Sex Ed

Two people roll around kissing and pushing each other into walls and floors after fighting verbally. Demi Moore wears a revealing outfit and strips for someone as a part of a scheme to distract while theft happens. A teenager on an MTV show takes off her shirt and kisses her boyfriend who realizes she has stuffed her bras due to being embarrassed by her boob size. I am very interested in Lara Croft Tomb Raider. My older friends, who are all boys at this time, pull up images of scantily clad women with their breasts showing. The image loads frame by frame, bottom to top so it takes over several minutes and when finally revealed my friends say “nice!”

And most formatively, a fan fiction describes the various sexual activities of two women characters from Dead or Alive Xtreme Volleyball.

All of these experiences, among others, informed my understanding of sex and sexual attraction from an early age.

By the time my mom thought to broach the topic of sex, I was 13 and had already had these experiences. Rather rapidly to avoid the discomfort, I promptly responded with, “ I already know, Mom!”

Except, I didn’t really. I just knew that I couldn’t talk to her about it. I had read and watched a lot of things by then but understood very little. I didn’t understand where my different sexual erogenous zones were, I just knew vibration felt good down there (let’s be real, the medical imagery shown in 6th grade health of the cervix, ovaries, testes, and penis are almost purposefully unhelpful). So when I finally had sexual encounters there was a lot of initial frustration with it not feeling as good as it felt with a "personal massager" because I had no clue what to tell them to do.

I assumed that all sexual intimacies with a partner always eventually lead to anal sex as the pinnacle. I thought my vagina was naturally dirty and thus anyone wanting anything to do with it was also themselves dirty (including myself). I harbored intense guilt for all of these thoughts and feelings and particularly after losing my virginity just before turning 15, I thought that God may never forgive me, but I also couldn’t bring myself to go to confession. The priest was so judgmental about my white lies, how would he react or look at me after this?

As a bisexual youth, it was much easier to foray into encounters with boys and men than it was with girls. Not that it wasn’t offered, I just already had so much catholic guilt burdening me I couldn’t even let myself conceive of actual intimacy with a girl outside of fantasy.

I am telling you all of this because I am trying to make it clear that the “information gateway” that was the internet at my millennial fingertips did not actually help me learn proper sex education where my religion, school, and guardians failed me. And even as a teenager I knew it wasn’t just me. My friend would sneak over to the college and have sexual encounters with adult women as a high schooler. I remember them talking about how possessive and scary one of them became after a short period of time. I remember a friend hiding in the janitor's closet at school for oral sex with another boy who would actively bully him in public. I remember myself sending nude images to adult men, and many of my friends doing the same. 

Moreover, I remember that it took a lot of active unlearning in my young adulthood to finally understand the problems that lead to all of these things and how to have healthier and more enjoyable sexual encounters. 

I think a lot about the people who didn’t learn those lessons for much longer, if they ever did.

These risky behaviors became the origin of my research interests as a college student in my first psychology lab. Although risky sexual behavior is not the only avenue of risk behavior I study, I have found over the years of reading the outcome of research studies and conducting my own research that this domain has not improved in the public eye as much as I would have hoped. 

In my graduate studies I became a part of an incredible non profit that engaged in free sex education for agencies and communities that could host the events. There were many areas of the state where it was difficult to find locations and due to laws regarding funding of sex education, schools were not allowed to host us as after school programming. They claim this is what people want, but research continues to show otherwise that at least 90% of parents want some form of sex education for their kids in schools (Tortolero et al., 2011). Furthermore, I found as with most sex education literature a significant gap in sex education inclusive of the alphabet soup aka across sex and gender identities.

We are continually fighting this battle and experiencing much backlash at anything that attempts to communicate to kids or teens about sex in a positive, affirming, and inclusive way (Lameiras-Fernández et al., 2021). People believe this increases the behavior. And in watching the rates of teenage substance use and sexual behavior decline over the past 10 years with the so slight improvements to access of information on these topics, I can assure you knowledge doesn’t increase risky behavior (Marsiglio & Mott, 1986; Nurgitz et al., 2021). 

Thus, I think I would like to incorporate the things I have learned working with teens and young adults, conducting research, and reading the literature into an accessible book of information that can be referenced and engagingly enjoyed by anyone trying to understand the transition from puberty to adulthood on this topic. I am excited by this prospect and want to quietly announce it here to myself to encourage me to follow through. For younger me and friends, who really didn’t understand, fumbled around, and got hurt (and hurt others) a little more often than we might have if we had been a bit more informed. This one is for you!

References

Lameiras-Fernández, M., Martínez-Román, R., Carrera-Fernández, M. V., & Rodríguez-Castro, Y. (2021). Sex education in the spotlight: what is working? Systematic review. International journal of environmental research and public health, 18(5), 2555.

Marsiglio, W., & Mott, F. L. (1986). The impact of sex education on sexual activity, contraceptive use and premarital pregnancy among American teenagers. Family Planning Perspectives, 151-162.

Nurgitz, R., Pacheco, R. A., Senn, C. Y., & Hobden, K. L. (2021). The impact of sexual education and socialization on sexual satisfaction, attitudes, and self-efficacy. The Canadian Journal of Human Sexuality, 30(2), 265-277.

Tortolero, S. R., Johnson, K., Peskin, M., Cuccaro, P. M., Markham, C., Hernandez, B. F., ... & Li, D. H. (2011). Dispelling the myth: What parents really think about sex education in schools. Journal of Applied Research on Children: Informing Policy for Children at Risk, 2(2), 5.