Didn’t learn anything in sex education classes growing up? Get in line.
The only entertaining aspect of “sexed” was the awkward, outdated videos where teenage actors discuss puberty as if they’re thirty-year-old adults.
But it also wasn’t informative about sex at all, at least not on topics including masturbation, pleasure and consent that are so important for young adults to learn about as they navigate their bodies.
Nina Randolph, a Spring 2020 Stanford University alumna, and Oakland resident Isa Bogart started an Instagram account called “i am EMPWR” in April 2020 to educate the youth on sex topics usually not covered in school.
“I definitely got abstinence education but also for me, it was more focused on sexual puberty than actual sex,” Bogart said in a Zoom call.
Sex education usually only covers topics relating directly to the body such as menstruation and erections, Bogart explained.
Currently, 28 states require that abstinence be stressed in sex education, according to the Guttmacher Institute’s “Sex and HIV Education” webpage.
Guttmacher Institute is a research organization dedicated to advancing sexual and reproductive rights, according to its website.
Abstinence-only sex education focuses on stigmatizing sex instead of informing young people on how to practice safe sex, according to a Feb. 28, 2018 Guttmacher Institute article.
Ivy Chen, San Francisco State sociology and sexuality studies lecturer, said because the “main message” in sex education is abstinence, educators don’t feel as if they can tell you about birth control or sexually transmitted diseases (STDs).
Chen said educators also fear they’d be giving incorrect information regarding topics not included in the curriculum.
“A scare tactic is a really common way of teaching sex education in general but certainly abstinence-only sex ed,” she said.
The goal of sex education should be to educate young people with the resources necessary for them to explore their sexualities safely.
However, Bogart said she was educated using the abstinence-only model and because the emphasis was predominantly on puberty, she never actually learned about sex.
“What happens with an abstinence-only program that extends through high school is that you graduate these young adults that basically remain ignorant,” Chen said.
There’s no evidence on the efficacy of abstinence-only sex education, according to a Sept. 1, 2017 Journal of Adolescent Health study.
The U.S. curriculum needs to favor a more comprehensive model for sex education.
Chen delved deep into the history of why so many schools haven’t adopted the comprehensive model, which is far more inclusive of different sexualities, according to the Guttmacher Institute.
“There had been funding for sex education that was matched from the state and federal and so the only thing was that the sex education had to be abstinence-only, which meant that if you accepted the federal money then the state would pony up the same amount [but] they would be handcuffed to teaching only abstinence-only,” Chen said.
In 1996, the U.S. passed a welfare reform legislation that included the addition of the Title V Abstinence-Only-Until Marriage program, according to the Journal of Adolescent Health study.
If a program accepted this federal funding, it could only teach abstinence and had to avoid topics including contraception. Between 1998 to 2019, Congress spent more than $1 billion on Title V programs, according to an Oct. 2018 Siecus study.
Siecus is an organization that advances sex education, according to its website.
“A lot of abstinence-only puts the blame or responsibility on women to have that option. We then create this lack of conversation centering women's pleasure in sex and removing that agency from women then has a trickle-down effect to all this other sexual trauma, where women don't feel comfortable asking for what they want,” Bogart said. “So then they stay silent.”
She said abstinence basically removes women from sex.
“[Women or anyone who can get pregnant] being given whatever the man wants, are kind of being forced into complacency, coerced and manipulated into situations that they're not actually comfortable in and don't desire because they lose their voice as they're not a part of the [sex] conversation,” Bogart said.
In many educational programs, boys and girls are separated when they’re taught about sex: girls are taught about menstruation while boys learn about erections.
Bogart said that division allows educators to place any sex responsibility onto the girls because they’re the ones who get pregnant.
Novelist Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote The Scarlet Letter in 1850, which is about a woman Hester Prynne who was exiled because she became pregnant without being married.
Hawthorne wrote, “she had wandered, without rule or guidance, in a moral wilderness. . . . The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread. Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers,—stern and wild ones,—and they had made her strong, but taught her much amiss.”
Women are taught to carry that shame with them even today. They’re burdened with “scarlet letters” for choosing to do what they want with their bodies.
Still, Ivy Chen said we’re lucky because California never accepted the federal money that would require abstinence-only sex education.
“In California, what we do is we're inclusive about things like gender identity, sexual orientation, all different family structures as well as all different body types including acknowledging that some people have intersex bodies,” Chen said.
Chen also referenced the California Healthy Youth Act, which requires school districts to provide comprehensive sex education and cover topics including HIV prevention.
Nina Randolph said she hopes to see consent being taught more in schools.
“Consent needs to be taught very early on and that doesn't need to be in a sexual context but [by] teaching very young children, asking to hug them, telling them they're allowed to say no to a meal,” Randolph said in a Zoom call. “Teaching them general respect for yes and no and showing them that you respect [the no].”
She said consent is much more than a simple yes or no question, it’s an entire communicative process.
Randolph and Bogart said sexual empowerment is also crucial, where individuals feel confident to explore their sexualities.
Teaching sexual empowerment means teaching the “taboo” topics including masturbation and orgasms.
“When you give people the information and you allow them to make competent, informed decisions, that's the start of how you can then be more empowered,” Randolph said.
