The Condom Queen

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Posted by: SexOracle, on 9/25/2008 , in category "Hall of Fame"
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Location: United States

Abstract: Joycelyn Elders

“We will look foolish in the light of history”, the wise Joycelyn Elders said in 1997.

She had been fired 3 years previously by President Bill Clinton from the position of U.S. Surgeon General, for publicly recommending that masturbation be taught as a part of sex education in schools.

At the time (and sadly still now), suggesting that kids even be taught about sex, let alone the ‘M word’, was shocking to many, when abstinence was so widely promoted in schools.

But Dr. Elders realised that the high rates of STDs and teenage pregnancies were not coming down just because grown-ups told teenagers to ignore their hormones. She advocated sexual education in classrooms and encouraged contraception (which earned her the name “Condom Queen” from conservatives). She also suggested that since masturbation is a safe sexual activity and a normal part of human sexuality, it could be included in sex-ed classes in order to lower STD and teen pregnancy rates. After all, no one ever got knocked up by a dildo. You have probably heard her most famous line: “We know that more than 70 to 80% of women masturbate, and 90% of men masturbate, and the rest lie.”

After being fired by the man who put oral sex in the spotlight, Dr. Elders returned to the University of Arkansas (where she got her M.D. degree in 1960), as a professor of paediatrics. She persisted in her goal to enlighten the general public, writing in 1997:

“Masturbation is not a four-letter word, but the President fired me for saying it. In this so-called ‘communications age’, it remains a sexual taboo of monumental proportions to discuss the safe and universal practice of self-pleasure. No doubt, future generations will be amused at our peculiar taboo, laughing in sociology classes at our backwardness, yet also puzzled by it given our high rates of disease and premature pregnancy. We will look foolish in the light of history”.

Joycelyn Elders quick facts:

• Born into a poverty-stricken African American family in the racially divided 1930s.
• The first Afro-American (and second female) U.S. Surgeon General.
•  Vastly improved healthcare for children in her native Arkansas.

Check out more stars in our Hall of Fame:

• Alfred Kinsey

Information for this piece was sourced from:

1. Human Sexuality, 2006, 2^nd Ed., written by Simon Levay and Sharon M. Valente; published by Sinauer Associates, Inc., Massachusetts
2. Wikipedia: Joycelyn Elders http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joycelyn_Elders
3. Wikiquotes: Joycelyn Elders http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Joycelyn_Elders
4. Joycelyn Elders: From Sharecropper's Daughter to Surgeon General of the United States of America. Book review by Leon Dash, for the Washington Monthly (Jan-Feb 1997). http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1316/is_n1-2_v29/ai_19034244/pg_1?tag=artBody;col1