Instigator / Pro
3
1483
rating
2
debates
0.0%
won
Topic
#3895

Sexual Education Should be taught to kids a lot more than a lot of people think

Status
Finished

The debate is finished. The distribution of the voting points and the winner are presented below.

Winner & statistics
Better arguments
0
3
Better sources
2
2
Better legibility
1
1
Better conduct
0
1

After 1 vote and with 4 points ahead, the winner is...

RationalMadman
Parameters
Publication date
Last updated date
Type
Standard
Number of rounds
2
Time for argument
Two days
Max argument characters
10,000
Voting period
One month
Point system
Multiple criterions
Voting system
Open
Contender / Con
7
1687
rating
555
debates
68.11%
won
Description

I think that sexual education should be taught to kids a lot more than we appreciate and the casual taboo we put on sex is rather harmful. I think the right to have sex should be set completely clear between people including teenagers - I also think that the casual shame we as a society put on it is absolutely meaningless and stupid. I think no significant adult to a kid should ever hesitate to explain to the kids that having sex or masturbating is absolutely healthy and explain to them in detail how to use all kinds of protection. I also think that the right to have sex should be completely normalized, thus: Sex with just friends, 14-18 year old teenagers having consensual sex (between teenagers, obviously, as they are minors) with good protection, sex before marriage, etc.. I also think that a lot of people take sex way too irresponsibly therefore end up having unwanted birth which is most of the time not a good thing...

And I believe that the solution to all the problems sex causes is to teach kids from their young age to have responsible, consensual protected sex, instead of making sex a taboo and shaming on sex/masturbation. I believe the "they should never be having sex at the first place" rhetoric is not only wrong but also not working.

I don't believe that kids should be shown sex in graphic detail, obviously, but I believe that sexual education needs to be taught more than we appreciate.

I'd like to have a debate with someone who disagrees with some of the points I've written here and get to know more things about the matter.

Round 1
Pro
#1
A lot of the time what you see in the modern society is that people tend to put a weird taboo on sex. But it's never done anything positive: we can never avoid having sex just as much as we can't prevent teenagers from having sex, this is inevitable.
Also, the entire idea of putting a taboo on sex makes no sense. Why would we? That's a completely healthy activity that most of the people on earth do. There's nothing wrong with it. 
Putting a taboo on sex only makes it a lot more difficult for people to understand the safe ways. A lot of people have this misconception that if you shame sex among teenagers they will shy away from it - I don't agree with that. You can't stop teenagers from being horny, and there's nothing wrong with that. But this method of putting a taboo on sex is also really not working - the only thing that it most of the time leads to is teenagers getting sexual diseases or having unwanted births due to their lack of proper knowledge of SEX-ED.
I believe sex should be normalized in the society - putting aside the arguments that involve religion, which don't make sense because it's a choice to believe in a religion or not, so these arguments are simply irrelevant - there's not much logic as to why NOT do that. Nothing harmful will happen to kids, they will be more mature when having their first times and understand that it's completely healthy. I would say that putting a taboo and making a mystery out of sex will in fact not only make the kids confused in their adulthood and lead to them making bad decisions, but make them even more interested in that.

Let me elaborate why I think that the lack of SEX ED leads to people being irresponsible when it comes to sex. I think that it should be taught from a young age that you should always carry protection with yourself as it is pretty easy to get caught up in the moment unexpectedly, then being led solly by their hormones which often leads to disasters - unwanted birth or sexual diseases. The only thing that the lack of sex ed does is only unnecessarry harm and confusion.

I believe that a deeper and a higher-quality sex education will solve most of those issues.
Con
#2
We can avoid sex if you mean literally. This metaphor that people will always lose control is... alright but why say 'children' and not 'adolescents already deep into puberty' in your resolution/title? I would begin to like to note at how Pro instantly concedes in the description that it's harmful if an older person engages in sex with a younger or middle-level teen. Yet, suddenly at 18 it is perfectly okay for that individual to fuck someone far older? How about 17? See, I am not coming at this from an angle of fear discussing the taboo topic, I am coming at it from an angle of noticing Pro's deep hypocrisy.

Pro says this via the debate's description:
I also think that the right to have sex should be completely normalized, thus: Sex with just friends, 14-18 year old teenagers having consensual sex (between teenagers, obviously, as they are minors) with good protection, sex before marriage, etc.. I also think that a lot of people take sex way too irresponsibly therefore end up having unwanted birth which is most of the time not a good thing...
The only reason the part in parantheses is there is to implicitly concede that the moment it's with someone older it's wrong, that something harmful is happening. An irresponsible underage teen having even foreplay let alone full on sex with another irresponsible underage teen is somehow given carte blanche by this hyperliberal mentality while the millisecond one is an assumed-responsible adult, the other is declared a victim. Clearly, the reason statutory rape exists is not because one party should have known better but it is because the experience inherently corrupts and violates what should otherwise be an innocent and unviolated teen that was culpable to persuasion and tempation.

In other words, what people like Pro say and think is that the very same corruption and violation of someone is fine so long as the violater is themselves to be declared just as naive and supposed to be uncorrupted. This is very akin to another huge hypocrisy we have as a society; that date rape isn't date rape as long as the other person/people was high on drugs or drunk as well. If you don't believe me, read up on it, in most countries only a sober person can engage in date rape even though the identical actions done to the identical person in an identical state is considered consensual and relatively acceptable so long as the one doing it themselves was high and/or drunk.


It is extremely important to appreciate the hypocrisy here as I want to leverage it brutally against Pro. I wish you to follow me here:

If Pro is conceding that there truly is something corrupt, wrong and malicious about a grown adult having sexual relations with an underage teenager, it then follows that if an underage teenager is corrupting and violating another, the very same assumption that even if they think they're consenting, they are not truly and should be protected, should actually apply. Even though there's an argument to make about how severely to punish the 'wrongdoer' this isn't about retribution, I am speaking of the complete other side of justice altogether; the victim's harm in the first place.

Pro essentially argues that we should be informing and providing contraception, somehow non-graphic specialised porn for education purposes and sex toys readily for underage teens to indulge in. This is based on the idea that no matter what teens will be irresponsible and give into temptation. Also, why does Pro actually start at 14? I am not daring to suggest this is too old, it's definitely too young but why is Pro starting there? Females in particular hit puberty sometimes at 8-9, clearly it is absolutely abhorrent to suggest sexualising them so why is it Pro starts at age 14?

The reason is due to another hypocrisy, one much deeper woven into Pro's case; he wants to feign that they aren't really children and that this debate is about some kind of 'half responsible, half adult' beings and therefore that it's won by Pro consistently conceding the irresponsibility and lack of impulse control in teens and children.

Let me explain how and why this is hypocritical...

If Pro is arguing that no matter what we do, people too young to responsibly engage in sex with adults will inevitably do it anyway with each other regularly, severely and so much so that STDs and pregnancy will become widespread. Then simultaneously, linked to why Pro starts at 14 rather than any younger, Pro argued that when armed with the right information and exposure to... 'sex info and tools', these youthful people (which aren't technically 'children', Pro left out all ages that would be called that and aimed only at adolescents) will somehow actively be responsible and trustworthy enough to use the information sufficiently to engage in healthy, consensual sex.

This completely contradicts itself since the very assumed fact that no matter what, these youngsters will engage in regular, third base sex and that it's wrong for an adult to 'corrupt' them, means Pro knows they're not able to engage in healthy, responsible consensual sex to any safe degree of assurance. Then, Pro wants to remove all barriers and encouragement of these people to resist, abstain and wait until they're old enough to healthily explore themselves and as for kinky sex I have no idea what they'd even do. Do you know how severe BDSM can get? In fact, the whole problem with Pro making it 2 irresponsible, underage teens together as the only 'okay' option is that neither is going to properly be the dominant one in the BDSM and it will very plausibly traumatise the submissive and/or masochistic one let along the dom/sadist themselves with what goes down, even physically scarring and such.

Teenagers and children are not irresponsible solely due to lack of information, their brains and hormonal status make them prone to impulsive, irreponsible decisions and equally their brains are not built for the kind of complexity involved with realising they can and will be loved independent of sex, while having lustful fun. Instead, it's extremely likely that these underage people develop complexes surrounding sex whereby they feel people will only love them if they act like a whore or in the case of men like whatever stereotype they were pushed into (either very masculine and dominant or more like a sissy or idk what they engaged in).

This is not a joke, these are traumas and lifelong psychological alterations we are talking about.

Not Just Adults Who Have Sex With Minors
Someone can be charged with statutory rape of a minor even if they’re both under 18 or the same age. Most of these cases are heterosexual encounters where the boy is charged with a crime. If both sexual partners are minors or are the same age, the boy may be charged with a felony, but sometimes, it’s a misdemeanor.
Consent applies to anyone who can’t freely agree to sex, regardless of age. Older adults with dementia, such as Alzheimer’s disease, or who are dependent on other adults may be sexually abused because they’re unable to consent to sex. Some seniors in nursing homes may be dependent on their abusers for care and afraid to speak out, while others may be unable to communicate because of dementia or illness.

Does Pro actually understand the above? Does Pro grasp why there even is an age of consent?

The problem is that almost all online sources about the harms of underage sex on psychology do focus on situations with adult perpretrators since the minor-on-minor stuff either is considered 'okay' or the trials are kept hush-hush to protect the minors involved (also unless it's blatant rape in action, it's sometimes hard to determine which of the two technically was in the wrong as both are deemed unable to give informed consent).

The biggest harm I can think of is the one I mentioned:

This young being will form the idea that the peak state of being loved and accepted is intertwined with being sexual. In fact, I know many adults who wrongly think and feel this way. This is a corrupt idea that leads to them acting out in very harmful ways and I get it, Pro's point is if a nympho's a nympho may as well make her an effective and healthy slut rather than some very unhealthy, uneducated one in how she gets her urges going. In that way, I slightly agree with Pro. There should be a slight increase in how available certain information about masturbation itself is accessed. However, this is about sex and also I want to note another glaring issue in Pro's case/description:

I think no significant adult to a kid should ever hesitate to explain to the kids that having sex or masturbating is absolutely healthy and explain to them in detail how to use all kinds of protection. I also think that the right to have sex should be completely normalized,
Pro is conflating explaining how to healthily tug one's pole or stimulate one's own breasts and clit etc is to be the very same lesson where they are taught to engage in regular sex so long as protection is used.

The reason masturbation is fine, in moderation, is the very urges driving the teen to corrupt themselves and engage in severe regular sex is the very thing masturbation helps them stay away from. Masturbation is about releasing the urge in a self-stimulated way. It doesn't lead to one confusing intimacy with sex as their brain is still developing and their ideas of what love vs lust are, are still forming.
Round 2
Pro
#3
Forfeited
Con
#4
I accept your surrender.