This is a serious question - and I’m open to any and all help available!

My 2 youngest children - and moreso the baby - are fascinated by Asian culture.  (By Asian, I mean Chinese, Japanese, Korean, etc.)  It started with the discovery of Anime, and has ballooned from there.

That in itself?  Doesn’t bother me.   Anime may not be my thing, but if they like it, that’s all that matters.

What has started to bother me is the way they - and again, it comes more from the baby than her older sister, although they both do it - treat Asian people as if they’re some sort of exotic alien or something.

I’m probably not going to put this the right way, but I hope I get my point across:  I feel as if their fascination (that’s not quite the right word but it’s the best I can come up with) perpetuates “othering” of Asian people - and all POC, as a knock-on effect.

It’s not the interest in other cultures, it’s the WAY they go about it.

Now I should also say that they’re only 10 and 11, so I DO realize that a lot of that is pure ignorance about how the world works.  I can’t expect them to understand the concept of “white privelege” at their age.  At the same time, I also realize that it’s my job, as their mother, to teach them how to interact and deal with people that are different.  They have a bit of a head-start in that direction, having lived their entire lives with a sister with quite severe special needs.  They’ve seen at least one version of different all their lives.

The problem is that I’m not entirely sure what to say to them.  I want to do the right thing, but I don’t want to end up saying the wrong thing for the right reasons.  If that makes any sense.  For example, growing up I always tried to explain my acceptance of people of all races by saying something along the lines of “I don’t care what color they are.  Black, brown, yellow, pink with neon green polka dots…”  But I’ve come to learn from reading essays and blog posts from POC that that actually irritates rather than assuages them.  I always thought I was saying the right thing, but it turns out it was wrong.  But it was for the right reasons.  I’d like to avoid making that mistake in whatever I say to them.

And since tumblr is such a large, varied place, and what with people answering and maybe reblogging… well, hell, I figured it was worth a try.

Y’know?

frass:

Things girls are taught in Sexual Education:

-Basic terminology of female genitals and reproductive system
-Anatomy of male genitalia
-About menstruation
-About Pregnancy / Contraception
-About STDs
-Abstinence only
-Guilt

Things boys are taught in Sexual Education:
-Anatomy of male genitalia
-Basic terminology of female genitals and reproductive system
-Wet dreams
-Why sex, masturbation and ejaculation feel good.
-Hormones, pleasure and why they will crave sex 
-Oral sex (fellatio) 
-How Pregnancy happens
-STDs 
-Abstinence is better 

Why aren’t girls taught about the clitoris, apart from the word being on an unrealistic diagram? Why are girls not taught sex can feel good, and about masturbation? Therefore not teaching girls it’s ok to be aroused, how arousal works, that it’s normal and healthy to want sex and to enjoy it? Therefore continuing to make women’s sexual pleasure weird, shameful, perverted, dirty, uncommon or non-existent?  Why are they taught to be the moral and responsible gatekeepers of sex?  Why are we teaching girls more about how sex works for boys than for themselves? Why are we making girls responsible alone for pregnancy? Why are we not teaching girls about consent, peer pressure and about how to communicate their needs?

Why aren’t boys taught about proper female anatomy, and that the in-out-in-out that feels great for them isn’t so good for women as there are almost no nerve endings inside the vagina? Why aren’t we teaching them about the clitoris and other sensitive parts of women when its ok to go into full detail about their own pleasure? Why aren’t they being taught respect and consent, and how to negotiate their needs? Why aren’t they taught about other methods of sex which aren’t penetrative that women can enjoy like mutual oral sex? Why aren’t they taught about menstruation, when women often get educated about everything sexually that happens to men? 

The average age to experience hardcore pornography is 11.
The average age for first sexual education is 13.
If you can’t see how that, plus an incredibly sexist, hetero-normative scare campaign of ‘sexual education’ is failing everyone- I think perhaps you need some education on a thing called reality.

And trans sex education is completely left out. Cisnorms take over in Health/Sex Ed as well. No one is taught about dysphoria(disphoria) and so everyone who doesn’t want to do with the dominant partner wants to do is automatically labeled as a freak or prude or something completely irrelevant to sexuality.   

This is why I want to be a school sex counsellor. GET THE KIDS SOME TRU FAX ALREADY.

I would love to be a school sex counsellor.