Hell Yeah Feminism: A personal story as to why comprehensive sex ed is *necessary*
My sexual knowledge was so limited that I was actually one of those preteens who thought that you could get pregnant from a toilet seat. I always assumed that was the reason why male and female bathrooms were separated. I also thought that you could get STDs from pool water, and believed that babies are birthed through the anus. It took a while for me to find out that there was actually a third orifice down there: the vagina.
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What irks me now, however, was the extremely negative mindset they taught us. Our teacher said that menstruation was something dirty and disgusting, and that a true lady would never, ever mention her period to a man. She also taught us to never get caught with a sanitary napkin, because it was considered extremely embarrassing. She emphasized that discretion was extremely important, especially when you are around the opposite sex. Even then, I thought that this was stupid. If it happened to every woman, why should it be such a big secret?
On the other hand, I finally found out what a vagina was after they explained the menstrual cycle to us. I found out that menstrual blood originated from this orifice, and that babies were born from this canal as well. I admit that I was relieved when I heard that little tidbit of information, because the idea of shitting out a baby was just horrible.
I didn’t really learn about and understand intercourse until I was about 14 years old. And that was only due to sneaking peaks at my mom’s copy of Our Bodies Ourselves. And when she found out I had it, she made me give it back like it was information that I shouldn’t have!
Knowledge = power. How can we know how to make the best decisions about our bodies if we don’t even fucking know our bodies?
