By Neil Treday
Valencia Voice
He’s been called an “agent of the devil” whose speeches leave audiences in the throes of “an erotic frenzy,” and last Tuesday he came to Valencia’s West Campus to yet again incite lustful orgies in the name of Satan.
Except all that really happened was sex educator Jay Friedman gave a 90-minute talk that covered sex and sexuality in a frank, engaging, and funny manner.
Friedman opened his speech, “The J-Spot: A Sex Educator Tells All,” with a steamy story involving “erect nipples,” instantly engaging the audience. As it turns out, Friedman was just talking about breast-feeding.
“All of us are sexual beings, from the womb to the tomb. We have a natural desire to learn about sex. Sex is good. It’s what we learn about sex that’s bad,” he said, setting the tone for the rest of the lecture.
Friedman illustrated this to the audience by describing the common early sex education American males have: Dad’s box of Playboys in the garage or National Geographics in the library. Friedman then set to work disproving many sexual myths Americans may have, such as whether or not men will explode if they do not have sexual release. (No.)
“Dull lovers, not condoms, make for dull sex,” Friedman said, disproving another myth.
The speech’s climax, so to speak, was a clip from an animated Swedish sex education video describing orgasms and masturbation with Pink-Floyd-esque visuals. After Friedman revealed that this video is commonly shown to middle school students in Europe, the audience gasped.
Yasen Angelov, however, did not. “I’m from Europe, actually, and we are pretty open minded over there so for me it was strange that here there is a more conservative view of sex. I’m now seeing it from the other side,” he said.
Friedman’s call-to-action speech struck a chord with others in the audience as well.
“He wasn’t afraid to talk about the real topics that are being discussed now but aren’t being discussed as much. It was provocative and stimulating at the same time,” said Teree Douglas.
“People need to speak up on what they like,” Friedman said. “Part of what I like to do is make people more active. There’s not the activism [on college campuses] that there was in the 60s and 70s. The opponents to sex education are very vocal about that and then their voices seem very strong to skittish school administrators.”
Friedman’s ideal sex education curriculum may not sit well with those skittish administrators, however.
“The ideal sex ed curriculum is comprehensive: kindergarten through 12th grade. People hear that and get scared like you’re gonna teach sexual positions to kids, but it’s age-appropriate. How about this? Teach about puberty before kids go through puberty,” Friedman said. He wasn’t afraid to tackle birth-control controversy either, saying “All too often there’s no message about birth control or an anti-message. I always say ‘Vows of abstinence break more than condoms do.'”
Friedman talks in other countries as well.
“This is a high school lecture in other countries. In Japan it’s interesting because there’s a similar mentality as there is in the United States, where you don’t talk about sex so openly and yet they have this wacky culture where there’s vending machines with used women’s underwear. There’s a weird split there. [America] tends to export [policy]. We’re very missionary with our abstinence-only programs,” he said.
For someone so unassuming, Friedman does cause controversy.
“I’ve had schools hire security for me out of their concern for me,” he said, adding, “Southern audiences seem to be full of that stereotypical Southern hospitality. People clap even though they’re like ‘You suck.'”
Friedman braves name-calling and threats because, as he puts it, “the places that are the most conservative are perhaps in most need of my message.”
