Sex Ed In Cyberspace
From: CBS
By: Cynthia Bowers
The Birds And The Bees In A Podcast?
Wisconsin Mom Runs Wry Sex-Ed Show
Web
Show Tackles Teen Sex
It isn't just Jamie Lynn Spears; across the country more
teenage kids are having kids. A controversial Web show for
teens is trying to change that.
If the name doesn't grab your attention, the opening montage
will.
But this isn't pornography; it's a provocative podcast that
shoves sex-ed into the 21st century, starring a PTA mom with
a past, CBS News correspondent Cynthia Bowers reports.
“This is the Midwest
Teen Sex Show. This week we're talking about parents,”
Host Nikol Hasler says.
Hasler talks matter-of-factly about things that make most
parents cringe, such as birth control, first-time sex, and
dating.
"If you are in junior high and you are dating someone
out of high school, he's a pedophile, and pedophilia is a
disease," Hasler says in one show.
The mother of three from Waukesha, Wisc., says she's able
to do because she learned sex-ed the hard way -- when she
got pregnant at 18 after a one-night-stand.
"One birth control method we don't recommend is the
'pull and pray.' That's the reason I have two of my three
kids," Hasler said.
That kind of brutal honesty has made the Midwest Teen Sex
Show one of the most popular health podcasts on the Web -
with more than 60,000 subscribers tuning into to the twice-monthly
episodes.
Some of her upcoming shows are going to be on homosexuality
in high school and porn.
Hasler says: "We're encouraging both boys and girls
to be responsible for having safe sex. And we're also telling
them that they don't necessarily have to have sex at all."
A scene from one episode involves a girl telling her mom:
"There's something I've been wanting to tell you."
"Oh, my god. You're pregnant," the mother replies.
"No, mom. I'm not pregnant," the girl says. "I'm
gay."
Filmed on a shoestring, the show is the brainchild of Hasler's
high school classmate, aspiring filmmaker Guy Clark.
"We're presenting it in a way that maybe it's not such
a big deal," Clark, the show's director, said. "It's
okay to be curious about it; it's actually kinda funny."
Although this racy approach to sex-ed may make parents nervous,
a recent study found abstinence programs that preach "just
say no," just don't work.
Sex educator Erika Pluhar says there's a place for this “in
your face” approach to teenage sexuality.
“A lot of parents have difficulty having these dialogues
with kids,” Pluhar said. “I would want them to be
dialogue starters, rather than stop, period, end of sentence."
One group of Chicago-area teens gave the show a big thumbs
up.
“I was impressed at how honest it was,” said high
school senior Jack Dengel. “I mean, they were explaining,
they weren’t preaching.”
Creators say their ideas come from viewers themselves: teens
with age old questions, getting answers in a whole new way.
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