Comprehensive

[liv]

Aaaages ago, Pervocracy hosted a discussion about Things I wish my sex ed teacher had taught me. I intended to post a response to that, and then I got distracted, and then I was reminded recently because people were doing some kind of straw poll on Twitter about whether people's sex (and relationship) education included anything about rape or domestic violence. I voted yes, and turned out to be in a minority of about 10% of respondents. Not that a Twitter straw poll is exactly a valid sampling method, but you know, it reminded me that I meant to make this post months ago.

Thing is, I had what is known in the jargon as "comprehensive" sex education. There weren't really any major omissions or horrendous distortions for the sake of propaganda. In fact, I left school pretty much an expert on how to avoid getting pregnant, I knew about all the possible options for contraception (yes, including the more obscure ones), how they work, how to obtain the relevant equipment, the advantages and disadvantages of each. Obviously this required understanding the basic mechanics of sexual intercourse, which in fact was covered multiple times in both biology and what we used to call "personal and social education". I was also fairly well up on periods and the menstrual cycle, pregnancy and abortion.

Unlike a lot of the commenters on the Pervocracy discussion, I also learned that people have sex for pleasure, not only in order to have babies. I had good access to resources for teenagers explaining how to have sex, with a level of detail that was age-appropriate but extended a good way beyond simply mentioning inserting a penis into a vagina. There was no sense that sexual topics were forbidden knowledge, it was acceptable to be intellectually curious about sexuality and the actual act of having sex.

Masturbation was also covered in a mostly positive way. (Sometimes a bit too positive; there was one teacher in particular who became convinced that regular masturbation was the solution to many emotional problems and took every opportunity to tell the thirteen-year-old girls in her charge that we should be masturbating regularly. It's possible that this was a subtle attempt at reverse psychology intended to put us off touching ourselves, but I think she was basically just a bit batty.) At one point I remember reading in one of those sex education resources: it's perfectly normal to fantasize about things that would be unacceptable in real life. Unfortunately I took this as prescriptive; obviously I wouldn't want to be anything other than perfectly normal, so I undertook to invent sexual fantasies about morally unacceptable things. Having less than zero interest in anything non-consensual, I tried various permutations of adultery, but this just caused me to imagine feeling horribly guilty rather than particularly turned on, and I spent some months worrying that I was "abnormal" for my lack of desire to fantasize about unacceptable acts.

What about sexual diversity? Again, within the parameters of what was reasonable in formal education, I think I didn't do too badly. I understood that different people enjoyed sex in different ways, and wasn't pushed towards thinking there's one right way to have sex. My teachers did at least make an attempt to acknowledge non-straight people too. It was kind of weird, though, because it was very much "don't be mean to gay people!" without any real acknowledgement that some people in the classes receiving this moral lesson might themselves be anything other than straight. "Gay people" were presented as some kind of distant, rather pitiable group, a bit like "starving children in Africa". Though interestingly when we tried to raise money for the Terrence Higgins Trust, there was quite serious official disapproval, because it was seen as a "gay" charity, which somewhat undermined the "don't discriminate" party line.

I think the school probably sincerely wanted us to be at least open-minded about gender and sexual minorities, but they didn't really succeed in putting this across. What actually happened was that girls and teachers who were unpopular were often described as "Lesbians" – I was subjected to that epithet quite a lot, not because of any rumours of my actually being sexually interested in girls, just because I wasn't fashionable or pretty. In hindsight, I can think of a couple of teachers who probably were gay, but it wasn't a situation where any of them could be out, and they weren't the unpleasantly strict ones who got called homophobic names. So there was homophobic bullying; it was officially disapproved, you could get into trouble if you were caught sneering at someone for being a lesbo, but the message of tolerance was never quite consistent enough. It was always "you shouldn't call her a lesbian!" rather than "if she is a lesbian, that's not a reason to be unkind!"

In some ways, I did get the kind of education about sexual violence that liberal educators always advocate for. Lots of support for resisting peer or individual pressure to have sex, lots of advice about where you could go for support if you felt threatened, physical self-defence classes, repeated admonitions that partner violence is always unacceptable. We were absolutely drilled with the idea that if your boyfriend ever hit you, or ever used force or threats to make you have sex, you should first get yourself to a safe place and then end the relationship.

The problem was not the content of the actual PSE classes, but the pervading and sometimes not quite explicitly stated attitude behind them. The "hidden curriculum", as educationalists sometimes call it. The assumption of a whole lot of our discussions about sex and relationships, especially the ones that weren't part of the formal PSE curriculum, analysis of novels, for example, or just general social chat, was that all men everywhere would always be trying to "get" sex from unwilling or indifferent women. The evil ones would rape you if you gave them the slightest possible opportunity, the "normal" ones would try to trick you or pressure you or manipulate you into having sex.

You had to deal with this by making sure you didn't give any man an opportunity to rape you, so there was this constant tide of bullshit "rape prevention" advice, don't go out alone at night, don't wear clothes that can be grabbed or impede your ability to run and fight, don't get drunk in mixed company, don't get into a situation where you could be alone with a man, that kind of thing. There was a little bit of the more pernicious kind of advice, the don't dress sexy, don't flirt unless you mean it, don't lead him on kind of thing, but mostly it wasn't that kind of direct victim blaming. Even if you stayed out of situations where there weren't enough witnesses to keep you for being raped, you had to be constantly on the alert for men who were "only after one thing". I remember an English teacher very solemnly telling us, aged 15 or so: never ever trust a man who reads you poetry.

On the plus side, it wasn't all "stranger danger" stuff, we were definitely aware of the possibility that friends, boyfriends, adults in positions of authority and even family members could be a threat. But it presented an unbelievably negative view of the male gender, and tended to make us girls constantly hyper-vigilant or even fearful, a message which is certainly reinforced by quite a lot of media stereotypes. There was also no possible suggestion that we might actually want to have sex at any point in any situation (let alone that we might want to have sex with non-male people!), it was all about how to avoid getting either fooled or coerced into sex. There was even a bit of what we used to call "Shere Hite clitoris propaganda": we were quite often told directly that men would always selfishly pursue penetration, when in fact biologically (sic) women prefer clitoral stimulation and we had the right to insist on it. And if our hypothetical partners wouldn't comply we should dump them and just masturbate instead.

So even though our official PSE lessons told us about how to have sex safely if we wanted to, there was a very strong subtextual message that we weren't in fact expected to want to. In practice we had far more advice about how to avoid having sex than anything else. Attempts to prevent slut-shaming were about equally ineffective as attempts to prevent homophobic bullying: it was all, just because she wears make-up and revealing clothes, doesn't mean she's sexually promiscuous, rather than reinforcing the intended message that being sexually active isn't despicable.

So, to repeat Pervocracy's question: what was left out of your sex education that you wish had been included?

Comments

[lovingboth]

Hmm, not much. The main thing was that it was a rather late - year 5 is what we called it, but now it's year 16.

What had happened was that the recently retired long serving head of the school had put off doing much outside biology lessons and the new one went 'right, do it' to a teacher. Fortunately he was an expert and while the head had drawn up a curriculum regarding what should be taught to the various years, it went out the window when a younger year asked what gay men do in bed and.. argh, I have forgotten what the other one was. Something on bestiality, I think.

So we were treated as worthy of knowing everything, and given who was doing it, that was a lot. It was sex-positive and not least because he was a Christian, there was also a strong element of 'teat other people how you'd like to be treated'.

About the only things that have come as a surprise is that you need a firmer erection to start anal sex than vaginal sex and that there's a big emotional difference between intercourse with a condom and intercourse without.

It did leave me with a big desire to not get an STI, despite his amusing stories of a friend's - it was only later that I realised it was him - visit to the local hospital clinic ('Front or back this time, sir?') Given my age, that turned out to be lifesaving.

[lovingboth]

Oh, this was a boys' grammar school. There wasn't any teasing / bullying around non-heterosexuality that I remember, not least because so many of us were doing stuff with each other that very few people could do it without the risk of their victim knowing exactly what they'd done with who...

I wonder if that's a reason that there hasn't been a reunion at any point: not everyone is going to welcome the reminder that they've not been entirely heterosexual.

One of the striking changes between then and now is 'source of first same sex partner' for gay and bisexual men. Then it was school, as it was for me. Now, it's the internet.

The sex ed itself was - thanks to him being a fan of Kinsey - big on 'this is what people actually do vs this is what society pretends they do / says they should do'.

[liv]

Yeah, one of the things that was weird about my school, which was a girls' school that couldn't decide if it was actually a public school or just an "ordinary" private day school, was that it was very, very, very straight. I'm seriously not aware of any sexual or romantic interactions between any of the pupils; if they existed, they would have had to be deeply, deeply hidden. Not even the kind of thing that can be dismissed as teenage experimentation, no spin-the-bottle, no "practice" kissing, nothing. There wasn't really even the typical homoromantic culture you might expect in an all-girls environment, no culture of "pashes" or deeply intense friendships. Even holding hands was pretty much taboo. I've often heard people remark that my school is the only girls' school they've ever heard of that didn't have a "lesbian mafia".

I've met loads of alumnae at LGBT events since we left school, and FB tells me of several people in same-sex relationships as adults. So I know for a fact I wasn't the only person thinking I was the only non-straight person out of five hundred pupils.

[(Anonymous)]

That sounds similar to my school (also all-girls). There were no "out" lesbians as far as I knew. There was a tendency (still common in certain tabloid-reading subcultures) to conflate alternate sexualities with sexual predators, so the games teachers were rumoured to be lesbians and to enjoy watching the girls in the shower, and if anyone had been out as a lesbian I think people would have avoided her and been unwilling to get changed in front of her.

I didn't realise that was unusual; I thought that would be the norm at schools, certainly 15 years ago and maybe today as well.

--Rachael

[liv]

That's really interesting, that there are other all-girls schools which are totally straight straight straight. The stereotype seems to be that lesbian interactions are not officially approved but everybody knows there's stuff going on anyway. My experience there was a meaningful, serious stigma against anything that might have possibly been interpreted as lesbian. And yeah, we didn't have a very clear picture of what lesbian actually meant, but the taboo extended to any kind of physical affection, any discussion of strong positive feelings towards other girls, and a bunch of other things that weren't really related, you had to be circumspect about even mentioning breasts however non-sexual the context, for example.

I can't imagine what an out lesbian (or bi girl or any other non-mainstream sexuality) would have looked like in that context. Like an out serial killer, or perhaps being out about incestuous desires. I don't remember even any credible rumours about same-sex interactions that were supposed to be secret or closeted. Everybody knew that lesbian / lesbo just meant "uncool" or "annoying".

[shreena]

there wasn't really even the typical homoromantic culture you might expect in an all-girls environment, no culture of "pashes" or deeply intense friendships.

See, I think there was... at around age 10-12.

I also don't remember "lesbian" being used as an insult. Though I do generally agree with you that it was quite an asexual culture in many ways.

[deborah_c]

I wasn't aware of anyone at my (also single sex) school who was other than straight. Since the school's ethos was very much that anyone perceived as gay (or any kind of "other", really) was Target Number One, I can quite understand why no one would have dared come out.

On the other hand, while I stay the hell away from the place, and so wouldn't necessarily know about it, I'm aware of exactly three people from my nine years in the place coming out since (two of them as trans). I'm not sure whether it's that there really were that few LGBT people around, whether everyone was so traumatised by the place that they were too damaged to come out, or whether they've just broken off contact, as I more or less have.

[liv]

That sounds like you had a really great teacher! But yeah, 16 is criminally late to start proper sex education beyond the biology. I think treated as worthy of knowing everything articulates a really key principle. Partly because even if you're legally a minor at the time, you do actually have both the right and the need to know this stuff. And partly because if the authorities start trying to "protect" children from knowledge, it's always the less normative sexualities that get hidden away.

I don't think I would have expected even perfect sex education would have left me without any surprises in my own experience. Sex is so personal, and I've found something surprising about every new partner I've had.

The condom thing, tbh I've never had penetrative sex without a condom and I don't suppose I ever will; in my judgement the risks outweigh any possible benefits. I think what I was taught at school was that some people find condoms make a really big difference, others don't really notice them. That bit was reasonable, the bit where men always try to persuade their victims partners to have unprotected sex for no particular reason other than machismo, not so reasonable.

[lexicalcrow]

I only remember doing any kind of sex ed in probably year 10? I don't think it was very comprehensive. It was part of our year 10 health classes, which we did all year long on various topics, like sex ed, drugs, alcohol, maybe a little on actual relationships, and whatever else we covered. That's about all I remember. I know we were in sex-segregated classes for at least some of these topics, but I can't remember if it was for the whole year or not.

As far as sex ed went, I remember covering reproductive anatomy (which we also did in biology), the menstrual cycle, pregnancy, STDs/STIs (though I think HIV/AIDS was covered in an illicit drugs context, not a sexual one?), and putting on condoms. I can't remember if we talked about other kinds of contraception. I honestly can't remember. That's ... really all I remember from my health classes.

I'd have liked to have anything at all that wasn't just basic biological reproductive sex stuff. There wasn't anything about sexual pleasure, fantasies, or masturbation, nothing I remember that said sex was a good thing to do (though I do have a faint idea that we might've covered not being ready for sex and that being alright? But it was a LONG time ago). Women's sexuality being an Awesome Thing and Totally Acceptable. Nothing on queer identities, either, though I did know about them, and it was a private co-ed Anglican school, so perhaps I was expecting too much.

I think I'd also have liked to know more about the male side of things as well, and male sexuality, because I don't really feel we got enough about that, apart from basic reproduction stuff. I think I'd have liked to know about other forms of sexual pleasure, like there are other ways to get off other than with PiV sex, and that these were alright too. (Then again, I was introduced to BDSM by my then-boyfriend in year 12, so.)

[liv]

Hi, thanks for joining the discussion!

Yeah, getting actual biology rather than just dire warnings not to have sex is a start, but you're right, good sex education needs to go beyond the biology of reproduction. It sounds like in your case sex was presented mainly in terms of risk avoidance; my sex ed was a bit like that too though perhaps not to quite the same extent.

I would have liked anything at all that acknowledged boys and men as human beings with desires and fears, rather than everything assuming a sort of twisted war of the sexes where men were trying to capture the more-sex flag and we were trying to defend our honour.

[monanotlisa]

I think the anatomical and functional level was covered well and early; sex ed starts in elementary school in Germany. Putting condoms on bananas live and in-class, explaining the effects of the pill on the cycle, and so on.

The meta level -- not so much. I guess there was a high level of tolerance for sex and sexual activity; it made a lot of us hold back until we did feel ready. I'm not quite sure it reached acceptance, especially regarding women, though.

I knew so much more -- in theory -- than we covered in class that it wasn't the area I paid most attention to; now I wonder about the flaws and strengths of the German approach in more detail and with regard to ideologies or religion...

[liv]

That's an interesting example, thank you. It fits with my image of continental education, that there's no particular taboo against teaching relevant biological facts from a young age.

Tolerance rather than acceptance, I totally know what you mean. For me, being given tacit if not direct permission to do my own independent reading was important. By the time I left school I knew about the Kinsey report, I'd read a fairly wide range of sexually explicit fiction and sexological non-fiction, and I wasn't shamed for knowing this stuff. So that certainly did help to fill the major gaps in what was actually formally covered in class.

[(Anonymous)]

I went to an all-girls school. They taught us the biological facts and the pros and cons of different kinds of contraception, and I think we got to look at condoms. But I don't recall anything about sexual pleasure, or alternate sexualities, or consent or rape.

As maligned as teenage magazines are, I think they are the place I heard the message "don't let anyone pressure you into sex if you're not willing."

--Rachael (tried to post using OpenID but got an error message "OpenID support not enabled")

[liv]

This is definitely a common theme, both at Pervocracy and here: getting the biological facts and decent info about contraception is certainly better than not getting that, but it's not really enough. It's interesting that teen magazines were able to fill the gap for you!

(Sorry about the OpenID thing, it's semi-broken at the moment.)

[verazea]

Went to an all boys school and likewise had a "comprehensive" sex education and I can't think of anything it did too badly at. If anything I think consent might have been handled better. Yes, you should make sure someone wants to have sex with you before doing anything, but how about explicitly asking? Similarly alcohol might mean that people do things that they regret and you should be careful both yourself and to not hurt others, but getting people drunk to have sex with them is not okay. I'm not sure how that could be formally taught to 14 year old boys, but a number were bragging about doing just this :(

I think a bigger weakness might have been that the school really didn't have any working anti-homophobic bullying campaign. Sure we might be told that non-heterosexual relationships are perfectly normal and okay. Our biology teacher (who was great) emphasised that bullying is not okay and asked people who had any questions or felt they were bullied to come and talk to her if they wanted but this was pretty much the only time I can remember anyone saying that. And people did get bullied. Either because they were suspected of actually being gay (which was social death) or just because there was something different about them. Slightly odd ears? Gay. And the school did nothing about it.

[liv]

That's a pretty depressing story, both in the failure to prevent the straight boys from raping girls, and in the failure to deal with homophobic bullying. Part of the problem is that at least some teenagers will always do the exact opposite of what authorities tell them to do, so telling kids not to rape and not to bully peers perceived as gay isn't enough.

My brothers' school had much more directly targeted at gay or effeminate kids homophobia than mine. I know Screwy spearheaded a campaign to get the school to stop automatically accepting the gay panic defence for charges of fighting or beating someone up. I think there was a mixture of people intentionally beating up the perceived-as-gay boys, and people wanting to avoid trouble for fighting who would say "he tried to kiss me" as an excuse. For us at the girls' school, the homophobia was so intense that there just wasn't anyone who was genuinely believed to be gay who could be picked on for that. Obviously the fact that "lesbian" was used as a generic insult was totally unhelpful to all the non-straight people around, but they weren't specifically being targeted.

[naath]

I find it hard to separate out in my memory what I learned in actual *class*, what I picked up on the internet/from books, etc.

My secondary school taught a subject that had various names but is currently (AIUI) "PSHE" (personal social and health education) which covered sex, relationships, drugs, alcohol, ... I do remember doing some stuff about domestic violence and abusive family dynamics (as well as Stranger Danger stuff and some PE lessons on physical self defense). This merges in my head with the 6th form class for "General studies" which I think was the venue for a long discussion about "what family is" which included discussion about same-sex marriage and adoption.

I think the prevailing attitude was more "you will want to have sex a lot" rather than "sex is horrid you'll want to avoid it". Which was a bit weird for me because at the time I mostly identified as an asexual lesbian; so I didn't really fit into the "OMG BOYS" culture (it was an all girls state school). I think there was too much emphasis on "eventually you will want to get married and have children" (no, I don't) although there was almost nothing about issues surrounding infertility, or peri-natal health concerns (which may have been useful for people who did want to have children). Very little about the practical day-to-day "negotiating how to have a relationship that makes you both happy" stuff.

My Mum is in charge of all this stuff (PSHE) now, at my old school. I sometimes pass on hints from around the internet.

[liv]

Yeah, I think the most positive meta-lesson I got about sex ed was that it was ok, even encouraged, to go out and learn more for myself. I wasn't completely reliant on what was taught in the classroom, and most importantly I didn't expect that I should be. (I didn't really discover the internet until after I left school, for I am old, but I knew how to find out stuff I wanted to know from books and asking trusted adults and so on.)

I kind of thought I was asexual when I was a teenager too. Partly I really did have a pretty low libido, which didn't wake up until I was 19 or so (for which I am on the whole grateful, as it made my teenage years a lot less distracting), and partly the same thing you mention, that everyone around me was obsessed with BOYS and I find it hard to think of any group of people I find less attractive than teenage boys. Teen idol overly pretty popstars come close second. I was occasionally attracted to some girls and women, but I kind of only realized this in hindsight, at the time my context for what "attraction" meant simply didn't include same sex attraction.

Yes, very good point about infertility and peri-natal health. I could do without the assumption that everybody's going to get married and have kids, but statistically it probably is the majority. I guess childbearing was assumed to be so far off that there wasn't much point teaching about it at school, because Our Sort of girls most certainly didn't marry young or have kids out of wedlock.

[naath]

Not letting OMG BOYS distract me from the important business of learning things is probably how I managed to look a lot smarter than I am for years :-p

I had stupid teen-girl crushes on Famous People; although not generally teen pop sensations who I mostly couldn't stand (in retrospect the Spice Girls were a LOT MORE AWESOME than I gave them credit for when I was busy being "the nerdy one").

I guess the general pointers for "where to get info" were probably more likely to be useful for things people might not want to do for decades; and we did get a useful amount of "and you can ask your doctor" or "the NHS has leaflets" or (tangentially) "you can call the Samaritans" type stuff. My GP when I was at school was a bit crappy; happy enough to give me a 'scrip for the pill but didn't really take any time to discuss options - in Cambridge I've had a lot more luck with really useful doctors.

[(Anonymous)]

I don't remember a discussion of women actually enjoying sex, just the discussions of men pushing and women putting the brakes on, like you mentioned. Then again, I could just be forgetting because that wasn't a message I was prepared for at that time in my life. I do know that when I first got involved with my first boyfriend I found my own response to him really surprising and didn't feel like I'd known what to expect there.

[finding_helena]

gah. That was me. Didn't realize I wasn't logged in.

[liv]

That's a really pertinent example, thank you. I mean, even if the goal was supposed to be to prevent girls from having sex, it might have been helpful to suggest that girls would sometimes want to. Actually my dad taught me that information, that if I wanted to keep my then resolution to remain abstinent, I'd have to deal with my own desires as well as resisting pressure from hypothetical male partners.

In fact I kind of did drift into having sex by accident with my first boyfriend, not at all because he pressured me or because I gave in to overwhelming temptation, because I didn't have a clear definition in my head of what "sex" was, or how to draw a boundary between just fooling around / making out etc and actual sex. Once I realized that in hindsight what we had been doing was sex, even if it didn't involve PIV, I introspected a lot and then decided I was ok with that.

[tig_b]

Almost everything.
At 13 years old, we were told 'the facts of life' during a games session. I don't know what the boys got, but we had a spinster games teacher who gave us some very misleading information as she tried to avoid most of the relevant nouns and verbs.

She assumed we wouldn't start menstruating until we were at least 15.
Her efforts to describe penetrative sex and fertilisation (they always went together) sounded as if it was possible to get pregnant while in two different rooms.

Later, those of us doing Biology (less than half my year group) had some official government cartoons from the 50s. Nearly as bad. As for anything other than how it works physically, and why it should only be done when married, nothing else existed. No contraception, no abuse or rape, no other way of having sex.

I know I am older than many of you here, but this was all after contraceptive pills were available.

I was lucky, my sister's friend's mother was a nurse and would answer any questions about the processes. So at least I knew that much. But it's not surprising that parents and teachers still find this difficult when so many of us were not given the information or the freedom to discuss anything.

[liv]

Wow, that's really appallingly dire! I mean, whatever sort of sex ed curriculum you're going to be delivering, at the very least you have to pick a teacher who isn't too embarrassed to talk about sex! That really did have the potential to be incredibly damaging, and I'm glad that you at least had a better source of info :-(

[deborah_c]

As a variation on this, the (exactly one lesson) of sex ed at my school was given by the one teacher in the school with whom absolutely no one wanted to be alone in a room... I knew some things from (age-appropriate) books my parents had got me as a kid, but I was still pretty unclear about any of the details. What was taught was, to the best of my (embarrassed pre-teen) recollection, pretty much just the basic mechanics, and the idea that this was how pregnancy happened.

[pretty_panther]

I don't think my sex ed left out anything at all. We got it constantly from primary six until we no longer had to take social education classes in fourth year at 16.

Primary 6 started with puberty facts and how we would be 'changing' and the class was split after the facts of what a period is and why you have one. The boys went into one room and learned what erections were and how to deal with them (lol they basically got wank classes), along with being reassured that it was normal and ok and not to feel bad and the girls got instructions on how to use various sanitary products. We also learned that boys got erections and why but not how to deal with them~

As I said, there were then videos of pregnancy with clips showing how a baby forms in the womb and when it can live and so on and what sex was, why it resulted in a baby. There was then a rather disturbing video of a woman in labour. Parents had to sign consent for you to be in those classes but I don't remember anyone in my year group not taking part.

Primary seven was basically a repeat of this.

Then we got to high school were we started to cover the emotional side of sex and preventing pregnancy. It involved videos where people acted out being pressured into things and flashing red screens saying this wasn't ok and this was why. These videos had a wide variety of sexualities involved so that was covered. Then we got taught about all sorts of contraception and given demonstrations of them. We saw femidoms and condoms and such in class and then we had models of an erect penis and scrotum to roll a condom onto to prove we could do it properly.And this went rinse and repeat for four years. Our school certainly wasn't going to have 'I didn't know X would happen' on their shoulders. We covered STDs and their impact and such too, not to be embarrassed by docs and I think most importantly, where to get free contraception. They accepted that kids will have sex, will go behind people's back and do need contraception. So, they wanted us prepared. This has basically become what WAS covered but I felt it was better to ramble rather than say 'they covered it all'

[liv]

Yay, nice to hear some good news. I admit I did get pretty bored of every year reciting the litany of different options for contraception, but I think it makes sense to repeat that lesson so you don't end up with someone getting pregnant because they were off sick or not concentrating on the one day the material was covered.

[ajollypyruvate]

On the one hand, and considering the time and place, I had a decent sex education. Mostly from my mother but a few teachers did try. On the other hand, I did not receive any formal education of any kind about sexual assault.

[liv]

I do wonder what the middle ground would be on education around sexual violence. Being an ostrich and not mentioning it at all is pretty irresponsible, but so is inculcating fear and distrust and giving out prevention advice which is impossible to follow if you want to have any kind of normal life.

[ajollypyruvate]

Given my background and that of many of my former foster sisters, I think some education should be devoted to what to do if you've been raped/molested by a stranger or a family member. That is, "where to go for help", etc.

And, of course, persons in authority need to be educated on that as well.

Trigger warning for mention of verbally violent homophobia

[khalinche]

IIRC, the extent of sex education at my school was to show us a poorly animated video narrated by a serious man not dissimilar to the narrator of Rocky Horror Picture Show who outlined how a penis would fit in a vagina and eggs would get fertilised and so on. Also, he told us solemnly that masturbation was quite natural and done by most boys and a few girls. Then the rest of the course focused on fetal development. I think there was some attempt to cover 'if you don't want to get AIDS then you should use a condom' in Personal and Social Education class, but nothing more was explained.

The only time we touched on anything LGBT, it was brought up by someone asking if we as a class thought the age of consent for men should be lowered to 16. Of course this person was a pupil because this was Scotland in 1993, in the days of Section 28 and teachers were prohibited by law from 'promoting homosexuality'. One boy put up his hand and said, 'Miss, my dad reckons all the gays should be rounded up and put on a desert island until they all die of AIDS'. The teacher, whether through inexperience or being gagged by Section 28 or through secret agreement, had no response and certainly did not tell him off.

Like in your school, accusing someone of being a lesbian just meant you thought they were being weird or displeasing to you in some way, it didn't mean you thought they might actually be a lesbian or a poofter or whatever because that would be way too serious an insult to be tolerated and probably someone would end up getting a kicking.

Given that in this place, people start going out and drinking when they are very young, and sexual abuse and violence is quite widespread, it would have been good to have had a really thorough conversation about consent, boundaries and abusive relationships, as well as about contraception.

[blue_mai]

I'm on a barely-functioning screen here, so apologies if this is a little disjointed.
Presumably I had the same formal sex-ed as you, but it's surprising how little of it I recognise. I remember Biology lessons, I remember the absurd but not entirely unhelpful self-defence classes. I think perhaps I just went through school with my head in the clouds a little, I don't feel like I was as imbedded in the 'culture' of the school as you - it was very much just 7 hours of my day, I (mostly) kept my head down and tried to do well, and, importantly, busy (I did extra-curricular as much as I could, most years I barely had a lunchtime period free). This meant I didn't suffer the social dynamics that various people seem to have found quite painful.

I seem to have barely registered the sex-ed we were given, although I'm sure it had some effect. Perhaps it just seemed irrelevant. It's not as if I was an asexual teenager - I think I became sexualised quite young; masturbating and having crushes on people I knew as well as people I didn't (popstars, actors etc). But sex-ed at school didn't connect with me, it felt like it was aimed at a different sort of girl. Interesting how you describe the lesbian stigma - I was aware of it being used as a generic insult, but not much compared with how frequently "gay" was used by boys I knew of the same age. I did write love letters (unrequited, needless to say) to a girl I had a huge crush on - and later felt really guilty about putting her through it as they were typically melodramatic rubbish - so people must have been aware of such feelings existing amongst the pupils. I was out to my close friends, and it was definitely hush-hush, but I didn't really fear homophobia at school, and occasionally tried to express a non-hetero voice to a wider audience. Then, much as has continued, my concern was keeping it from my family, not saying anything absolutely categorical that could be relayed to my sister by other pupils or teachers (so I sort of wanted people to know, but not by explicitly telling them).

I didn't get any sex-ed at home. I didn't do any outside reading. I did get a simultaneous and rather contrasting education at a LGBT support group I started going to when I was 13 - it was supposed to be for 16-25 year olds, but there was a bunch of us who were younger and they never turned anyone away. Sex ed there was rather more detailed, and explicit, and really quite focussed on sexual acts. It was still discussed in rather abrupt terms, with a lot of innuendo. There was no mention of contraception, naturally. There was a great deal of fear about HIV, and a lot of discussion about avoiding it (this was early-mid 90s, it was still very much seen as a gay disease). Frankly, even though were told about alternatives to penetrative sex, and the need for safe sex even if you're lesbian, a lot of it fell on deaf ears. Some mention of pressure and coercion, but not nearly enough, in my opinion. It was sex-positive, in a basic way, it pretty much assumed we wanted to have sex, and taught us various ways of doing it, but I don't think I ever heard the word consent. Since we were, by and large, a group of sexualised, sex-obsessed but inexperienced kids, who were being introduced to the big bad world (the youth workers used to take us to "the gay pub" - there was only one - although we were not supposed to drink or be bought drinks), I wish there had been a lot more emphasis on not having to have sex, to still be able to explore sexuality and be comfortable with that, without having to have sex, being able to say no, and being aware of when that might be necessary. Perhaps it was because they simply weren't prepared for that kind of sex-ed for younger people, when they were essentially supposed to be about supporting adults who were exploring or uncertain of their sexuality.

Although I was paying attention rather more than the sex-ed at school, I still felt like it didn't really connect with me - I still felt "other". I think the huge thing that was missing in both places, was a discussion of emotion, feelings, desires, and how these related to sex and consent. At the time, "being in love" was all emotion, sure there was some sexual desire, but it was pretty fuzzy and undefined, which is natural since I had no experience. It felt like a drawn-out and at times painful process, discovering these things. I accept that you have to learn these things for yourself, but it would be great if sex-ed gave some hints. Like many people I knew I channeled most of my teenage angst into being gay, and being in love (to various degrees) and this combination was likely to put you in situations where you were, um, vulnerable and out of your depth. I think I was actually lucky in that I was able to be quiet and observe and not be bothered too much, when out and about, being female (and at the time I was quite good at retreating into the shadows in all sorts of situations). The boys got mixed up with older men a lot, there was a prevailing predatory culture, and from the boys end a lot of bluster, a lot of acting up. It makes me really sad sometimes, thinking about that, and how at the time it was just the way things were. I wish we had all been taught how to be more in control of things.

Whenever I think of that support group I think how things changed so quickly. We (a small group of us, around the same age) treated it as a youth group, a safe space, a place to be open about a sexualised side of ourselves that was disapproved of by family, school and society. We played games and watched Rocky Horror on video. The gay scene was something hidden, subversive. We talked about 'clues' like which side a man wore a single earring on, and whether we might have just seen someone carrying a pink newspaper. The support workers all matched a certain stereotype of a gay man or lesbian. They were very right-on, very concerned. They promised to only write to us at home if they were worried about our well-being, and then only in plain, hand-written envelopes. There were counselling sessions available, which were mainly taken up by the older people. I think we were already regarded as quite different in terms of how comfortable we were with "being gay" - yes, we still hid it, but we were less likely to be personally conflicted. I can't think of anyone who wasn't out to their close friends. The older people (mostly men) were there because they didn't feel comfortable with themselves, or because they weren't able to be openly gay in any other aspect of their lives. I say "gay" because that was what we said, there wasn't a great deal of room for nuance. It wasn't many more years however, before that kind of acceptance that being non-hetero might cause you some personal problems, and providing support, seemed to become side-lined. I remember when I started to see teenage boys openly holding hands on the street, how surprised - and happy - I was. When groups of teenagers on the train started to discuss each others gay relationships in the same breath as straight ones. But then I heard that the group I used to go to had changed to being just for under-18s, and much more social than support. And I wondered whether if you were a bit older, or just a conflicted teenager, there was still somewhere you could go to that would take your problems seriously, and give you space without pushing you for answers. Hmm, have I said this before?

[blue_mai]

* I was thinking the other day about my preferred use of "gay" and "straight" and making another comment on the relevant thread... but I probably won't get around to it. I like the ambiguity, basically. I like that both words are also used for other meanings and that it isn't always obvious which meaning it is. It seems normal somehow, and english. I have always disliked the words "lesbian" and "homosexual" as being too defined, too much other, especially when used as nouns rather than descriptors. Yesterday my dad made some remark about something being a topic of conversation "amongst the homos" at work. I know it's a common term amongst my parents' generation - he would never say "gay" to mean homosexual - but I still hate it. It makes me feel all ugh.

[blue_mai]

So, to repeat Pervocracy's question: what was left out of your sex education that you wish had been included?

so... I thought about it some more. and I also actually went and had a (quick) read of the Pervocracy page, and another one it linked to which resonated with me (probably more).

and, to cut it all down, and this has pretty much been covered by others.

it wasn't really to do with the sex in the sex ed. I wish I had been given a glimpse or a clue about concepts of agency (primarily) and consent. and how when you were at your most vulnerable or confused, you would seek a means of controlling what was happening around you and to you, and this might be external and active, or it might be a way of reading and interpreting things internally. I actually still find agency a slippery word. there isn't much I regret, but I wish I had been given a better chance to have positive sexual experiences as a young person.

also, remember all that concern about eating disorders? did anyone ever really talk about why? they may well have done, and if they did I wasn't listening, but in my experience so much sexual behaviour for young people is mixed up with issues of control and sensation, as much as other types of self-harm. it might have helped someone.

[syllopsium]

My sex ed was in the late eighties at an all boys school, so the overriding message I remember is the AIDS tombstone advert and 'if you have sex you're going to die'.

I can remember we did something about the physical process, giving birth and a bit of stuff about STIs - nothing else. It can't have been that I wasn't interested, because my parents gave both my sister and myself a thinly veiled Adrian Mole like book that was really all about providing information about relationships and sex, and that was quite decent.

I can't remember anything about alternative sexualities, being queer or relationships full stop. Being thought of as queer was not well handled at school.

On the whole it would have been nice to have some discussion about relationships and feelings and suchlike, although I can imagine that's rather challenging in a room full of teenage boys.

[lovingboth]

The book was probably Teenage Health Freak. It has some good content in the middle of lots of padding. The one for young women has a truly horrible line something like 'only (small percentage) of girls are lesbian or bisexual, so we don't need to bother about anything for them'.