Last fall it was discovered that a teacher at Dalton School was showing cartoon videos on masturbation to first graders. After parents caught wind of what the teacher was showing their 5 and 6-year-olds, the teacher Justine Ang Fonte, resigned from the school.
One of the several videos the teacher used in one of her ‘sex-ed’ classes showed little kids talking about “touching themselves” for pleasure. Fonte’s lessons for first-graders also included subjects such as gender assigned at birth, gender identity, and gender expression.
Initially, after parents complained to the school administrators, they were told they had simply “misinterpreted” the Dalton “health and wellness” educator.
In a statement, a representative for Dalton said that Ms. Fonte “helped to develop an exemplary K-12 health and wellness program” and that her work should not be “overshadowed by unwarranted misinformation and hateful rhetoric.
But after The NY Post published several articles on the porn class for 5 year-olds, Dalton parents “bombarded” the school with more complaints about Fonte’s curriculum, and Fonte subsequently resigned.
Now Fonte has resurfaced to defend her methods, claiming that it takes a village to raise a child.
“I equip them with a way that they can exercise body agency and consent, by knowing exactly what those parts are, what they are called, and how to take care of them,” Ms. Fonte said. “That was paired with lessons around, what are the different ways to say ‘no’? And what’s the difference between a secret and a surprise? And why you should never have a secret between a grown-up and you. Because it’s never your responsibility as a child to hold a secret or information of a grown-up.”
The material for her first-grade class never used the term “masturbation,” Ms. Fonte said recently.
Across the US, sex education has expanded to younger ages and well beyond the prevention of teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases. So-called ‘sex education’ now includes teachings about sexual orientation, gender identity, body positivity, LGBT celebrations, and apparently cartoons about masturbation being shown to 5 year-olds.
According to the Washington Times, Chicago public schools recently announced that they would be handing out condoms to 5th graders.
The new policy will go into effect without parental consent, and their reasoning for the decision was because ‘society has changed.’ Incoming students will have access to 250 condoms per elementary school; high schools are required to have 1,000 on hand.
“I would expect that not everybody is going to be completely on board right from the start, but I do think society has changed,” CPS doctor Kenneth Fox said.
Many parents say society has ‘changed’ because we have allowed the moral decay of our society to take place unchecked.
Recent studies indicate 90 percent of teens have viewed porn online, and 10 percent admit to daily use. This is due to increased smartphone usage among children and adolescents, with elementary-age smartphone ownership rising to over 50 percent in recent years. Ten years ago, just a small percentage of teens viewed porn intentionally or accidentally each year, according to the American Psychological Association (APA).
According to studies, kids as young as 5 are starting to watch porn. It’s not always intentional; it may be the youngest sees an older sibling watching it and simply follows the path. Research demonstrates that parents are, for the most part, unaware of their children’s porn usage, with half of the parents unaware their teens had seen pornography and teens having seen up to 10 times more pornography than their parents believe.
Parents especially underestimated their teen’s exposure to extreme content, such as violent porn, which is just as easy to access as traditional pornography content. According to scientists and researcher like Gary Wilson who wrote the book “Your Brain on Porn”, viewing pornographic material changes the structure of you brain in the same way that using heroin does.
According to some studies, the complete rewiring that occurs in the brain from consuming pornography is lasting and in a lot of cases permanent. Porn-induced erectile dysfunction has also become a rampant problem among men who view porn regularly, and lower testosterone is also linked to porn viewing.
Additionally, porn viewing is associated with more liberal beliefs according to research published in Psychology Today. According to other research, those that consume porn become more egalitarian, less religious, more likely to be open to breaking through traditional sex and gender roles, and more likely to adopt liberal beliefs about abortion, immigration, and men and women sharing traditional roles.
Researchers behind a 2017 study found that many porn users are compulsive, distressed, depressed, or all three. Another study showed that the volume of gray matter in a person’s right caudate was negatively correlated with how much porn they view.
Debby Herbenick, a professor at the Indiana University School of Public Health, defended the teachings of Fonte in an email saying that “we cannot wait until adulthood to talk with young people about what they and their friends and sexual partners are already seeing pornography.
But many experts say that pornographic material is what we should be focusing on, not exposing children to more of it.
Just a short time ago, the only pornography that was available to people was in the form of a magazine, or at an adult bar. Consumers were and still are expected to show a form of identification to be able to purchase adult magazines or enter an adult bar.
Today, young children can access porn at lightning speed with just a click of a button on their smartphone, and never have to prove that they are old enough to access the material.
Some have suggested that states need to address this public health crisis by mandating pornography websites require consumers to show some form of age verification to be able to access the content. The age verification they’re calling for would be similar to the verification process required to purchase a pornographic magazine, cigarettes, or enter an adult bar.
A recent report by Entertainment Insider outlines the massive increase in LGBTQ content in children’s programming and explains that the people behind the scenes have been trying to make this happen for years, and are not stopping any time soon.
GLAAD, the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, recently demanded that the TV industry more than double this number to 25% by 2025.
Estimates of the percentage of Americans who identify as LGBT is only around 4%.
A tidal wave of gay representation has washed over children’s TV shows, with a 222 percent increase in LGBTQ characters and stories between 2017 and 2019 alone.
