(The class reaction to that video was actually a fascinating insight into the stereotypes we held, even as teenagers, on what kinds of harassment are serious and what kinds are sexy/funny/unthinkable.
Video: "Sexual harassment can be male on female,"
Class: [stern silence]
Video: "Female on male,"
Class: [snicker]
Video: "Male on male,"
Class: [laughter]
Video: "Or female on female."
Class: [roaring, pounding on desks, falling out of chairs])
But at least they taught us that contraception exists! We even had another day where we learned that homosexuality and bisexuality exist. For public education in the US, that's outstanding sex ed. In retrospect, someone probably had to fight for that.
And yet it left me, not just lacking in advanced topics, but in the basic understanding of how sex even worked. I mean, it wasn't until I started watching porn that I understood what an erection was, or that intercourse involved thrusting. The sex-ed version was so sanitized it had left me honestly thinking men stuffed their soft dicks in women and just sorta stood around until they ejaculated. This isn't a frivolous pornographic detail. This is like taking driver's ed and still not knowing about the gas and brake pedals.
So here's some things I wish they'd taught in my sex ed class:
•"I know this is a pretty loaded subject, and a little nervous laughter is okay, but if you're laughing at someone, or if you're making disrespectful remarks, you're out and you can tell the principal what was so funny. This classroom is not a place to hurt people."
•"Homosexuality and bisexuality don't just exist as some 'other' that you should dutifully tolerate. Some of the people in this class are gay or bisexual. It may be you. You may or may not know it yet. And all that is okay."
•"Oh hey, you know who else exists? Transsexual, transgendered, and genderqueer people. They exist too. Let's make a note of that."
•"Some people want sex more and some people want it less. These are both normal and okay. There's nothing wrong with a girl who wants it more or a boy who wants it less."
•"It is not normal or okay to not want sex but to have someone have sex with you anyway. Whether you're a boy or a girl, even if you didn't stop them from having sex with you, that is not how sex is supposed to go."
•"There's a big debate among adults whether we should teach you about contraception. So I figure hey, this debate is about you, so you deserve to know about it. I'm going to teach the controversy! We'll learn the arguments on both sides of this issue and discuss them in class. However, we can't very well have an intelligent discussion on contraception without everyone being on the same page about the basics, so let me give you a quick primer. This is a condom..."
•"You know what else exists? Abortion. I'm not saying you should. I'm just saying that if you're fifteen and you're pregnant and you're not remotely ready to be a parent, you should know this is a thing you can do and have an idea of where to begin the process."
•"Here's a real rough outline of how sexual activity actually works. It's not lasciviously detailed, but it'll give you the gist. There's details in there like 'most penises like stroking with a bit of squeeze, but ask your partner to be sure.' You're going to be doing this at some point in your lives, you ought to know what you're even trying to accomplish." [I am aware how hilariously impossible this would be to get into a sex-ed curriculum anywhere in the US. I'm just dreaming now.]
•"You can't talk about sex without talking a little bit about love. Here's some things you should know about love."
•"The most important thing about sex is that it's consensual. The second most important thing is that it's safe. Whether you have sex is not important at all."
If you ruled the world, what would you teach kids in sex ed?
"It is not normal or okay to not want sex but to have someone have sex with you anyway. Whether you're a boy or a girl, even if you didn't stop them from having sex with you, that is not how sex is supposed to go."
ReplyDelete"... and it's their fault, not yours."
That's a bit tricky. I know there's been some posts here about changing consent culture and that's very interesting. But if you're going to hold people to that standard, you'd better teach a lot more consent culture, with role plays, in the sex ed class.
DeleteThat is exactly what I was getting at.
DeleteA resounding YES on role plays! These days, it's possible to get lots of good information online, even information on sex positivity, but actually *practicing* is not something you can do on the internet. (Of course, you can practice some elements, but actual face to face conversation is a completely different dynamic from asserting yourself in a chatroom.)
DeleteWhat about kinks?
ReplyDeleteWhat about actually getting your hands on some contraception?
I would limit the discussion of kink to, "Some people have different tastes, and like to do unusual things while they're having sex, and that's OK."
DeleteAs for the latter, there is no way any state would allow such education to pass, unfortunately. :(
I believe a school in Maine provided the pill free to girls in middle school. Its out there, you just have to find the right community.
DeleteSource: http://articles.latimes.com/2007/oct/18/nation/na-contraception18
i went to a high school in michigan, and we were shown actual contraceptives in person, including female condoms, whatever those ring things are and some other types. we were told about depo provera and the pill and all that, too. otherwise, we got pretty much the same education as the author of this article.
DeleteOur teacher put a condom onto a plastic penis to show it worked. Sadly, my mother called the school to complain.
DeleteI'd stick in something about masturbation too. it was mentioned to me but never explained. and it was only in the context of guys. tell kids that sex feels good, and you can get that pleasure safely on your own.
ReplyDeleteMasturbation - what a great idea! Totally dream the US would ever embrace the thought of girls masturbating to be a good thing - but how else do you learn about your body?
DeleteOne teacher I had the pleasure of working with is a *fantastic* educator and has no qualms about explaining all of this to 13-year-olds. I was very pleased when I sat in on one of her classes and she not only talked about masturbation, but said it was perfectly normal and could even be fun, explained how girls usually do it, explained how boys usually do it, encouraged them to give it a try but also said it's OK if you do and it's OK if you don't, too! I was like...yay!!
DeleteI would also point out that not all contact with your own genitals counts as masturbation--there are actually people who believe that cleaning out your labia while taking a shower counts as masturbation!
DeleteLove this. I never got sex ed. Imagine my surprise when I found out I had a vagina. I was 13!
ReplyDeleteI guess this would be more 201 than 101, but a class in how to spot abusive relationship patterns would sure be handy.
ReplyDeleteAlso: "Some people want sex more and some people want it less. These are both normal and okay." That's the only sex-related statement that little ole asexual me will be saying "yes, yes, yes" to this month.
(I love this blog so much)
I actually had a sex ed course that included a pretty decent segment on abusive relationships in 9th grade. I don't remember how seriously it was taken at the time, but pieces of it have definitely still stuck with me 6 years later, so that's nice.
DeleteAlthough...as far as I can remember, it was all in the context of, "Boyfriends can be abusive to girlfriends!", so still some progress to be made there, but it's a start?
DeleteThe only thing I heard on that score was:
Delete"Don't let a boy pressure you into sex."
"If a guy says he'll leave you if you don't have sex with him, then he's going to leave you anyway. Don't give in!"
There was also the implication that the way guys try to pressure you into sex is by reminding you that birth control exists, and that you can convince him to stop by saying, "But those don't always work!" Because at this point, he will, of COURSE, respond with "I didn't know that. I guess if it's not 100% effective, it's not really safe sex after all!" and you'll both remain happy and "pure."
This is 90% of the "sex ed" you get in an abstinence-only program. The other 10% is pre-natal development, with a six-week embryo labeled as a four-week one, and no discussion whatsoever about how the sperm cells might have gotten into the mother's body in the first place.
I think a link to Scarleteen?
ReplyDeleteI disagree about kinks per se, but maybe emphasising that people are massively different and it's important to find what's authentically yours instead of mimicking what you think sex ought to be.
You should look into the Unitarian Church - at least around here, they do a FANTASTICALLY detailed sex-ed course called "Our Whole Lives" that covers so much of what you talk about here, that just isn't covered in traditional sex-ed. My boyfriend went through it, and they did things like have break-up workshops, all about how to respectfully end a relationship, and discuss how to negotiate libido differences, and the course culminated with a condom-on-a-banana relay race.
ReplyDeleteHonestly? I'm just jealous that I had to go through the public-school kind, where I did so many "color in the diagram" worksheets that I could tell you exactly where a vas deferens was, but I didn't know a damn thing that was actually useful. Thankfully, I managed to find the right* websites with which to educate myself, but it would have been pretty easy for me to have ended up really, really ignorant.
*though I will say, as much as reading Dan Savage early meant I absorbed the keeping an open mind thing pretty early... it did totally skew my perception of how kinky most people are. I went through a brief period assuming that if someone couldn't come up with something "they were into" than it meant it had to be REALLY AWFUL so they couldn't tell me, and was obviously poop-eating or something similar. I grew out of that though.
I went to Our Whole Lives! The best part was that we could anonymously submit questions that would get answered every week. It was a pretty good time.
DeleteI want that stuff!
DeleteOWL is one of the major reasons I joined a UU church.
Delete(There are worse reasons to affiliate religiously.)
Seriously, I facilitated the OWL program one year at my church, and my oldest son will be attending soon. This program is unbelievable! For the record, it was developed jointly between the UUA and UCC and we had people from both organizations when I went for training:
Deletehttp://www.uua.org/re/owl/
http://www.ucc.org/justice/sexuality-education/our-whole-lives.html
If you like this blog and you have kids, or have friends with kids, please pass the word.
The OWL program is truly, absolutely amazing! I was a facilitator for the program one year, and my oldest child will be participating in it soon. The program was actually developed jointly by the UUA and the UCC, and when I went for training we had teachers from both organizations:
Deletehttp://www.uua.org/re/owl/
http://www.ucc.org/justice/sexuality-education/our-whole-lives.html
If you have kids, or friends with kids, and like this blog, please check it out and pass the word!
Big one for me: that if you feel you need to physically fend him off from PDA you've said no to, that's crossed the line into sexual harassment. Yes, even if you've been dating for years. Yes, even if every other girl in a relationship in the school has said yes to the exact same touches. Still harassment.
ReplyDeleteWe didn't get taught that. Instead, I got told by classmates I was abusing him for insisting he remove his hand from my person and then pushing the arm the hand was attached to away to make him remove it -- the school administrators just looked on (literally, that particular day, since some of them were standing maybe ten feet away).
Emphasizing consent. And consent again.
ReplyDeleteSaying to the kids, "Homosexuality, bisexuality, scat, amputees, urine, needles, whatever. Between consenting adults, these things are okay. It doesn't have to turn you on to be okay. That's healthy sexuality: Reasonably safe and between two consenting adults."
"About your gender. You can be male, female, both, or neither. It doesn't have to match your physical body, and you don't have to make your body match if you don't want to, but you can. How do you know? It's up to you. No, seriously. I am not kidding."
Just presenting these ideas would make a huge difference. It did for me when I got on the Internet. I didn't realize the extent of my non-cisness and non-heteroness as a teenager because no one ever talked about it; I just assumed I would be a cis hetero female because that's what everyone treated me as and talked about. I never realized just how a la carte sex and gender were.
In some ways, presenting accurate, helpful, non-judgmental information about trans issues and identity might be the most important idea that anyone has brought up so far. I just mean that in the sense that while many of these other ideas are out there in the culture for teenagers to find out about outside of school, trans issues are just not covered very much in the news, and when it's treated in entertainment it's often done terribly. As you say, just hearing from an adult that gender's not fixed, that there are options, and that any choice is okay could make a powerful difference in the lives of students.
DeleteA couple of weeks ago I had a dream that I was asked to teach Grade 9 Health. Okay, when I woke up, I'll admit it seemed like more of a nightmare. Since then, however, I've thought about it, even though it would be a difficult class to teach, I can see it being very rewarding too. Nearly everything you mentioned were things that made me realize that teaching health and sex ed is an incredibly powerful thing. My usual teacher hat is Grade 1, and I have my own campaigns to eliminate bullying and hate speach, but there's only so far to go with it at that age.
ReplyDeleteTeaching Sex Ed is one of the least desireable classes in high school, but it has so much potential to do so much good... if only the powers that be will let it be taught well.
Because we're sex positive, we wouldn't last a term. Therefore only sex neutral or negative people can survive as sex ed teachers. Sad.
DeleteI've had that fear, as a (would-be and/or step-)parent: that my version of The Talk would be way too sex-positive, and some mandated reporter would conclude that since my child is decorous but not ashamed about sex, zie must be in an abusive home -- or that a home that didn't teach zir shame is abusive by definition.
DeleteSo yeah, I think there are more people who feel being honest and open-minded is a little to close to showing them porn or grooming them than there are people who actually understand what's needed.
"Teaching Sex Ed is one of the least desireable classes in high school"
DeleteSpeak for yourself. I LOVED teaching sex ed in high school, precisely because it gave me the opportunity to talk about these kinds of things. And the kids were always paying 100% attention. To me, teaching is most fun when everyone is engaged in the subject matter, and high schoolers are definitely engaged when talking about sex. I could have spent the entire year teaching nothing but sex ed.
And yes, we talked about consent, what it means, under what conditions you can give it (not when drunk, or high, or extorted), how to put on a condom (never did the relay races though, that would have been fun), had an anonymous question box (also fun - mostly about what you can fit up where) gender and gender expression, homosexuality, among a whole bunch of other things (anatomy, sti's, etc etc). That unit led into a unit on relationships and families.
And I never got any flak for any of that. But I taught in the Bay area, so maybe I had a slightly skewed experience.
@Hershele Orstropoler
DeleteAnd what's wrong with showing them porn? I mean, 'here's how this works' and 'you know that's not actually physically possible' and etc can be very useful. You could simultaneously debunk a lot of misconceptions, dig up a few you didn't know your kid had and have something concrete to instruct on. Maybe even point out some sex-positive porn for them to watch on their own, outside of The Talk.
I get that to some points of view, this is crossing a line to almost having sex with your kids, but I think it's all about your attitude towards it. If you've got your teaching hat on and your hand out of your pants, porn can be just another educational tool.
I'd be fine with showing kids a tape of people having sex. (If such a thing were thinkable.)
DeleteI'd be very uncomfortable showing them most commercial porn.
There's a big difference between "this is one way two people can have fun together, you ought to know what this stuff looks like," and "this is athletic yet joyless sex between two people with a lot of fake body parts and 'I'm getting paid for this, I'm getting paid for this' written in every vaguely-uncomfortable grunt." The latter kinda scars me as an adult.
I actually learned a lot of the things you outlined there in my class. I think I was lucky to have a very forward thinking, younger lady teacher who wasn't afraid to share her expertise. And there was NO lewd language or innaprorpiate giggling allowed! That being said, I also remember going along to a sex talk from a lady volunteer at my uni. This was, I will be honest, the first time that I learned that men could be raped, because one of my dorm-mates was brave enough to share his story. I honestly thought, until that point, that it was something that only happened to women. I will be forever grateful to that older lady who came to my uni residence, had that discussion, and forever changed my views of what sex should be and how to inititate it, and that it's always OK to say NO at any point. I wish I could remember her name. I'd send her a thank-you card.
ReplyDeleteI think one of the things I would teach would be communication skills....both for sex and for relationships. Also, emotional control (ie what to do if you get angry, upset, want more, want less, etc). And *definitely* I would teach them about different kinds of abuse, not just the obvious "Oh, did you walk into a door?" kind, but also the more insidious, emotional kind. Because that one took me a long time to figure out, too.
My sex ed. was taught by a gym teacher who made fun of me in front of the class for saying women could ejaculate (even though I knew they could first hand!) and for pointing out that clitorises become erect during arousal. His poor wife.
ReplyDeleteOne word: lube. Had enough serious relationships with unpleasant sex fail before figuring that one out.
ReplyDeleteFor an example of actually good treatment of sex in high school, see http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/20/magazine/teaching-good-sex.html?pagewanted=all (my high school). Note that this is a senior elective, though, not the standard health class everyone takes, which when I was there was still better than most but not that great.
ReplyDeleteI also had no idea as to how sex functionally worked, and gained my insight from hollywood sex scenes. Not the most comprehensive educators.
ReplyDeleteThe major complaint I had with my Sex Ed is that they tried to teach the social aspects of sex and failed miserably. This was in Australia, so considerably better than most US Sed Ed, but we were taught that boys would try and pressure girls into sex, or girls would feel pressured to do so in order to gain social status, but girls should wait until they found someone they really loved. Not until they found someone who they were comfortable with that made them really horny, because women don't really have a sex drive, right? Implicitly, boys like sex, girls 'give it up' (and presumably lie back and think of England) in exchange for things that actually do like from boys - romance and associated trappings, or for shallow popularity. (Also, same-sex relationships? What are they?!)
That's pretty much how it was presented to me in the U.S. in the early 90s. We had plenty of scenarios presented where a boyfriend was trying to pressure his girlfriend (it was *always* in the context of a longer-term relationship) into sex, but that was the only gender dynamic presented, and there were really only three ways those scenarios went:
Delete1. She says no, he respects that, and they "agree to wait."
2. She says no, he gets huffy, they break up, and she realizes he was a jerk and she's better off without him.
3. She says no, he rapes her, she tells the police and he goes to jail.
Oh, they kept using those for another decade. I had that swill as well.
DeleteI was so well-indoctrinated that by the time I actually had a decent sex-ed presentation in my 11th-grade year, I spent the whole time thinking, "But why would I do or use any of that stuff? It's an affront to God! I don't go around making God angry!!"
It took a while to de-program myself. I spent years thinking that I was deformed and evil just for having a sex drive.
Part of my sex education: "There's this thing called 'masturbation'"
ReplyDeleteWhat I wish they'd taught: "...and here is what it is"
Like you said, I don't need technique tips or lotion recommendations, but the first time I brought myself to orgasm I thought I done some SERIOUS damage to my penis! Some general idea about what masturbation might look like if I encounter it in the would be nice.
The best "yuck it up" moment in my high school sex ed class was a heat sensitive video of a man getting an erection. We also skipped the whole "STD picture" thing and instead watched a video of a live birth (the school had at least one kid either throw up or pass out during this every year) - I have to say watching a baby's head crown is one of the large reasons I insist on condom use now.
ReplyDeleteOh my gosh, we had the exact same things, in term of the erection video and the live birth! Our sex education otherwise was so terrible that during the erection video I had to nervously laugh along with everyone else... but had no idea what was happening. Like, I left that class STILL THINKING that the flaccid penis somehow managed to make sex happen. That preconception didn't last long though, as that was around the time that I discovered the internet, which had a whole lot of information on the subject...
DeleteIt should be explained that exclusively homosexual and exclusively heterosexual are extremes on a continuum, and that all points in between are places one might find oneself. It made a big difference to me that I was exposed to the idea that if I had any sexual experiences with boys, it didn't define my preferences absolutely and forever. And I would assume for those who identify as mostly homosexual, it would have made a big difference for them to be exposed to the idea that if they had any sexual experiences with the opposite gender, it didn't define their preferences absolutely and forever.
ReplyDeleteThat would have been so wonderful. I honestly thought that 'gay' and 'straight' were the only two options. I spent at least decade of my youth being confused that I was attracted to both and trying to decide which I was more attracted to. Because obviously it had to be an exclusive decision. There were no shades of grey with these things, right??
DeleteKids should get an idea of the spectrum, not only of sexual preference but about all of this stuff. They should know that they don't need to make absolute decisions about these things because there are a hell of a lot of options and none of them have to be permanent.
"You can use things besides your body and your partner's body for sexual, and that's OK. It doesn't make you bad at sex to agree to use sexual aids, and it doesn't make you needy or wrong to want to use sexual aids. Here is how you use sex toys safely" /cue lecture on sterilization, sex toy materials, condoms & sex toys, etc., etc.
ReplyDeleteYes! And they sell these things on...Amazon!
DeleteI remember having this big epiphany when I was around 13/14 when I realised that sex wasn't just something that happened at particularly important plot points in the movie...it was something people did *all the time*. Several times a week, perhaps. Often without epic fanfare. It's weird, in retrospect, but I had similar sex ed to you, Holly, and most of my other information did come from movies, so...
ReplyDeleteUgh, this reminded me that we have sex ed coming up soon in class, and I have no idea what to expect. My teacher is young, but we all dislike her, so I don't know how she'll handle it. I hope she covers LGBTQ issues responsibly, but if she doesn't, I have no friends in the class, so I won't be able to stand up for myself. I do know that if she shows a sexual harassment video I'll start crying, so good thing I read this, cause now I know to bring it up with her beforehand.
ReplyDeleteYour post has me bursting with pride for my school district's sex ed! We covered almost every point on your list (except maybe the point about how love works, which I desperately needed as an impressionable 15-year-old). Admittedly, it was a public school (though even in Catholic school they tell you what an erection is), and we weren't taught by teachers but rather by instructors from a not-for profit in the city that basically focussed on teaching sex ed well and providing free birth control, counselling, etc. But even in jr. high, when it was taught by our humanities teacher, we covered most of the above bases (pun perhaps intended). All of this was in the most conservative province of Canada, where I knew that if I wanted an abortion, it would not only be anonymous, but paid for by the state. :)
ReplyDeleteAnd as an addendum, I guess I didn't mean to brag - I meant to say that the "good" sex ed worked. I felt well informed and it came at an appropriate time in a positive environment.
DeleteMaybe YOUR local Catholic school tells you what an erection is. My high-school biology class completely ignored everything to do with sex beyond "this is a gamete. It makes a baby." It was in the textbook, but...as far as the class was concerned, mitosis is the only form of reproduction that matters, and the only one people care about.
DeleteI only know the mechanics of reproduction because I was a super-nerd who wanted to know EVERYTHING in the textbook, whether it was covered in the class or not.
....I'd always had an inkling I'd gotten "good" sex education in school, but I'm coming to realize it was actually amazing. At least half the things on your wish list were in there, and there was no giggling or taunting tolerated.
ReplyDeleteWe did get "here are the mechanics of sex". We didn't get how to stroke a penis properly, but we definitely got erection, thrusting, vaginal lubrication, the clitoris, and quite a bit more. They managed to make it mostly dry and untitillating, but I came out of it knowing at least the basics of how to do it if not how to do it well.
I didn't go to a public school, though I DID go to a private prep school where the parents' demographics almost certainly trended conservative.
In my sex ed class, they gave us some very misogynistic, almost-rape-encouraging 'caveman psychology' explanations, along with a diagram. There was no discussion of contraceptives or LGBTQ at all.
ReplyDeleteIn a sex-Ed class, I'd emphasize sex-positivity and consent, along with safety. I think it's also very important to stress communication between all participants; otherwise, it's very easy to get the idea that sex is something that 'just happens', or that it's something that somebody (generally a man) does to somebody else (generally a woman).
"Sex is supposed to feel good. If it hurts and you don't like it, or you feel unhappy, scared or just not into it, it's okay to stop."
ReplyDelete"Sex involves emotions. It can change relationships and can make things complicated. This is not always a bad thing or a good thing, but it is a thing."
"Sex doesn't always mean putting a penis in a vagina. That is one thing that a person with a penis and a person with a vagina can do together. There are lots of other options worth exploring and enjoying, many of which can also be enjoyed by two penis-having persons or two vagina-having persons."
"If you have sex once, you don't have to keep having it. 'Yes' today doesn't mean 'yes' forever."
i.e., they call it "making love" for a reason.
DeleteI don't think going down the 'making love' route is good, actually. It's absolutely correct to say that sex is supposed to make everyone involved feel good, but to imply that these good feelings must have something to do with love is misleading. Casual one night stands are perfectly healthy and okay too. Wild, rough sex for the sheer sake of getting off is perfectly okay too. As long as there is consent and mutual enjoyment, sex without love is just as okay as sex with love.
DeleteFor me it was very disconcerting to go from the sex-ed class mentality of "you are probably going to get pregnant any time you have unprotected sex, no, seriously, you will get pregnant if there's a drop of pre-ejaculate on someone's finger and it touches you, BE AFRAID" to the adult reality of "you might take your temperature and pee on sticks and have carefully-timed intercourse for months and months and submit to rather invasive medical tests to get pregnant, and some people can't get pregnant without a lot more medical intervention than that, and some people can never get pregnant at all". I mean, I understand that in getting teens to take contraception seriously, they have to emphasize the risks, it just seems like it ends up giving people a sort of fairy-tale view of fertility.
ReplyDeleteSeconded. The idea that unprotected p-i-v intercourse automatically leads to pregnancy has been a hard one to shake and leaves me feeling broken and less-than for not getting knocked up when thousands of uninformed teenagers do it all the time.
DeleteOn the other hand, teenagers are quite fertile and extremely impulsive. Maybe they should throw in something like, "And the older you get, the longer it can take to get pregnant." Then you'll know when you get older that you're not broken, but still understand how much of a risk it is now...?
Delete"it wasn't until I started watching porn that I understood what an erection was, or that intercourse involved thrusting"
ReplyDelete*blinks in genuine disbelief* I didn't realise sex ed got this bad!
Mine (briefly) from a state funded school in England
Started at age 10, ended at age 16
Things we were taught:
STD: Names of various STDs, symptoms of STDs, some don't have symptoms, gross pictures, can be caught from oral sex and anal sex as well, always use a condom
STD testing: here's where you can get it for free, here's what will happen at an appointment, it's confidential
Contraception: Different types of contraception suit different people, these are all the many types of contraception, withdrawal method doesn't work, use condoms unless you're mono and have been tested, use condoms, use condoms, use condoms, girls don't be afraid to say no to a guy who refuses to use a condom,
Anatomy: parts of genitalia, penises like being touched, clitorises like being touched, penises get hard, vaginas get wet, this is what an orgasm is, women have orgasms too
Masturbation: it exists, it's okay, all guys masturbate, some girls masturbate
Sex: the basic mechanics of sex, sex is pleasurable for men, sex can be pleasurable for women, anal sex exists (if you do it use lube), oral sex exists (it feels good, boys will ask you for it), impotence happens, premature ejaculation happens, vaginal dryness happens, it's better to have sex in a relationship
Gay people: they exist, it's okay to be gay, this is how they have sex
Abortion: it exists, this is the law, this is where you can get advice if you think you're pregnant, this is how abortions work (basic medical facts)
Things which were implied:
Men like sex more than women, gay people are other people, sex is a 'big deal', men are active, women are passive, if anyone says no the women says no
Things I wish had been mentioned:
How relationships work, what abuse is, what assault is, what consent actually is, gender isn't binary, it's okay not to want sex, kink is okay as long as it's practised safely, trans people exist, the type of sex you like is not a comment on your worth as a person
All in all, my sex ed left me fairly well prepared, but I still felt very confused and alone when I first started realising that I liked kink. When I first realised that I liked to dominant in bed after years of being told that my gender were meant to be passive in bed I thought that I'd never find a guy who liked the sex I liked (and that scared me).
I also think that our sex ed was too late. We got the BIG CONTRACEPTION TALK at age 14/15 and by then a girl in my year was already pregnant.
I see what I received as the absolute bare minimum!
Sorry, that wasn't brief at all. I intended it to be.
DeleteI don't think we should be telling people "all guys masturbate" (or any variant of "all people in x group do y.") Most do, sure, but there are a few who don't, and we don't need to make them feel like freaks of nature for the sake of education.
DeleteI had sex ed in the Southeastern US.
DeleteWe weren't allowed detailed line drawings until middle school. Yes, even for our own gender.
First photos? Junior/senior STD slideshow. There were no before slides.
Forget mechanics beyond 'This is Tab A. This is Slot B.' No, really, the bit about how exactly everything is supposed to fit together was left to the imagination.
Contraception information was limited to failure rates.
We girls were given tampons as a freebie from the major brand in the area. Instructions on use was limited to the slip of paper in the package. This was apparently supposed to get us to be used to using their stuff, even though all the girls who got the freebie were already over 15 and had preferences for products already.
The classes were always officially abstinence-only, but I got shamed in a class simulation for acting out abstinence. Asexuality, even the less absolute variants, just wasn't permitted to exist. We had gay classmates who were out of the closet but according to the course materials they pretty much didn't exist either. It was just presumed everyone in the room was eventually going to have and like PIV and that's the way the world was.
Additionally, for time reference, I graduated in the past ten years. That same sex ed program is probably being used in my high school right now.
DeleteMy mind is boggling right now at the idea that you had to be abstinent, but you weren't allowed to be asexual. Wow, you really CAN'T win!
DeleteI am also from the UK, and I don't remember most of my pre-Sixthform sex ed (apart from the big disappointment when we did the 'condom on the dildo' thing, and I only volunteered so I could get to wear the drunk goggles, and the other girl got to wear the drunk goggles) due to a number of reasons (e.g. avoiding paying attention because having sex was what all the mean girls did).
DeleteIn Sixth Form (and after the age of consent) we got told: have as much sex as you want, as long as you enjoy it. Then we passed around a strawberry-flavoured condom and someone got to put it on the dildo.
Most of my 'knowledge of gay people' came from the other girls. Some of these girls were very homophobic. One girl recounted her mother's boarding school experiences, finishing with: "and some of them were lesbians!!!" in the same tone of voice one would use when being asked to stick a dead rat up your vagina. It was so over-the-top it circled back round to being funny.
(This is the US sex ed anon, and the one with the PDA as sexual harassment comment further up. I figure if I'm going to comment, I might as well have some bit of identity continuity.)
DeleteThat about sums it up, Erica.
No mechanics, better not be doing it now, but the only real sexual consent options we girls were told about were Where When and Who. Why was supposed to be marriage, or at least pretty damn close, and How was presumed to be missionary, of which there was no description or depiction. There was no opening for anyone to think having a Universal No Consent stance on PIV was acceptable -- you had to say yes eventually, no matter how deep the revulsion to the concept might be. Oral was vaguely mentioned as a delaying-the-inevitable tactic, and there was a special section of the STD slideshow devoted to the dangers women who provided it exposed themselves to.
By orientation, I'm a repulsed heteroromantic demisexual woman. I simply do not have the most common kink on the planet. The things I actually could have used in a sex ed curricula beyond This Is Your Own Body weren't the things that we covered, ever, and all the relationship management information we were given was based on figuring out when to do things I won't.
Mine, from various CCD and private-school classes:
Delete- Masturbation is, in the words of St. Thomas Aquinas, "an intrinsically disordered act."
- "When you have sex with someone, you give a piece of your heart to them. So when you've given away all the pieces, what's left for Mr./Ms. Right when they come along?" (That is an exact fucking quote from an actual pamphlet.)
- 2nd virginity exists. No seriously, there is a thing where after you've had sex, you can decide to magically be a virgin again as long as you save yourself for marriage from that point on. (I thought it was stupid even THEN.)
- All birth control methods fail sometimes. (We won't tell you exactly how often, because that might tempt you to try the odds.) Abstinence is the only 100% effective method for avoiding pregnancy or STDs, and is therefore the only way to truly be safe.
- No means no. If a man has sex with you after you've said "no," then either he's a Complete And Utter Monster, or you weren't saying no hard enough. There is no in-between, nor has consent ever been uncertain because of poor communication. ...But rape is never the victim's fault! Like, totally not something that happened because you weren't careful or anything! Really!
- Don't even talk to your SO about sex until you get married. After all, if you mention it--even as "How much sex do you think we would have if we were married?"--then he will think that you are easy, and no woman wants to be easy. Just assume that he's abstaining until marriage, just like you are!
- Abortion is murder. Remember, an 8-week fetus already has all its organs and just needs time to grow! (We won't tell you that those organs are all in an extremely rudimentary form, because that interferes with our pro-life agenda!)
- Here, have some creepy, gory photos of ACTUAL abortions! Just look at that poor saline-abortion victim! And the little bloody hand of a suction-abortion victim! (We won't bother to tell you that about half of the methods mentioned aren't used anymore because of risk to the mother. After all, we don't want you to think that abortionists care about mothers.)
- The use of a condom is a direct and deliberate affront to God. Godly sex is always open to the possibility of conception. Condoms "pervert both the unitive and procreative aspects of sex, and are thus a dire sin."
- Babies are made when sperm cells from Daddy meet egg cells from Mommy. We won't tell you how the sperm cells get inside Mommy--they just DO.
- Homosexuality is both evil and really gross. All gay men care about is sticking their dicks into as many poop-chutes as possible. All lesbians care about is corrupting our women--somehow. We're not sure exactly how, because sex involves penetration.
From a rather liberal (by US standards, let alone AL standards) public school, in 11th grade, WELL after the damage had already been done:
- Some people are gay. This is a morally-neutral thing.
- This is how you use a condom. Don't have sex without one until you are married.
- No means no. Respect your partner when he/she says no.
- Touching a partner's genitals directly can spread STDs. You can't always tell whether a person has an STD just by looking.
No seriously, there is a thing where after you've had sex, you can decide to magically be a virgin again as long as you save yourself for marriage from that point on.
DeleteSee, I got told a relatively sane version of this, which is that if you have sex for the first time and feel that it was a bad decision and you weren't ready after all, that doesn't mean you have to go on having sex at that age. You can put it off until later and have every right to do so. Granted, that option was being rather heavily pushed as probably the right thing to do (this was in a tough private school where the general attitude was that you didn't have time for that stuff until college anyway). But it was phrased in terms of the girl's own agency, and without any slut-shaming.
The main thing I wish my sex ed teacher had taught me was that most women have libidos too, which leads to the important corollary that the best way to find a sexual partner was to seek out someone who wants to have sex with you, not to try to get someone who doesn't want to have sex with you to do it anyway. (Also the other corollaries, which were (1) having sex isn't proof that you are so awesome that girls would let you do this unpleasant thing to them, and (2) sexual desire isn't inherently disrespectful and something to be concealed at all times. Those are pretty much what I walked away with and didn't get over them for another decade or so.)
ReplyDeleteDo I ever agree! But, putting myself in the position of the educators, it's hard to see how they could have managed anything so sex-positive; sex was supposed to be always transgressive, and the easiest way to convince a gentle (male) person of this is to portray all (male) sex(ual desire) as dangerous and aggressive.
DeleteMy high school had a great project where we had a bunch of index cards and sorted them into piles labeled "abortion," "adoption," and "keeping the baby." I'm sure that some of the cards were really shamey, but I don't actually remember what they said... the important part is that abortion was discussed as an actual *option*. The project forced us to talk about different ways to handle pregnancy.
ReplyDeleteThe ironic part is that we probably spent more time talking about pregnancy options and the consequences of pregnancy than we spent on contraception. Our contraception unit *sucked*, and some of the information was inaccurate.
I'd include some discussion about asexuality and the fact that that's okay, too. As well as something to reassure students who *are* sexual and *do* want to have sex but haven't been able to yet that they're not defective human beings.
ReplyDeleteI wish sex ed had been taught more frequently. I got two sex ed classes in my life, one when I was ten and one when I was fourteen. I lost my virginity when I was eighteen. It's kind of like getting taught algebra in ninth grade and then having no real education in it until the SATs.
ReplyDeleteI went to elementary and middle school in Texas for a long time, and I got one special day where the boys were all sent out and we had a talk with the nurse about puberty and were given samples of tampons and pads and stuff, and sex was briefly mentioned in a don't do it ever sort of way. Then, a few years later, we had a class about it but it was some religious guy who came from outside of class, and it was a purity sort of thing (I don't know, I blanked it). We had a day in health class where the boys went off and discussed their reproductive systems, and the girls went off and discussed their reproductive systems.
ReplyDeleteFunnily enough, when I moved to Oklahoma I had a much better class. Contraceptives were gone over fairly thoroughly (Dental dams, gloves, condoms) and she even used a finger cot to show us roughly how the condom goes on. There was also mention of lubricant, and I'm pretty sure Planned Parenthood and abortion even came up. I was class of 03, so I hope they're still doing that at my old school.
Still took me forever to figure out masturbation (which is pretty sad for my teenage self, all things considered).
This post turned out to be different from what I expected.
ReplyDeleteFor my part, in addition to everything else, I think sex ed should have prepared something about sex & disability. Some of the students in my graduating class had disabilities; others developed some later; more to come later, I'm certain.
So obviously I got the sexual pain issue which is complicated enough to deal with, without having to drag around the baggage sex ed teachers piled on. One of my classmates had a severe vision impairment & some mobility problems, a few others were dealing with some mental health issues.
On the one hand, if students develop disabilities later on in life, then maybe by then they'll have some more experience & resources to look up information. On the other hand, idk... some of us can't wait that long.
What they did teach us was actually pretty scary, in hindsight. I never went into some of the stories on my own blog because in retrospect, they're horrifying enough so that I don't know if anyone would ever believe me.
We live in a world where people who think all babies are blessings from God exist, no matter how or at what age they were conceived (and these people have political power).
DeleteI'm sure that most of them will be seen as plausible, unfortunately.
I'll believe damn near anything regarding what is and isn't taught. I had quite possibly the worst sex education you can get--a Catholic one.
Deletehell, i'35, and i'd KILL for a class on sex while desabled. been trying to figure it out for... 4? 4-ish years, now...
DeleteI'm from Ireland, and I never really got sex ed formally. There was something about chickens and eggs when we were in the equivalent of third grade, and we saw a video of girls discussing how their periods didn't stop them from doing things they liked when we were in sixth grade (over a year too late for me, and for a few other girls in the class) and that was it.
ReplyDeleteI never had any problems though, mostly because one of my favourite books as a child (like, around 6) was a giant book on pregnancy (written for adults: my mother actually only found out this year that I'd ever read it). I loved seeing all the pictures of what growing babies were like, and I must have absorbed some of the other info too! (I still remember what to do if I child sticks their finger in a socket :P)
My parents had also always been really open about where babies come from (especially when I had a big fight with my friends over it when I was five: I was born by c-section, and didn't realise that most children weren't, though my mam explained it to me then, and playing doctor became a lot less fraught with tension!). I had a really cool pregnant doll that came with an anatomically-correct baby boy. There were also a few books left on my bed when I was 10 and 13: an American Girls one on puberty that covered hygiene, shaving, and eating disorders, as well as how to fit a bra and insert a tampon; and another one that had colour diagrams of male and female reproductive organs. I was a pretty curious child too, and read a lot of books at a young age that I probably shouldn't have.
My only problem with masturbation was that it took me three years to realise that those nice feelings at the end were actually orgasms: Cosmo and chick lit have a lot to answer for as multiple waves of magical pleasure that make you forget your own name are not exactly standard orgasms for the majority.
I don't know if I would have been comfortable being told this in school, but it probably would have been good for me, and definitely for people who weren't as terminally curious as I am!
I think my sex ed was pretty decent in a lot of ways... though I thought it was strange when, after having some sex ed every year starting from grade 4, in grade 9 our teacher looked at us very seriously and explained "women enjoy sex too. Women can even orgasm," as if he'd only learned it himself that morning when he read the lesson plan. We'd been told that, by then. Though I guess it's good he was making sure?
ReplyDeleteHowever, there was one thing that I took from it that is incredibly wrong and could have potentially been very damaging. I don't know if it was my personal misunderstanding, or if a lot of kids drew the same conclusion, but what I gathered from my sex education was that sex (defined, of course, as PIV), once started, could not be stopped until it was "finished"; and sex could only be finished by either the penis ejaculating or ceasing to be erect. It was like it was this automatic pumping reflex that you had to be awfully sure you wanted to initiate, because you couldn't change your mind once it had been triggered. I want kids to learn that you have the right to stop sex at any time, and that you never, ever get to keep going after your partner has said "stop."
The funniest thing I remember from sex ed were diagrams of PIV intercourse which made it look like people had sex by standing somewhat near each other and angling their pelvises towards one another until penetration... happened(?). No other part of their bodies touched at any time.
Oh, I should have noted: this was in Alberta, Canada. I've heard that the quality of sex ed has gone down in the 5 years since my graduation.
DeleteI was going to ask if we went to the same school but then I see this happened in Alberta.
DeleteSee, one of the stories I'm afraid no one will believe me about is this:
The sex ed teacher - really just a gym teacher & wrestling coach - he got real angry one day during sex ed. What I'm about to quote, happened in the greater context of the gym teacher talking about how some girl RUINED one of his star players, by having sex with him on a beach & he got a pretty bad STI breakout like a week later. Like bad enough so that the coach's star player couldn't play for a little while to recover. This happened in the greater context of the teacher refusing to talk about female orgasm. This happened in an even greater context where rape prevention advice was given to the girls; standard "Watch your drink" stuff after telling us about how one girl the teachers used to know, aaah I won't even get into it...
Anyway one day this gym teacher is yelling at us about how sex is bad and awful and whatever other dreck they were spouting that day. And he looks at the class and he goes, "IF the girl says 'no' halfway through sex, is it still rape??????"
And of course you and I and regular readers at the Pervocracy recognize the answer is a clear, "Yes;" you are free to withdraw consent for sexual activity even during the act! You're allowed to say no! You're allowed to say stop! And the partner you're with at the time - if they hear a "No" or a "stop," then you're supposed to do exactly that. The only exception to the rule would be if you're using safewords in which case "Banana" or "Red" means stop - and then you're supposed to proceed with the stopping.
But on this particular day - the way the teacher phrased it and refused to give an answer of yes or no to his own question - I realized at the time and I stand by my realization now -
He meant the answer was "No."
He meant that once you give consent - and he meant it where it's a het, cis couple having sex & the girl is the gatekeeper - he meant that once you give consent, it goes on until the end of encounter. End of story. You give consent once and the guy is free to do whatever. If you feel bad or like you've been raped after, then you're faking it or just trying to gain sympathy. You weren't raped; you just regret what happened.
In hindsight, my sex ed class was actually quite pro-rape culture.
Now there's something that they certainly didn't prepare me to understand. Rape culture? The teachers, if I confronted them with such a term now, they'd laugh at me and laugh it off. They should teach that in school but they won't do it at mine.
Yikes, K. There was nothing so blatant for me. :/
DeleteWell, I am from Russia, and, at least during my school period we did not have any sex ed whatsoever. We did, however, have a good biology program, so by grade 8-9 I knew the mechanics... That is, in the anatomy textbook there was a detailed description of human genitalia, as well as hormonal and physical triggers causing the change, the change itself, and the "Human mating" chapter, but that was it. Social aspects: nil, contraception .. well I was called a "condom" by upperclassman, and I had to look it up. I have learned masturbation from that textbook, though, by inference (and if I apply repetitive friction to my penis, what would happen?). Well, in retrospect, the above-described sex-ed class would have been better. I am pretty sure they still don't have sex ed in school, by the way.
ReplyDeleteThey don't. I graduated in 2010 and we had no sex ed, ever. But you are right about the biology textbooks - I think there even was something on STDs in the 8th grade book, but it was just descriptions of which microorganisms cause them and the symptoms - nothing about how they might relate to actual sexual behaviour or how to protect oneself from them.
DeleteIn 11th grade we were given a survey on AIDS, about what we knew and whether we believed that HIV+ people deserve to be admitted into society ("Do you think children with HIV should be able to attend regular schools?" etc). That one was enraging.
At one point we had some sort of extracurricular girls-only discussion round with our tutor, about *boys* and *feelings*, and how *being* with a lot of boys will only make them respect you less. Sex wasn't mentioned even euphemistically. At this point most of us were already having sex, one girl had had an abortion, and I just sat there being gay and apparently wrong or nonexistent because of not having *feelings* for *boys* and *being* with them.
But that's Russia for you - there is this insane cognitive dissonance regarding sex. People seem to become sexually active a lot earlier than in Europe (not saying it's a bad thing), they don't know shit about it, and everyone pretends like it's really not a thing. Apart from this there also are very strict gender roles (apart from those related to women and work, but that's the communist history) and loads and loads of homophobia (no transphobia, because trans people don't exist). And it does not seem like it's going to get better any time soon.
In 11th grade we were given a survey on AIDS, about what we knew and whether we believed that HIV+ people deserve to be admitted into society ("Do you think children with HIV should be able to attend regular schools?" etc). That one was enraging.
DeleteYou see the comment I left above talking about Disability & sex? Well we had a similar conversation to the one that you had to go through about HIV. Except our conversation came from the Bio Teacher in a section about genetics - should people with genetic problems be allowed to reproduce. She presented us with these 'ethical' quandaries about wether or not it was responsible for people with genetic disabilities (like Downs Syndrome) and other problems - ones that can be passed down genetically - (I think she referred to Crohn's disease? The one that gets passed down on the Dominant gene.) Like, is it right for this person who has health problems to reproduce knowing full well that their child will likely inherit the same problem. Costs a lot... health problems... responsibility... sterilization... she was talking about it from the perspective of an able-bodied person. An able-bodied person with truly, deeply, self-evidently problematic views about people with disabilities.
(Same anon as above)
DeleteUgh, yes that one happened too, when we were doing genetics. Our teacher started out more or less acceptably, talking about people making the choice not to have children to prevent passing on their hereditary disabilities, but THEN she went off on a bizarre tangent about how people with developmental or mental disabilities don't know that fucking makes babies, so they just go ahead and do it anyway, and also something about people getting pregnant in mental institutions and how that is a real problem. Count all the things that are incredibly horrible and sickening about this.
K and Anon;
Deleteok, yeah, i wish we'd talked about these in school, too.
instead, i was left to flounder to my own ethical decision on this, a choice that has been derided by damned near EVERYONE i know. not only do i have a disease that will almost surely kill me [presuming any pregnancy lasts long enough - chance of miscarriage is 92%. chance of dying if no miscarriage is 98%. chance of having a healthy baby WITHOUT the disease? less than .001%] if i attempt a pregnancy, but if i and said child survive it, child almost definately WILL have the same disease, but will have it ACTIVE from Day 1. porphyria isn't anything to fuck around with - it has multiple physical AND mental health components, and the list of meds i CAN'T take is longer than the list i CAN...
then i was - against my will, without my consent, an asshole i trusted used safety pins on the condoms and poured out the spermicidal lubricant and replaced with non-spermicidal - pregnant, DYING in a gods-damned CATHOLIC hospital with an ER doc placing his liscence on the line taking me to the abortion clinic, and i made the entirely RATIONAL decision that not only was i NOT ever going to fucking risk my life for the merest chance - that not even a compulsive gambler would take! - that i'd survive it, but i SURE AS FUCK was NOT sharing this disease.
now, this *IS* an individual choice. for lots and lots of genetically-related issues, i don't think it's truly a problem. my deaf friends wanting to adopt a deaf baby [who are being told "no" because they're deaf, not because they're lesbians, but it's STILL fucked up] are better able to judge the effects of being deaf.
they don't live in constant, chronic, unrelenting pain. i can barely survive it, and i've been in this pain since i was *9* - NOT putting an innocent child thru that.
but it would be DAMNED nice if there were classes about it - also classes about people who *CAN'T* have kids, for whatever reason, are REAL, and not all of them WANT to adopt, how in vitro can be good, adoption can be good - though there are more kids in foster homes and/or orphanges than are being adopted... that it's actually *OK* to NOT bring a disabled child into the world, but that it also *IS*. and that if you yourself can't afford the child, and don't *mind* being pregnant, than perhaps you should FIND someone who would adopt and love that disabled child... and if you can't find someone who will, you need to REALLY think about it. because you won't be living that HELL - disabled, un-adoptable, shuttled from foster home to foster home, negligected and probably abused...
so many things around this issue. sigh
(Disclaimer: not from US)
ReplyDeleteI don't think we really had sex-ed at all.
We had a class in like third grade where all the boys were sent out to play and the girls were told what the downstairs looks like (i.e. there are three holes) and something about menstruation.
Then around fifth grade the girls were given a few pads and maybe a booklet or something, but it wasn't even a proper class I think, just a "here you go, now bye" moment between classes.
Then around eight grade there was someting about menstruation again, I don't know if boys were present for this or not though.
And sometime later when we were studying human biology we learned about contraceptives, STDs and erections. But in this clinical kind of way.
There was a 'health day' though, where you could find sex-ed pamphlets which did have a bit more information, even about masturbation and foreplay. Which is better than nothing, but I've checked what's in it since and things it lacks/misrepresents are:
- girls masturbate, but they shouldn't use objects or do it too much, beacuse that might make them anjoy sex with a partner less
- once guys have a real girl, they will no longer feel the need to masturbate
- no mention of rape (although there is a part about trusting eaxh other and feeling safe)
- no mention of sexual harassment
- no mention of homosexuality (not to mention transsexual, bisexual, asexual, trans* people)
Not that I'm especially surprised by any of this given the state of affairs in my country, but it's still sad.
Mine was middling, and I'm UK based and was in secondary school from thirteen to nine years ago (JEEEEZ, I have never counted that out before).
ReplyDeleteWe were taught in both biology, which was very graphic and included a pins-cam video of ejaculation inside a vagina and made everyone feel sick, and in social ed, whch was lacklustre and grudging. That was the bit that SHOULD have told us about contraception, realtionships, pregnancy options and whatnot, but didn't.
Essentially, we were told not to have sex until we were sure we loved and trusted someone, and we were old enough. We were given a chart of how the various methods of contraception worked and what their pros and cons were, but as far as I remember this was very heavily aimed at the girls with an undertone of "boys do not care if they knock you up, this is YOUR look out." We were never shown how to put condoms on courgettes as we were told had happened on other schools, there was no mention of foreplay or of homosexual/bisexuals existing, there were no freebies or advice as to where to get contraception, and this was all done aged 15 when a lot of people were already sexually active.
Consequently, four of the girls in my mixed class of 30 were pregnant before the age of 16. I went into my first sexual relationship without a CLUE how to use a condom properly, look back now at the mistakes we made and wonder what miracle allowed me to escape that one without getting pregnant. The 'social' ed taught us less than we'd already learned from behind the bikesheds and missed the bits we could have actually done with an adult explaining.
I do remember my biology teacher standing on a chair, screaming "SEX SEX SEX SEX PENIS PENIS SEX VAGINA... right, is everybody over it? Okay, here we go" before a lesson on reproduction.
I didn't have sex ed at all. Catholic school. I learned everything from Just 17 magazine which was all sex positions and condoms/the pill. And films with sex scenes (Moll Flanders with River Song) and my mum saying don't let him near you without a condom and leave him if he hits you. I could have done with some assertiveness training and much more. And I hated myself for being bisexual. And I thought once you said yes to sex you had given blanket consent :(
ReplyDeleteI'm not from the US, so I don't really know how sex ed works there, but I'd put in some stuff about what to do or where to go if you want contraception, if you want to get tested for STDs, if you've been raped or assaulted and if you just generally want to talk to someone about sex. Also, STDs and protection when you're having sex that isn't PIV sex. Also, debunk som virginity myths.
ReplyDeleteBut mostly, how you talk about sex and consent and protection and preferences with a potential sex partner, before and during and after.
My school taught us sex ed in a really patchy way. Luckily my mum had been cunningly slipping me books that had detailed descriptions of what STDs there were and what contraception methods there were and I'd already read them from cover to cover and absorbed all the information by the time I got to year 10 (this was in the UK so that's age 14-15) when they started doing contraception, because it was taught really badly. Some classes got the lesson where they show you how to put on a condom, but I never did. I never knew you have to make sure no air gets into it by pinching the end, and if I'd lost my virginity to a virgin who didn't know either we'd probably have been very confused. I remember a lesson where they sort of passed out various contraceptive devices for us to look at but I don't remember learning anything about them at all other than their names. I already knew what most of them were but I hate to think how little some of the other kids probably learned from that kind of thing. And I could probably have done with some updated knowledge because the books I had read were written before the contraceptive implant and injection existed. Mind you, I'm sure I learned a lot more than kids in the US seem to. I honestly can't believe a lot of schools don't teach contraception at all because that would mean even imagining the idea that kids might have sex before marriage. It's like burying your head in the sand. I really liked what Holly said (in a different post I think) about how when you are teaching sex ed to kids you are also teaching future adults. So yeah, if I was teaching sex ed I'd definitely make sure everyone knew the advantages and disadvantages of all the different contraceptive methods (and how they work, of course) by the end of the class.
ReplyDeleteI can remember being shown really good videos at primary school when I was 10 about how our bodies would grow up, a video of a woman giving birth (unlike most of the girls in the class this one actually reassured me for some reason: I think I'd been imagining something far, far worse than what I saw in that video) and a video explaining how a man and a woman have sex (using illustrations not real people). I do remember that the video emphasised the emotions that might lead to sex rather than being very diagrammatic and ignoring that aspect altogether, which I think was good. So things started well, but by the time we were due the next installment of sex ed when we were at secondary school at age 14, they just seemed to become very vague about everything. They seemed more interesting in trying to prevent us taking up smoking, tbh (too late for some of the class by that point). There was no acknowledgment that some people in the class were clearly already sexually active, not to mention that like in most schools some people were sexually harassing others and it was basically ignored. There was no idea of teaching us about other kinds of sex like oral sex (I remember this being coyly mentioned as 'mouth sex' by the teacher, and I thought it sounded like the most disgusting thing in the world. It certainly wasn't presented as something people might enjoy). A bit of a dead loss really. And all the time the idea that boys would try and pressure girls into sex (ONLY that way around) was thrown around- I think I came away with the idea that as a girl I wasn't supposed to like sex from this. I was a bit of a late bloomer and had trouble reconciling myself with the idea that I had sexual desires at all. And I could certainly have done with someone telling me that if someone made me feel uncomfortable with the way they were touching me, it was ok to say no or leave. This sounds obvious but it almost never occurred to me at that age. Also, I think UK sex education (mine, anyway-maybe it's moved on by now) lets itself down with no education about trans people. Otherwise all there is are documentaries about people who get sex changes, which are often done in an unpleasant 'freak show' way (though not always). Also, though homosexuality and bisexuality were touched upon and described as perfectly normal, teachers never addressed the fact that the word gay was constantly used as a slur in our school. And the spectrum of sexuality/asexuality was never brought up. That I think needs improvement in a big way.
DeleteI'm in the UK and we had a "sexual health awareness day". I was 15 at the time.
ReplyDeleteIt was the first time that the school had done it so we were told that we'd be giving feedback on it the following day. All normal classes were cancelled for the day and an outside company came in to take over the teaching.
I can't remember everything that happened that day, but it was broken down into different sections. The 2 that I can remember were the contraception class and the STD session.
The contraception class was actually really great. They covered all the available options and passed them round the class for everyone to have a look at. Then they split the class into small groups and each group was given a banana to put a condom on. (Being in a group still meant that only one person could actually 'do the deed' so the first time I got to try it was lying naked in someone's room and being passed one by an expectant looking guy. Nonetheless, their intentions were good.)
The STD class was really not okay though.
Everyone was sat in front of a huge slide projector screen and shown the most disgusting advanced cases of STDs that they could find. Once again, no before shots or anything, just a whole hour of "this is what happens when you don't use a condom: sex=fear".
They were all such advanced cases that they became unrecognisable from what you might realistically see if you were about to have sex with someone. In my mind, it did the opposite of what they were trying to preach. It just made you think "Well, that CAN'T be warts because I saw a photo once and it looks like bubble-wrap", etc.
Not everyone is going to sleep with someone harbouring a text book advanced case of any STD. Everyone in that room walked out with absolutely no idea how to spot any STD in 99.9% of actual real-life situations. Also, I don't think there was any mention that some of them had no visual signs (although, in fairness, it was a while ago and there's a good chance I wouldn't remember as that would have been 100% less visually shocking).
Oh, also, the following day, our teacher sat us down to get feedback. We went through everything we thought was good and bad with the day and she was obviously appalled by how they had approached some topics. I'm pretty sure she made a formal complaint to the school.
DeleteI have no idea if they're still running that program.
I vividly remember the LGBTQ part of my sex-ed. My teacher spent about 20 minutes telling us about how, on the cow farm she'd grown up on, some bulls would only try and have sex with other bulls. Thus, being gay was entirely natural.
ReplyDeleteThat was it. Well intentioned, poorly executed.
I wish my Sex Ed class had taught us that you don't always get pregnant every time you had sex.
ReplyDeleteThe less on I took implied that sex was only there FOR TEH BABIES, which confused me because I already knew about Gay people at the time, and I knew that they had some form of sex because of what I'd heard on TV but I didn't know how it worked and I knew that same sex couples couldn't have babies on their own.
Someone actually mentioning that you can get urinary tract infections from sex and that peeing after is a pretty effective way to prevent it would be good.
ReplyDeleteOh my god, this. Relatedly, if anything goes anywhere buttwards, don't touch the vulva with it. I had I think three UTIs and one kidney infection in a year before I finally fully understood those two things.
DeleteAlso useful: most condoms are lubricated. It doesn't seem like it has a big effect, but it can! If you try condomless sex and it's painful, try lube. Yes, even if you'd been having unlubed condom sex for a long time already.
Sex ed at my school took place during health class, and was only taught during half of freshman year.
ReplyDeleteI remember making a model of a vagina that involved a ziploc bag, straws, and cotton balls. Very accurate and educational.
We learned so much about abusive relationships and peer pressure that it didn't occur to me until years later that it was possible for two (or more) people to actually agree about their sexual choices and preferences.
We had to learn what LGBTQ stood for, but our teacher didn't really understand T or Q. She wasn't too strong on B either. She may have told us it was basically a transitional phase between straight and L or G.
We were told that girls had to have started their period in order to get pregnant, but it was phrased in such a way that a few of us thought you could only get pregnant while you were menstruating. Whoops.
There was a poster next to the desk I sat in with a list of 101 things to do other than sex, and another one on the other side of the room with a list of 100 "reasons to wait". There were also two visits from "motivational speakers".
The first speaker was a high-energy, cute 20-something guy who did that awful packing tape demonstration. For those who aren't familiar, the demonstration uses tape as a metaphor for sexuality. "See this nice, sticky piece of tape? Well, that's like you before sex! When you have sex before marriage, it's like doing this with your tape!" [Sticks tape to the dirty floor, then to the chalkboard, then to a dusty filing cabinet] "If you have premarital sex, by the time you want to get married, your stickiness will be all used up. Who would want a gross, used-up piece of tape? You won't be able to stick to (i.e. bond with) your husband/wife, and your marriage will fail!"
Even at the time I knew that was bullshit, but I remember sort of absently pondering the metaphor from time to time. I mean, tape that's been stuck to the floor is still pretty sticky even if the floor is dirty, and tape that's been stuck to several different completely clean surfaces is usually pretty good too... Maybe if I have premarital sex with only a few clean people, or just one really dirty person, I'll still be sticky enough for marriage?
The other speaker was a middle-aged woman who explained that our bodies release "feel-good chemicals" during sex... and went on to claim that these chemicals respond most strongly to the first person you have sex with and get weaker and weaker with each subsequent partner, until finally you can't experience sexual pleasure at all.
As far as I can remember, my parents never really talked to me about any of it. Every now and then my mom told me to "respect myself", and my dad gave me some vague advice along the lines of "be safe"... when I was 18 and had already had 5 sexual partners. Fortunately I had horrible acne and irregular periods and so was allowed to start taking birth control when I was 14.
Until I wrote all this out I hadn't realized how completely abysmal an education that was. It's pathetic that mine isn't even the worst.
I'd add two things to your list.
ReplyDeleteFirst (and I know this is a complete fantasy), I want sex ed to admit, even celebrate that sex is FUN. That it exists not just to create babies for god (or kill bad unmarried teenagers) but as a lovely pleasure-fill bonding experience that should be cherished for it's own sake. And that if someone isn't enjoying sex the only appropriate reaction is for everyone involved to stop and figure out how to make it pleasurable or just move on to something else entirely.
Second, I'd like the emphasis to be OFF penis in vagina intercourse. I understand we have to talk about STIs and pregnancy, but one way to help avoid those is to make petting and outcourse sound as sexy, lascivious and interesting as sticking a penis into a hole (perhaps the first step would be not to call these activities 'outercourse'). Emphasize that it's all sex, just like appetizers, side dishes, main dishes, desserts, drinks and snacks are all food, and that all of the choices are tasty and worth exploring.
Promotion of non-PIV in sex ed as a means to avoid pregnancy and STIs seems to me like a soft version of abstinence-promoting sex ed.
DeleteIt could be framed that way, but I don't think it has to be. I would love it if, as a culture in general, we got over the idea of PiV being the "real" or "special" sex and realized that all of the other sexy good-feeling things we do with our partners are sex too, not just "foreplay."
DeleteSo yeah, maybe if it's promoted exclusively as STI/pregnancy prevention, it becomes abstinence-lite. But I do think it would be good to teach kids that PiV isn't all there is to sex.
okay but some of us actively enjoy PIV sex too and the way sex ed normally ends up sounding is that the things that get a vague mention are either wrong, dirty, and horrible don't ever do them (which really isn't okay either, being sex positive means celebrating all different types of sexuality including straight vanilla sex, which will likely end in intercourse). Why can't we realize that pushing for one thing with teenagers is going to make them think that is the only "right" option? The best case scenario is to present all information accurately, without any kind of value judgement whatsoever and to not emphasize one thing over another
DeleteThe sex ed I had at school was in a catholic school and it wasn't quite as terrible as some of the horror stories I've had out of the US, but there was still a lot of trying to scare kids out of having sex, only talking to girls about periods etc. and our incredibly sexist gym teacher giving some kind of speech blaming girls for any injury they sustain while "leading men on".
ReplyDeleteI think this is a Good Post and like the idea of a 101 and a 201, the first one giving the mechanics and what happens and that it's okay, ans the more advanced course going more into the social negotiation, abusive relationships etc. aspect. And both before everyone has a chance to become sexually active.
My particular pet issue was that i always felt a profound disgust for sex and its depictions because it was always a man on top, bored or vaguely distressed looking woman passively receiving, and sex was always described as this thing that was done to women or taken from them and if they enjoyed it it was in some perverse, self-hating way. I eventually buried myself in gay porn since my brain wouldn't try to go HEY, THAT'S YOU, YOU'RE THE ONE BEING SHAMEFULLY USED if there were two men. It wasn't until I was 21 or 22 that I sort of hit upon the idea that hey, maybe I can be in control of a sexual encounter and it wouldn't be wholly disgusting. And now I'm slowly unpacking the idea of myself as a top or a domme and getting more and more comfortable, but it's strange because I'm quite a shy person and will have to really step up my ability to negotiate and express what I want. I expect I'll be 30 or older by the time I get things sorted.
I never went to high school, so the only sex ed I got was from a guy who came in to talk to the entire school about abstinence until marriage. He started out talking about how boys were more visual than girls, so if girls wore skimpy clothing, it meant they wanted boys to look at them and were either teases or sluts. Boys had to be sure not to look at porn, because Ted Bundy had looked at porn, and before he was executed said that looking at porn had turned him into a serial killer.
ReplyDeleteThen, he held up two sheets of aluminum foil, and said that this was your heart before you got in a sexual relationship. He then crumpled the two sheets together, and said that this was what happened when you had sex with someone, and if you broke up you would be all crumpled and torn like the foil, and so you shouldn't have sex with anyone you're not married to.
Finally, he said that he knew that statistically some of the people in the audience had been raped, and he wanted to reassure them. So he held up a 5 dollar bill. "This is you before you were raped. Now who wants this 5 dollars?" A bunch of people held their hands up. Then he crumpled up the money and dropped it to the floor and stepped on it. "So, who wants this now?" People still held their hands up and he said that people would still want you after you'd been raped.
In retrospect, there are a lot of things I wish I'd said then. Texas is kind of a fucked up state.
Heh. From Texas myself. I remember that one, only instead of a dollar/foil it was a paper heart that got all torn up.
DeleteThe punchline? I got raped that year. At the time, I remember being completely unmoved, because it seemed to explain why I felt so bad perfectly.
Fucking Texas, man.
--Rogan
Ok more comprehensive overview of my sex ed, from a set of pretty average, secular, uk state-funded schools
ReplyDeleteyears 5/6 (age10/11):
puberty- body changes, periods etc. annoyed that we got told explicitly that periods never hurt.
basics of what sex is (penis in vagina), very brief mention that sex can be for fun (complete with video of animated man and woman having a pillow fight) and masturbation (it was in the context of 'don't call it wanking' and gave absolutely no explanation of what the hell it was)
how babies are made, and very graphic full frontal video of childbirth - one guy was sick. designed to shock us I think.
very basic relationships stuff - limited to 'respect each other' and 'sex has to be accompanied by love'.
I would like to have seen: better explanations of what masturbation is, anything on lgbtq, consent, more on healthy relationships
next thing I got was year 7(age 11/12) biology lessons:
more comprehensive baby-making and puberty biology. otherwise nothing new.
there was a question box where we could anonymously submit anything. someone asked if girls could get erections and our teacher got partway through explaining that there was something (the clitoris) that became erect, but too much inappropriate giggling made him stop and we never got told any more.
no relationships ed or anything at this stage, it was purely biology.
then I got a gap of 2 years, until year 9(age 13/14). this was one of our PHSE days (personal, health, social education)
it seems that the school presumed that during the preceding two years we would have found out about sexuality, sex is fun, teenagers have sex, how to have sex at all, etc on our own, which is a terrible view to have, as there were plenty out there who were still pretty damn confused. This is where we got some fairly good advice on relationships and consent, though they were very biased to typical heterosexual relationships with stereotyped gender roles. We got the 'how to put on a condom' demo, but didn't get a chance to have a go ourselves.
That day we also got shown a video and given a presentation about homophobia and how we shouldn't use 'gay' as a negative word (there was, and still is, a tendency here for people to say 'that's so gay' when they don't like something). Not convinced the message got through, but I appreciated the effort.
Still no mention of masturbation, why sex feels good, how any sex other than PIV works, etc
I think it was year 9 biology that my teacher somehow ended up talking to us about how men can get raped too, in surprisingly graphic detail. Kudos to her.
Got another PHSE day in year 11(age 15/16)
Frankly excellent overview of all types of contraception, in detail of how they worked, and with info on local places to go to get them.
Talk of sex when drunk-essentially not to do it, as you can't give informed consent and can't put on a condom properly- insert beer goggles and failed attempt by yours truly here.
More repetition of the narrow heterosexuals-only view of good relationships and consent.
No formal education really since, though my MEP (morals, ethics and philosophy) teacher did mention the odd thing here and there. there was one lesson where some guys had been talking about sex change operations and she drew up a diagram of the vagina and showed us where the clitoris is, which, at the age of 16, many of the class had not heard of.
Sixth form now, so age 16/17, we're treated as adults who have sex and know how to be safe about it. Not really had much sex ed so far, though in national AIDs awareness week we were told about HIV and how to prevent it, some stats etc.
But most of my sex ed has come from the internet, a mix of dedicated sex ed websites and reading porny fanfiction. Me and my friends are very open about sex, but a couple of my friends are still pretty clueless. we talk so much though that we share what we know, and i've recommended scarleteen to the more clueless ones to learn more
* "Sex is supposed to feel good. It's also supposed to make you feel good. If you feel bad post-sex, it's probably something you have to talk to someone (partner, adult depending on the situation)about."
ReplyDelete* "Sex makes you look weird and say funny things. It also smells a bit, but mostly pleasantly."
* "Not wanting to have sex is okay."
* "Being told "no" does not mean you're ugly, disgusting or unlovable. The "no" should ALWAYS be respected."
* "PIV is not the only way to feel "real" sexual pleasure. There are loads of other ways to make your partner's toes curl with pleasure."
* "Sex does not have to involve orgasms to be "worth it"."
* "You have control over your desire. It is not an unstoppable force and it does not need to be satisfied RIGHT NOW."
* "SEX IS FUN. ENJOY IT!"
I received an abstinence only "education". I didn't even know how to use a condom when I first had sex at 19, and neither did my partner (we went to the same school). So guess what...it broke.
ReplyDeletePeople graduating from high school should at least know how to use a fucking condom.
"Your first sexual encounter, first crush, etc. do not unalterably determine whether you're straight, gay or bi. Some people are unsure about this for quite a while, and that's okay. Other people know from very early in life, and that's okay too."
ReplyDelete"Here are reliable sources for more information." I'd put Scarleteen high on that list--excellent site.
My sex ed (growing up in denmark) contained most of whats on the wishlist.
ReplyDeleteThe teacher basically had a big case full of one of every contraceptive, chemical and mechanical, demonstrated and explained each one, (i was so very surprised by how small the little metalthingy you insert is)and had us all put atleast one condom on the anatomically correct average sized penis-model.
In denmark, sex ed usually starts by the 3rd grade=age 11/12ish with the general reproductionparts, then as the kids age, you move on to the more emotional/sexual-best-practices parts.
She made sure to address the fact that we should all feel free to have as much sex as we felt comfortable having, and would use any of our questions to try and build dialogue. She also stressed that emotions and sex can be very tied up in eachother at our age, and confusing, so if we had questions, we could ask them at any time we felt like it. (and boy did we ever have questions).
I think the fact that we started swith the anatomical basics when we were pre-teens, meant that when we got hormonal/curious we werent so shy about talking/asking questions about the more pleasureable/emotionally confusing parts.
As an example about how publically available sexual/body-demystifying materials are, we have a site called "better sex ed" and available to downlaod are pdfs like http://www.bedreseksualundervisning.dk/Admin/Public/DWSDownload.aspx?File=%2fFiles%2fFiler%2fBS%2fKroppens_mangfoldighed.pdf to help kids understand their bodies.
Currently theres a semipublic debate going on about kids having unrealistic imagery of genitals through porn affecting how they view their own (mainly focused on young girls atm.) in response someone made a picture chair to photograph vaginas and make the pictures publically available.
im going in next month to add to the project.
if interested, you can view it here http://kvindekenddinkrop.dk/kkdkpix.html#
(you klick the link on the bottom)
sorry if my reply is long/link-heavy, but i thought it might be interesting to see how another country handles bodies and sex ed.
bahh sorry, i cant work links in comments :(
ReplyDeleteMy sex ed (growing up in denmark) contained most of whats on the wishlist.
ReplyDeleteThe teacher basically had a big case full of one of every contraceptive, chemical and mechanical, demonstrated and explained each one, (i was so very surprised by how small the little metalthingy you insert is)and had us all put atleast one condom on the anatomically correct average sized penis-model.
In denmark, sex ed usually starts by the 3rd grade=age 11/12ish with the general reproductionparts, then as the kids age, you move on to the more emotional/sexual-best-practices parts.
She made sure to address the fact that we should all feel free to have as much sex as we felt comfortable having, and would use any of our questions to try and build dialogue. She also stressed that emotions and sex can be very tied up in eachother at our age, and confusing, so if we had questions, we could ask them at any time we felt like it. (and boy did we ever have questions).
I think the fact that we started swith the anatomical basics when we were pre-teens, meant that when we got hormonal/curious we werent so shy about talking/asking questions about the more pleasureable/emotionally confusing parts.
As an example about how publically available sexual/body-demystifying materials are, we have a site called "better sex ed" and available to downlaod are pdfs like http://www.bedreseksualundervisning.dk/Admin/Public/DWSDownload.aspx?File=%2fFiles%2fFiler%2fBS%2fKroppens_mangfoldighed.pdf to help kids understand their bodies.
Currently theres a semipublic debate going on about kids having unrealistic imagery of genitals through porn affecting how they view their own (mainly focused on young girls atm.) in response someone made a picture chair to photograph vaginas and make the pictures publically available.
im going in next month to add to the project.
if interested, you can view it here http://kvindekenddinkrop.dk/kkdkpix.html#
(you klick the link on the bottom)
sorry if my reply is long/link-heavy, but i thought it might be interesting to see how another country handles bodies and sex ed.
Denmark sounds pretty reasonable about sex ed...
Deletewait, y'all don't have 3rd grade until you're 11/12? Here in the US, 3rd graders tend to be 8/9.
uhm, i think the table is (i went to school a loong time ago)
Delete6-7yrs: kindergartengrade/grade 0.
8-9yrs: grade 1
then ect-ect till grade 9 (finishing grade).
afaik, schools in Denmark allows you to "stagger" intake, if you feel your kid needs more maturity or isnt adjusting well to his/her class.
(im a january kid, so i was put into one kindergartenclass, then held back and put into another).
i think its commonly thought that by the age of 16 kids will be having all kinds of sex, so we have to get the knowlegde to them early enough to make it stick.
the legal age for sex called "pants age" (buksealder) in denmarkis 15, but theres usually no issue with kids fooling around earlier than that. the main concern is agedifferences greater than 4-5 years, due to differences in maturity and such.
also, sorry for the ton of messages i wrote, somehow when i reviewed a text, it wouldnt come up, id then patiently retype and same thing would happen :(
i am a spambot :(
I can't remember much - I went to a crappy church school .I remember a cookery teacher telling us how disgusting french kissing was. I remember thinking at the time 'I don't think it is' and 'why is she telling us this?'
ReplyDeleteFortunately my family was OK with sex so I knew most things by 14, inc LGBT stuff (though not particularly positive, tolerant straights in the 70s were not quite the same as genuine liberals now).
Yes, these things should definitely all be taught in Sex Ed classes. Personally, I would make sure not to forget that asexuality exists, as well. You mention people who have less desire and people who more desire, but you fail to address people who have no desire, or who aren't attracted to anyone. That's as important as teaching kids that homosexuality and bisexuality exist. I do take issue with comments like "You're going to be doing this at some point in your lives, you ought to know what you're even trying to accomplish." While that is indeed the case for MOST people, it's not the case for everyone. Some people might not want sex, ever. And that's fine. I think it's important to let kids (and everyone) know that it's okay to have as much or as little sex as they want, and that includes no sex, too.
ReplyDeleteYes. Not only does asexuality exist, but sex isn't fun or enjoyable for everyone. I get that the point is to counteract the "sex is a thing you SHOULDN'T DO you horrible teenagers" stuff, but there's no point in making people who don't like sex feel bad in order to encounter that.
DeleteWhen I read _The Purity Myth_, I had to check twice to see that the author was not a fellow student of mine, as she seemed to be echoing several things that one of my teachers said about people making fetishes of both virginity and non-virginity, whereas in reality becoming sexually active is a process, not a single watershed event. I would definitely want to say something about how people can keep learning and growing sexually throughout their lives, adapting to new situations and discovering more about themselves and their partners.
ReplyDeleteOn the other end of development, I would want to talk about how sexuality develops and manifests long before you're actually having sex -- how the way you're treated sensually from babyhood onward can affect how you relate to others physically (which eventually, in certain cases, flowers into sexually). Oh, and about how abuse or harassment can affect how you relate to others. I know I repeated patterns in my life that I didn't realize I had learned from others' violating my boundaries.
I do think, too, though I may be just over-valuing my own experience, that by rights most people ought to have been having orgasms (or at least masturbating to pleasant effect) for some years before having partnered sex. At any rate I think it ought to be so for way more people than it currently is, put it that way.
I had a similar experience with not knowing how sex actually worked until very late in life. The only sex ed I got was in Grade 7, about age 11. We never got taught the mechanics, just about the changes that happened during puberty. We were taught that boys started producing sperm and girls developed breasts, but no one ever told us what to do with those. I don't remember anything being taught about masturbation or libido even being mentioned. I know they mentioned condoms, but I still had to ask my mom about what those were later. Sex ed lady never bothered to explain how to use them or what they were, she just mentioned them as an option. For what? Eleven year old me didn't know. The nurses that taught us were extremely frigid about the whole thing, if that wasn't obvious already. They explicitly told us not to ask ANY questions about their own experiences with sex or puberty, why, I don't know. It probably would have made the whole experience a little more relatable. What bothered me most, looking back on it, was the fact that they kept insisting that these changes were completely normal and nothing to be ashamed of, then refused to talk about their own experiences like it was some horrible secret.
ReplyDeleteThe one thing that had me scarred for a while was one particular nurse's wording on the menstrual cycle. She said, and I remember this very clearly, "A woman's period will begin when she is about eleven or twelve years old, and continue until her mid-forties to mid-fifties." That was the extent of her explanation. My eleven year old self, being aware that a period meant you bled, but not being aware of the monthly nature of said bleeding, was under the assumption that my period was going to start one day and continue until I was 55, unless I got pregnant. That seemed like a lot of blood to be losing on a daily basis for over forty years. Thankfully, again, mom was there to clear everything up.
Also, I should mention that as helpful as Mom was...thank god for Sue Johanson.
DeleteHere's something that will blow your mind. When I was about 13, my mom gave us Dr. James Dobson's book on dealing with becoming a teenager. Yes, THAT Dr. Dobson. And in that book, he explains in plain, somewhat scientific terms exactly how intercourse worked. Sure, it had HEAVY religious overtones, but as far as the actual mechanics of sex goes and the the fact that sex is a pleasurable activity, Dr. Dobson was more informative than all of my relatively liberal sex ed classes.
ReplyDelete-Kit
On the mechanics of sex, I blush to admit that my main source was Desmond Morris's The Naked Ape, an early work of evo-psych that is just about as ridiculous as the title makes it sound. However, as far as I recall, said basic mechanics of tab P in slot V were pretty clearly outlined therein.
DeleteI'm 32 and a Californian. In fourth or fifth grade, we got a sex-segregated class on Your Changing Body, the main topics of which were 'Hair Is Appearing and That Is Okay' (I hit menarche around then, so good timing) and 'Your Swimsuit Area Is Off Limits.' In seventh grade, I got a week-long break from gym class when the gym teachers covered 'The Bloody, Painful Miracle of Birth' and 'How To Avoid AIDS, Pregnancy, And Other STIs.' We didn't cover...
ReplyDelete1. Anatomy. I had no idea what a clitoris was until I was in my twenties and looking for a writing guide about sex and I have a clitoris. I was also, in my twenties, surprised to learn that the vagina and the urethra were different things, and that the inside of the vagina and 'the hairy part' were different things with different names. And my mother is a nurse, for crying out loud!
2. Clarification of terms. My class got a fairly good rundown on what activities can give you an STI, but chances are if one of your students thinks 'oral sex' is like giving an oral report (IE, phone sex), then she's not going to understand WHY you're telling her she could get AIDS from it.
3. Condom application. Granted, it was awesome seeing one of our gym teachers with both of her hands stuffed inside a condom, stretching it out as far as she could, telling us, "Don't you let him tell you it's too big for condoms! It's not too big! Make him use a condom!" But that totally didn't give me any idea of how to put one of the damn things on a penis.
4. Pleasure. 'Orgasm' was not a topic we covered, male or female. I mean, I knew what I was doing with the showerhead felt good, but I was in my late teens before I realized what I was doing and what the end result was.
5. Menstruation. I started my period when I was ten, and school basically only taught me that periods would happen and left it at that. My parents made sure I knew the anatomical basics (uterine lining sloughing off, wear a pad, CAN have a baby but DON'T), but it would have been nice for SOMEBODY to say 'it's going to be pretty irregular while you're young' and also 'it's going to be sludgy brownish blood coming out your crotch' and especially, 'it's going to freak you out, but you aren't sick or dying.'
6. Having a baby won't fix anything. Yes, it's totally natural to get the baby rabies in your early teens, to believe that having a baby means having a sweet little cherub who is yours-all-yours to love and snuggle and dress in cute little outfits. Mom was a neonatal nurse when I was a kid, so I got disabused of this notion when I was, like, eight, but I knew a lot of girls who believed that all the way to adulthood.
7. Sexuality. I mean, somehow we must've learned that it's okay to be gay, because by high school it seemed like all the disapproval over coming out came from parents, not friends... but I don't know who TAUGHT us that. It probably should have been covered in Health or Sex-Ed.
8. Safety beyond condoms. I just realized we never got the most basic sexual safety tip I've ever seen on the internet, which is 'don't go ass to ANYWHERE ELSE without changing condoms.' Teenagers will try ANYTHING and it's probably a good idea to tell them that while a cap of bleach will kill HIV on surfaces, introducing it to your body is a very bad plan.
9. Consent. Although we got another day out of gym later to watch videos on how to spot abusive boyfriends (and leave them), we never got told that if you said no and the other person kept asking pretty please with a cherry on top until you finally said okay, that wasn't cool either.
While we're busy inflating the sex ed curriculum so it would take an entire term to teach it, let me add something to point 3, condom application:
DeleteYes, condoms are quite stretchy. Still, different sizes of condoms exist for a reason. For men with bigger penises, bigger condoms might be
- easier to put on properly
- more reliable to stay on
Fortunately, large condoms are also available in any better drugstore, at least around here.
On a related note, I agree that it is important to point out the variety of sizes and shapes of genitals, and that "normal" has as wider range than some idealized picture.
But there are people whos size or shape are sufficiently different that this does make a different for the sex machanics.
For example, my penis is curved downward enough that it is actually inconvenient in some positions, including the "standard" missonary.
All that "variation is ok" talk on comprehensive sex ed websites, is missing information about when variation goes into "you might consider asking a doctor about this" territory.
"On a related note, I agree that it is important to point out the variety of sizes and shapes of genitals, and that "normal" has as wider range than some idealized picture."
DeleteI was just thinking of adding this to the mix. I mean... seriously. Women are getting plastic surgery on their labia because they're afraid they're not pretty enough. Maybe they wouldn't be if we talked about the variations.
While we're busy inflating the sex ed curriculum so it would take an entire term to teach it...
Delete... You know, it SHOULD take an entire term. Semester or quarter or whatever. I'm the OP of the previous list-of-nine comment, and my junior high school required me to take a semester of keyboarding (which I didn't really get good at until I discovered instant messaging). They totally could have spent as much time teaching us about our bodies as they did teaching us not to watch our fingers while we typed. If it only takes a quarter or a semester to teach kids Sex Ed and Bodily Autonomy, we could throw in some of these classes, too.
But also, yes. Absolutely, we need to know that genitalia varies wildly, penis and vulva and breasts. 'Your body is okay as long as you're healthy' is a pretty important lesson to teach people at a young age. ("Healthy" is the key. I know someone who had her vulva surgically altered because it was structured in such a way that it didn't let her sit comfortably, and someone else who had breast reduction surgery right out of junior high because her spine was having issues supporting her chest.)
Sludgy brownish blood - ha!
DeleteThe first time I got my period I thought I was having anal leakage (which I had also never had before) because it wasn't red, and blood was red! I stuffed my underwear with toilet paper because I was at school and it wasn't until I changed the paper that I realized what was actually happening. I'm just glad I knew what a period was, because I could go to my PE teacher and shame-facedly ask for a pad instead of running, screaming, to the school nurse.
I was lucky in that the brownish sludge part only showed up around the end of my period. I was doubly lucky that I was at home when I first noticed the blood, so that I could ask mom to get me some pads. (Several years prior, Mom had given me a "You're about to undergo puberty, so here's everything you could possibly want to know about your period" book from the 70's, so I knew how to insert a tampon, use a pad,etc. and that what was going on was perfectly normal.)
DeleteSpeaking of that 70's "period book," OMG they still sell it:
Deletehttp://www.amazon.com/Period-Girls-Guide-JoAnn-Loulan/dp/0916773965
I'm definitely getting the updated version for any daughters I end up having. It was surprisingly comprehensive for a book that didn't mention sex itself in any way.
Holly's formula for sex ed sounds pretty great to me, but I have to say, if my high school health teacher had tried to explain how sex or masturbation worked, I would have been really creeped out. I figured out how to masturbate at a young age, before I had ever heard the word, and I think high-school-me would have seen someone else telling me how to masturbate as them interfering in something personal and private. My high school's sex ed did actually mention masturbation, but only briefly, in the context of debunking myths about sex. "Masturbation is a normal thing that many people do, and it will not make you go blind, get sick, etc." was about the extent of it.
ReplyDeleteIf a sex ed class were going to go into details about it, it'd be really important to emphasize that different people like different things. I feel like the goal of "explaining how sex and masturbation work" has the potential to get simplified into only including whatever ways the teacher thinks are normal. So I'd want to emphasize that any examples the class talked about are just a few examples out of many, and that there's no wrong way to masturbate, or to have sex (apart from not being safe and consensual, of course).
Actual pictures of "normal" (read as: a wide variety) of genitals!! In my sex ed, we started by focusing on male anatomy, then we moved to female anatomy. I remember being so frustrated when we got to female anatomy and never once did I see a picture of a vulva- or even a diagram! The boys got a diagram of their penis- where is my goddamn vulva diagram?!?!? Yeah, it's all well and good to know what my uterus looks like, but I would have liked a little reassurance that what I got going on down there is normal. I definitely got the impression that the vulva was somehow more disgusting than the penis.
ReplyDeleteThis of course isn't even getting into the fact that most diagrams conform to very strict aesthetic standards in which flaccid penises are always six inches long and clitorises and labia are teensy, delicate little flower petal bits. Hence the need for actual pictures of genitalia.
"I definitely got the impression that the vulva was somehow more disgusting than the penis. This of course isn't even getting into the fact that most diagrams conform to very strict aesthetic standards in which flaccid penises are always six inches long and clitorises and labia are teensy, delicate little flower petal bits. Hence the need for actual pictures of genitalia."
DeleteSeriously. I've heard people talk about how beautiful the vulva is. I was in my twenties before it occurred to me to even take a mirror and look. I always feel like I'm freakish and hideous. I don't think I'm even outside of the norm terribly. Just... because an abuse history and crappy sex ed, I really can't stand the sight of my own genitals.
Definitely this! Diagrams of vulvas were always very neat, and being a kid who filled in sex-ed blanks via the internet, I had come across the term "meat curtains" (and the associated judgements) and was too terrified to look at my own vulva for fear I'd be one of the "gross" ones. In class, we just didn't talk about it.
DeleteAnd, on the other side of that, a friend of mine who has a cute pink porn-star vulva didn't even know inner labia existed because hers were so small!
I would LOVE to see some "genitals all look different, especially vulvas, and they are all good and not disgusting" in sex ed in the future.
And you should teach girls that they are born with a limited number of eggs only and that they'll run out of eggs mid thirty. And that it takes a couple of years of relationship before you should have children, you don't meet daddys at the street conner, so they better plan ahead. This would make the life of men of my age (i.e. mid thirty) so much more pleasant … would could finally date girls of our open age without bumping into all those panicking chicks who are desperate to get a child because they have made an uninformed decision of not having children when they had been younger.
ReplyDeleteMenopause doesn't happen because you "run out of eggs" (there are millions) and it sure doesn't happen in the mid-thirties.
DeleteAnd women's lives are not all about having babies while simultaneously causing men no inconvenience whatsoever.
Look at it this way... if women were good girls and had babies when you think they should...
DeleteThen you'd have the terrible inconvenience of having to date women who have children.
Isn't that even worse, to your sort of thinking?
As I see the logic, no. He'd date the childless ones, only now he wouldn't have to deal with them expecting children from him.
DeleteWomen aren't born with a limited number of eggs. We keep right on making new eggs even after we're born.
Deletehttp://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/2012/02/26/dogma-overturned-women-can-produce-new-eggs-video/
Who on earth taught you about the female reproductive system? That person has a lot to answer for.
DeleteNow, women post-30 have a somewhat higher risk of producing children with genetic defects (like Down Syndrome), but they certainly still HAVE eggs. I remember seeing in the news once when I was a kid about a 63-year-old woman having a baby!
Sadly, this misconception seems to be pretty common. One of my best friends thought menopause was caused by running out of eggs and was really surprised when I explained that it's caused by hormonal changes that simply halt the ripening and release of eggs. That was what made me realize how incomplete our sex ed was in school (we went to the same schools growing up). It hadn't really registered before that that my knowledge of sex and reproduction was largely gained through reading books (It's a Girl Thing, which is a GREAT book on puberty and sexuality, and some pop-up book about the reproductive cycle) and the internet and that that was the only reason I wasn't horribly confused or misinformed coming out of high school. No wonder my friends were always asking me questions about things like how birth control works (I previously had thought they just weren't paying attention when we learned it).
DeleteI saw a really terrible Heather Graham movie once that was based entirely around the premise that menopause worked that way. This woman wants a baby, the doctor says he can see her last egg about to drop, and she spends the month frantically trying to conceive any way she can because she thinks it's her last chance. Never at any point in the movie is that idea challenged. It's kind of funny that the movie was called Miss Conception because the whole thing is based around a misconception. The fact that someone was able to get away with making a Hollywood movie about it suggests that a startling number of adults believe it. Even the scientist in the video in the link above to Scientific American seems to believe it (as he attributes menopause to the ovaries "failing" upon using up all their eggs).
Under my Canadian sex-ed curriculum, I remember learning :
ReplyDeletepeeing with an erection is difficult/impossible for many men.
The basic anatomy of female/male reproductive organs.
You should use protection when having any kind of sex (never really went into what those were...)
You shouldn't have sex unless you want to.
Bananas are a very unrealistic representation of of a penis for most men
How conception works (which quickly got diverted into how it works in plants...?)
For an added bonus, my grade 8 teacher who was a botanist and 10000x more interested in plants than people sang the 're-pro-duction!' song from Grease 2.
I honest-to-god did not actually know for 100% how intercourse worked until I HAD SEX for the first time. Porn was not really an option on 56k modems.
It's odd to me to hear of "porn" implying just movies. When I was growing up, seems as though there were any number of books around that got across the basic points, from Anya Seton's Green Darkness (basic historical-novel-with-sexy-bits, which at least covered something about erections and thrusting) to The Happy Hooker. (One of my high school teachers said to the class crossly one day, "If you want to be an educated person, you're going to have read a book now and then. And I don't mean The Happy Hooker!" Half the class promptly slid down in their chairs and avoided his eye.)
DeleteShoot, I still barely know how sex works. That, paranoia about STIs, and near-ADD inability to focus = unwanted celibacy.
ReplyDelete*sigh* A few drinks would probably shut down a few of my higher brain functions, allow me to relax, and simply enjoy the process, but self-medication isn't something I condone. *sulk*
You said that Sex Ed classes need to say that some people want sex more and some people want sex less. I think that Sex Ed classes also need to say, "That means women too." Because although that should be obvious, we live in a society where most people assume that only men want sex.
ReplyDeleteI know that in my Sex Ed class everything was taught with the assumption that all guys masturbate, and all guys will want sex; but female masturbation wasn't discussed, and there was no talk of female orgasm. When oral sex was discussed, a lot of time was devoted to fellatio but I don't think cunnilingus was talked about at all. The message that we got was that girls don't really like sex.
All throughout high school I felt really weird for masturbating, because I thought girls weren't supposed to do that. Also, when I first started having sex it was all about the guy. He initiated, and it was over when he came. He didn't think he was supposed to make me orgasm at all, and I didn't think I was supposed to orgasm. And I know, from talking to other people my age, that lots of people got the same message. My younger sister had been having sex for months when she told me that she isn't sure if she's ever had an orgasm. Not that sex needs to include orgasm, but I think it should sometimes.
I think a lot of people get, from movies and books and Sex Ed, that all a guy has to do is insert-penis-into-vagina-and-thrust and that will automatically be really enjoyable for their partner. More needs to be said about making sure your partner isn't in pain after penetration, that they feel good during penetration, and that they are a sexual partner with wants and needs of their own, not a blow-up doll.
I wonder where I got the idea from that men are losers if they don't get their partner to orgasm.
Delete(Even if that's just as bad, only from the other angle.)
Sooo much this. I thought that orgasm was something that was just supposed to automatically happen to both parties at once.
DeleteMy first sexual experience, I didn't have one, but he did. But I thought that the vaguely-pleasurable feeling I had at the time must have been an orgasm, because he had one.
My second partner quickly disabused me of this notion, and actually enjoyed making them happen. But that was just pure dumb luck.
You said that Sex Ed classes need to say that some people want sex more and some people want sex less. I think that Sex Ed classes also need to say, "That means women too." Because although that should be obvious, we live in a society where most people assume that only men want sex.
DeleteI very much agree with this. I detest the paradigm of, "girls, boys will try to pressure you into sex, which is obviously entirely in their self-interest and opposed to yours, and it is your duty to tell them no."
One of my best friends had a very fear-based, abstinence-focused (they covered forms of contraception, but in a way that emphasized "they are unreliable and you WILL get STIs and get pregnant") sex ed curriculum that spent a lot of time on how to say no to boys trying to talk you into having sex but didn't acknowledge that girls could have sex drives too or say anything about how to say no to yourself. As a result, she ended up having sex when she wasn't ready for it because she didn't know how to sort out her own conflicted feelings. It makes me really sad and rather frustrated to see how messed up she still is about sex and how much she struggles to try to believe healthier attitudes.
I had fairly decent sex ed, as far as US schools go. We had one day each in 4th, 5th, and 6th grade on anatomy and puberty, in gradually increasing detail each year. I went to a charter school for middle school and didn't get any sex ed those years (but the regular public schools covered it in health class, which was apparently infamous for showing a video of childbirth). And then 9th grade was when we actually had a whole unit in health class on sex ed. By that point it wasn't that useful for me, as I'd already learned most of the health and safety stuff from educational books and how sexual activity actually works from porny fanfic. There's a fair amount I don't remember about what we did and didn't cover because I spent more time writing porny fanfic than actually paying attention. We had the scary STI photos and considerable emphasis on failure rates when talking about contraceptives, but we actually got fairly in depth information on what the various STIs are and how you can and can't get them (including a lesson on "it's not dangerous to be around people with HIV and you can't get infected just by touching them) and on what the various types of contraceptives are and how they work. Then we had a guest speaker come in one day to talk about how sex is a beautiful thing but only in the context of marriage and if you don't wait you're ruining it for yourself and your future spouse. We had a decent grounding in the mechanics of how sexual activity actually works in addition to how conception and embryonic development work. We had the childbirth video, which I heard many horror stories about from the kids who had already seen it in middle school, but I was rather underwhelmed by. We spent a while on relationship abuse, although I think it was all with the assumption of male abuser and female victim. I know the existence of homosexuality and bisexuality was acknowledged, but I think the curriculum was pretty heteronormative.
My close friends at college come from half a dozen different states; I had by far the most comprehensive and liberal sex ed of any of them. (And just last year I found out that even in my area, my school district was an outlier; most of the other districts in the state teach abstinence-only.)
Sex feels good... very good. and it may make you want to do crazy things... like get married... Know that the selection of a spouse and selection of a sexual partner are very different searches.
ReplyDeleteWe had pretty good sex ed in my (private, secular) school ~1977. Though I admit only one comment really sticks with me, during the discussion of types of contraception:
ReplyDelete"Next is the diaphragm. I was a diaphragm baby. So was my sister."
So, UK, Catholic school.
ReplyDeleteYear 7 (age 11-12) we had some stuff in biology, which went over the mechanics and suchlike, including a video about what going through puberty's like, with such things as awkward swimming-pool erections and wet dreams. The biology topic sticks in my mind mostly for someone getting confused and thinking the word for menstruation was masturbation, the teacher explaining what that actually is, and the pupil replying "Euuuugh, why would you do that?" I can't remember if I actually said "Because it feels good?" or if someone else said it or I just thought it.
A couple of years later we had morals/ethics of sex/contraception/etc. in RE (standing for religious education), which may be setting off some alarms in some people's heads... As I recall, it was pretty well-balanced - "These are the issues, these are the differing views, here're the arguments, this is what the Church thinks." I definitely came out of it with a more liberal view on abortion than my parents. (My personal feeling is that abortion's quite an extreme measure and probably best kept for quite extreme cases, but more importantly, that it's *none of my business* what other people choose to do.)
Oh, yeah, one other thing- I remember all the girls going off at some point and hearing afterwards that they'd been taught to put a condom on a banana or somesuch.
DeleteI can't help wondering why teaching *boys* (you know, the ones who, under current cissexist school-system assumptions, will have something to put a condom on) don't get taught how to do that. Any explanations?
Because in our culture girls are responsible for making sure that they don't get pregnant. Boys get a free pass.
DeleteAh. I had a feeling I might be meeting the answer with a profound "Fuck that."
DeleteThere was me hoping it was some sort of mechanical reason to do with it beign awkward to get on when it's attached to your own groin...
I had a UK sex education, which was fairly decent - stunning compared to the ones I've read about here. Similar to the commenters above, I had a lot of information about the different types of contraception from a fairly young age, including how to put on a condom (they actually told us it was important to squeeze the tip to get the air out!) using a demonstration model of an erect penis, not a banana. I was ill the day they did the terrifying STI slides, in retrospect a good thing as it sounds like just a ton of 'sex = dirty' messages and no useful advice. Our sex ed focused pretty exclusively on PIV though, and I don't think they talked about oral sex or anal sex in terms of how or why you'd want to do it, only in terms of 'you can still get x disease, wear a condom/use a dental dam!'. We did have an excellent session where a nurse came in and answered our questions, in a way that was actually helpful and non-shamey to the people who were already having sex. It was pretty candid, perhaps helped by the fact we were a single sex girls school and all our sex educators were female. I don't think masturbation was mentioned though, and although we knew about gay people we never really found out how they had sex.
ReplyDeleteMy best sex ed definitely came from home - I already knew about most of the stuff they taught in sex ed class, the basic mechanics certainly. My parents were always honest with me and willing to answer questions etc, and I was *very* well supplied with books, the first being when I was about 4 or 5 and wanted to know where baby brother had come from. It had an anatomical diagram, to its credit, but next to it was a picture of a couple in woolly jumpers embracing on a park bench, leading me to wonder how they managed to do *that* through all the clothing. I also got given a useful one about periods, and one on puberty. There were a bunch of books just lying around at home that I discovered as I got older - ones like 'the Joy of Sex', a scientific one with pictures of growing foetuses during pregnancy, and an excellent Dorling Kindersley one which was called something like 'The Whole Woman' and was the first place I learnt about masturbation. It actually contained detailed anatomical pictures and instructions, bless its heart. I was always allowed to read whatever books I liked, and if I had questions I knew I could talk to my parents (though as a shy bookworm, being able to read about this stuff in private was ideal). I'm grateful to have gotten such a good education.
I'm from Canada, and my sex ed was similar. Lots of contraception, lots of STIs, and some overall information about menstruation and names for the individual bits on penises and vulvas. We even had the slideshow of last-stage infected genitals. We had this same clinical information reiterated so many times that by grade 10 the students were essentially teaching the class.
DeleteMy mom left early, and my dad is so awkward and uncomfortable with the fact that I have genitals at all that there was zero education coming from home. But, I've been in a gifted class throughout school, so most of my peers were comfortable asking questions, and I sought out enough of it independently through the internet that even now I'm sort of the go-to sex ed expert (particularly because I emphasize emotional well-being in addition to unbiased information).
I have one friend whose parents never let her attend sex-ed (for some reason you are allowed to opt out, despite it being perhaps the most relevant and useful class you'll ever take) and she has asked me all sorts of questions. I've debunked many a myth that her mother gave her to scare her off sex.
So, what I'd like to see is this (in addition to everything Holly suggests):
- Sex ed is not optional.
- Sex ed includes emotional well-being and CONSENT (you can say yes/no to anything at any time with anybody for any reason (or no reason - "I don't know if I want to" is enough), if anybody tries to shame you they are a douche and should not be listened to, "sexually active" isn't a permanent state and doesn't say anything about you as a person, watch for signs that your partner is uncomfortable/SUPER HAPPY - it should be VERY OBVIOUS, communication is the most important part of sex, etc.)
- Sex is supposed to feel good. Sex is not supposed to be obligatory. There is no script for sex, and WAY MORE than PIV exists. LGBTQ+ people exist and have sex too! Here's how to stay safe doing it!
- Debunking idiotic sex myths (virginity isn't real or valuable, having anal isn't a way around it, porn is not a how-to guide)
- Maybe a bit of "mainstream porn is really awful and here's why, but porn itself isn't evil and if you want to watch/take naked pics/videos you are not a bad person as long as everybody involved is happy and consenting"
- Acknowledge that everyone has different needs/desires/identities/problems with sex, and that they're okay; women tend to need more not-PIV activities to get off (and should expect to get off), but men might also have more difficulty than society would tell you to expect
- Having boundaries is okay. Enforcing those boundaries is okay. Exploring/surpassing those boundaries when and how you want to is okay. Pushing past someone's boundaries for your own pleasure is NOT OKAY. Even if you're madly in love or you apologize later.
- Bonus: A run-down on abusive relationships. Show us the cycle of abuse, and focus on relationships that never end up getting really violent (the kind where you go "well, it's not so bad, they never hit me or anything").
Basically, I want everyone to know that sex is fun, and they should expect it to be a positive experience and never expect or tolerate anything less than that. Be considerate of your partners.
Oh! Something funny from my elementary sex ed:
DeleteI had the same misconception as Holly about the mechanics of sex, (I figured it was a kind of "insert->wait 3 seconds->ejaculate->leave" deal) and asked my teacher about it.
"Why does the penis even get hard if all you have to do is stick it in and ejaculate?"
She replied, "Have you ever tried putting a wet noodle into an electrical socket?" and I instantly understood. Thought she never explained thrusting either!
Yesssss, absolutely! I received my schooling and consequently my sex ed in a Western European country, so getting to know about contraception and stuff was not surprising - but still, everything was from a very medicalized, very reproduction-focussed, and very heteronormative angle, without any frills or details beyond that (I think pleasure was mentioned in passing. Maybe. There were no slides of any actual genitals, just drawings, and no mention of the word "vulva" or the idea that masturbation exists and isn't evil... well, it was a Catholic school, so they were probably already telling us more than they wanted to. ). I don't remember if we discussed abortion, I am pretty sure we didn't discuss consent or any of the relationship-ed stuff you detailed in your (brilliant!) other post. This needs to change, not just in the US (though it needs to change there more badly) but throughout the Western-minded world! Also, we had one unit on this in grade 4 of elementary school (super progressive, I know) and one in grade 6, which are still both too early for anyone to take the matter seriously (accordingly, jokes were made and embarrassment was abundant, since kids at that age still believe that sex is "ewwww" - at least I did... ). I do think it's important to get the information about contraception out there as early as possible, before anyone can start gathering uninformed experiences, and of course teaching kids about consent (especially the message "nobody is allowed to do anything sexual to you while you are kids, if someone does tell a person you trust", which I don't think I got from anyone but my parents), but I wish they had another unit on the relationship side of this topic later on when people are mature enough and interested enough to care and listen.
ReplyDeleteSomething that needs to be included for the information age: Porn.
ReplyDelete"It's okay to be curious about porn, and it's okay to be turned on by some of it. But porn isn't meant to be educational. You wouldn't learn about driving safety from watching an action movie, right?"
Basically, explain to them that most porn photos and videos are made to look exciting to the audience, not as a realistic portrayal of sex. It's shot in such a way that you don't see condoms, and never see someone putting a condom on. The actors don't communicate with each other much because there's a director offscreen telling them what to do. The positions they use are less about what feels good and more about getting the camera close-up. And the "money shots" often use Ivory Soap.
If I ruled the world ... well, as a middle school teacher, I commonly get approached by adolescents who want to know all sorts of things. Today, during a class discussion about gender roles, I was asked if boys get hormonal periods. At our school I am the only seventh grade social studies teacher and there's only one seventh grade science teacher. (This is because no one cares about social studies or science any more now that the Cold War is over.) By law I can't talk about anything relating to sex ed with my students until I have seen all of their cume files and have searched out any extant "I forbid my child to have sex ex classes" paperwork - which parents do, often enough, sign. It's worth my job to talk about sex education without permission. The science teacher doesn't like answering student questions, so my kids get the canned 3 week curriculum and that's it. So I had to tell my students that I was not allowed to answer that question, but they could ask the science teacher. (Our school doesn't have a nurse. Or a librarian, for that matter. Please vote to increase funding for education.)
ReplyDeleteSo, I'd require a comprehensive curriculum to be taught to students starting in kindergarten and ending in 12th grade. I would not allow parents to opt their children out of it - that's what home schooling is for. For the Kindies I would just add body parts to "knees and elbows." I'd cover anatomy and physiology in late elementary school and move into family planning and emotional concepts such as love and relationship abuse with the middle school and high school kids. I'd add parenting classes in high school, too. My students know almost nothing about medicine or their bodies, and the ignorance I'm basically forced to leave them in is criminal.
This, so much. I learned what sex was at age 9, and the act of knowing did NOT make me want to go out immediately and do it.
DeletePeople have bodies. As adults, people need to make important medical decisions concerning their bodies. You can't take care of something if you don't at least have a vague idea of how it works.
I've come across grown ADULTS (including women!) who do not know what menstruation is or why it happens. There is an image circulating the internet about a fertility counselor who had to explain to one couple that the little space between a woman's thighs just under the pelvic area is NOT her vagina. These stories SHOULD NOT HAPPEN.
I dated a guy once who had no idea that women menstruated. He was 19 - totally old enough to know this shit. I don't think faulty sex ed is to blame, though...I'm pretty sure Canadian sex ed classes still talk about periods. I think this kid just assumed that women are aliens and our genitals are incomprehensible, and zoned out whenever anyone tried to tell him any differently.
DeleteOne does wonder what the hell he thought tampon commercials were about, though. Shouldn't he have thought - at the very least - that women get blue liquid sporadically coming out of them, somewhere in the pants region?
Middle school teacher back again ... I'd also start talking to them about child sexual abuse at a very young age. I was abused for the first time at 5. It would have been nice to know that even if it feels good, it's still abuse. I thought, at the time, that it was only abuse if it didn't feel good, because that was (and still is) the public message.
ReplyDeleteMy parents taught me early on that it is ALWAYS wrong for a grown-up to ask children to get naked around them, or to see or touch their private parts, for ANY reason other than the really obvious ones (like changing a diaper).
DeleteGranted, there is room for nuance (in Europe and parts of Asia, it's not unheard-of for people of all ages to be nude in communal steam baths) but kids shouldn't generally have to decide "was I abused or not?" based on some complicated criteria. It should be made more clear that some ways of touching kids are ALWAYS bad, whether it feels good to the kid or not.
My mom didn't tell me anything - in fact, when I informed her that I'd gotten my first period she got nervous, jumped in her car, and left. That attitude totally left it open for my dad to tell me that my mom had told him to tell me about "the birds and the bees," which in his case involved hands-on (etc.) demonstrations. If you have one parent who won't say anything, another parent who says that you obey him because he's your dad, and some really vague messages about "don't let people touch you in ways you don't like" (which even then I knew to be malarkey because my folks spanked me, which I definitely didn't like, and our culture supports their right to do that) then you're basically prey and anything can be done to you.
DeleteMiddle school teacher back yet again! While I would have no difficulty talking about my own experiences with puberty and all this stuff with kids because I really think they ought to have someone they can trust to talk to about this, it occurs to me that it might be just as wise (or wiser) an idea to cover my ass by not talking about it at all. All you have to do is be frank with one group of kids, then piss one kid off, then have that kid report you for sexual harassment, before you lose your credential and can never teach again. And as much as I want the kids to have a quality sex education, it's not worth my own future. There would have to be laws covering frank sex ed, and I would insist on being videotaped for every minute of it.
ReplyDeleteYou wouldn't even have to piss one kid off. That one kid could, in all innocence, tell their parents about what they got taught in school that day, and their parents could get all outraged on the child's "behalf". Seeing their parents get upset would probably upset the kid, who would likely decide that it's emotionally safer to blame the teacher for their distress.
DeleteI remember being beaten over the head with the fact that girls were allowed to say no to sex. There was no mention that a girl could ever want sex herself. Our sex ed was supposed to be "comprehensive" or, in other words, not abstinence-only, but we spent so much time talking about how birth control fails and abstinence is the only way to avoid pregnancy, that we didn't have time to learn much else. I think the only thing I really learned in that class was that my teacher supported rape culture. Things weren't even just limited to implicit things either; she actually said once that if we don't wait until marriage to have sex,as soon as you say yes to anything, guys will (rightfully) jump immediately into PIV intercourse without waiting for you to get aroused. I'm not sure if it's worse that she portrayed every guy as a rapist who is unwilling to negotiate, or that half of my class came out thinking that guys are constantly aroused, and that lubrication therefore doesn't matter to them. And no mention whatsoever of anything other than masculine guys and feminine girls.It was all totally gender stereotypes. The only mention of LGBTQ health was that the teacher said one sentence "all people deserve to be tolerated, regardless of sexual orientaiton" and, while a noble idea, it wasn't exactly helpful to hear a one-off phrase with no context or further discussion.
ReplyDeleteSo, what I want focused on is
women can want sex
men can not want sex
gender is not static and solely based on genitals
comprehensive info about LGBTQ sexuality
You can say yes to a specific act, and it's not yes to everything
Accurate failure rates of contraception, emphasizing sucess
Mechanics of sex
I thought of another thing -- seems as if people always portray teenagers as being great except for those dang puberty hormones, always getting in the way. But the thing is that those same hormones are responsible for all the rapid development you see intellectually, emotionally, athletically, musically -- just plain growing up of all kinds. It's a package deal.
ReplyDeleteOther people have already said what I'm about to say, I'm just seconding/rephrasing it, but:
ReplyDeleteI think sex ed needs to just...break down all the imaginary barriers between male and female, gay and straight, penetration and not-penetration. They should stop categorizing things so much and just say that sex is any kind of touching that you like and that makes you feel good. No one act is any more legitimate than any other (but some are riskier than others, and here's a detailed chart...) and it's okay to like whatever you happen to like and to dislike whatever you dislike. Sexuality should be presented as an a la carte buffet where the couple (or triad, or whatever) can choose whatever works for them. And there should be a lot of talk about communication and consent.
So, instead of acting like P in V is "real" sex and a big deal while everything else is lesser, act like safe, consensual touching is all good and it's unsafe/nonconsensual touching that's "not legitimate" "not really sex" etc. Try to move the prestige that kids currently put on having "done it" to having done it safely and happily.
And yeah, there needs to be more discussion of the mechanics. My parents explained to me about erections when I was young, but I still had no idea that sex involved thrusting (I pictured it like getting a shot: pushing the penis all the way inside is like pressing the plunger on a hypodermic needle, and makes stuff squirt out). I had no idea that sex was supposed to feel good, either. It would've made so much more sense if someone had said "rubbing the penis - with a hand or a vagina or a mouth or whatever - feels good, and when the penis has those good feelings it usually triggers an ejaculation." Then I would've felt like I had all the puzzle pieces.
And no, hearing that sex feels good wouldn't have made me want to run out and do it before I was ready. I also keep hearing that bungee jumping is an amazing "rush", and I have no desire to do that... If anything, being educated on exactly what to expect from sexual contact (and specifically that if I don't want something, I have no obligation to do it) would've helped me fight the pressure I got from guys back in the day.
sex is any kind of touching that you like and that makes you feel good.
DeleteOkay, that really is too broad. By that definition, I've had sex with my kids, for pete's sake, not to mention other family members, teachers, a massage therapist...
No kidding! I've had sex with newborn babies, cats, birds, potters clay, my garden, trees... No no wait! I haven't. We might want to narrow that down a bit. Any sort of pleasant, consensual, genital touching perhaps.
Delete"...Feel good in your crotch," then. Better?
DeleteI worry that this alienates anyone who likes sex but doesn't really experience genital arousal, though. And yet I don't want to narrow the definition down to include only genital touching, because that leaves out all the non-genitally-related activities that people find sexually stimulating. So yeah, I chose to err on the vague side.
Oh, I know. I remember Figleaf riffing on what is or isn't sex in much the same way. I guess what I was thinking also is that people get turned on during, or by, all kinds of stuff -- there could easily be one person getting turned on during a consensual hug, for instance, while the other person doesn't even know the first person is getting turned on. It occurs to me that I used to have a vague idea in the back of my mind that people hugging each other affectionately, or lovingly, or lustfully, HAD to be feeling essentially the same thing, that feelings were literally flowing back and forth between them, rather than still being locked up inside separate people. Pure magical thinking, of course, and as soon as I looked at the idea consciously I realized it couldn't be true, but it sure does feel as if there were energy flow from one person to another sometimes. That might be another thing to add -- not to use magical thinking to suppose that the other person must feel as you do, because really that's a sign of self-centeredness at best, and could be a sign of a desire to control other people.
DeleteKick-ass article (second that UU Our Whole Lives seems to be close to exactly what mostly everyone here is looking for). I've also really enjoyed hearing everyone else's horror stories and the rare positive stories.
ReplyDeleteI think I was spared the worst of mandatory abstinence-only by a truly health incompetent teacher (he of the "Well, I guess we have to have a test today (all open book, fill-in-the-blank) because it's midterm and you have no grades yet." This is what happens when you made a policy that all head coaches much be teachers at the school and value your sports more than your education.)
I'm not saying I learned anything worthwhile... I mostly didn't learn anything at all, but that includes skipping the horrible STD pictures and most of the sex-shaming. Instead, all I remember are terrible analogies that even as very religious, personally conservative/prudish late-bloomer (happily recovered from all that now) made no sense to me in a "Um... that's not how sex/the world/bodies work at all."
Examples:
-The sticky tape=strong marriage, dirty tape=filthy whore who will never form meaningful connections example given above
-Direct quote from my teacher: "Some people say we should teach all about sex and contraception because, well, if your kids are going to go joy-riding without your permission, wouldn't you at least want them to wear a seatbelt? But to that I say--why wold you leave the keys in the ignition? So I refuse to teach any of that."
-Cheetos video!: A teacher in the video calls about 6 kids to the front of his classroom. He give them all cheetos, tells them to chew them out, and then passes a paper cup down the line and has them all spit their chewed up cheetos in it. When it gets to the last kid, he tells him to drink it. The kid refuses. They go back and forth a bit with the teacher pressuring the kid to drink it. The kid refuses. Then the teacher says, "THAT'S why having premarital sex is like!"
..?! I mean, I won't drink it, but you can tip it over my head if you put a condom over top of that cup first...
-Then it continued:"When you get married, do you want your spouse to be like this cup? Or would you rather be a clean glass of water? Here." Then he gives the kid a clean glass of water to drink.
Etc.
Coming back to this some time later, I think the distillation of what I want from sex ed - and what could have helped me avoid assault - is help figuring out how to figure out what I wanted, romantically/sexually. I got a lot of "it has to stop if you say no" and no "here's how to decide if you want to say yes" or, for that matter, "how to avoid getting into a situation where you go catatonic and thus cannot speak to say 'no', which will magically stop it happening".
ReplyDeleteThe flip side of that would be about asking for desired things, rather than trying them and waiting to see if "no" emerges....
That was essentially the entire extent of my sex ed, with no other information one way or the other. But I forgot the one rare positive thing he shared:
ReplyDeleteSeveral years prior, they hired a young nurse to teach health ed. She was unmarried. Our backasswards conservative parents flipped out, because obviously either:
*She was a good little virgin waiting for marriage and thus was unqualified and they didn't want her teaching sex ed to their kids
OR
*She was a filthy slutty whore and they didn't want her teaching sex ed to their kids
...ignoring the fact that she was a licensed health professional with, you know, medical knowledge, and that's it is generally inappropriate for a teacher to talk about his or her personal sex lives in class in most situations.
So when they came to deliver this petition to the board to have her removed from teaching health because she wasn't married, he met them and said, "Do you think your kids' history teacher has actually met George Washington? Probably not. Go home."
I reckon, learning kids up about flirting would be awesome. It would have so many applicaions even outside of the sex arena, and if you're comfortable communicating with others like that, it can facilitate actual discussion about consent etc. Plus maybe the arseholes won't score all the time cos nice guys will have some skills.
ReplyDelete(soz about the anon, I'm a bit late for an appointment)
my mother was an OB/Gyn nurse [now she's a Nurse Practicioner!] and she came in and taught a sex-ed class when i was in 8th grade.
ReplyDeletei will now repeat an exchange that, AT THE TIME, embarassed the hell out of me, but today i look fondly back on, proof [had i but been able to see it] that my mother was my ALLY.
Mother: you should always use a condom when engaging in sexual contact
Bitchy Girl: what, like, EVERYTHING?
M: Everything. well, for giving a woman oral sex, a dental dam. but all sex acts where a penis in penetrating ANYTHING, use a condom
BG: even during a blow-job?
M: even during a blow-job.
BG: do you know what condoms TASTE like?
M: yep. they come in flavors. i prefer "root-beer".
BG: **unable to breath**
SERIOUSLY.
i've had kids [i mentored teens until i became too disabled] who had STIs in their throats, because they were under the mistaken impression that STIs only happened with vaginal sex. some were smarter, and thought it was only vaginal AND anal.
course, i've had kids who used CANDY WRAPPERS as condoms, so...
Candy wrappers? Wouldn't that be a good way to make sure you get some sort of infection down there?
Deleteyep. also: cuts.
Delete*shudder*
but 13-y-o aren't always the best decision makers. they knew what condoms do, and couldn't optain them, so found what THEY thought was the best way to mock up condoms. sigh
oh! and "oral sex IS STILL SEX, but generally safer - i.e. w/r/t pregnancy - and if you won't reciprocate, don't offer"
ReplyDeleteok, one last one, but this one is SO FUCKING IMPORTANT:
ReplyDelete"This is a hymen. it is NOT an "indicator of virginity", nor was it created to lock in the vagina's "freshness". it is a membrane that protects the tissues of girl-babies/children/children with those parts. it DOES NOT LAST. you will NOT automatically have to "break" your hymen, have it broken, break your girlfriend's, because a thousand and one NON-sexual things can "break it" - like playing basketball, falling down, doing heavy housework - and SOME people never have one, and even if it doesn't "break", it WILL atrophy, so the longer you wait to have sex, the less likely you will still HAVE a hymen, AND THAT'S OK"
This, so much.
DeleteIn addition to feeling ashamed because I broke my own hymen before becoming sexually-active...I had this weird idea that virginity lasted up until the moment a guy had an orgasm while inside your vagina. I blame the Catholic Church for that one.
Laura;
Deleteyeah... i was one of those born sans hymen. which led o a horrible fight/issue with my first real boyfriend and sex partner, who refused to believe that i hadn't had sex because i didn't *bleed*. i told him to either get some real education or a new girlfriend. i was pretty damn pissed, but yeah.
and i really do know people who act as if a hymen has the point of "proving" virginity, PERIOD, and any girl/woman [or person who has those parts, i should say] is either a virgin with an "intact" hymen that will bleed and HURT w/ first PIV, or is a complete slut as "proved" by lack of hymen.
ok, i lied - there's one last thing, and it sums up a good chunk of what lots of people have said.
ReplyDelete"There are sex organs. there are male organs and female organs. GENERALLY, at least some of these organs will be in play. but there is one organ that EVERYONE has that will ALWAYS - or at least SHOULD always - be involved. this is THE most important sexual organ, and the largest.
YOUR BRAIN. not just in the "let's be smart about sex" sense, either. things that turn you on - having fantasies - hell, the fact that you can both physically and emotionally FEEL ANYTHING - your nervous system requires the brain, and feeling sex requires the nervous system, so...
YOUR BRAIN. THE most important sex organ. enjoy!"
really, truly, seriously, when my dad told me that *SO* many things made sense, things like wet-dreams and written erotica, that had previously seemed... silly? counter-intuitive? brain = necessary for sex.
Didn't read the thread but found something I thought you'd find interesting. It's an article from 2000 in the Unesco Courier about the Dutch model for sex ed in schools, called "Long Live Love". They talk lots about attitudes, values, and decision making skills. It's been in use for over 20 years now, and I wonder if there isn't a certain amount of grandfathering that's happened, since the other half of the Dutch model is the fact that parents are pragmatic and reasonable about the fact that their kids are going to have sex, and so talk to them about their responsibilities when they do.
ReplyDeletehttp://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0012/001201/120152e.pdf
Someone may have already said this (191 comments? Whoa!)
ReplyDeletebut the Unitarian Universalist Denomination has a sex-course for teens called OWL (our whole lives)...and it covers every point that YOU brought up in your post about what you'd teach if you led a sex-ed class.
Yes, the UU's are a church. Yes, we teach sex ed as a class.
nilla
I have read every single one of the comments above and it wholly reinforces my plan to return to study next year to become a sex educator. I feel so strongly and passionately about this chronic lack of information and support for children and teenagers.
ReplyDeleteI made some bloody terrible decisions and put myself in some awful situations sexually growing up, mostly because I didn't know what the fuck was going on and I was really horny.
Knowledge is a powerful tool in life and I was deliberately denied the tools I desperately needed in regards to sex, sexuality and masturbation.
I am determined to share as much knowledge and information as I humanly can.
I am in Australia and I am SO sick of the concept of giving information as sexualising children. The whole notion of if you tell kids about 'it' they'll just want to do it. It is so broken and backwards.
We deliberately dis empower our children from making informed decisions regarding their bodies. It just completely blows my mind.
(for some reason I can't post here via my blog...)
http://yeahbutnobutyeahbut.wordpress.com/
I'm probably not the first one saying this (I didn't read all the comments) but...I just realized how horrible sex education I had. All it was was basically: here are a bunch of sexual diseases you can get and don't have sex until marriage O_o.
ReplyDeleteThat Barnacle-Bill photo served a very important role in our Sex-Ex class, because that was the only photo I can remember being shown of an un-circumcised penis, and a source of great confusion to much of the, predominently Jewish, class. The teacher, to his credit, explained that, and probably saved several of the students from a terrified "what IS that" later in life.
ReplyDeleteI've just seen this post, but funnily enough I wrote a similar post not long before this one was published. It was in response to a crackpot British MP proposing we should introduce girls-only, abstinence-only sex education into UK schools.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.allthatchas.blogspot.com/2012/01/what-i-wish-my-sex-education-had.html
All my sex ed was either abstinence or wear condoms or you'll get disgusting STD's and/or die.
ReplyDeleteBut ignorance =/= inaction, since I ended up getting most of my sexual knowledge on teh internetz.
It's pretty difficult to keep people uninformed nowadays.
I can't relate to this but it makes me really sad. I grew up in Europe, we had our first sex ed class in 4th grade, where we learned about the male and female anatomy, erections, menstruation, etc. By middle school we had some vague contraception teaching, but in my first 2 years of high school we had two semesters a year, about 60% of which was dedicated to sex ed (the rest was dedicated to things like eating disorders, drinking, drugs (but my middle school tutelage on that was extremely extensive too), harrassment etc) during which I learned about every single form of contraception known to man, the pros and cons of each, even the more obscure ones that no one uses anymore. This on top of human reproduction in freshman biology class, including a very graphic video of a birth.
ReplyDeleteThe kicker? The elementary/middle school I went to was British, the high school American, located in Italy. So why are American schools abroad so much better at teaching this stuff?
The only thing we didn't cover was LGBT issues, which I suppose I would have added, although we were all perfectly aware of the LGBT community and there was zero harrassment of LGBT classmates, since no one cared who others found attractive. Still though, the subtleties of gender identity was most likely not known by all, and it would have made for interesting conversation.
I was incredibly lucky. I had this:
ReplyDeletehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/About_Your_Sexuality