Let's Talk About: Comprehensive Sex Education
Let’s talk about Sex: What is Comprehensive Sex Education and why is it important?
Human beings enjoy sex. That’s why there’s 7 billion of us on the planet. That’s why sex is the go-to marketing strategy for almost every product from deodorant, to cola, to cars. Sex is all around us, everywhere we turn. It’s in the marketing, it’s in the music, the movies, the books we read. We are wild about sex. It’s one of our deepest and strongest biological drives, but what is it? How do we have sex? How do we have great, safe, pleasurable, fulfilling sex?
I’m a sex ed teacher. I teach middle and high school students through a comprehensive program called O.W.L. (Our Whole Lives), which is a part of the Unitarian Church. This article is not affiliated with that program, but I do love the program and encourage anyone with a school age child to look into it. I can probably guess what you’re thinking, “Sex Education through a Church? It must be Abstinence Only”. No! Not even close. Comprehensive sexual education is about equipping young people (and adults) with all of the information they need to make healthy, responsible, fulfilling choices about their bodies and their lives as they grow up, as well as encouraging dialogue between our students and their parents. We discuss not only anatomy, contraception, and safer sex, but also healthy relationships, communication skills, gender issues, and discuss different routes of sexual expression. It’s not a perfect program, the curriculum is in the process of receiving some much-needed up dates and it’s a long process, but in my opinion it’s just about the best available.
Why is this important? Lots of people have terrible sex education growing up and they go on to have perfectly fine sex lives. Right?
Sure. And even a blind squirrel finds a nut every now and again. But wouldn’t it be easier to equip young people with the tools and information they need from the get go? Many people fear that providing children and teens with information about sexuality and access to safer sex options will encourage them to have lots more sex. This just isn’t true. Studies showed that students who received comprehensive sex education were either equally likely to have sex as their Abstinence-only counterparts, or even delayed their first sexual encounters*. In fact, students who participated in comprehensive sex education programs were 50% LESS likely to have an unplanned pregnancy than those who received abstinence only education.* Studies have shown time and time again that young people benefit from real sex education, so why people continue to insist on abstinence only sex ed is mind boggling.
When I discuss teaching sex ed to young people, adults are usually fairly enthusiastic. When I bring up the fact that most adults desperately need sex ed too, they balk. As if simply having had sex at some point in one’s life is means they know longer need to learn more. But over and over again we see examples of adults with a profound lack of understanding about how the human reproductive system and sex work.
For example, Representative from Missouri Todd Akin of Missouri famously said in 2012 “If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down...”.
That’s not how the female body works.
For another example, a prominent GOP donor Foster Friess claimed “This contraceptive thing, my gosh it's such inexpensive, back in my days we used Bayer aspirin for contraception, the gals put it between their knees and it wasn't that costly.”
Because that’s the best solution to the rising cost of contraceptives. Also, there are a great number of penetrative sexual positions that involve keeping one's knees together, so I doubt this would be an effective method of contraception, even if used as instructed.
Any collection of politicians discussing contraception or abortion will yield plenty of misinformation and a clear lack of understanding about how the human reproductive system works. Politicians should be the best educated among us, because their opinions on sexuality effect the lives and health of their constituents. Unfortunately it would seem that they need some comprehensive sex ed themselves.
We also see people with profound misunderstandings of how gender, biological sex, and sexuality are intertwined. Recent events discriminating against Transgender people are pretty clear signs of this.
I believe that information and education are the first best lines of defense against ignorance, hatred, and bigotry. Unfortunately, for a society that’s as absolutely obsessed with Sex as we are, we have some serious hang ups about talking about it. People have a notion that sex is something shameful, or “private”. Meaning that it should be kept away from public discourse, and especially away from children. As if everyone, including children, aren’t bombarded with sex every day, both from the outside and from our own internal drives. By creating a taboo around sex and sexuality we make it impossible for people to have open and meaningful discussions about it, and therefore to understand it. People become ashamed of themselves, bitter, angry. Resentful of those who are different because they can’t understand it and are disgusted by it.
By breaking those taboos and talking about sex, in the clearest and most accurate ways possible I hope to help everyone to understand more about how sexuality works, how sex works. I want everyone to have a safe, satisfying, sex life. But that doesn’t happen by magic, it happens through the tough work of acknowledging one’s own biases, one’s own lack of knowledge in certain areas and then seeking out information to fill in those gaps.
In this series I’m going to be exploring the basics of comprehensive Sex Education, with an aim at making sure that every adult who reads these articles will at least have a place to start.
My topics will be:
Anatomy and Physiology
Communication and Consent
Diversity and Inclusion
The world of Sex is so broad, it encompases so much that I could probably write all day every day for a year and still barely scratch the surface, this is barely a start. My hope is that this may stir up some questions and lead people to seek out more information.
With Love
Erin
* Information gathered from studies cited on: http://www.advocatesforyouth.org/publications/1487
Visited on 12/21/16
Originally posted on Femislay.com