{"id":191857,"date":"2009-06-16T17:22:00","date_gmt":"2009-06-16T22:22:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2009\/06\/16\/swedes-dont-understand-the-united-states-at-all\/"},"modified":"2009-06-16T17:22:00","modified_gmt":"2009-06-16T22:22:00","slug":"swedes-dont-understand-the-united-states-at-all","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2009\/06\/16\/swedes-dont-understand-the-united-states-at-all\/","title":{"rendered":"Swedes Don&#8217;t Understand the United States at All"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Swedes have a society that I envy in a number of ways.<\/p>\n<p>A social safety net, a policy of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thelocal.se\/20080\/20090615\/\">making contraception to teens 15 and above<\/a>, and the latest case, the requirement that, &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.thelocal.se\/20086\/20090615\/\">Sex education should form part of the curriculum for all adults attending Swedish for Immigrants (SFI) classes<\/a>,&#8221; according to an official report given to the Minister for Health and Social Affairs.<\/p>\n<p>This is a good policy.  The idea of teaching people who may have come from <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">very<\/span> sexually repressive societies things like human sexuality, that clitoridectomy is wrong, and that homosexuality isn&#8217;t wrong, that women have the right to refuse sex to their husbands, contraception, etc.<\/p>\n<p>Here is the part that had me spewing at my screen, though:<\/p>\n<blockquote style=\"color: rgb(0, 0, 153);\"><p>Milton said he thought it would be unnecessary for people from functioning democracies to sit through classes on sex education. He added however that finding a practical solution did not fall under his remit.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Clearly people from the UK, US or Canada, for example,<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\"> know these things already<\/span>. But it can be sorted out on a case by case basis. It&#8217;s something that can be worked out locally,&#8221; he said. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>While I cannot speak to the sexuality and sexual mores of either the Canadians or British, notwithstanding the, &#8220;no sex please, we&#8217;re British,&#8221; jokes, I find the idea that the United States, with the highest incidence of teen pregnancy, partner murder, etc. is somehow sexually enlightened as a society to be completely unsupported by reality.<\/p>\n<p>Just ask Briston Palin.<\/p>\n<p>Were US sexual mores more honest, and less punitive, we would be a far better place to live.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Swedes have a society that I envy in a number of ways. A social safety net, a policy of making contraception to teens 15 and above, and the latest case, the requirement that, &#8220;Sex education should form part of the curriculum for all adults attending Swedish for Immigrants (SFI) classes,&#8221; according to an official &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[984,1075,982],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-191857","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-europe","category-sex","category-stupid"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191857"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=191857"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191857\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=191857"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=191857"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=191857"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}