Animated Sex Education Goes Viral
In its season premiere, Swedish kid's show Bacillakuten showed an educational cartoon featuring a stylized penis and vagina. They dance, they sing, and eventually they demonstrate where they're each located on the human body. The video has gone viral in Sweden which is about when people there started freaking out. Sweden is generally seen as being more sexually progressive than a lot of other countries (including America). So, one might think this video would be met with smiles and heads nodding in agreement.Yeah, not so much. One commenter asked if the show's producers were "on drugs" while another railed about genitals being "totally inappropriate subject matter" for preschool aged children. I know when I began "reproductive health" class in 6th grade that we had to have signed parental permission notes. Are genitals a big secret or something? I don't see how.
The video itself is tasteful, sex-positive, and damn cute. Since the lyrics aren't in English, that might even protect you from being earwormed.
So, What's the Problem?
Cool, right? The terms "Snopp" and "Snipp" are typically how Swedish parents refer to genitals in front of very young children. The Swede version of "willy" or "thingy" and "no-no" or "va-jay-jay." Don't even get me started on the horror of calling any body part a "no-no." As the cartoon genitals dance around in the video, they sing about the penis coming forward at full speed (okay, that's pretty funny. Slow down, guy!) and that the vagina "sits there so elegantly, even on an old lady." The instructional video goes on to say the vagina is awesome. Why in the world would anyone want to dispute that?It's expected that some adults will get the vapors whenever someone suggests telling children basic facts about sex. This video is so simple and straightforward. It only explains that penises and vaginas exist. It also states that these parts are also used for peeing. That's not exactly true. Women do not pee from their vagina.
The video says these body parts are "awesome" and "elegant." Is that the problem? Is a body-positive message really a problem? Are some adults just paranoid that kids "can't handle" hearing cartoons sing about things they're already fully aware of? Maybe parents just need to feel in full control of when their kid finds out that they have genitals. Do they simply want to avoid their children's follow up questions in case they're "uncomfortable?"
When this Swedish kid's video made its way to YouTube, it was quickly shuffled into the "Adult" category despite being a video made for preschool age children. That tells us a fair bit about American hysteria in discussing bodies, sex, and genitals. If we listened only to obscenity policies of sites like YouTube or Facebook, we'd learn that breastfeeding is obscene since pics of it are immediately removed. Meanwhile, horrific pics of cruelty, violence, and abuse are left alone since they're "educational." This might cause one to wonder exactly what kind of education these sites think they're purveying. YouTube has since decided that Snipp and Snopp can, in fact, be seen by everyone on their site. That a sex-positive message doesn't have to be for adults only. Wouldn't it be cool if the rest of the world followed suit?
