Being up against a society with a FRANTIC sense of child safety is difficult. I remember enrolling my son in senior year of high school. I had to fill out a form naming who could pick him up after school. I asked if I could write ‘anybody’ on the line. The woman behind the desk was aghast, and threw out a comment about ‘didn’t I care whose car my son got into’? My reply was that my son was an intelligent 17 year old – if he didn’t know whether he should get in a strangers car by now than I had not done my job!

But he knows this because as a society we instruct our children to stay away from strangers. At the time the ‘stranger danger’ campaign started up,  we hadn’t analyzed crimes against children. If we had we would have said ‘extended family, and family friends danger’, as that has now been proved to be, by an overwhelming percentage, those most often guilty of sexual assaults against children.

We also hadn’t gotten close to the current #METOO awareness. Every woman in the world has a #METOO story, but we didn’t share it among ourselves, let alone made it public.

Many men still don’t realize the extent of the secret women have kept for our abusers.

And while every woman has a story, many men do as well. They are just less likely to come forward. Hopefully the #METOO will open the conversation up for everyone.

In the 1960’s schools started teacher ‘Sex Ed’. Very controversial. Then came contraceptives. Even more controversial.

We still don’t talk openly in sex ed about gays and lesbians, even though the US Supreme Court has deemed same sex marraige constitutional. We haven’t even started to have the conversations about inter sexed, hermaphrodite, trans sexual and trans gender!

ALL OF THESE PEOPLE DESERVE TO BE WHO THEY ARE, AND THEY DESERVE TO BE VALIDATED. #THEMTOO

This is my opinion. Not everyone shares the same opinions. But what we do share is the instinct to protect our children.

Yet we don’t!

Real sexual education would not only include every physical and emotional sexual choice, it would also include facts and discussions about the various sexual abuses.

When do our children hear the facts about human trafficking? When do they learn about pedophiles? When do they learn about valid police action to secure our sexual safety? And when do we teach them that it is not OK to pay for sex, or to communicate with anyone, whether you believe it or not, who claims to be under age?

Right now they are learning it as they go to prison!