Informing the Ignored

I have taken courses on sex education three times at three different schools. One of those schools was Exeter, and it still took me until the age of sixteen, two years after prep health class, to learn all the safe sex information that was relevant to me—and I had to learn it from the Internet. I was not exposed to the phrases “dental dam,” “finger cot” or “gloves” (terms in relation to safe sex, not the kind that one might wear to pull up weeds) until reading about them online. For those who may be confused, these terms refer to methods of protection used in cunnilingus and fingering. I understand that Exeter does not want to encourage teenagers to have sex. The curriculum, however, does not teach us about abstinence, but teaches us about safe sex practices. Condoms are available in the Health Center—the school, realistically, knows that students at Exeter will be having sex whether we are told it is advisable or not, and that the best way to ensure our safety is to educate us on how to avoid pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases. Yet many Exeter health teachers still omit some information that would make sex safer for those who engage in sexual activities that are neither vaginal nor anal. While some of the teachers did cover oral sex safety, the curriculum is not standardized, and is very limited. Not all of the students going through the spring term of prep health receive this information—I certainly didn’t, and I am someone who, as a queer girl, needs to know these things.What most worries me about Exeter’s omission of these forms of protection from the standard sex education curriculum is that it actually deprives an entire group of students from proper education and protection. With the exclusion of these tools from the curriculum, female students who want to have sex with other females are not given comprehensive sex education. As a member of this group, it both scares and angers me that I did not learn about proper safe sex practices until the age of sixteen—and that I had to specifically go looking for this information on the Internet, instead of hearing about it in health class. Who knows when I would have found out about this if I hadn’t been specifically searching for safe sex information for LGBT people? I received information about condoms when I was in middle school and was even taught about safe anal sex during prep health, but I had to wait another three years to learn online that protection for sex between two females even exists.Inclusive sex ed at Exeter is especially important because many students don’t receive that information during the “sex talk” at home. Though my mother is open-minded, accepting and relatively knowledgeable when it comes to sexuality, she never mentioned protection I could use if I had sex with another female. She talked to me about condoms and contraceptive pills, but even after I told her that I was queer, she didn’t inform me about all the protection I might need. If I didn’t receive that information, it would not be an unreasonable guess that countless other students are not receiving adequate sexual health information from their families either—especially if they live in less accepting environments than I do. When the most reliable and informative source for sexual education is a student’s school, that school had better not be denying its students a comprehensive knowledge of safe sex. Even more worrying is what this denial of education truly indicates about discrimination against LGBT students in schools nationwide.Discussion of sexual orientation in high school sex ed programs is only required in twelve states, three of those require teachers to give students negative information. Discussion of gender identity isn’t required anywhere. This discrimination is dangerous. As it is, teenage girls who identify as queer are more likely to contract STIs than girls who identify as heterosexual. Gender-queer students face similar consequences. Transgender people are four times more likely than the national average to become infected with HIV. I consider Exeter to be a much safer and more welcoming place than most to be queer. However, it feels like a blow to that opinion to realize that my school perpetuates a system that puts queer students in danger by depriving us of essential sexual health information. In a curriculum that stresses safe sex, not abstinence, it is irresponsible to present to us an incomplete knowledge of sexual health. Both for the safety of its students in general and to maintain a welcoming environment to students of all sexual orientations, Exeter needs to expand its standard sex ed curriculum and enforce that every teacher adequately covers those topics.Scarleteen.com is the site on which I discovered these modes of protection, and I would recommend it enthusiastically for anyone looking to find a broad range of information on safe sex, sexual orientation, gender identity and healthy relationships. 