I got the sex talk when I was in ninth grade at a Fred Meyer. A friend of mine got hers at the dinner table in eighth grade. Another friend, who graduated from high school, never got one. Sex as a subject is awkward, and how our families choose to approach it even more so.
But sexual education—specifically its correlation with sexual assault—shouldn’t be.
Recently, I went to a seminar about preventing sexual assault on college campuses and personal advocacy. I went begrudgingly, not only because I was one of eight individuals there, but because I thought I would already know most of what was taught. And that proved to be true. All I have been ever told regarding sexual assault is that “no means no,” to never leave your drink unattended, to be with people you trust, to avoid going anywhere alone, and the seminar simply reiterated these generalities.
Thousands of girls have known the same preventative measures for years, yet thousands of girls are experiencing sexual assault. Parents, educators and victims of sexual assault then ask, "What more can be done?" After my experience at the seminar, I believe the answer is mature sexual education and directed focus on males’ roles in sexual welfare.
One of the primary objectives of the seminar was gaining an understanding of and advocacy for obtaining consent. Consent, if not reciprocated, is an ambiguity that plays too large of a role in sexual assault cases.
The seminar’s explication of the significance of consent and its implication in self-respect and sexual conduct was well articulated, but the way in which it approached these topics was so childish it was borderline insulting, and made me think about the way in which people entering college should be educated about sex.
At the seminar we were split into pairs and some of the pairs were asked to act out skits regarding engaging in sexual acts and consent. In the skit I participated in, sex was represented by ice cream. It went something like this:
A: I could sure go for some ice cream right now, what do you think?
B: I’m not sure if I’m in the mood for ice cream, maybe later.
A: Come on, you’ve been acting like you want ice cream all day and it doesn’t seem fair that you don’t want it now.
B: Just because it seems like I wanted it doesn’t mean you can assume that. If I wanted ice cream I would tell you.
The eight of us in the class are all entering college, and most of us are 18-years-old. Alcohol, drugs and sex aren’t unfamiliar topics, so why are we subjected to talking about sex in such a childish context? How can consent and prevention of sexual assault be fully understood if we handle the issue with "kid gloves?"
One in five women are sexually assaulted during their college tenure. A trend this significant demands prevention education that isn’t as childish as comparing sex to ice cream.
A second fault of the seminar was that the audience wasentirely female. Eighty-two percent of sexual assault victims are females. While both sexes need to be educated about sexual misconduct, more attention should be diverted to males, since they are most often the perpetrators of sexual assault, and in college, fraternities host more parties than sororities. Sex is an emotional as well as physical engagement, and sexual education should reflect this duality. If we can adjust our attitudes about sex (particularly young men's) and how to appropriately practice it then we establish a precedent about the role that respect plays in sexual engagements.
