How lucky are
you, readers
? Here are bonus questions and answers that didn't fit into
this week's SFR Talk with Alice Kahn Ladas
, author of
.
SFR: Do you counsel women about sex, or was that just for the book?
AKL: I am a body psychotherapist, which means that instead of just working with words I work with breathing and muscle tension and with touch if it's agreed upon and relevant and needed. Mostly I see either individuals or couples. I used to do groups, but I don't do them anymore. Recently I had a woman come to me who was brutally abused, and has not been able to reach a climax and would like to. So I'm working with her. But I don't usually just see people for sexual problems.
What kind of sex ed should we have in the public schools?
more
It shouldn't be ‘just say no,' because it's not going to happen. It shouldn't be, ‘condoms don't always work, so don't use a condom.' It's got to be a positive thing. When I was in high school, a couple was expelled for going the whole way. At that time, very few of us had intercourse in high school, because it was against the culture. You were supposed to wait until you got married.
I always suspected that nobody really waited.
Very often they didn't wait, but then they had to get married—it was called a shotgun wedding. I also worked in a home for unmarried mothers as late as the 1950s. A home where women came when they didn't want people in their community to know that they had transgressed. They mostly gave their children up for adoption so that nobody knew what was happening.
