Students at the University of North Texas learned about “Sexual Pleasure and Response in Infants” in their human sexuality course entitled “Psychology and Sexual Behavior,” the College Fix reports.
A student captured a photograph of the lesson’s PowerPoint presentation and submitted it anonymously to Big League Politics. The photo shows the title of the presentation, but the words on the slides are unreadable, so it’s unclear just what was covered in that lesson and what understanding or knowledge students could have possibly derived from it.
Disturbingly, the lesson on sexuality in infants appears to not be the only time the course focuses on sexuality amongst young people.
Big League Politics was able to obtain documents from the course, taught by Terry E. Davis, which includes presentations on “Sexuality During Childhood and Adolescence.” Of the 18 “Learning Objectives” in that particular lesson plan, several may be deemed objectionable. These include the following:
Discuss examples that demonstrate how infants of both sexes are born with the capacity for sexual pleasure and response.
Describe the incidence and frequency of masturbation among male and female adolescents.
Summarize what the research reveals regarding the incidence of and reasons for intercourse, including multi-person sex, among adolescents. What factors are related to early or late initiation of intercourse? Include a discussion of the racial and ethnic differences regarding intercourse.
The Fix also uncovered a disturbing activity in the instructor’s guide to the course textbook, Our Sexuality, which instructs teachers to have students witness “sexual interactions” amongst children at local schools and playgrounds:
Take the class to a local elementary school playground, or ask permission for a few of your students to attend various school playgrounds, preschools, or daycare centers during recess to observe behaviors of children. Ask students to note interactions between same-sex and mixed-sex groups. Which group was more frequent? Which behaviors were most frequent? What kind of touching did children engage in? What about teasing behaviors? Were there any overtly sexual interactions? What was the age range of the children being observed? Have students write a report comparing their observations with information in the text.
When contacted by the College Fix regarding the lesson plan activity, the textbook’s current editor, Laura Widman, said that she has requested that the activity be edited out of future edtions of the book. She agreed that the activity was inappropriate.
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“I can say that as an instructor I have never used that activity and I would be quite surprised if any instructor has asked their students to observe children on a playground,” she told The Fix.
But even without that bizarre activity, the course’s interest in sexuality among adolescents, children, and infants is rather disturbing. The continued insistence that young children are sexual beings seems to be part of a larger and more insidious agenda, some say.
In 2009, the United Nation’s Economic, Social and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) published a 98-page report that included curricula for children between the ages of five and 18 that encouraged teaching children as young as five about masturbation and “gender roles, stereotypes and gender-based violence.”
UNESCO later published a report entitled “International Technical Guidance on Sexuality Education,” wherein they wrote, “It is never too early to start talking to children about sexual matters.”
That report also said that parents should refrain from teaching children about morality, as there are no right and wrong values, and asks parents to encourage children to “experience genital pleasure” from birth until age two, and by age three, to encourage “sex play.”
In 2011, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services website was discovered to describe children and infants as “sexual beings” in its “Questions and Answers About Sex” section:
Children are human beings and therefore sexual beings. It’s hard for parents to acknowledge this, just as it’s hard for kids to think of their parents as sexually active. But even infants have curiosity about their own bodies, which is healthy and normal.
The website cited toddlers touching themselves while naked as evidence of this statement and encouraged parents to engage in discussions with children as young as five about sexuality.
Naturally, these statements were heavily criticized by family groups such as the Family Research Council. Peter Sprigg, a senior fellow at the Family Research Council, opined, at the time, “The idea that ‘children are human beings and therefore sexual beings’ is one of the most destructive myths of the sexual revolution. To a large extent, this myth may be traced to the ‘research’ conducted by Alfred Kinsey, including the infamous ‘Children of Table 34’ experiments, which involved the deliberate sexual abuse of children as young as 6 months old under ‘experimental’ conditions.”
He continued, “The fact that young children are aware that their bodies include genitalia hardly makes them ‘sexual beings,’ and it is improper (and potentially dangerous) to treat them as such before puberty.”
Unfortunately, it seems that not much has changed in the last decade.
Portraying young children as sexual beings is increasingly more disturbing when considering the simultaneous efforts to normalize pedophilia. In 2011, the same year that HHS described infants and toddlers as “sexual beings,” B4Uact, a group of pro-pedophile mental health professionals and sympathetic activists, sponsored a conference that examined ways in which “Minor Attracted Persons” (MAPs) can be involved in the revision process for the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5).
The goal is to label pedophilia as a sexual orientation so that individuals who are guilty of pedophilia are not blamed for their feelings. Frighteningly, two recent TED lectures have called for sympathy for pedophiles on these grounds.
Claims that young children are sexual beings can only serve to add fodder to the effort to normalize pedophilia. College courses on the relationship between psychology and sexuality have no business sexualizing children.
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