Going through school I was never taught about sex. I still have no clue how to do it, and most of what I learned was from the internet, peers and books.
My school did have the "Growing and Changing" unit in fifth grade. But at that time my ten-year-old self was not even ready to learn any of it nor was much taught. It was in my fifth grade class that I learned that I had a vagina. I was so surprised that I had another hole down there that when I got home from school I had to check. But, sure enough it was there.
In this growing and changing unit I learned how to place a pad in my panties, learned how to wear deodorant, and colored coloring pages of the male and female reproductive system.
When I got to college at my freshman orientation someone from the county health department came in and gave us the sex talk. This is where I learned that they made female condoms. That STD's are not always deadly. That some STD's are treatable. I soaked in that information wanting to know it in case I ever needed it. While knowing that it was too late for a lot of my peers.
It wasn't until the summer before my freshman year of college tell I even allowed myself to think about liking girls romantically. I always would get those feelings, but everything I had learned in society had told me that it wasn't right. That I just needed to wait for the right guy to come.
Nobody had ever had any sort of talk with me, nobody had ever said that it was okay to be gay. So I walked around in a state of confusion. It was that summer that I found my first love. She was a girl. She was everything I wasn't supposed to love. But I fell in love with her. I just wish someone had told me before then that that was okay.
As a nation we need to look at what we are or aren't teaching our children. The problem is parents expect the schools to teach it, and schools expect the parents to teach it. Which results in it never being taught. I believe we need to increase sex education in our public schools and make sure we cover things such as condom usage, birth control, and sex education. So we don't allow our kids to grow up to be embarassed confused adults.
