Receive credits for talking about sex!
By Shantell WhiteheadFor over 15 years, Glendale Community College (GCC) has offered sex classes. These courses are not the "birds and the bees" courses you received in grade school, however. Human sexuality courses go beyond basic knowledge and explore the topic of human sexuality from a variety of individual perspectives.
Students can learn about sexuality from theological, psychological, philosophical, and physiological viewpoints as well as how sexuality is influenced by culture, age, gender, and orientation.
Instructor Kam Majer, Ph.D., explains that in her class, PSY277 (Psychology of Human Sexuality), students can expect to learn something new about sexual behavior every day. Majer is so convinced this is true she claims she will give her entire class an A if they prove her wrong. So far, the only A grades she has given are the ones that have been earned.
Unlike basic psych classes, which only scrape the surface of sexual behavior, PSY 277 is an in-depth discussion of human sexuality, including a detailed description of physiological responses during sex, abnormal sexual impulses, and alternative lifestyles.
During the discussion of alternative lifestyles, students have the opportunity to hear guest speakers talk about their own way of life, may it be transgender individuals, people living with HIV, nudists, and others with an unconventional outlook.
Other classes, like PHI218 (Philosophy of Sexuality), "focus more on prescriptive and proscriptive sexual behaviors as defined by classical religions, as well as earth-based and alternative spiritualities," according to GCC religious studies instructor Julie Waskow.
Waskow hopes "students will come away from the class with a recognition that love, relationships, and sexual acts are permeated by cultural and social meanings and that our culture and religion (or lack thereof) impacts or even defines our styles of loving, love making, and with whom it is 'acceptable' for us to share those intimate experiences." These classes are both offered next semester, along with SOC130 (Human Sexuality), which explores sexuality from a sociological point of view, and PSY143 (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgendered Studies), which focuses on sexual orientation.
Although these classes are based on human sexuality, students are in no way required to talk about their own sex-life and do not need to be sexually active to take the courses.
Courses concerning human sexuality are important because, Majer asserts, "we live in a world where we are surrounded by sex, but there isn't much of an opportunity to learn about it."
If you need additional credits, or are interested in human sexuality, this is the opportunity for which you have been waiting.
