The Promise of Better Sex Ed

“I want you to look at these vaginas so that you know that vaginas can look one hundred different normal ways, and so that you don’t believe people when they tell you that vaginal reconstruction surgery can fix you.”

Twenty-five tired and now stunned faces looked back at our teacher, having difficulty processing her words at 8:08 a.m. Up to this point, health class had meant talking about good nutrition and the names of our bones, not graphic photos of pink, brown, purple-ish vaginas. We passed around the packet of vagina photos, some students flipped through them unphased, others tried to conceal their wide-eyed surprise, and still others passed the photos on, barely touching the pages.

This was the start of sex ed, a semester-long course mandatory for tenth graders at my relatively liberal high school. By the end of it, there was little shyness left when it came to talking about the human body, in all of its shapes, colors, and functions. This sex education was comprehensive. We memorized detailed diagrams of genitalia, yes, but we also talked about every form of contraception under the sun, the symptoms and treatments of different STDs, and strategies for communicating with your partner. We took robotic baby dolls home for the night that woke us up with real screaming and reflected on the challenges of child-rearing. We were reminded of the basket of free condoms always kept in the drawer of the health room desk. Abstinence, that key, ever-present word when it comes to sex education, was presented as a completely valid and safe choice, but simply one choice of many.

It was not until my freshman year Introduction to Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies (WGSS) class that I realized my high school experience had been the exception, not the rule. Student after student told stories of their abstinence-until-marriage curriculum, of awkward teachers who acted as if sex would probably just kill you, a real-life version of the gym teacher from Mean Girls. Sex was shameful, and in response a lot of my peers had turned to the internet and each other for guidance. At the same time, college also made me see the ways in which my sex ed wasn’t as perfect as I had thought. It was still overwhelmingly heteronormative, and by tenth grade some kids were sexually active before first being exposed to this information.

These anecdotes are small examples of a much larger, troubling picture of sex education in our country. According to a survey conducted by the Alan Guttmacher Institute, a non-profit health research organization, 23% of public high schools in the U.S. require abstinence-only sex education, teaching that “physical and emotional harm” are likely to result from premarital sex. In a 2014 study of 44 states conducted by the Center for Disease Control (CDC), fewer than half of the high schools surveyed taught all 16 topics recommended by the CDC as part of a comprehensive sex education curriculum.

Proponents of the abstinence-only curriculum, including government representatives primarily from the conservative right, argue that if we raise the bar for delaying sex until marriage, students will rise to the occasion. Not only does this type of thinking impose a moral, rather than medical, judgement on sex, it doesn’t even work. A CDC study comparing abstinence-only programs and comprehensive risk-reduction programs did not find conclusive evidence that education stressing abstinence actually led to a change in behaviors. On the other hand, risk-education programs were tied to positive trends related to frequency of teen pregnancy, unprotected sex, and STIs.

Despite the overwhelming evidence, education policy has not reflected this data. Since 1982, the US government has spent over $2 billion dollars on abstinence-only education. This trend has continued most recently under the Trump administration, making the question of the future of sex education as important as ever. The 2017 federal budget included $90 million in funding for abstinence-only programs, the highest level since 2009, and in July 2017 Congress announced the end of the Office of Adolescent Health’s evidence-based Teen Pregnancy Prevention program.

Reflecting back on my own experience, I realized that a number of factors had come together to allow for my lucky sex education. While my school was free and public, it was administered through the City University of New York system, rather than the Department of Education. It therefore had a lot more leeway in constructing its own curriculum in a number of subjects, including sex ed. Its location in the heart of extremely liberal New York City meant that it did not have to adapt to social and cultural backlash from the local community. It was relatively well-funded, and could dedicate resources towards a class that is often an afterthought. While I feel extremely grateful for my education, I am not satisfied with my experience being “exceptional.” All of my peers in that WGSS class should have been afforded the same knowledge and ability to make informed choices about their bodies, no matter the location of their school district or if their state was red or blue.

For so many reasons, we must do better. Sex education that doesn’t fully and comprehensively educate is dangerous not only because it denies students access to the information needed for making healthy decisions, but also for the negative sex culture into which it feeds. Under abstinence-only education programs, young people in the United States will be taught that unless it’s happening in the marriage bed between a man and woman, sex is too shameful to be talking about at all. This not only leads to statistically higher incidents of sexually transmitted diseases and teen pregnancy, but also represents a largely missed opportunity to develop a conversation around what safe, consensual sex looks like.

[pullquote]Sex education that doesn’t educate fully and comprehensively is dangerous not only because it denies students access to the information needed for making healthy decisions, but also for the negative sex culture into which it feeds.[/pullquote]

Now more than ever before it has become painfully clear that this is a conversation we must be having. Over the past few months, the dialogue surrounding the epidemic of sexual assault and violence in the country has grown at an unprecedented rate, as the #MeToo movement has empowered thousands of survivors to tell their stories of harassment, assault, and rape. Tarana Burke, founder of Just Be Inc., a non-profit focusing on promoting health and well-being in women of color, founded the movement years before the hashtag went viral, in response to hearing stories of assault from so many survivors. She wanted to create a path towards healing, and most recently, a wave of testimonies from survivors across the country demanded that giants from a range of fields and industries—Harvey Weinstein, Larry Nasser, and Al Franken to name a few—be held accountable for their violence. As a society, publically supporting these survivors and demanding accountability is a powerful way of sending the message that this behavior is unacceptable.

However, if #MeToo has taught us anything, it is that sexual violence is a problem that goes beyond a select group of famous men. It is systemic. It is pervasive. And it is supported by a culture that has, on every level, normalized toxic masculinity, sexual aggression, and victim blaming. A problem this systemic requires a solution of the same thoroughness. One part of that solution can and must be reformed sex education for all students.

[pullquote]However, if #MeToo has taught us anything, it is that sexual violence is a problem that goes beyond a select group of famous men. It is systemic. It is pervasive.[/pullquote]

Sex education provides an incredible opportunity to positively influence the way students understand healthy, safe, and consensual sex from an early age. By destigmatizing the conversation around sex, we empower students with the vocabulary to communicate to their partner what they are and what they are not comfortable with. It makes clear the types of behaviors that are abusive, even if students have been conditioned by the media and our misogynistic culture to think otherwise. Sex ed can be a place to not just talk about the rates of STDs and how to prevent them, but also the rates of interpersonal violence and strategies for ensuring healthy relationships.

At Wash U, these conversations are being led through programming such as The Date and by groups such as Leaders in Interpersonal Violence Education (LIVE). But it is unfair to expect that these efforts alone will be able to effectively undo 18 years of socialization and miseducation. These conversations must be happening much earlier, adapting and growing as students mature.

For this reason, sex education must move away from the narrow confines of abstinence-until-marriage. At the minimum, better sex education makes people more comfortable being able to talk about sex, period. Because if we can’t talk about safe, healthy sex in a way that does not insight shame, how can we expect to move forward on issues as sensitive, personal, and traumatic as assault? If we believe that education has the power to create responsible citizens, we must trust it to have the power to teach our youth to not hurt one another.

[pullquote]Education is not everything, but it’s something. And I think starting with something is better than not starting at all.[/pullquote]

To those who would point out that education is not the full solution, I am not so naïve as to think that there is such a thing as a magical fix, a singular policy suggestion or piece of legislation that can undo such a deeply engrained cultural problem as sexual violence. But to allow students to continue to be misinformed, to let our government systematically reinforce the roots of this epidemic through its educational agenda, is a huge disservice. Education is not everything, but it’s something. And starting with something is better than not starting at all.

Hanna Khalil ‘20 studies in the College of Arts & Sciences and is a staff writer for WUPR. She can be reached at hannakhalil@wustl.edu.