Sex ed in public schools

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Wug

My belief is that we really need to teach kids about the penis anatomy and the horrible consequences of injuries to these regions.

Sex education in a lot of the US is not comprehensive--I should know, because I went through it and learned nothing useful.

Boys need to understand their own bodies, and girls need to understand that they need to be delicate with boys' sex organs. This is not the time for Victorian prudishness--peyronie's disease can take over a person's life, and while it can be managed, it would be so much better if it could be prevented.

We need to get this out there in the US, Canada, Europe, and elsewhere, to stop the next generation from suffering fates like this.

LWillisjr

My wife and I counsel young married couples who really don't even understand the basics of anatomy or sex. Porn and magazines clearly don't portray real life for real married couples.
Developed peyronies 2007 - 70 degree dorsal curve
Traction/MEDs/Injections/Surgery 2008 16 years Peyronies free now
My History

Thisismyusername

I agree.  The only thing I remember from sex education was talk about stds and pregnancy and various birth control methods, with the main message being "use a condom!".  My generation grew up on porn and thinking that rough sex and crazy positions are normal, and that's how I injured my penis and developed peyronie's disease.  

At the same time I think it would be hard to get the idea across to people that they need to be gentle and careful and that sex should be about pleasure rather than being rough.  It's hard for kids to take things like sex ed seriously sometimes especially if it would be seen as uncool to be gentle and careful during sex.  Guys think you have to "F^@% hard" and pound girls to be a man, but that is completely BS.  Guys want to copy porn and do crazy positions without realizing how dangerous it can be.  

There should at least be an effort to discuss the anatomy and explain that the penis is really a very delicate organ.  Discussion of peyronie's disease and other penile injuries could help people understand that they need to be careful with their penises.  

ComeBacKid

My sex ed in public school wasn't that informative, although I can't say I paid to much attention at the time, I remember being shown lots of std slides, so much more to learn about pregnancy.  I learned a lot through porn actually and researching ovulation on the internet.  I think sex ed in public schools needs to be done and done well, we can avoid so many unwanted pregnancies that way by a collection of methods.  

Comebackid

abc3

Everything in this topic thread is so very true......to me the Education aspect has become the most important of all, because I believe everyone here would want the same thing - that is, any other person or couple in the future should get a better 'sexo-physiological' education so they won't have to suffer the same loneliness/darkness that comes with a genital injury. To go with that - prevention: because in current medicine the Andrological field isn't highly evolved enough yet, so it's better to try and prevent at the moment, rather than hope for much competence in such a (historically) under-valued and low-priority field.

For me growing up, the sex-ed was much the same as you guys have described, and the only mention of anything 'bad' that could happen to your penis was STDs. There was never any mention of the risk of injury from rough sex or anything like that.

In fact, the whole thing (but especially the male genitals) seemed to be viewed comedically even during sex-ed lessons. I think this is because of the background comedy aspect in popular culture...eg TV shows/movies that show characters using penis-extending devices, using vacuum-cleaners to masturbate, hanging heavy objects from their erections in macho displays...all in the name of a cheap laugh. And yet I've read many many accounts online from people who have done the above things, caused an injury and now say their life is ruined - because they were influenced by the 'comedy' aspect and like most people didn't receive adequate sexual education that would warn of such dangers.

abc3

I think people/couples turn to porn because their sex education was so bad, and in turn, porn then increases the risk that they will try something stylised or unrealistic which will increase the chance that they injure themselves horribly. I say 'themselves' because even if it was just the guy's erect penis which was injured, imagine the distress/guilt that would cause to his girlfriend (even though she would hold no blame at all as she would've grown up in the same cultural environment).

-------------------------------------------------------------------

I'd like to share a letter I sent to my counsellor about 3 years ago...it details my experince from the start and drags on a bit, but if anyone feels like reading it, check out the 'Education and Prevention' bit the most, as that's what I feel most strongly about now

(it should work in OpenOffice but if nobody can read it let me know and i'll just post it in a series of posts)

Hawk

It initially started to open with MS Word but then failed and I got repeated error messages that flashed too quickly to read.  I finally right-clicked on the downloaded file and opened it with a browser.

It is clearly a well-thought-out and extremely well-written paper.  Judging from your obvious passion, I guess that you will not depend on the medical community or traditional educational institutions to change their educational curriculum.  I don't say this in a judgemental way but rather as a practical assessment.  I am surprised you do not have a Youtube channel on essential but neglected sexual education for males.
Prostatectomy 2004, radiation 2009, currently 70 yrs old
After pills, injections, VED - Dr Eid, Titan 22cm implant 8/7/18
Hawk - Updated 10/27/18 - Peyronies Society Forums

abc3

hi Hawk

I'm sorry I took so long to reply to you...I'm not much of an internet person but still, I should have got back to you sooner.
I used Openoffice to write the document and don't have MS Word (i'm very bad with computers/tech), but what I'll do is make a series of posts here with the detail copy-and-pasted in. If that looks too clumsy feel free to copy/paste the info into a proper document/attachment that people can download more easily.

On your other point of maybe making a Youtube channel, even if i had the technical skills I don't think I'd have the mental strength to do something like that...I know there are some folks out there who have overcome that psychological hurdle and have made their own channels to help/inform others, and those folks are like angels or superheroes. I admire them immensely because I don't think I'm brave or strong enough to do it

abc3

Here's the document (again sorry for clogging up the thread with it I couldn't seem to get the attachment file to work proplerly)

- - - - - - - - - - - -

F.A.O.  senior figures working in an administrative capacity regarding sexual health education (within and beyond the NHS), and any upper-level health sector professionals who are concerned with improving and ameliorating public education resources within the field of sexual health and well-being - in particular male sexual and mental health

---------------------------
(the sentiments that appear in the following document are opinions and reflections that I have tried to express in the past, without much success – however I hope any reader will value them)

To protect my family I will not disclose my name or identity, but for any professional interested my NHS number is:


......



Although it might seem so, I am not writing this document with the singular intention of disparaging the state of Andrology/Urology departments – my main focus is to improve the education aspect, so that people in the future don't have to go through what I've been through, and witness how bad those departments are.

BRIEF

At age 19 I sustained an internal genital/pelvic injury, which seemed to be minor. The 'minor' aspect is emphasised by the fact that, at the time, I wasn't even immediately aware that something harmful had happened – it was only in the following 7-14 days, when the symptoms gradually got worse and worse, that I realised something was badly wrong. Doctors said that there were no indications of penile fracture, or typical signs of any conditions such as peyronie's disease.  Like most people, at the time of the injury I was completely ignorant that these kind of injuries/ailments existed, even though my school sexual health education was normal and standard. This incident/injury destroyed my life, and I have come to find out (from visiting men's health internet message boards) that many other lives from all around the world have been devastated by similar experiences. I will describe below the history and details of my injury, but again I want to emphasise the education and prevention aspect, so that the 'taboos' that pervade male sexual health education, and even Urological and Andrological medical practice, might one day be dispelled.

abc3

INJURY

At the time of the injury I had not been sexually active for a year, but had recently begun a relationship with a girl which was at first platonic. When the relationship developed I learned that, due to religious beliefs, the girl was a virgin – but that she had engaged in 'dry sex' before (sometimes referred to as 'dry humping'). I had never done this before, but didn't think it was out of the ordinary, especially taking into consideration her religious background. Particularly, another probable reason that I had no problem with the idea was that, as a child, I learnt to masturbate in a prone position (something that I've since discovered is called 'traumatic masturbatory syndrome' and can be extremely harmful, but isn't mentioned in conventional male sexual health education).

As I understand, 'dry humping/dry sex' can happen while clothed or naked – in my case, the girl and myself were clothed (I remember I was wearing tight fitting jeans which may have contributed to the injury). I remember hearing a very small 'popping' or 'crack' sound during the encounter, but at the time, it didn't overly concern me – after checking myself later, there was no pain, swelling or bleeding (although it's important to note that I didn't know to look for these things -  I was completely unaware at age 19 of the possibility of 'breaking' or 'fracturing' your penis, despite having a conventional sexual health education).

The following morning, there was normal nocturnal tumescence upon waking up, but there was a slight (but not overly bothersome) pain at the base of the penis/the suspensory ligament area. However, over the next 2 weeks, the main, and completely distressing symptom appeared – which was a complete lack of sexual or tactile neurological response in the penis. This got progressively worse over the 14 or so days until I could feel nothing at all. I went to the doctor and was examined multiple times, but received no answers. This pattern continued even when I was referred to urologists, who shrugged their shoulders and offered no opinion on a diagnosis other than typical psychological anxiety. This was despite more physical indications of the problem appearing, such as a left-leaning bend or twist which appeared in the penis after about a month and a half of the date of the injury, and an increasing absence of nocturnal erection activity.

After paying for some private consultations, and appealing strenuously and consistently to the NHS complex case coordinators, I was eventually referred to a specialist Andrology unit in London UCL Hospital, and was called back there for appointments numerous times, with inconclusive results. I was sent for an MRI scan in 2009 (3 years after the injury), which showed subtle amounts of low-signal potentially indicating fibrosis/scarring in the dorsal area of the base/suspensory ligament, but this was never investigated further. I was passed in circles from doctor to doctor in London until around 2012 when the investigations stopped. The only speculative opinion any specialist ever suggested to me was that I might have sustained a minor internal injury, which healed gradually, leading to the symptoms (i.e. the healing process in the area of the dorsal nerves caused the symptoms rather than the injury itself). It is now more than 10 years since the injury and it is still a mystery.

As you can imagine, the psychological effects of the injury itself, and the experience of being in the dark watching doctor after doctor shrug their shoulders, was devastating – I will detail these psychological effects later on.

abc3

PATIENT EXPERIENCE OF ANDROLOGY AND UROLOGY DEPARTMENTS

I stated above that the main purpose of writing this document is to emphasise the 'prevention aspect', so these types of injuries do not occur to others in future.

Despite this, I feel it is necessary to draw attention to how primitive the fields of Urology and Andrology seem to be in the 21st century. Like most people, I had no notion of this state of affairs before I was a patient, but it is no exaggeration to say that the diagnostic capabilities and overall levels of expertise in this speciality, when compared to other fields of medicine, are disgracefully poor.

This is not necessarily so much the fault of urologists and andrologists themselves, as it is the fault of broader societal tendencies and collective thinking. For instance, historically, men simply haven't gone to the doctor – this sounds like an over-generalised statement, but there is some truth in it. The  number of gynaecologists compared to andrologists is a sign of this pattern and is seen world-over. This field of medicine has also been hampered by deep-rooted psychological issues of self-image, and archetypal notions of masculinity that go back to the beginning of the species. Self-invoked taboos about male sexuality also continue to the present day, which hinders open discussion of the subject and ultimately holds back medical progress.

These views are not just speculations, but conclusions I have come to after first-hand experience as an Andrology patient and contact I have had with many others suffering with these symptoms, from all corners and walks of life. These individuals, from many different countries, describe exactly the same symptoms as me, and worryingly, describe exactly the same experience of going to doctors and specialists and being met with confusion, mystification and apathy. Beyond those who suffer the same mysterious symptoms that I have, there are also countless men all over the world who have more widely understood problems like Peyronie's, congenital curvature, phimosis, priapism or corpora-cavernosal fracture, who nevertheless still experience the same taboos and frustration with the ineptitude of the speciality.

It might be stating the obvious but it is still important to say that a patient with very real, life-changing symptoms, who is suffering from acute distress and then subsequently is plunged into further darkness by the absence of diagnosis or prognosis, is likely to suffer from extreme mental health effects. The patient is denied the relief of diagnosis and support. My own experience of the doctors and specialists, even after I was accepted to UCLH, was characterised by incongruence of care and a feeling of falling between the cracks of a kafkaesque NHS system, neatly designed to sort patients into categories of known ailments, but incapable and unwilling to investigate mysteries or unknowns. On many occasions in London, I had to start my story over from the beginning because I was seeing a different specialist each time – a result of the 'team' system, where the head of the department will operate a revolving door-like team of sous-specialists. On another, a specialist told me I was 'brave' to be a young man speaking so openly to him about my symptoms – this filled me with the black despair of realising that the taboos also pervaded the medical world. The doctor had mistaken my genuine desperation for 'admirable openness' – this only resulted in communication breakdown and increased my sense of futility.

Eventually I searched online for more information, and found out that Andrology departments in most other countries are similarly limited. There are one or two burgeoning techniques in the USA involving collagenase enzymes and stem cell treatments, but due to pharmaceutical dogma they will likely not be accessible for decades, and will be extremely expensive and thus not suitable for State Healthcare. The main thing I took away from speaking to other patients around the world was their feeling of futility and frustration – they also shared my sense of disbelief that this field of medicine could be so regressed.

abc3

EDUCATION AND PREVENTION

In writing this document, education and prevention is the main thing I want to get across. My life may have been destroyed by not knowing about things such as penile fractures, or other poorly-understood complications that can affect the intricate physiology of the male reproductive organs, but there is no need that others in the future should suffer in the same way because their sexual health education wasn't thorough.

You may think while reading this that the symptoms I am describing are uncommon, and that the instances and occurrences in medical literature are rare. It's true that they are rare, but I can virtually guarantee that the real numbers are significantly higher than those reported – this is due to the aforementioned taboos surrounding male sexual health, and the reluctance of men to seek medical help (especially medical help concerning sexual problems). It isn't clear which caused the other, but these two things are definitely related. Also, searching online for these symptoms quickly reveals the discussions of thousands of people, on message boards and forums, who have run into the same medical dead-ends that I experienced – sometimes these people have spent thousands and thousands of dollars, travelling abroad to find answers because the problems are so poorly understood. Most of the time it is the men themselves who are reporting their situations, but you also see messages from exasperated wives and girlfriends who have experienced, by proxy, the same medical ineptitude. All  of them have turned to the internet in desperation because their local doctors have turned them away.

I have learned about other related male sexual health problems while searching online - I never learned about these issues when I received sex-ed lessons as a teenager, and to the best of my knowledge they still do not appear in sex-ed today. One of them is called 'jelqing' or 'jelking' and appears to be very common – it refers to men who try and increase the size of their penis by practising a set of stretching exercises or using rudimentary devices. This unbelievably harmful practice usually results in all kinds of physical abnormalities and horrific symptoms, such as impotence and sexual dysfunction (not to mention the resulting massive psychological trauma), yet seemingly it is still attempted because men are not educated about the dangers. Reading the stories and testimonies of people who have been affected by this, it is clear that most people were simply not aware of those dangers – it is my opinion that the taboos around male sexual health, and the society-wide 'comedy' approach to this part of the male anatomy, are responsible for the smokescreen which blinds people to the horrible consequences of their mistakes.

Another issue I have learned about is something called 'Traumatic masturbatory syndrome', which involves infants learning to masturbate in a prone position (without hands) and continuing this behaviour through puberty and their teenage years. This is relevant and personal to me, as I learned to masturbate in this fashion, and was one of the reasons I consented to the dry-sex which caused my injury. According to some American reports that I found online, this can lead (and has led) to psychosexual problems later in life. During sex-education I wasn't told that there was any 'harmful' way to masturbate, and so I didn't question my behaviour. I only found out about the term 'Traumatic masturbatory syndrome' recently, and it seems as though there are only tentative efforts to recognise the phenomenon, but it is likely to be another issue which is more common than we think.

To summarise, I would say that from my own experiences, and from the reports I have found and read online of people whose own lives have been devastated, it is extremely important to me that these issues should be considered by sexual education experts. This could maybe in future reduce the chances that others will have to suffer the same loneliness and isolation that I have felt in dealing with sexual dysfunction, and help to remove the stigma and taboo of male reproductive well-being.

abc3

PSYCHOLOGICAL EFFECTS

In this last part of the document I will try to talk about the severe and debilitating mental health effects that have affected me as a result of the injury. It might be uncomfortable to read but I think it's important to try and get across the feeling of blackness and emptiness that follows these types of injury.

On the physical side itself, having no neurological response to a part of your body - a 'dead' arm or leg after sleeping awkwardly, for instance – is alarming if it lasts longer than normal. A special kind of dread is likely to be felt, because the familiar has become horribly unfamiliar, and there is the sense that something is deeply, fundamentally wrong.

In the case of a genital injury there are extra layers of mental distress, because of the function of that part of the body. The depression that afflicts me arises from a 'void' or blackness, that is left behind by a now-absent biological compulsion to live. It is something that bypasses the higher logical functions of your mind and your ability to reason, and attacks you at a primordial level. Your rational mind tells you that, with modern medical help, it is possible for you to reproduce – but because the body can't feel that it can reproduce, the body's instincts override the logical mind and leave you with the feeling that there's no point in you being alive. In some way the rational side of you bumps into its own limitations. This 'physical' depression eats away at the core of your very existence; it is visceral rather than mental, and so can't be classed as simple depression as a result.

This constant existential attack happens every day and forces me to look inwards to a very dark place, which has to do with our base human nature and the purpose of being alive. It is very frightening because it reminds me that if all of our higher levels of awareness – such as our intellect, conscientiousness, social conscience and humanity – can be overridden by our base primordial functions, then these higher principles are merely auxiliary to the more animalistic part of ourselves. It has forced me day after day to ask horrible questions...what is the point of everything, are morality and other values just illusions, are we anything more than DNA survival machines. As you can imagine these non-voluntary contemplations afflict me all the time and their presence has stalked me in the years since the injury.

I have read reports online of other people who might have suffered from similar overbearing thoughts. For example in the USA - in the case of Army servicemen who were injured by improvised explosive devices in Iraq and Afghanistan, there are low suicide rates among veterans who lost a leg or an arm, but abnormally and shockingly high suicide rates among men who suffered genital injuries. This is not widely reported because of the societal taboo that I have previously mentioned. Another case that I read was of a man in China who suffered severe genital injuries in an attack by a jilted partner – he said that his symptoms meant his life was like 'living death'.

Perhaps the worst aspect of my experience is the loneliness, which comes from being in 'medical limbo'. Not having a definitive diagnosis at any stage has affected me greatly, as you have no sanctuary, point of reference or signpost to try and make sense of things. There are no support groups for medical mysteries. On top of that, feeling like you are part of the 'taboo' is another psychological burden which has led me down the path of severe depression. Reading things like the admirable Andre Van de Merwe's comments to the media after the 2014 stellenbosch operation only confirm that these taboos exist and even exist in the professional medical arena (I would urge any medical professional reading this to look at his comments about the operation to gain a further understanding of some of the issues I have talked about here).

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I hope that this information finds the medical professionals in the right/apt station, and I hope that they can find some use for it in the context of furthering the education of male sexual health issues. If it makes even a small difference to the way we think about these issues then that will be something. Most of all I hope it catches the professional curiosity of doctors and also helps them to understand and investigate the societal influences, which in the eyes of many patients have pervaded and hindered a medical speciality. Thank you for taking the time to read  

Old Man

Hey All:

Just want to add my 2 cents for what it us worth. I was born in September 1929. And, i was raised during the 1930s and started to elementary school in 1935. Our family owned a farm in the South of the USA. School for us was what our parents called the three Rs. ~~ Readin, Ritin and Rithmetic (sic) The also spelled them this same way.

Living on a farm that raised a lot of animals we were exposed to the sexual acts of these animals. We had very little finances to be able for schooling. For the most part we were "home schooled" for the basics of the Three Rs. Our teachers in most classes had mostly a high school diploma and sometimes a little college time. So, we were very lacking in any formal teaching, So, we were also taught by ministers of our local churches for religious education. I am relating that to say that sex education for us was from what we saw and worked with on the farm.

At an early age in life we learned how to breed animals and produce them for our cash crops. Doing such we were exposed to sex through those experiences. Our parents would shame us if we even thought about asking them questions about sex. Further, our science classes in high school only touched a bit about physical sexual anatomy with very little explanation of how sex ''worked''. Of course, we figured out the basics for ourselves.

The above is for information of the younger members of this forum so that they would possibly know somewhat about the general population that grew up in the "old days". Today's sex information is scattered all over the TV media and published books and magazines. TV shows have sex as their byword.

However, as an old coot of 91 and raised in the early years if the 20th century, I would wish for some of the "old school" of sex education could be taught today. It might just prohibit some of illegitimacy of today.

Hopefully, it might help someone understand that sex education is sorely needed to produce a better life for us all.

Old Man

Age 92. Peyronies Disease at age 24, Peyronies Disease after
stage four radical prostatectomy in 1995, Heart surgery 2004 with three bypasses/three stents.
Three more stents in 2016. Hiatal hernia surgery 2017 with 1/3 stomach reduction. Many other surgeries too.