Former Surgeon General Dr. Joycelyn Elders Combats Our Sex-Shaming Culture

I’m not lying when I say I’m excited to introduce every week’s guest on Unscrewed. It’s always a joy, if a fraught, white-knuckle-making experience, given how our society is mired down — like a filthy barnacled ship — with sex-based shame. It’s a wonder to me that we move forward at all, much less float sometimes.

But like a mud-loving sow, I enjoy wrestling with those problems on the podcast; it’s part of the joy. (Apparently, it also has me trotting out good-bad metaphors like my 4th grade English teacher.)

This week, it is not only my joy, but my venerable honor to introduce Dr. Joycelyn Elders — the former Surgeon General and the very first Black American to ever hold the position, who’s been on the front lines of sexual education and reproductive rights for more than 50 years.

In 1994, while serving as Surgeon General, Elders was speaking at an AIDS conference at the UN and was asked whether masturbation should be encouraged as an alternative to “riskier” sexual behaviors. She answered, “I think that is something that is a part of human sexuality and it’s a part of something that perhaps should be taught. But we’ve not even taught our children the very basics.”