Sexual Health by Elizabeth Canfield

Testing 1-2-3 Testing 1-2-2-Test. People along the coast of the Caroliners were ready for hurricane Hugo as ready as you can be for winds of 125 miles per hour and torrential rains. It was a frustrating time, the staff, the staff, the staff tried to keep in touch with the station had no formal plans. I think the problem of truth is sexual health. Communication was sexual health as five minutes ago. Once we did get on the air, there was a scramble. Whatever we do, don't be too sexually. In the wake of the storm, we've compiled a list of emergency equipment and procedures that might be helpful to your station. It is important that everything we do or keep from doing be voluntary. Anything from manipulation to rape, we're opposed to it. Everybody can agree on that.

The third thing is enjoyment. It is important that our sexual ways of being or acting or not acting be enjoyable. That's its purpose. We couldn't have sold it all these generations. There wouldn't be any people around if it weren't enjoyable to be sexually involved. You couldn't sell it. Why would you do it if it weren't enjoyable? So pleasure is a real big plus. The fourth and fifth items are rather clear. It's not sexually healthy to have or be an unwanted child. It's not sexually healthy to have or give a disease. I think those five components would pretty well take care of nearly everything. Of course, you can elaborate on each one for several hours. But I think it's important to say sexuality is a wonderful component and only that. It is not the total person. It is a component of our total personhood and as such to be handled with like all other components, with care, with love, with kindness, with awareness, with education and information. Elizabeth Canfield is a counselor and sex educator.

She currently works with the Rio Grande Planned Parenthood Association and the University of New Mexico's Paranatal Program. She began her career in the field of sexual health in 1959, when she volunteered to act as a translator for Spanish-speaking clients at a Los Angeles Planned Parenthood Center. Since then, she has helped develop other family planning programs. She has directed pregnancy counseling and sex education programs and is an advocate of women's reproductive freedoms and gay rights. Canfield will host a call-in program tonight at 7 on KUNM and will answer questions on the issues of sexual health. I think I could give a lot of information. What people do with it is up to them. I can introduce ideas. I have no answers to anything. I am somebody who likes to raise questions. That's all a program can do. That's all a good book does. That's all a good speaker does is raise questions and help people with information where they can explore a topic further.

Instant answers we do not have. Not on radio, not in the written word. Anonymous talk shows and anonymous three by five cards that people hand me after my public presentations usually contain very personal questions. I will have information where to refer people or give another phone number or tell them where to write. I am particularly interested in reaching homosexual oriented young people who might have questions. They don't have to have a name. They don't have to know whether they are gay or not. I couldn't care less. As long as they are questioning this and have some concerns. I want them to call in. Can Field is a member of the Board of Directors of Common Bond. An Albuquerque based group concerned with the issues affecting homosexual oriented men, women and adolescents. The other person who works with me in sexuality education, Judy Klima,

is a straight woman or non gay woman. I don't really like the word straight very much because I am not very straight at all. She is also on the board. We were both highly honored to be honorary homosexuals, I guess you might say. The Common Bond organization has a helpline for information about what is going on. Lots is happening in Albuquerque all the time. Performances, educational meetings, group discussions. We just had one. I was just a speaker at Common Bond the other day on coming out issues. I spoke for a few minutes on my experience as a counselor. Obviously, I don't have the experience as a person to come out of the closet as it were. And then broke into small groups with gay facilitators who discussed their own stories about how they came out to their parents. Most of all, how do you come out to yourself? How do you call yourself a homosexual person or a lesbian woman? Do you need to label yourself at all?

I think in a sense you do. It's important to say this is who I am partially. If you turn on the radio and you listen to Mozart, you listen to Mozart exactly the same way I listen to Mozart. Whether you're gay or not gay. So we celebrate the uniqueness and we are aware of the commonality which we have. Saul Gordon, who's a prominent sex educator, says gay is not a lifestyle. Gay is a sexual orientation. Lifestyle is whether you live in a home or an apartment, whether you live in a large city or small city where you live communally or alone. That, those are lifestyle questions. Who does what to whom sexually really is relatively uninteresting, except that people have been persecuted and therefore it's very outstanding. I hope someday we won't need gay pride week. Canfield has also worked extensively to improve the quality of children's sex education programs and she counsels parents on their roles in teaching children about sex and sexuality. She says it's important that the parent be aware of other sources of information

to which the child is exposed. What we have to do is parent, as conscientious parents I think, is counteract the enormously prevalent sexual messages. Every toothpaste has some kind of sexual and competition message. If you use this particular brand, someone will love you forever, not to speak of underarm and vaginal deodorants which will really solve all of life's problems. I think that it's very important that the home be the base which counteract all those messages. Television particularly is filled with subliminal sexual messages. Glamour and beauty and all are dictated by the various media, which I'm afraid television is perhaps the most offensive medium. We need to work on that all the time. Canfield says it's not enough for parents to be willing to answer children's questions. She says they must create an atmosphere in which questions can be asked.

We bathe children until a ripe old age. We teach them how to clean the sexual and genital parts of their bodies. We teach them we have opportunities for teaching them what feels marvelous and wonderful. I remember one sex educator with whom I used to work, who always said when she went into the bedroom and found one of her children masturbating, she would say, doesn't that feel wonderful and go on about hanging up some clothes or whatever she was doing, vacuuming. These are all moments that help children understand that the body is a wonderful thing, that we can celebrate and be happy about and that has a proper place to be used in one way or another. We don't brush our teeth in the living room and those are all teachable habits and customs. That's how we socialize our children. But these situations all offer opportunities for learning about sexuality, which is different from sexual intercourse.

I'm talking about the broad range of human sexuality and the human sexual experience. Also touching, hugging, same sex, not same sex, whatever, celebrating warmth and caring has a lot to do with teaching human sexuality. Canfield points out that human sexuality is a matter of education, not just for children, but for adults and for adult partners. She says it's important to realize that a healthy sexual relationship does not just come naturally. About 10 years ago we started having workshops on intimacy. It seems to be something that we need to learn on purpose rather than innate ability to be intimate and open with one another. It seems to be the biggest problem. We have to have workshops for that. So I say it helps people to go in together as couples, any constellation of couples, to learn with an objective person who helps how to talk to one another, how to have sufficient trust to say what one wants or likes or enjoys or doesn't enjoy.

And the most helpful thing of course is always to speak about oneself. Rather than accusing people, you always, you never, those aren't helpful tools. Canfield says partners can develop the tools for a healthy sexual life by seeking out new sources of information such as workshops and literature. It is more helpful, I think, to speak about one's own personal experiences with someone objective and with the partner. The most important sexual organ is the mouth, and the brain is next. In other words, it's important to communicate, it's important to think, it's important to observe and to communicate ideas. Trust is the biggest help and the biggest problem. If we cannot trust the person with whom we are, whoever that might be, husband, partner, lover, whatever you call it, then we have a very difficult time communicating what feels good,

what we would enjoy, what we have trouble with. The changing roles of men and women offer both sexes and opportunity to develop more appropriate sexual behavior and attitudes. Canfield points to changes in the types and availability of birth control as one factor that has changed men's attitudes about sexuality? Men used to be in charge of birth control, right? They either pulled out, which was ineffectual, or they used condoms. Then we changed birth control, and with an emphasis on control, women started taking over. The pill, diaphragm, et cetera, were female methods of contraception. So we had the male role changing there. Certainly the male role is changing in child care. More men are taking turns at being the primary caretakers of children, women are professional a lot, and go out and out of the home to work. Men stay in the home to work or to take care of children.

That has changed enormous amounts of changes in the going out and dating habits. Most of the people I know, I would say white, middle class, college educated, don't use words like dating anymore. They go out together, and they are equal, and everybody pays for his or her own movie or own Japanese dinner or whatever. There's much more equality, and there's much more equality on the part of women to enjoy sexuality, and therefore express what they would like, and so forth. We have a men's movement, which is rather big in the big cities in this country, which is a feminist movement on the part of men, fighting sexism, fighting clear role definitions. The changes are just overwhelming. Canfield says she believes birth control is an important aspect of sexual health. Education about birth control, she says, should not be a matter of fear, but of choice.

But I think we could make some inroads, not just scare tactics, but certainly promote the idea of care and caution more than we're doing. We see we live in a very anti-sexual society so that you don't have an awful lot of promotion of how to achieve greater sexual enjoyment with less risk. That is philosophically indefensible, so that we have an awful lot of problem letting people know that they can have their cake and eat it too, as it were. That is what the conservative element would certainly call what I am proposing. But I think there's something very salutery and very healthy with a healthy sexual life, and therefore it is my interest in making it healthy in all areas, not just emotionally, gratifying, but also physically healthy. Elizabeth Canfield, sex educator and counselor,

will host a one hour call-in program tonight on KUNM. Listeners are invited to call with questions and opinions. This special program is part of KUNM's celebration of International Women's Day. It will begin at 7 o'clock. Cake Bennett conducted the interview with Elizabeth Canfield. This program was written and produced by Gail Krueger. I'm Barbara Shealey. Thank you.