We watched two new
Bullshit! episodes last night, specifically the ones about martial arts and teen sex. The martial arts one didn't really tell me anything new. I took Tae Kwon Do when I was in high school, and I pretty much realized even then that it was bullshit. I mean, it was good exercise, and much more fun than weight lifting or aerobics classes. As addressed in the episode, though, martial arts classes are generally going to include a certain amount of pseudo-religious psychobabble. There's a lot of talk about the ancient origins of whatever martial art they're teaching, and how it exercises your mind and spirit as well as your body. Also, you'll get a few random Asian words thrown in. I think I can still count to ten in Korean, although I have no idea whether my pronunciations are at all accurate. That's mostly just trimmings and trappings, though. What's more annoying is how the teachers try to sell it as Serious Stuff. I remember the owner of the gym I attended telling a kids' class that it was easier to get A's in school than to get a black belt. I never made it to black belt, but I participated in and watched several belt tests, and you didn't have to be any good at anything to pass. If your check clears and you show up, you move up in belt rank. If that's how your school works, I'm going to assume you're in a drastically underfunded district (which I guess is pretty much all of them these days). Then there were the rants about how many martial arts gyms weren't authentic (yeah, because I'm sure that one was), and the times they had us clean the building. They actually mentioned this in the episode as well. I put up with it at the time, but really, I kind of have to wonder if I'd let my kid stay in a martial arts class where they were forced to do household chores. If I'm going to pay someone for that, I'd rather it be the kid. I'm inclined to believe the gym owner is making enough money from the belt tests to hire maid service.
The teen sex episode wasn't really all that well organized, but it touched upon some significant points. The main one was that there's really no way to keep teenagers from having sex. One lady on the show said that you'd never have sex that enjoyable again, which made me disappointed that I didn't get any until my twenties. It wasn't a question of "waiting" so much as that I don't think any girl would have touched me with a ten-foot pole. Most of them still wouldn't. There was also something about how kids could be considered sex offenders if they were caught with naked pictures of other kids on their cell phones, even if they didn't ask for or want these pictures. Institutionalized homophobia was also addressed. I guess the teen sex topic is a little tricky because you have to draw the line somewhere, and it can be difficult to decide where. It's beyond obvious, however, that ignoring the whole situation and forcing obstinance-only...sorry, ABSTINENCE-only education is about as effective as sticking your fingers in your ears. And at least the fingers-in-ears technique isn't an offensive attempt to enforce religious values on people who might not share your religion. Since when is sex the province of the religious sphere, anyway? Okay, it actually has been for a long time, both in a good and bad way. You had your Canaanite temple prostitutes and your Roman vestal virgins. But does anyone ever stop to think about WHY what people are doing with their genitals should be of any concern to mystical guardians of the universe? You'd think they'd have more important things to worry about. But maybe the reason God allowed the BP oil spill is that He's too busy investigating every single occasion of non-marital sex in the entire world to do anything about actual disasters.
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