What Do You Wish You Had Learned Differently About Sex?
Reflections on my sex education, and the sex education you likely received.
One of the primary ways that I learned about sex in my Dallas-area public high school was through sugar babies.
No. Not these sugar babies. Although at some point, we’ll do a few articles about sugar baby/sugar daddy relationships.
Every year, a group of students would carry around a bag of sugar, which would be decorated with googly eyes, ribbons, yarn, and other artistic supplies that attempted to anthropomorphize bags of sugar on a public school budget.
Amanya Gonzalez describes her experience of managing sugar babies in an article for The Pennant Online:
“The week consists of carrying the babies everywhere, making sure they don’t get damaged, and most importantly, making sure they do not get lost. Teachers outside the child development classroom also gain a new responsibility: watching these parents care for their children. Teachers were asked to take notes and sign off on the care of these babies. If not correctly managed, teachers were asked to mark down these parents and report them for “child abuse.” With this in mind, every mess-up shaves off a mark on this project!”
In my best John Oliver voice. Ho…ly shit!
Another important note for context. I grew up in gifted/talented programs. And in my town, all of the gifted/talented schools were in some of the roughest neighborhoods of Garland (my Dallas suburb). The assumption is that you get the best teachers educating the brightest students and students with the fewest amount of resources.
The reality is that this created a class system between the gifted/talented students, who were largely White and Asian, and the “neighborhood kids” who were largely Hispanic and Black.
I was the only Hispanic person in the gifted/talented programs during elementary school, and was joined by maybe three other Hispanic students in middle school and high school. I spent a lot of energy trying to prove to teachers and administrators that I wasn’t one of the “neighborhood kids”.
Back to the sugar babies. The only kids who carried sugar babies were the “neighborhood kids”, although by the time we got to high school, that language evolved to “the kids in the regular classes”. The gifted/talented kids were too busy learning about physics and philosophy, I guess.
During my senior year, I dated a girl in “the regular class” for about two months. She explained that the sugar babies experiment stemmed from a conversation about sexuality; she was understandably quite anxious about physical touch. The message was loud and clear:
The consequences for having premarital sex is getting pregnant. With the gifted/talented students, we can trust that describing the anatomical complexities of STIs and pregnancy will be enough to dissuade teens from having sex. With you, regular student, who cannot absorb scientific information in the ways that our prized gifted/talented students can, we have to invent this month-long experiential exercise to convince you not to have premarital sex.
High school was great. Classism is great too.
How did you learn about sex in high school?
Leave a comment, and make sure that you connote whether or not you went to a public school or private/religious school. As we say on our podcast, “You don’t have to have grown up in the church to have been fucked over by the church.”
This week, we’re starting our spring podcast series Ask a Sex Therapist. We’ve gathered ten of the most common questions we get around sexuality from our clients and podcast audience. Our episodes will provide feedback about how to talk about these questions in your own relationship.
We also recognize that giving your relationship permission to consider these questions might incite some variation of deconstruction, which Julia describes in this week’s episode:
“ Deconstruction is the process of reevaluating the worldview and behavioral expectations of a specific community, including sexual worldviews and behavioral expectations. Talking openly about sexual experiences that exist outside of purity culture dictates is one of the fastest ways that a couple from a high control religious context may begin deconstructing.”
Our first episode in this series is aptly named, “Can my relationship survive deconstruction?”
The first part of deconstruction involves unlearning some of the harmful messages that we indirectly absorbed or were actively taught about sexuality.
One of the common questions Julia and I ask our clients is, “What do you wish you had learned differently about sexuality?”
Some folks are able to name specific changes, although a lot of folks express the ineffectiveness and harmfulness of their sex education, but because sex and sexuality were shamed, they struggle to verbalize specific changes they would make. I cannot recall a client that I’ve asked this to who has said, “My sex education was great. I wouldn’t change a thing.”
An important feature of research and development is getting feedback about the effectiveness of the offered product. There are quite a few research studies that describe the ineffectiveness of the abstinence-only sex education that many of us receive(d) from the perspective of desired outcomes. For instance, the folks at the Guttmacher Institute write:
“By the end of high school, the majority (57%) of teenagers will have had sex, yet abstinence-only programs are not designed to equip them with the information about contraceptives, STIs, consent or healthy communication that they need to safely navigate these experiences.”
Parents are often asked about their reflections on the sex education their children receive, which, at its worst, has fueled the paranoid frenzy behind the parental rights movement that are badgering conservative politicians to divert funding away from public schools and into charter and private schools.
However, there are very few studies that ask teenagers and young adults, the recipients of these “services”, how they would do sex education differently.
Two years ago, I wrote about one of my favorite sexuality studies. A group at the University of Galway partnered with Irish students to describe what effective education about ethical porn would involve:
Today, I want to share another study in which students reflected on the effectiveness of their sex education in the context of small focus groups. Public health is at its best when it interviews the target audience who receives and are most impacted by public services.
Like me, these students are (likely) from Texas, as the research study engaged students from a large(ish) Texas public university that generates most of its attendants from Texas.
Only two of the 38 students reported that their sex education experience was helpful or somewhat helpful. Most reported that sexual abstinence was highly encouraged, and education focused on STIs, reproduction, and the biology of puberty, and ensuing untrustworthiness of pubescent teenagers. They reported scare tactics; although nobody mentioned sugar babies, one student mentioned that a cop was the designated sex educator, turning his lesson into one of those Maury Povich episodes where cops or military members yell and threaten the deviance out of the teenagers. (This is for a different Substack than ours, but I’m super thankful for the journalists who are writing about the dangers of the troubled teen industry.)
In these focus group meetings, students identified eight improvements for the sex education they received:
Information about the social consequences of sexual activity. In some ways, abstinence-only education is superfluous because teenagers have their own strategies for monitoring the sexual activity of others, such as slut-shaming, homophobic comments, or body count. Teenagers are much less worried about pregnancy, and much more invested in navigating the negative ways that their peers talk about sexuality.
Communication and conflict resolution skills for navigating a sexual experience. Teenagers wanted to know their options for what a sexual experience could include, and how they could communicate and negotiate these in a partnered experience beyond “use protection” and “don’t have sex”.
Strategies for navigating the emotional and relational consequences of sexual activity. A quick note: Consequences is a word that teenagers consistently used, which speaks to the negative, fear-based language that educators used. With that said, teenagers want to know how to positively navigate the emotions and thoughts that correspond with a sexual experience, as well as how to process and protect themselves from sexual exploitation.
Updated and realistic information. For starters, they observed that a lot of educators are using content from over 10 years ago. (I giggled about this, because even in my own sex therapy training, a lot of the videos that we watched were from the 90s. A lot of this has to do with the battle waged by conservative legislators and tech moguls about what they deem as “pornographic”.) The teenagers asked for accurate information about how many teens are engaging in hookup culture, diagnosed with STIs, and get pregnant. Most importantly, teenagers craved positive information about sexuality. Quite a few called out abstinence-only educators by recognizing that forcing abstinence encourages rebellion (i.e. risky sexual behavior, as opposed to sexual behavior).
Basic information about STIs and contraceptions. Teenagers wanted more demonstrations about how to use contraceptions (including IUDs, birth control patches, and condoms), and to know what to do should they contract an STI.
Diverse sexual behaviors and identities. Remember, Texas is one of the fiercest proponents of banning books about gender and sexual diversity. Even at this Texas public university, which runs conservative, students crave basic information about gender and sexual identities. They also wanted information about options for sexual activity beyond vaginal intercourse, and how to prevent contracting an STI while participating in these (i.e. oral sex, digital stimulation, anal sex).
Increased frequency of sex education at an earlier age. Teens wanted sex education to begin in elementary school, and invited sex educators to find age appropriate ways to discuss sexuality and sexual concepts to younger students.
Sexual health education from sexual health educators. Teenagers hilariously mentioned the all-too common experience of receiving sex ed from the basketball coach or overly involved and highly anxious parent. They implored their school districts to hire professional sex educators.
For more information about this study, check out the article “College students’ suggestions for improving sex education in schools beyond “blah blah blah condoms and STDs”. Yes, that is really the title. Kudos to Dr. Shelby Astle and her colleagues for their brilliant research and title, which was published in a 2021 issue of Sex Education.
The second part of deconstruction is recognizing what you wished you had learned differently.
Two questions to consider as we close today:
Which of these eight items do you wish were included in your own sex education process?
What other features do you wish your sex education included? If you have children, what do you hope their sex education includes that yours didn't?
Julia and I offer free 30 minute consultations with couples who are interested in pursuing relationship and sex therapy/coaching.
If you’re interested in learning how to practice this kind of sexuality and communication, the Relationship 101 Substack is the place for you!
Let’s heal together!
Jeremiah and Julia
I’m not done reading this but want to say I absolutely clicked on it due to the picture. I had no idea about sugar babies and thought you’d simply found a funny picture. I’m now imagining the sticky, crunchy mess when a (bag of sugar) baby was jnjured. good-ness.
What sex education?....The word "se....." was NEVER spoken aloud or even whispered in my hearing at least and certainly not by the teachers.