the sexual advice your child will and won't get from his or her college health center.
If you missed the book when it was first released, as I had, I urge you to get a copy now. You will be stunned.
Dr. Grossman, who has worked as a psychiatrist at UCLA for ten years, writes, "I once assumed campus medicine and psychology had one priority: student well-being. I'm no longer so naïve. Radical politics pervades my profession, and common sense has vanished."
She believes that, starting in the 1990s, being politically correct took precedence over being truthful. And while there are instances when political correctness is simply annoying, in the case of students' health, it's downright dangerous.
Parents may be under the misguided notion that doctors and nurses at their child's college are neutral providers of healthcare. "Think again," says Grossman. "The nurse teaching your daughter about herpes, the social worker reassuring your son about his homosexual thoughts – these people may have a vision for social change that you don't share. They may see their jobs as an avenue for activism, and one of their goals is to influence your child....They hope to destabilize a truth of science and civilization: that the sexes are deeply and essentially different....It's bad enough that androgyny, promiscuity, and 'alternative sexualities' are promoted by Hollywood; it is altogether another matter to have them endorsed by professional health organizations and college administrators."
Some colleges and universities have websites devoted to answering students' questions and concerns regarding their sexual health. Columbia University's is one of the most shocking. It encourages kids to "experiment" and "explore," explaining that doing so will "add to [the student's] future well-being and peace of mind."
Grossman rightly points out that there are no studies whatsoever to support that statement, absolutely no science behind that advice.
On the website, for example, a freshman wonders about losing her virginity to a boy she's known for three weeks. Here's what the website has to say: "T]hree days, three weeks, three months, three years? There is no right time to have your first intercourse..." And yet, as Grossman points out, there is scientific evidence that "early sexual debut and multiple partners are well-established risk factors for cervical cancer and infertility." But heaven forbid this girl should be given the facts and encouraged to use self-restraint.
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Columbia University isn't the only college to have a website where students can go for sexual advice. Taking a look through others, Dr. Grossman found what she describes as "normalization of behaviors that were once considered illicit – if not perverted – all over the country." Without going into details, let's just say she's right.
With names changed, Dr. Grossman tells the stories of some of her patients. Heather, a freshman, came to see Dr. Grossman because she was experiencing dark moods, crying spells, and feelings of worthlessness. Normally upbeat, and with nothing obvious wrong in her life, she was baffled by the way she was feeling. Dr. Grossman questioned her to find out what, if anything, had occurred in her life when these feelings started. She thought long and hard. As it turns out, she had begun a relationship with a guy, a 'friend with benefits,' as they're now called. Meaning they got together solely for sex. No dates, no emotional connection. Heather went on to explain that she was feeling a bit confused by it all. She admitted that she'd like to do other things with this 'friend,' but he didn't want to get too involved. Heather couldn't put two and two together and figure out that she was feeling bad because she wanted more out of the relationship. The ideology of sexual liberation had led, or misled, her into believing that it was perfectly natural to engage in sex without any emotional connection.
Another freshman, Olivia, came to see Dr. Grossman because she was emotionally devastated by the end of a romance, her first experience with intimacy. Her question for the doctor was poignant: "Why do they tell you how to protect your body – from herpes and pregnancy – but they don't tell you what it does to your heart?"
These girls had been taught all there was to know about they physical consequences of sex. But they'd never been warned that casual sex, particularly for girls, can be emotionally devastating.
In fact, there are studies that prove that females have a greater vulnerability when it comes to romantic involvement. Dr. Grossman reports that Heather and Olivia are far from alone. She reports that girls in similar situations line up at the health center doors.
"I've seen so many students like these...a pitiable crowd of confused, vulnerable young women, ill prepared for campus life, making poor choices, and paying high prices. No amount of Prozac or Zoloft is going to solve this problem. These young women must, for their physical and emotional well-being, change their lifestyle."
So why aren't the therapists, doctors and nurses at college health clinics across the country counseling them in ways that will actually help? Why would they treat someone who was nicotine-addicted or obese with therapies based on scientific research, but not girls like Olivia and Heather? Because, as Dr. Grossman writes, "To acknowledge the negative consequences of the anything goes, hooking-up culture would challenge the notion that women are just like men, and undermine the premise of 'safer sex.'"
Setting aside religious and moral teachings, Heather and Olivia might have been better prepared to make wiser decisions if they also knew about the biochemistry of bonding. It turns out that during sexual activity, the female brain releases a hormone called oxytocin. It causes feelings of attachment and trust.
What Dr. Grossman is fighting against is the politically correct notion, embraced by her colleagues, that sex for women (and men) is nothing more than a physical activity. Why isn't the research about oxytocin headline-making news? Could it be that it threatens the feminist agenda that separates sex from soul?
Then there's Stacey, a patient diagnosed with HPV, the virus that causes nearly every case of cervical cancer. To be clear, many times the virus is harmless, but a few types are extremely dangerous.
Stacey was shocked that she could have contracted it. After all, she'd only been with a few guys and they'd all used condoms. Not only do condoms not protect against HPV, "low-risk" HPV can cause warts, and may be transmitted in childbirth, causing respiratory disease in infants. This girl was under the impression that practicing "safer sex," as it's called now, would protect her. She was wrong. In one study, 43 percent of college coeds will learn they have HPV at their annual gynecological exam. According to Grossman, HPV is common and highly contagious -- and get this: "most young women are infected within a few years of becoming sexually active, from one of their first few partners." Regarding the new HPV vaccine, Dr. Grossman has this to say: "I don't think we should rely on medical technology for a quick fix to a social problem. Vaccine or not, my concerns are legitimate, and they are unwelcome, I believe, because they challenge campus dogma: latex protects, behaviors are entrenched, disease is unavoidable."
Grossman lays much of the blame at the feet of those within the field of reproductive health. "This discipline has been permeated by an ideology promoting permissiveness and experimentation; in order to preserve that ideology, the bar has been lowered. Instead of aiming for disease prevention, as is done in the fight against heart disease or obesity, the goal is risk reduction – aka 'safer sex' – followed, when it fails to be safe enough, by damage control. Instead of the grim facts, women are fed oversimplified and whitewashed information." For the sake of ideology and political correctness, women's lives are put at risk.
Pamphlets at campus health centers, according to Grossman, are full of reassurances regarding HPV and other STDs ("you're not alone," "it's very common"). But they are not telling the whole story.
Because there is a whole population of people who do not need to worry about HPV, herpes, chlamydia or any other STD. They are the people who have waited, and who marry someone who also waited. "Yes, it can be done," she writes. But instead of promoting and encouraging abstinence till marriage as the only sure way to avoiding sexually transmitted diseases and pregnancy, the medical community assumes young people will have multiple partners and make all kinds of poor choices.
Health professionals are complicit because they are promoting the lie that safe sex is just that: safe. It is not. They have settled for risk reduction instead of risk elimination. They wouldn't hesitate to advise a student to quit smoking and list all the reasons why. But they wouldn't dream of doing the same when it comes to sexual behavior.
The bottom line for Dr. Grossman is this: "The only people who are completely safe are those who, along with their spouses, waited for marriage, and once married, remain faithful....We don't hesitate, in other areas of health, to strive toward an ideal." Why don't we do the same when it comes to sexual health?
Marcia Segelstein will be on vacation in early August.
Her next column will appear on August 26.
After ten years as a producer for CBS News, forty-something years as an Episcopalian, and fifteen years as a mother, Marcia Segelstein (mvsegelstein@optonline.net) considers herself a reluctant rebel against the mainstream media, the Episcopal Church (and others which make up the rules instead of obeying them), and the decaying culture her children witness every day. Her pieces have been published in "First Things," "Touchstone: A Journal of Mere Christianity," and "BreakpointOnline," and she is a contributing editor for Salvo magazine.
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