First off, a warning This video is extremely not safe for work. So don’t click that link if you are at work! The video is from Technical Virgin, but they no longer have their videos up on their site, which is a pity, as they were all quite good. They were well played spoofs of the PSA genre.
To the point, however, this video is germane to some thoughts I’ve had on my mind the past couple of days. I’m a regular reader of BloggingBaby.com, a parenting website. This is weird because I don’t have any children, and am not sure if I will or not, but one of my regular reads, Melissa Summers of Suburban Bliss is one of their writers, so I started reading on account of her presence, and came to find the site generally pretty interesting. Anyway, earlier this past week, there was really good entry about dealing with teenagers, porn, and masturbation. Most of the commenters were pretty level and reasonable, too.
Anyway, in case you can’t play it where you are at, the video linked above is a fake PSA about Vibrators for (technical) Virginity. And I actually think it’s a pretty good idea. In fact, I voiced this notion quite a few years ago, when I was a teenager in highschool, in one of our pointless and shame-laden “sex ed” classes, where the teacher muttered, blushed, and pushed the message “sex is bay-ad, mmmmkay?” and the kids all tittered, guffawed, and slung double entendres around. It was a very bad scene.
So one day, I was feeling stroppier than usual, and loudly spoke up in advocacy of masturbation. It wasn’t like I had a reputation to ruin. Already most of my schoolmates thought I was a lesbian, and in mid-1990s rural Nebraska, that basically gave many of my schoolmates carte blanche to terrorize me. Speaking up in favor of whacking off was a refreshing break for me, as I was briefly suspected of being a slut before falling back into the suspected-lesbian camp. Not that suspected sluts have substantially more fun, but they do seem to sustain fewer instances of property damage.
That same year, though in the summertime, and away from the stifling atmosphere of HHS, I embarked on a letter writing campaign, advocating that the school should install condom-vending machines in the restrooms, to cut down on risks of disease and pregnancy. Of course, this went down like a lead balloon. One response was a sneering, “your tax dollars at work” reply, though my suggestion was not that the school should give away free condoms, but that they should be available for discreet purchase. Another response was an attack against my morals and values, whereupon a local mom basically called me a slut in the Letters To The Editor section of the local paper. Niiiiice. Because I felt that it would be in the better interests of my schoolmates not to get knocked up of have their crotches rot out. That obviously makes me a deranged and devious person, a panting sex addict, and a menace to the community.
I was a mouthy teen who thought that masturbation was a pretty great idea and that teenagers should be able to get hold of some condoms with minimal fuss and embarrasment if they decided to go ahead and bone–what a renegade! And to make matters worse, I was a virgin until I was 20…a good 3-4 years after all this stuff had gone down.
My life would have been much more enjoyable back then if I’d had net access, and the Internet was more like it is today. At least the parody sites would have helped validate my outlook and lift my spirits.