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.
Sex education has always been about learning about puberty body changes, safe sex (namely not getting an STI/STD or having an unplanned pregnancy), and more recently the importance of consent. It has never been about expressing sexuality, sexual identity, or building relationships. I’m not sure I follow what is missing.
In order to learn about sex you’re going to have to learn about either straight sex, gay sex, or both. Turns out both types of sex happen to exist. If you’re going to learn about straight sex you should probably learn about gay sex too in case you’re gay. If you’re trans the topic of puberty and your changing body gets 10 times more complicated. You should probably learn about that in case you’re trans. It would be helpful for queer kids and the things they experience to not be left out of sex ed, also so that kids who don’t know there’s some form of queer yet don’t grow up thinking that they’re broken.
Since both straight and gay sex exists, and because trans people exist too, learning about sex from those perspectives is important.
This kind of education is what could have stopped an entire country from thinking that AIDS is caused by being gay.
Excluding queer sexuality and gender from sex education is what we’ve been doing since forever, and surprise it’s left queer kids unprepared for the things they will encounter, and the other kids with the kinds of assumptions that you express here.
We learned next to nothing on sex, straight or otherwise. It was just condoms, dental dams, periods/ovulation, wet dreams, how babies are made, and consent
Sounds like you learned a ton about straight sex, especially given that most sex Ed programs only tell students to abstain. You learned something about condoms, which I assume means that you learned how to put one on.
In most of the country, sex Ed is one video about puberty and then in health being told to abstain from sex to avoid pregnancy and STDs with detailed descriptions about the pain and torture of STDs.
It would be superhelpful if sex Ed programs were expanded upon your curriculum to dispel sex myths, like women can’t get pregnant if they are on top or take a shower right after. It would also be good to discuss how to prevent harm during vaginal and anal sex.
All those things are equally applicable to gay sex. Gay men use the same condoms as straight people. And like it or not, reproduction involves a sperm and egg. And consent is pretty universal, too.
I agree dispelling dangerous pregnancy myths would be good, but I don’t think actual sex instruction belongs in school, gay or straight.
You don’t think it’s important to teach how to prevent a prolapse or anal tearing/fissures? Or stress the importance of condom use in anal sex to prevent hepatitis?
We both agree that we shouldn’t be teaching sexual positions and how to bring a partner to climax, bit I think we should be teaching kids how to safely have sex so they aren’t hurting themselves.
Yeah, that seems like a fairly lean education on the topic. If you’re going to receive an education on something it probably shouldn’t be just the bare minimum?
Then why do they only teach about straight sex?
You are mistaking this as being about "expressing"when it’s about navigating it, and that certainly includes understanding healthy realtionship development between individuals that decide to engage in sexual activity.
Is having a relationship with someone you engage in sex with not exactly what expressing sexuality is?
My point is, this isn’t taught for straight people, either.
Yeah, I had pretty good sex ed, and it was just that, sex ed. Body parts, consent, having babies, not having babies, not getting STDs. Nothing about relationships, straight or otherwise. Should kids be taught about healthy relationships, and how to get help if you’re in an unhealthy one? Yes. Should it be part of sex ed? I don’t think so.
Maybe we should just have a remedial “things your parents should have taught you” class for stuff like that.