The birds and bees will never be the same: Introducing Healthline’s ‘LGBTQIA Safe Sex Guide’

The birds and bees will never be the same: Introducing Healthline’s ‘LGBTQIA Safe Sex Guide’

Healthline, for those unacquainted with the site, strives to be your one-stop shop for “medical information and health advice you can trust.”

Healthline is geared to users of all ages, as a glimpse of some of the currently featured headlines reveals: “Spotlight: The Best Natural and Gluten-Free Wine and Beer,” “12 Tips Sexologists Share for Reigniting Better Midlife Sex,” and “Another Study Shows Tdap Vaccine Not Linked to Autism Risk.”

Some of the topics explored on Healthline, and especially those aimed at young people, address sensitive issues — the sorts of things adolescents are reluctant to discuss with their parents. Take sex and sexuality. To ease the burden of learning about the birds and bees, Healthline offers a guide to safe sex.

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But this is not any old safe sex guide. This is an LGBTQIA safe sex guide. From the intro:

Historically, when sex education was introduced to the general public, content was focused on puberty education for cisgender people, heterosexual sex, pregnancy prevention, and reduction of sexually transmitted infections (STIs). During that time, there was a great deal of stigma and discrimination associated with being lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, and asexual (LGBTQIA). Gender-inclusive terms such as “nonbinary” and “trans” hadn’t yet entered mainstream language and culture.

This historical context and rampant homophobia and transphobia created a foundation where most sex education curricula didn’t acknowledge the existence of LGBTQIA and nonbinary individuals. Sex education programs were, instead, developed based on the assumption that those receiving the information were solely heterosexual and cisgender.

There’s a passage on gender identity that contains all the DSM 5-approved myths (such as making a distinction between sex and gender) and lots more to confuse and bedevil vulnerable pre-teens.

But the “best” feature of Healthline’s ‘LGBTQIA safe sex guide is its new nomenclature for sex organs. Writes the sex guide’s author, “gender specialist” Mere Abrams:

… [T]he notion that a penis is exclusively a male body part and a vulva is exclusively a female body part is inaccurate. By using the word “parts” to talk about genitals and using medical terms for anatomy without attaching a gender to it, we become much more able to effectively discuss safe sex in a way that’s clear and inclusive.

For the purposes of this guide, we’ll refer to the vagina as the “front hole” instead of solely using the medical term “vagina.” This is gender-inclusive language that’s considerate of the fact that some trans people don’t identify with the labels the medical community attaches to their genitals.

Yes, that’s just what the world needs: another euphemism for vagina.

LU Staff

LU Staff

Promoting and defending liberty, as defined by the nation’s founders, requires both facts and philosophical thought, transcending all elements of our culture, from partisan politics to social issues, the workings of government, and entertainment and off-duty interests. Liberty Unyielding is committed to bringing together voices that will fuel the flame of liberty, with a dialogue that is lively and informative.

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