The Nation: Teaching Sexuality Education
“Teen pregnancy and STI rates are drastically lower in major European countries because sex education is treated as a matter of public health,” she [Susie Wilson] explains. “Their general attitude surrounding sex is not puritanical and squeamish while strangely glorifying it without explaining what sex is all about. Their policies are much closer to treating humans as sexual people and sex as a normal, natural part of life.”
Our country’s inability to untangle matters of religion, politics and public health puts sexuality education teachers and their programs at an enormous risk. Sex and sexuality is treated as a moral issue, reserved for those who are married or those who are dirty with no acknowledgement of the in-between. In this worldview, unintended pregnancies and sexually transmitted infections are the unpleasant, deserved consequences of immoral behavior rather than the result of a lack of knowledge of reproductive health and sexuality.
(via allthechocolatesinthebox)
Source: consentual
