Sex education. What they’re not telling the boys.
Sex education in my experience was mainly putting condoms on bananas and being able to say no to ‘tea’. It seems that the curriculum confuses sex education with sexual health and wellbeing, particularly segregating female and male sexual health. Of course, it’s important to explain the birds and the bees, however, that’s not all it entails.
As a woman, google has been called upon 100 times more than my school nurse ever was. Even sexual health clinics feel like a big prison filled with judgement. But are we scared because they’re unfamiliar? Probably. Sexual health clinics are the epicentre of awkward conversations, and the cause of ailments we don’t want to admit to having. It seems that men are often faced with more surprises regarding female sexual health than their own. I feel that this is due to the lack of blended learning.
One day in year 8 a letter followed me home that went straight to my mum- stating the importance of having the cervical cancer vaccination. Some weeks later we were institutionally lined up and vaccinated, and for me I was not afraid of needles like many of my friends but felt embarrassed because I didn’t know what a cervix was. This feeling of disconnection from my body made me question how much I really knew about myself.
As part of a single sex school, female anatomy was relatively well-known to pupils the older you got, but only when I ventured further afield for sixth form did the jaunt that men can’t find the clitoris became a crashing reality. When candidly speaking about periods with other girls in my group did the boys begin to shift uncomfortably in their seats, though they were somewhat overcome with curiosity. Discomfort gave way to the tiresome debate of the pain of childbirth versus being walloped in the nuts. Through gritted teeth I fought my corner and unleashed the big guns. Laughter turned to dread when I explained tearing, and after a long spiel about the traumatic acts of childbirth on the body, no response followed. Despite being smug, the fact that the boys were in complete disbelief led to me asking, “were you not taught this in sex education?”.
Sex education seems to follow two themes; ‘don’t get pregnant’ for girls and ‘don’t get girls pregnant’ for boys. This doesn’t incite much fear for some but for others completely shuts down their ability to comprehend their sexual needs. The concept of sex is frightening at first, but not acknowledging sexual health is scarier. And both these problems can be solved very easily, having sex education less scary. Getting nurses to bark a list of STDs and their symptoms at students doesn’t help anyone, because I guarantee 90% of the information does not go in and is all forgotten when pupils become sexually active. I know that once I’d blocked out the trauma of that day, the only real thing I remembered was that getting pregnant is very bad and will ruin your life.
The Netflix series ‘Sex Education’ has had a phenomenal impact on its viewers' perception of the sex education programme run in Britain and contains very raw scenes of sexual abuse and abortion. It also highlights the lack of education surrounding LGBTQ+ sexual relationships. For me, all I could think was ‘is the syllabus lacking in some areas, or are the teachers in control of the lessons projecting a bias?’
Boys and girls need to learn about themselves as well as each other to reach a competent level of understanding, but this doesn’t have to be intimidating. It should be empowering.
