"Honestly, I’ve been having sex for a while now, and it took me a long time to be 'totally comfortable' with it."

(title quote from Amanda Hess, link to article below)

So partly because I work in the women’s health world, and partly because I just find the subject fascinating, I think about sex education a fair amount.  Mostly I think about how much the sex ed I had, freshman year of high school, sucked.  It just sucked.  I went to a public, suburban high school, and even at age fifteen I was completely dismayed at the overt religious overtones of the “education” we received in this area.  Here are 3 highlights:

• Skit:  Two volunteer students stand on a blanket on the floor of the classroom, the blanket representing their “marriage bed.”  It is their wedding night.  Hurray!  But the “newlyweds” are not alone in their marriage bed!  Why? Because they had sex with other people before tying the knot.  Gasp.  Part two of the skit: everyone these 2 have slept with, and then everyone those people have slept with, crowds onto the marriage bed.  Which is bad.  You do not want a crowded marriage bed, people.
• Video:  Some lady, on the video, informs us girls in the class very seriously that “Virginity is a gift that can only be unwrapped once.  And it should be by your husband.”  Not “spouse,” notice.
• The main other thing I remember from this class is the huge graphic slides of diseased genitalia resulting from STDs resulting from bad, outside of marriage sex (nevermind that married people contract STDs too).  The class was right before lunch, which made it all the worse.

I have no problem with the idea that some people don’t want to have sex before they get married.  And personally, I didn’t want to have sex in high school.  What the health teacher did or did not say about the effectiveness of condom use wouldn’t have changed that, nor would passing out condoms in class made me reconsider my choice.  My point being that *more* accurate information about sex is probably unlikely to make kids who wouldn’t have sex otherwise rush out and get laid.

I think it makes sense to inform kids honestly about the often good reasons for not having sex as a teenager: the risk of disease, pregnancy, and yes, the emotional complications that can ensue.  But none of that has to be wrapped up in the moral/religious overtones that insist not only should you wait til you’re mature and ready for sex, but also that you wait til you’ve found your true (opposite sex) soulmate and wed them.

Sady Doyle of Tiger Beatdown and Amanda Hess of Washington City Paper’s “The Sexist” column had a great discussion that touched on a lot of this, all under the umbrella of thinking about virginity– “You Will Always Remember That Very Special Time When You Were Like “Oh, Just Stick It In Already.”

A few quotes.  On the kind of sex ed that maybe actually works:

SADY: And, like, a while ago, there was this headline all over the place, which was “Abstinence Only Education: Totally Works!” And what it actually WORKED at, apparently, was delaying vagina-to-weiner intercourse for a few years among the preteens. Good job! But also, this magically effective abstinence-only education program taught abstinence this way: Don’t have sex until you are totally comfortable with having sex and know how to make good sexual decisions for you. This program that worked? NOT TEACHING ABSTINENCE, actually. What it was teaching was SEXUAL CONSENT.
Like, “Hey, when you decide to have sex, your decision should probably be full and informed!” Uh, OK. But feminists have been teaching this for approximately FOREVER?

Sady goes on to say, and I imagine a lot of people can relate to this:

what I had NEVER been taught, apparently, was how to respect what I wanted, and to ask for it, and how to say “no” if I did NOT want something he wanted. I mean, I didn’t even know how to say “ow” or “yikes.” My impression was that one could Have Sex or Not Have Sex, and so my first few experiences were like, “oh, so apparently sex is AWFUL? It seems weird that people are so into it! But, OK! I am Having Sex!”

In reflecting on my crappy sex ed experience, I’ve wondered what would have worked better, and my ideal would involve these ideas of consent and respect.  Rather than roleplaying terrible non-virgin wedding sex, why not do roleplays in which students talk to their partners about contraception, or, just as important and often more awkward, about whether they’ve been tested for STDs.  Hell, *I’d* sign up for that class, now, because even though I love talking about and thinking about sex, I certainly haven’t figured out the best ways to engage potential or current partners in healthy sexual communication.  If American sex ed policy were focused more on ensuring that all young people grow up to have safe, healthy, and yes, happy sex lives, think how different the education programs would look.  If  the mainstream programs were run not by bored PE teachers or scared-of-sex religious fundamentalists, but instead by, say, sex-positive feminists, I think it would make a world of difference.  Hopefully, this is some of what’s going on in current “comprehensive” or “abstinence-plus” sex ed programs, and hopefully, the trend will continue to favor such programs over strictly “abstinence only” ones, since the latter keep proving to be wildly ineffective.