The original link of this thread, which talks about the sex ed classes of a Mr Al Vernacchio, does strike me as a pretty detailed example of the kind of model that some European countries are practicing.
And I'll finish with another example from my own experience that illustrates the wider difference in attitude that I alluded to: I visited Germany about 6 or so years ago. One day we went to an area near Potsdam, I think it was Wannsee. This area has a lot of beautiful old architecture and park land and people can swim in some of these parks because they back onto a lake but this area is still very much a developed part of the Berlin/Potsdam area.
We went there with a small group of people, got lake-side and people started taking their clothes off to swim naked in the lake. This was a group of male and female people, almost none of which were in any kind of intimate relationship with each other. And in the middle of the day, with streets nearby and many people walking around the park and surrounding area. It wasn't specifically designated as a nude swimming area, it was just a swimming area and some people swam nude, some didn't and neither caused any issues for anyone.
This is one example that I noticed while in Europe but there were more of these situations where nudity or sex were treated in just a very mature and reasonable way. Not as something that should be shunned and feared out of some kind of puritan obsession with the subject; which in its self I think is fuelled by deeply unsatisfied sexual desires.
My partner of nearly 10 years is German and while I do feel that I've had a fairly long history of exposure to their culture through her, nor can I say that I am able to speak authoritatively on all Germans or all stratas of their culture. Certainly Germany and wider Europe are not made up of people who have an entirely homogenous attitude towards sexuality. And as you would of course know, it's not like you can just walk naked through any street in Berlin without causing a fuss. But having lived in Germany, I'm sure you understand the subtle difference in the European attitude that I'm trying to illustrate.
I think you're putting the horse before the cart. I'm pretty sceptical that anyone is 'fundamentally wired' any differently from anyone else. We're all products of our society and even if a certain set of social conventions are deeply baked into the history of a particular culture, that shouldn't mean that said social conventions should be mistaken for some form of innate attribute or that they cannot be re-examined if they are found to be detrimental. I'm not implying that this is necessarily what you meant, I'm just pointing out that its a slippery slope from 'fundamentally wired for X' to 'can't change X'.
http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/408927_5 http://www.usnews.com/usnews/news/articles/070318/26sex.htm
The original link of this thread, which talks about the sex ed classes of a Mr Al Vernacchio, does strike me as a pretty detailed example of the kind of model that some European countries are practicing.
And I'll finish with another example from my own experience that illustrates the wider difference in attitude that I alluded to: I visited Germany about 6 or so years ago. One day we went to an area near Potsdam, I think it was Wannsee. This area has a lot of beautiful old architecture and park land and people can swim in some of these parks because they back onto a lake but this area is still very much a developed part of the Berlin/Potsdam area.
We went there with a small group of people, got lake-side and people started taking their clothes off to swim naked in the lake. This was a group of male and female people, almost none of which were in any kind of intimate relationship with each other. And in the middle of the day, with streets nearby and many people walking around the park and surrounding area. It wasn't specifically designated as a nude swimming area, it was just a swimming area and some people swam nude, some didn't and neither caused any issues for anyone.
This is one example that I noticed while in Europe but there were more of these situations where nudity or sex were treated in just a very mature and reasonable way. Not as something that should be shunned and feared out of some kind of puritan obsession with the subject; which in its self I think is fuelled by deeply unsatisfied sexual desires.