Serafina+M’s+2017+OpEd+Article



Do you remember in the 5th grade when you had your first taste of sex Ed they showed you “feminine care products” and they talked to boys about “nocturnal emissions” It was embarrassing and slightly uncomfortable because either it was a young pretty girl or an old nurse lady teaching it. Then in the 8th grade, we all got “the talk” the “birds and the bees” and “when a mommy and daddy love each other very much”. We got to watch Peter penis and Valerie vagina and put a condom on a banana. Then again in 9th grade, we all giggled through nurse Mary and the boner question. We learned sex all over again and labeled a vagina. Some of us for the first time, but I'll get to that later. One thing that I noticed missing throughout my three years of sex Ed was the absence of any talk of our LGBTQ+ community. I mean what about when a mommy and mommy love each other very much. What about all those kids who were sitting quietly in the corner, confused as to why when they talked about heterosexual sex they were slightly more grossed out than the other kids. Why there was never a mention of lesbian or gay sex during the long conversation about straight sex. About 12% of students surveyed in 2016 by the Human Rights Campaign said that they had heard or learned about same-sex relationships in sex ed. This is completely outrageous, and this only includes same-sex marriages. What about trans-inclusive talk, what it means to be bisexual, or even just talking about safe sex within same sex couples? We often times leave our young LGBTQ+ communities to wonder where they stand during the birds and the bees. You would think that now in a time of marriage rights, equality, and overall a more general acceptance that it would be normal to talk about what it means to be gay, lesbian, transgender, queer, nonbinary, and so many other gender and sexual identities that people identify with. From what I remember sex Ed was all about learning how to practice safe sex, have healthy relationships, and take care of our bodies. But when we leave an entire group of kids out of the discussion we leave them to the wolves. There are 8 million gay, lesbian and bisexual people in the USA and those numbers continue to go up as we further include transgender, queer, and nonbinary people into this statistic. That’s about 4 million gay kids in America who never get proper sex ed. That’s about 4 million kids who have to go to the internet and other risky behaviors to learn about their lives and sexualities. We take about a week each year of our sex ed course and I think that spending one day learning about LGBTQ+ issues not only benefits those kids, but starts to perpetuate that it is okay to not fit into a very small box of what society says is normal. It helps kids who may not know what they're feeling, I remember growing up never really hearing the word bisexual, yet I had crushes on both guys and girls in my class and I can remember feeling so confused. When I got into high school I learned about it from friends and media and understood that it was normal, I wasn't weird or some odd man out. I then realized that I could date who I wanted and it wasn't anyone else's business. I know how weird I felt, but I had parents who accepted me and friends who accepted me, I wasn't alone. Yet there are so many kids who if they if they don't get sex ed at school they will certainly not get it at home and so the school system abandons millions of kids.Making them feel alone and like there's something wrong with them, we make it feel as though they have to turn to risky behaviors if they want to have an understanding of their bodies and feelings. Even if we say "no child left behind" when it comes to grades, we certainly leave them behind during sex ed.