Why “Oral Sex” Shouldn’t Be Banning Dictionaries

“Oral sex” isn’t a bad word. It’s not a four-letter expletive; it’s not even a nickname for a sexual part of human anatomy. And yet, because it has to do with sex, it MUST BE BAD.

That’s how some parents down in Menifee, California think, anyway. So passionately that a complaint about “oral sex” being in the Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionaries purchased for advanced readers at the local elementary school caused the books to be banned.

Banned! It’s a dictionary. At an elementary school.

How else are kids expected to develop a vocabulary? How are we empowering children to learn things on their own if we’re keeping from them one of the most useful writing, reading, grammatical and researching tools out there? Slapping their hands with rulers, so to speak, for using a school-provided resource to find the answers to their own questions. This is … bad? Shouldn’t we be encouraging kids to learn, to explore their sense of curiosity, especially on their own?

My mom’s a therapist and sex educator. And even though my sex education started before I could even pronounce the names of anatomical parts correctly, my elementary school sex education happened in fourth grade. (Yes, my mother was one of two parents who actually accepted the invitation to sit in on the “lecture” and painfully bad video.) It’s wasn’t all that comprehensive, and it sure as hell didn’t cover why adults have sex for pleasure and not just for procreation. But if we’re teaching kids about “how babies are made” in elementary school, it makes no sense to ban books — especially dictionaries! — that mention the topic.

Kids and pre-teens aren’t stupid. I can almost guarantee that they know more than their parents and teachers think they do. And if they’re looking up the term “oral sex,” it’s not because Mrs. Smith in Room 19 went off-key with her sex ed curriculum. It’s because that’s what the kids are talking about at recess, on the playground. Perhaps someone thinks they’re cool because they overheard their older sibling talking about “oral sex” on the phone, heard it on t.v., or most likely on the Internet, and decides spreads the “wisdom” (i.e. I know something you don’t know!) on to friends, or wannabe friends.

Instead of hiding from them the answers and taking away their right to curiosity, why aren’t we teaching them the truth?

The more they know and the less afraid they are to ask when they’re curious, the more they’re likely to make the right decisions when faced with them, and the more likely they’d be to approach an adult if faced a serious problem. Rumors about how babies are and are not made (“If you have oral sex with a guy, and swallow, you’ll grow a baby in your stomach!” … NO. Fail.) spread less like fire.

Way to put your town on the map, Menifee. What’s next? No Internet?