Documentary Reference Chloe

"Something which has always eluded me is what is the point of sex education? Literally, what is the point? In year 6, we had “sex education”, it wasn’t really. It didn’t mention sex, nor relationships. It was more puberty education, but all I remember is being told we need to wash our hair more as we hit puberty. Thanks. We were told that if we had any questions we had to write them on a piece of paper and put them in a box on the front desk. I understand it’s embarrassing to ask some questions, but the point is- it shouldn’t be. I shouldn’t be made to feel that asking questions about sex is so shameful I can only ask them anonymously. Sex education in high school, was again not sex or relationship education. Instead it was biology: we labelled diagrams. Thanks, now I know where ovaries are. In PSE/PSHE we had one lesson about contraception (this lesson also included drugs, it was kind of Two Awkward Subjects In One). The only thing I remember is a video of a couple going into a shed to have sex. The teacher mentioned ‘Dutch Double’, which is, I think, where you use condoms and the pill. Everything I know about sex, I know through TV/media, friends, and Google. Quickly: I understand British people to be awkward about sex. Someone suggested to me the other day that this is because we don’t dance, if you look at Latin American dance it suggests they have a much healthier relationship with their bodies. Having said that, I am more awkward talking about sex than most. I wonder (and I have to say wonder, because I am not yet sure how to label myself) if this is because I am uncomfortable with the term “heterosexual”. I have considered asexuality, and bisexuality, but I’m not quite certain and that’s okay. The embarrassing thing is, I didn’t even know what asexuality was until a few years ago. Becoming more and more common is transgender/non-binary gender, which I didn’t know anything about until my Dad came out as transgender two years ago. My Dad has grown up and lived not knowing what was wrong with him/her. This is not how people should be made to feel. Equally, one of my best friends now identifies as gay, but, as is quite common, he went straight-bi-straight-gay-bi before finally realising he is gay. As I am a drama student, I met very early on lots of gay people, and it was a fairly normal part of my teenage life. A friend of mine is a devout Christian and until she went to university hadn’t really met someone who publicly identifies as homosexual. She messaged me saying “gay people are so much fun!” a few weeks into university (we shall ignore the blatant, but accidental, homophobic pre-justice there!). She also said she was never against homosexuality, she just doesn’t encourage it. That, in itself, shows just how lacking LGBTQ+ sex/relationship education is. I once asked in a school council meeting if we could improve sex education, and I was told it was up to the government. Bullshit is it. It’s up to individual schools to stop wasting our time in RE/PSE classes reading the same Eurocentric, heteronormative, misogynist crap we’re taught and teach us something useful! Teach us about safe sex, teach us how a relationship works, tell us what oral sex is, tell us that women should be comfortable to get pleasure from sex because they are not flesh-lights, tell us what sex toys are, tell us that masturbation is not shameful, then tell us how babies are made."