In fifth grade, Stella Gage’s class watched a video about puberty. In ninth grade, a few sessions of her health class were dedicated to the risks of sexual behaviors.
That was the extent of her sex education in school. At no point was there any content that felt especially relevant to her identity as a queer teenager. To fill the gaps, she turned mostly to social media.
“My parents were mostly absent, my peers were not mature enough, and I didn’t have anyone else to turn to,” said Gage, who is now a sophomore at Wichita State University in Kansas.
Many LGBTQ+ students say they have not felt represented in sex education classes. To learn about their identities and how to build healthy, safe relationships, they often have had to look elsewhere.
As lawmakers in some states limit what can be taught about sex and gender, it will be that much more difficult for those students to come by inclusive material in classrooms.
New laws targeting LGBTQ+ people have been proliferating in GOP-led states. Some elected officials, including candidates for the Republican presidential nomination, have been pushing to remove LGBTQ+ content from classrooms.
The treatment sex ed as being risk assessment and harm reduction strategy is incomplete without some key points that also protect people having sex for recreational purposes specifically ones that LGBTQIA people tend to use as their primary forms of sexual engagement. Like if you don’t have a segment on anal sex with information about how it makes some STIs more transmissible, how anal sex with female partners is more likely to cause injury, and yes some basic pointers on techniques for making it safer for the people who rely on it as their primary form of being sexually intimate then you do leave people open to :
Higher physical risk of injury when experimenting with sex.
being potentially pressured into something with unique models and techniques needed for truly effective STI reduction.
people believing that it’s ultimately less of a big deal or life course altering because “you can’t get pregnant” so treating those behaviours as less risky
Removing or omitting sex ed that does not mention other risky forms of sexual intimacy other than heterosexual reproductive sex means you are creating blindspots of safety for everyone as many forms of sex like anal have become culturally prized even in heterosexual relationships. The prudish idea of “we can’t teach them techniques !” often stands of the way of fully comprehensive safety instruction leaving some demographics out in the cold as privileged people continue to treat those forms of sex as taboo and stigmatized.
Teaching minors how to have sex is just asking for it to get banned even more than it already is. You really think a public school lesson plan of “how to fuck someone in the ass” will be supported my even a bare majority?
Maybe if they saw what that sort of lesson plan looks like maybe they would realize it’s hardly as lude as people make it seem. Basically the key points are
That’s really it. It’s hardly sitting kids down and getting them to watch porn, heck you don’t even need graphics. Honestly if we mustered up a national program to put adults through actually decent sex ed so they wouldn’t freak out so bloody much we wouldn’t be having this problem. Where I am when I was a kid they piloted a number of university lecturers to hold age appropriate sex ed starting at grade one which covered basic anatomy and consent. They realized that just giving girls particularly exact words meant way greater protection for them as when a little girl comes to you an goes “My uncle touched my cookie.” doesn’t immediately ring alarm bells.
I would hazard that if they put it to a vote actually attending programs like these should be mandatory for actually getting a say. Letting the ignorant and uninformed decide the quality of an education system can only lead to it being subpar.
Nah, I doubt that will fly. That curriculum will get sex ed canceled. We literally have people that think you can’t say “gay” in class.