Wonder Vag vs. the Sperminator

6a00d83451bae269e20120a89747b3970b-800wiFrom our fiddling, fire-lighting friends up north, comes this sex ed website created for teens by the Ontario government. The best part is a Flash video game where you can play one of four superheroes:

  • • Wonder Vag the virgin, who can tell if you’re lying (is that a power I lost when I turned in my V-card?)
  • • Willy the Kid, a short sidekick-type whose superpower is “massive rock hard strength”
  • • Power Pap, a righteous babe who “believes in getting tested”
  • • Captain Condom, a scientist who was turned into half-man, half-condom by a lab accident

The villain is the Sperminator, who wears a Lucha Libre mask and has two massive, rippling penis arms. Answer one of their sex-ed questions about chlamydia, condoms, etc., wrong, and the Sperminator splooges your character with an angry-looking sperm. “Aagh, right in the face,” says Wonder Vag.

So blogger Karen Sugarpants thinks this is all a horrible idea to introduce in the schools. I am tempted to defer to her because 1) she’s Canadian and 2) she has done groundbreaking work in the field of full-body itchwear. (Really, you have to click that link. Those pictures are ridiculous.)

But I am going to disagree with Sugarpants. I’m wildly pro-sex-ed, if only because I don’t have to squirm through it any more. And as ludicrous and raunchy as those characters are, I actually missed a couple questions and saw what the right answer was. (Who knew that a chlamydia test only involves peeing in a cup? Not me.) That process is called learning. And yes, for a 30-something father of small children in a blissfully clap-free marriage, it’s a little creepy to be learning that way. But it makes sense for teens.

That bit of discomfort you’re feeling? Don’t make your kids suffer because of it. The stakes are much higher for them right now.

[Thanks to DadWagon friend TheZeroBoss for Tweeting this along.]

Published by Nathan

Nathan Thornburgh is a contributing writer and former senior editor at TIME Magazine who has also written for the New York Times, newyorker.com and, of course, the Phnom Penh Post. He suspects that he is messing up his kids, but just isn’t sure exactly how.

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10 Comments

  1. As I mentioned on twitter when this was discussed over there, I have a hard time getting worked up over this. This is juvenile and tasteless sure – but so are teens. I know I would have found this hilarious when I was a 14 year old, and therefore would have engaged with it.

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