Froth of harshly indicts contemporary sex education
For five years I was given “sex education”. It mostly consisted of periods and condoms. It didn’t talk about consent. It didn’t talk about the actual mechanics of sex, about arousal and lubrication and oscillation. It didn’t tell me a single thing about relationships and it didn’t tell me I had a clitoris.
...
That makes me angry. What makes me even angrier is the certainty that there are other girls like me, being “educated” in sex by their schools and their local health providers, and given so little information about their bodies that only luck and stubbornness will ever give them the ability to have orgasms.
That makes me furious.
Froth titles her post “Sex Education, or, What Boys Will Want From You,” which is pretty much the no-sex class construction you’d expect from a curriculum based on 1950s notions of gendered (coughwomen’scough) responsibility… and gendered (coughmen’scough) irresponsibility… plus denial, squeamishness about enjoyment, the high premium placed on womens’ utter inexperience, and the blunt pragmatics of the undesirability to parents and teachers of teen pregnancy.
That boys would have no idea what they’d want from girls, except the sports-analogy affirmation that comes with “scoring” was never considered either, of course. With the result that in addition to not telling women about their clitorises or that there are myriad ways to effectively have shared, parallel, or individual orgasms, the curricula also rarely covers ways boys can manage their own orgasms, to communicate their own wants and needs and vulnerabilities, or, for that matter, to say no when they feel pressured to “perform.”
It’s just taken for granted that enjoyable for boys is “easy,” even automatic, even unavoidable. So don’t bother teaching them anything. And that girls are “hard” so… again don’t bother!
For nearly four years the most popular post at Real Adult Sex, by far, has been How to find someone’s clitoris (if you don’t already know). As Froth points out, for men and women both that’s just the tip of the ignorance iceberg.
What’s the one thing you really wish had been covered in your sex education classes? Assuming you had classes at all?
I personally don’t get this
Submitted by Redleader (not verified) on Tue, 2010-02-23 20:52. I personally don’t get this whole business about why anyone thinks a clitoris is so hard to find. Unless a girl either has female phimosis or doesn’t wash herself, I don’t see how you could not notice it at some point. I can totally understand why a bunch of curious boys and young men who are already interested in sex, but so far have little to no experience, might see the whole business of “finding the clitoris” or the question of “clitoral vs. vaginal stimulation” as a big deal. (Young women also have weird questions in their heads about men!) Inexperienced male curiosity on the matter at least says they’ve heard about some things. But my gosh, how hard is it to locate a clitoris once you’ve had some basic experience playing around with vulvas? Let alone if you’ve had one all your life?! One problem I remember with sex ed and with just the culture in general was a lack of terminology for these things. But that’s very different from treating the most sensitive portion of your own body like it was some mysterious black box. I don’t get those who Betty Dodson classes either. It seems hard to argue against the fact she had a necessary social service, but what was so difficult. Finding a cervix might be another matter, but why does anyone think vulvas are somehow so much more mysterious and difficult to deal with then men’s genitals. Logically speaking they aren’t all that “hidden” or all that “mysterious”. Could it be that all this talk about “finding the clitoris” might be a way to make something that was not acceptable for some many generations, acceptable. Namely that they are putting it under a banner of “education” and “need to know” because culturally millenia of ice is just beginning to thaw?While it’s generally not that
Submitted by Nightfall (not verified) on Wed, 2010-02-24 18:35.While it’s generally not that hard to find, that’s not much help if no one knows what it is. One might as well say “find the wirfjirgle” or something equally random to teens (especially boys) who don’t know anything about it except the name.
Well… Female anatomy and
Submitted by osoborracho (not verified) on Thu, 2010-02-25 10:13.Well…
Female anatomy and clitoris size varies greatly. I have a vulva and have been stimulating away for as long as I can remember, and I still have not actually seen my clitoris. The thing is so tiny that (ignoring the sensory feedback from it) I can barely locate it by feel at nearly done levels of excited, even using Figleaf’s directions. Maybe that’s considered phimosis, but on me a lot more than just the clitoral hood would need to be removed to expose anything. It works just fine, so I don’t care and direct my lovers if needed.
That said, nobody needs to know where or what a clitoris is to please a woman. All you need to do is explore her vulva and pay attention to what she enjoys or ask her where she likes to be touched. Male anatomy being more visible does not make it automatically easier to pleasure a man, either. A more useful approach is to try lots of things and read your partner’s feedback. Everyone is different and one person’s favorite trick leaves another person bored or sore. Of course, it will probably be many more generations until talking about sexual technique is acceptable.
The problem I have in even
Submitted by chingona (not verified) on Tue, 2010-02-23 23:16.The problem I have in even trying to think about the question of what my sex ed class should have covered is that I think of the environment in which all these sex ed classes actually took place. I think of classes out in the portable trailers near the gym, the better to accommodate the embarrassed gym teachers who taught sex ed. I think of the general aura of humiliation that surrounded nearly every aspect of high school. I simply cannot imagine having real conversations about pleasure and consent with these people (either the teachers or my classmates).
Two or three years ago I read
Submitted by colorlessblue (not verified) on Wed, 2010-02-24 02:23.Two or three years ago I read Meg Cabot’s book American Girl: Ready or Not, and I was stunned because not only there was a lot of sex ed standard info (birth control and STD), but also a how-to masturbate. I started thinking that I wished that book was around when I was at puberty. I was having (not bad, but far from good) sex for 5 years when I got to have an orgasm (alone) for the first time, and till now, never happened while in the same room with a partner (but then I haven’t tried again since then).
Since last year, my fantasy sex ed would include a very strong focus on consent and body autonomy too, because I was shocked when I realized that, as informed and assertive as I thought I was, I’d been through so many assaults that I didn’t even identify as assaults because I didn’t have a concept of my right to decide what happens to my body, before it gets to the violent rape stage. And because I’m sure the guy who did the closest to textbook example assault has no idea at all that he did anything wrong.
Having a clitoris all your
Submitted by Froth (not verified) on Wed, 2010-02-24 05:21.Having a clitoris all your life, Redleader, is not a great deal of use if you’ve been well trained not to explore your genitals. Mine, at least, is quite well protected by my labia and accidental stimulation just doesn’t happen. When I washed myself, I was washing, not masturbating, and was (correctly) taught not to scrub inside my vulva. They’re self-cleaning, remember? Soap is bad for them.
Erotica informed me that the clitoris and the female orgasm existed. (Come to that, that ‘orgasm’ existed. Sex ed just told me about ‘ejaculation’.) But erotica doesn’t come with detailed diagrams. You’ll just have to trust me when I say that it’s possible to masturbate for years and not find the clitoris if you don’t know where to start looking, becuase it never occured to me that there was anything interesting so high up and far away from the hole that was all I’d been taught about. No, it’s not really very far. But all I’d been taught was that I had a hole for sex. It didn’t occur to me that the clitoris would be somewhere a penis couldn’t easily stimulate it.
When I looked, I found a sensitive bump just above the vagina and naturally thought that was my clitoris. It was actually my urethra. Since I hadn’t been taught anything about anatomy, how was I to know any better?
As a “well-behaved” girl, I
Submitted by anonymous (not verified) on Wed, 2010-02-24 08:48.As a “well-behaved” girl, I have “found” my vagina well into high school: fooling around and exploring was blocked in my mind, so when I had a yeast infection and had to put in some medical cream, I just looked up a diagram somewhere, found that it’s right after the urethra, peed a bit on my hand to be sure where THAT was, then got to the next hole.
Prohibitions can be really effective.
Dude, I had to look up
Submitted by ozymandias (not verified) on Wed, 2010-02-24 12:24.Dude, I had to look up diagrams to find my clitoris. Froth is right: it’s less obvious than you’d suppose.
My high school’s Catholic. Our sex ed was “don’t have sex, because you will get pregnant and DIE.” (Okay, sometimes they branch into “abortion is murder!”). It’s kind of sad that I’ve become the go-to sex-ed person for my friends simply because I, y’know, looked up blogs like this one and did my research.
But… seriously. People who don’t know that women have clitorises, people who think two condoms makes it less likely to break, people who are under the impression that ‘no’ means ‘playing hard to get’... I haven’t found anyone who douches with Mountain Dew as birth control, but it is a matter of time.
Yep, I had to google how to
Submitted by ZombieCheeze (not verified) on Wed, 2010-02-24 19:04.Yep, I had to google how to masturbate when I was 16. I began teaching sex ed in my senior year, after I’d wised up a bit and done my research, and was promptly removed from the program for not teaching ‘approved’ information (no anatomy – only STD information and discreditation of contraceptives).
So I guess to directly answer your question – I want to see the things I taught: more contraceptives and protection information, more anatomy, more information on consent and mutualism, less sexism, fewer threats, and more general information on healthy behavior.
I didn’t know what a clitoris was until I GOOGLED it. I knew orgasms existed, but I didn’t know a clitoris could give them to you. I was also told that condoms were not reliable, birth control pills destroy your body, and that boys only want to have sex with you, and it’s your job to withhold that, because it’s just sex, and you shouldn’t be doing that! It’s BAD and you will, as Ozymandias said – “Get pregnant and DIE!” Offensive to those of us who’ve learned better, and disturbing to know that there are far more kids out there who aren’t able to do that kind of research (by not knowing any better, or not caring enough).
I want to see the entire program revamped and the real, important, relevant information taught, instead of a curriculum based on threats and misinformation in the hope of preventing premarital sex (which is proven not only to not do that, but it actually increases the rates of pregnancies and STDs).
::gets off soapbox::
Yes. Yes. THIS. And a
Submitted by ozymandias (not verified) on Wed, 2010-02-24 19:39.Yes. Yes. THIS.
And a recognition that female desire exists! I distinctly recall being told that romance novels were like porn for women, and should be avoided for the same reasons (objectification, unrealistic expectations). Women don’t have explicit porn, my teacher explained, because women aren’t interested in sex, but /relationships/.
My (silent) reaction: “Dude, they don’t put all the shirtless scenes in the Hugh Jackman movies to appeal to body builders.”
Thank you, Ozymandias, you
Submitted by Shadow (not verified) on Thu, 2010-02-25 07:43.Thank you, Ozymandias, you just made me laugh.
No, the shirtless scene are definitely for the girls in the audience. And if anyone is still in doubt of that, I’ll suggest putting them in a cinema full of girls while New Moon is on… (Seriously, after hearing all the screaming anytime someone lost a shirt, my stomach muscles hurt from laughing).
Hmm, I think my own sex ed was a bit more liberal, than what I’ve heard here… We did have some anytomy, a lot about STDs and protection(Use a condom, was repeated many, many times. Even if you’re on the pill), and some about masturbation/orgasm. But I remember it as mostly being about boys masturbating, not so much girls.
Of course, I was quite shy then, so I might have blocked something out. Even so, I wish it had been more about relationships and sex than what we got. Not too bad, but with room for improvement. (And more anytomy wouldn’t have hurt either).
Oh, god. New Moon. Twilight
Submitted by ozymandias (not verified) on Thu, 2010-02-25 12:33.Oh, god. New Moon. Twilight fangirls scare me, y’all.
Well, my school’s Catholic, which explains a lot— they’re still on that whole “masturbation will send you to hell! condoms are EVIL! THE PILL IS OMGBABYMURDER!” trip. I understand that public school kids have far better sex ed. Or at least aren’t told that HIV and sperm will pass through tiny holes in the plastic of condoms.
raises hand first time a
Submitted by Pearl (not verified) on Fri, 2010-02-26 11:25.raises hand first time a condom broke I ran for the mountain dew douche. (I was 20 year old.)
I figure that that got into my head from some sort of midwife tales list thru sex ed FAQ sheets, not remember which column it was on.
sex ed had abstract line drawings. I thought my period would break out a new structure thru my thigh and I’d have to wear this sling contraption tied to my upper leg since sex ed at home amounted to something will happen between your t-shirt sleeves and short-cuffs and we’ll tell you more when you get married. Here’s a thing to put on if you start to bleed from “down there”.
I had friends whose sex ed was worse. They were in their mid-twenties and didn’t know how babies happened at all.
My sex ed class covered the
Submitted by Holly Pervocracy (not verified) on Thu, 2010-02-25 00:45.My sex ed class covered the clitoris. What it didn’t cover was relationships. I think it covered abuse in a “if he hits you, call the hotline” way, but they didn’t address emotional abuse, or ways that relationships can be bad for you without being per se abusive. I wish they had talked about how codependence and possessiveness are risks as real as herpes and syphilis. I wish they had gone into the reasons victims might not call that hotline—simply naming thoughts like “without him I won’t have anything” or “well, HE told me it wasn’t abuse” can give people more power to fight against them.
And I wish the class hadn’t been so detached. It was taught from a very rich-white-suburbia perspective that these things happen to other people. The section on homosexuality was delivered with a tone of “we have to tolerate these people, but we’re all normal here, right?”, without any attempt at reaching out to queer students. Likewise the section on abuse was all about “if this ever happens,” not “if this is happening to you now, there’s a lot of people here to help you and it can stop today.”
I’m pretty sure transsexuality and bisexuality didn’t get any mention at all.
And finally and least likely, I wish they’d really really pushed condoms. I wish they’d just told us, “if you’re going to break every other rule in the book, if you take only ONE thing from this entire class, use a condom.”
Only one thing that I wish
Submitted by osoborracho (not verified) on Thu, 2010-02-25 03:06.Only one thing that I wish I’d learned? That would be hard to choose, as sex ed was abstinence garbage (yay for living in a conservative state that’s in the bottom 5 out of 50 for public education spending in general).
One thing I didn’t figure out with my hands or the internet was how to have a healthy relationship or recognize an unhealthy one. My first boyfriend in high school was emotionally abusive almost from date one (and only got worse) but we were both completely ignorant as to what was normal or acceptable behavior in a relationship. I was afraid to ask an adult questions or for advice since the answer would have automatically been to not date until I’m 35 (implication being boys just want to use girls). My own possible desires for affection or sex were treated as nonexistent. Pressure from adults terrified of teens touching each other only strengthened my resolve to continue my fucked up relationship with the boyfriend. We ended up prematurely rushing into sex due to a lack of privacy (e.g. “Oh shit we’re alone, this opportunity may never happen again, go go go!). In conclusion the relationship was completely wretched, but at least I learned from it and somehow didn’t get pregnant or an std. Almost attempted suicide, but that’s going into details. :P
The other thing I didn’t learn for a while was that there are more orientations than straight vs gay. I knew I was attracted to boys, therefore I must be straight and not like girls… right? In middle and high school I spent a lot of time sneaking glances at other girls in my classes or trying to get their attention, but it didn’t occur to me at the time that I had crushes on them. Bi phobia didn’t help. I mentally wrote off my fascination as “oh, she’s really cool” and didn’t follow through to the conclusion that I liked girls, until I was in college. It helped that college had far more women I found attractive than my non-diverse high school did.
yes, sex ed did cover STDs
Submitted by Pearl (not verified) on Fri, 2010-02-26 11:29.yes, sex ed did cover STDs and there were demo condoms which boys inflated and threw around the room for which they got chastised. anatomy in any real sense? no.
I don’t think gay/straight/bi factored into lessons and masturbation? no. rape/assult info, yes in a checklist of what to expect, er, watch for. communication? relationships? nope.
The one thing I wish my sex
Submitted by Dw3t-Hthr (not verified) on Fri, 2010-02-26 21:04.The one thing I wish my sex ed had done the tiniest hint of maybe thinking about covering was:
How to figure out what you want.
My fumbling attempts to try to work that shit out on my own and with active discouragement from “sex ed” got me sexually assaulted.
How to say yes. There was a
Submitted by Plymouth (not verified) on Sat, 2010-03-06 17:34.How to say yes. There was a whole lot about how to say no but nobody ever mentioned how to say yes.