Sexual Education is Lacking, and It’s a Major Crisis

The following is adapted from Sextech Revolution.

Every time I give a sex education talk or workshop at a university, I put out a box where the audience can scribble down questions anonymously and submit them for me to answer. Some questions I’ve gotten recently:

• Will I go to hell if I am not a virgin?
• Is sex supposed to hurt?
• How do I masturbate?
• Do I have to shave my pubic hair?
• How does gay sex work?

These are incredibly basic questions, but the students aren’t stupid. In fact, some of the questions above have been submitted to me by students at Ivy League universities. The issue isn’t intelligence—it’s that we don’t teach about sex.

Many people wouldn’t consider this a large problem, but as I’ve discovered first hand, it’s a major crisis that has ripple effects through many parts of our society. 

Damaging Misinformation

Across the country, students are routinely taught regressive, harmful, medically incorrect information in schools. Most states don’t require that schools provide any sex education to students, meaning it’s left up to the school districts.

We now have a system in which your knowledge of sexuality and sexual health is based on where you are born. If you are born in a state that is abstinence-only until marriage, you’ll likely get a textbook that is not only medically inaccurate, it may be accompanied by moral lessons that are sexist, homophobic, or just plain wrong. You might get a nurse who teaches that masturbation will lead to erectile dysfunction. 

In the past two decades, the federal government has spent $2 billion teaching students information that is not evidence-based. As a teen in a conservative suburb in California, I was given a virginity flower demonstration during Sunday School which generally goes something like this:

A teacher shows the class a fresh flower bud. They pass it around, letting the class admire it. The flower, they tell you, is your virginity. Then, they take the flower back. They crush and bruise and mangle it. “Who would want this flower now?” they ask.

Once you have sex outside of marriage, they tell you, you are ruined sexually. There’s no going back. No one will want that flower.

Over the years, I’ve heard multiple versions of this demonstration. There’s a piece of gum that the teacher chews up and then offers back to the students. There’s a white sneaker version that becomes trampled and dirty. There’s one where the students pass around a Snickers bar until it’s melted and gross. They all end the same: No one will want you after you’ve had sex. More specifically, your future husband—because this is often directed to girls—will be disappointed.

As kids, we’re taught the “why not” of sex, but rarely the “why.” Not only is that confusing, but for many of us, it has lasting impact on how we approach sex as adults. 

Ignorance Leads to Health Risks

We currently have lower levels of sex education in America than we did twenty years ago.

Back in 1995, during the Clinton administration, 80 percent of students learned about birth control in schools. But that changed in 2000, with the election of George W. Bush and the elevation of the evangelical movement. Today, fewer than half of the schools in the US teach any sex ed at all, and 75 percent of those that do, only teach abstinence-only programs.

That means the generation of students entering college today haven’t been taught about birth control or STIs, let alone more controversial issues like masturbation, sexuality, or consent.

In fact, nearly twenty states require that educators teach students that sex is acceptable only within the context of marriage. Seven states prohibit teachers—under penalty of law—from even talking about gay people, unless it’s to condemn them.

The sad thing is, we know these programs don’t work. The CDC and National Institutes of Health say that abstinence-only programs increase teen pregnancy and the rate of STIs, and yet, under both President Bush and President Trump, those are the only programs that get funded. (The current administration slashed more than $200 million from teen pregnancy prevention programs that had been funded during the Obama administration.)

Is it any wonder that we’re at an all-time high rate of STIs? At the federal, state, and local levels, there has been a sustained assault on sex education in schools, and yet the government still actively pushes abstinence and fights comprehensive sex ed.

The Lessons of #MeToo

The #MeToo movement began a crucial conversation, unleashing pain and rage that had been suppressed and ignored for too long, especially but not only for women. A big part of the future of sexual wellness is supporting healing for those who have experienced sexual trauma. 

And yet, despite the crisis, men seemed surprised, confused, even angry about the reckoning. In many cases, they didn’t understand what was happening, or why. That’s because society has failed to educate perpetrators of sexual assault, especially men. 

Watch a Hollywood movie, check out most middle school or high school sex education classes, visit most college fraternities, and you will seldom find a strong foundation of consent education. Society teaches men to be sexually aggressive, to take initiative and make the first move, but not how to read the body language of others, make others feel comfortable saying no, or how to navigate power dynamics in professional and dating environments. If we want to reduce and eliminate sexual assault, we must teach everyone about the critical—and sometimes complex—elements of consent.

Men may know that the rules have changed, but that doesn’t mean they know what the new rules are. A recent survey showed that 60 percent of male managers were uncomfortable mentoring women in the workplace, a 32 percent increase from the year before. Many men that I have spoken to report feeling scared, anxious, and confused about how to be men in 2019.

For all the public conversation about consent and sexuality, we have generations of Americans completely unequipped to advocate for their bodily autonomy, that are extremely ashamed about any sexuality that they’ve experienced. We’ve failed those generations of women when we set them up to be hurt, and we failed those generations of men when we fed them toxic masculinity instead of teaching them about consent and pleasure for all bodies. If we’re to move forward, we need to find a way to build systems that educate and protect.

The Value of Sexual Wellness

Sexual wellness is not about sex toys. It’s not just about more pharmaceutical drugs. It’s not about having more sex, less sex, kinkier sex, or any specific type of sex. It’s about bringing us back to a holistic sense of wellness. It’s about healing a lot of shame and trauma. It’s about empowering people to live in their full power.

Sexual wellness encourages understanding sex as a source of energy, power, and self-care. It incorporates sexual health, mental health, and general wellness in order to help someone feel at home in their body, free of psychological and physiological issues around sexuality. Sexual wellness is about bringing sexuality back into the experience of being human.

And in order to be well, people have to have the knowledge and tools at their disposal. We deserve education and the freedom to make informed choices about the sex life that is right for each of us.

For more advice on closing the orgasm gap, you can find Sextech Revolution on Amazon.

Andrea Barrica is the CEO and founder of O.school, a judgment-free resource to learn about sexuality and pleasure. She’s one of the only queer women of color to raise millions of venture capital for her sextech company. Previously, Andrea co-founded the leading financial solution for growing startups, inDinero.com, and served as a venture partner at 500 Startups, where she invested in startups all over the world. She overcame fear-based sex education in public schools and a strict Filipino-Catholic upbringing to become an in-demand sexual wellness speaker and the leading sexual wellness industry contributor to Forbes.