Mary Steichen Calderone

From Philosopedia

Calderone, Mary Steichen (1 July 1904 - 24 October 1998)

Calderone, the daughter of the photographer Edward Steichen and niece of poet Carl Sandburg, was named Humanist of the Year by the American Humanist Association in 1974.

In 1953, she was medical director of the Planned Parenthood Association. From 1954 to 1975, she was executive director of the Sex Information Educational Council of the United States, becoming its president in 1975. In 1980, she received the Margaret Sanger Award from the Planned Parenthood Federation.

She enjoyed asking young audiences for a four-letter word ending in “k” that meant sexual intercourse. When they tittered, she answered “talk”: “We never talk to each other as nonsexual people.” Human sexuality, she explained, goes far beyond the sex act—it is multifaceted and must not be hidden in a shroud of secrecy nor lowered to the level of erotic expression. “Sometimes,” she wrote, “sex becomes a problem because of our inability to talk openly and objectively about it. . . . It is interesting to note that in the vocabulary of some cultures there is a rich supply of entirely acceptable words to describe the varieties of sexual love and parts of the body especially involved in it. . . . How much better if [we too] had an ample, pleasant array of language with which to talk to each other about sex!”

Sex education, she insisted, should start in kindergarten, leading enemies such as the Christian Crusade, the John Birch Society, and Moral Majority to accuse her of being an “aging sexual libertine.”

A nominal Quaker, she was plunged into depression upon the death from pneumonia of her eight-year-old daughter.

Calderone wrote Talking With Your Child About Sex (1982) and Family Book About Sexuality (1987). Although she and Dr. Frank Calderone separated in 1979, the two never divorced. He died in 1987.

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