What is Sex Education?

At first that question may seem like a no-brainer, but I don't think it really is.

Growing up on the East Coast of the United States, and attending public school in the late '80's and early 90's, I had sex ed classes in some form or other, throughout most of my education. The lessons weren't always good, and they weren't always non-biased or accurate, but they existed and they have made a lasting impression upon my life.

As a young adult, I had always, I guess, naively, assumed that all Americans had sex ed classes. I finally had to accept that this wasn't true when I was traveling through Ireland with a fabulous friend from Texas. It took me weeks of doubting her to finally believe she was serious when she told me that she never had sex ed classes in Texas! For a while I blamed it on her backwater state, but then I began asking random people around me, from all different places, if they ever had sex ed in school and if so what it was like.

This wasn't really a conversation most people wanted to have with me.

Naturally, it made me more curious and even more hell-bent on knowing what kinds of sex education people received and how it impacted their lives.

I don't know when I really began to think about sex ed as lessons learned outside of the classroom. Maybe it was something I was vaguely aware of for a long time, maybe it was a realization that hit me like a bowling ball to the head, I don't know.

What I do know, what I do believe, and the reason behind this blog, is that sex education is a lifelong process. The messages we receive about sex come to us from our family, friends, school, community, media, personal experiences, the grocery store (yes, I'm serious about that one...just look at the magazines on the checkout display!!) and so on.

This may all seem obvious to some people, but even as a "sexpert", that wasn't always obvious to me!

In many ways, I preferred to think about sex education as a series of neat, scientific based lessons children across the country were receiving, which were taught by well-informed, open-minded, well-educated adults who were comfortable with their own sexuality and wanted, without a hidden agenda, to impart useful, accurate information to future generations of sexually active individuals in a non-threatening, educational manner.

I know this concept is about as realistic as unicorns and a world filled with parents who openly discuss the pros and cons of sex with their children around the dinner table, but still, it was a nice dream.

Reality of course, or at least the reality that I have experienced, is that very few schools in America teach sex education in an open, honest and non-biased manner, very few parents have sit down conversations with their children about the good and bad parts of sex and sexuality and very few lovers are comfortable enough with themselves and each other to talk about what feels good and what their fantasies are. Even us "sexperts" struggle with these issues. And I think that is tragic.

Certainly there are endless issues seen as far more important than sex...war, the crappy economy, cutting one's toe nails, but I can't do much to fix those issues, in part, because they don't interest me as much as talking about sex does.

I don't know that I will ever obliterate all the negative messages people receive about sex (I probably won't, but I'm not always ready to admit that!) and I will probably never see a world that is one happy orgy of positive, sex loving people, and most days (heck, some moments) I'm ok with that. What I really want to do is to begin the conversations, even if it is currently in cyberspace, about sex and sexuality. I want to challenge and be challenged by people's views and experiences. I want to know what people have learned about sex, how they learned it and how these messages and experiences impact their lives.

I don't necessarily want to convert people to my way of thinking, nor do I necessarily want to be converted to someone else's way of thinking. I'm trying to reach a place where people who think I'm both insane and sinful, as well as people who think I'm courageous and daring, can share at least some of what we've learned, wished we learned or wish we never learned, about sex education.

So, with that in mind, what are your experiences with sex education?