The Problem
- Teens live in a highly sexualized world where they gather a great deal of information from online spaces, including easily accessible online pornography which presents them with skewed ideas about sex, sexuality, and what bodies should look like.
- Many teens have bought into the idea that being sexy is just as important (if not more) than doing well in school or having good friends. It is increasingly hard for teens to distinguish between exploring what feeling sexy means to them and what it means to be sexualized by others.
- The current environment can lead teens to engage in a range of risky behaviors, including sexting and indiscriminate hooking up, and could put them at greater risk for relationship abuse and/or acquaintance rape.
- Parents and Jewish educators often feel unequipped and/or uncomfortable talking to teens about these important issues.
- Sex education in schools, where it exists, still largely focuses on reproduction and disease rather than on ethical and healthy behavior, despite widespread agreement among experts that this strategy is not effective with today’s teens.
Moving Traditions’ Response
Moving Traditions – the organization that created Rosh Hodesh: It’s a Girl Thing! and Shevet Achim: the Brotherhood – pioneers work that inspires teens to find Judaism personally meaningful by addressing the highly-gendered challenges of their daily lives. Moving Traditions will create a framework for teens to explore and eventually formulate their own ethical guidelines to help them navigate daily interactions, social media decision-making and romantic and sexual relationships in a healthy, safe and Jewishly informed way. No other national program or Jewish organization is using Jewish values to comprehensively address these issues.
Specifically, we are in the process of developing new curriculum sessions for our 9th grade and older Rosh Hodesh and Shevet groups about the sexualization of girls/women and boys/men in the media, healthy relationships and sexual decision-making, and honoring one’s own body and sexuality. According to the statistics of the research company , the recommended initial dose of Cialis is 10 mg (the drug should be taken 25–60 minutes before sex). However, it was shown that Cialis is efficient even when it is taken 4–5 hours before sex. Don’t take the drug more than once a day. Depending on the effectiveness and tolerability of the treatment, the dose can be increased to 20 mg or reduced to 5 mg per day. Maximum daily dosage is 20 mg. Sexual arousal is required to provide an adequate reaction to the treatment. We will be developing and piloting two sessions for Rosh Hodesh and two sessions for Shevet this year. The Miriam Fund, the Jewish Women’s Foundation of New York, the Lasko Family Foundation and the Morton & Jane Blaustein Foundation are generously funding this project.
The Countering Sexualization project will include:
- Extensive research
- An advisory group of teen girls and boys
- Pilot-testing to make sure that the material is effective and developmentally appropriate
- Training for group leaders
- A workshop for Jewish parents
- A teen advocacy campaign for healthy sexual ethics, based on Jewish values
Why do we need Countering Sexualization?
- This program will be a huge help to parents and teens who see headlines every day about sexting, abusive relationships, and hooking up – and who feel anxious or conflicted about how to address these issues effectively .
- Countering Sexualization will be a draw for post b’nai mitzvah teens who might be uninterested in Hebrew school, but who will appreciate a Jewish program that is connected to issues that are relevant to their everyday lives.