Why Sex Education is So Important

This is a guest entry⁠ (entry: In a sexual context, when a kind of sex involves someone putting one body part inside the body part of another person, such as with intercourse. Some people use the word "penetration" instead.) from Dangerous Lilly for the month-long blogathon to help raise awareness and financial support for Scarleteen!

At 15, I was still scared of boys, sort of.

Sure I’d “date” them, and yeah I’d make out⁠ (out: Short for ‘out of the closet’. When someone’s LGBTQ+ identity is known to other people.) with them, but everything else? Terrified. It was because I knew next to nothing about boys, sex⁠ (sex: Different things people choose to do to actively express or enact sexuality and sexual feelings; often this involves genitals, but not always. ) , *whispers* penises, and all that good stuff. You learned about sex in one of three places: 6th/7th grade so-called-sex-ed lectures; your equally uninformed friends; your parents (so. mortifying.).

Oh, ’92. So good, so innocent, so…awkward. Way back in 1992, SimCity still had copyright codes hidden in black & white pixelated jumbles in a booklet that required a piece of see-through red plastic to enable viewing of text – without it, you were struck with natural disasters every 10 minutes. Oregan Trail was still fun, sorta, if you didn’t mind the thyphoid. The internet? Did not exist as far as we were concerned. We still used the freaking 30-some volume encyclopedia in hardcover for our school projects, as software-based (hello, Microsoft Encarta, long time no see) wasn’t yet available.

Today’s teenagers have the privilege of not just copious internet access, but Scarleteen. Scarleteen provides kids with accurate, safe, embarrassment-free sex education and a place to ask questions. They don’t use scare-tactics, they use facts. At the end of the day, the hormones⁠ (hormones: Chemicals – via our endocrine system – that send messages across our bodies and brains. They both naturally exist and can also be made in a lab.) of a 15-17 yr old are not going to be swayed by a threatening father, a threatening religion, or simple lack of information.

If I had had Scarleteen access in high school, I would not have:

• thought that my self-worth to men was based on my physical appearance
• thought that my self-worth to men was based on how “far” I’d go
• continued to have no clue as to the whereabouts of my clitoris⁠ (clitoris: A sexual organ both external and internal on the vulva and inside the pelvis of those often assigned female at birth that is similar to the penis, but serves no other known purpose besides providing sexual pleasure.) until age 24
• been so nonchalant about condoms

In short, my sex education/dating education…sucked. It sucked in that it severely lacked. I know that things aren’t perfect, even now. There’s a lot of misinformation floating around the ‘net, and even some schools providing incorrect information. But this site, Scarleteen, it’s a huge help. It’s a big dent in the “war”. They need help to continue on providing the information and support that teenagers so badly need.