There's been a lot of buzz in the media recently about some sex education videos coming out of Norway, a country that's not exactly known for sexual frankness. You would think that a country like the United States, which is saturated with sexual advertising and media, would be much more progressive than some peninsula hanging out in the North Sea - and you would be wrong. My sexual education class in high school was two weeks of Freshman PE in which I was shown slides of inflamed genitalia and told that abstinence was the only way I could avoid pregnancy. I live in a country where half of the government is trying to defund Planned Parenthood, an organization that provides health care to millions of women, on the made-up pretense that it has been selling fetal tissue. So, it's easy to see how pretty much anyone could blow us out of the water.
What's made some people so defensive about the videos, which are from a children's health show called Newton, is its straightforward attitude toward sex in a program that's targeted at children. The show includes demonstrations on giving a hickey (using a vacuum cleaner for suction) and french kissing (with a tomato instead of a partner), as well as explanations and demonstrations of male and female sexual anatomy.
It's worth noting that almost everyone complaining about the show's content comes from outside of Norway, and that the vast majority of dissenters are from the U.S. It seems odd to me - and kind of awful - that a country with a sex education system as screwed up as ours is so quick to target the tactics of a country with substantially lower rates of teenage pregnancy and STI transmission, not to mention a condom commercial that features a penis cannon spraying glitter to promote sexual health.
So here are a few of the things we can take away from Norway's attitude towards sex education, and from our own reactions to it.
Sex isn't gross.
Well, not as gross as a lot of other things people do on a regular basis. Sex is something that most adults on earth will admit to having done. It's something that movies and TV shows paint as an all-important objective to work toward. (I won't go in to why that can be a problem here- but suffice to say it can be.) It's everywhere, and it's not realistic - which is why it's important to talk to kids about what sex actually is, how it works, and how to make informed decisions about it. It's important to address sex as a natural process, one that's acceptable and even (gasp!) enjoyable. When we start to demonize sexuality or make it into something that deserves a punishment, we open the door for all sorts of problems.
Talking with children about sex does not make you a sex offender or a pedophile.
This seems like it should be obvious, but we live in an internet age where the birds and the bees talk often comes after a kid has already heard about sex from other (less reliable) sources. There is a difference between explaining to your ten year-old what the condom they saw on the ground is and encouraging them to go out and have sex. And as to use an overused argument, isn't it better that they get reliable information about sex from you than from the internet, or from a friend who happens to have an older brother?
Birth control is a thing. And it's really, really important.
No one ever told me what an IUD was. My sex education teacher told us that she was told by the school board to hand out condoms, but that she had decided not to, because she realized that we weren't animals and respected us- yeah, you read that right- enough to not insult us that way. It made me angry then, and it makes me angry now. Informing both men and women about birth control is not just helpful, it's necessary: educating people about birth control options like condoms and the pill lowers STI transmission rates and rates of unplanned pregnancy. Everyone should have access to health care, including birth control, and everyone has the right to accurate, impartial information about what it is and how it works.
Heteronormativity sucks. (And so do gender roles.)
If I, as a straight cis woman, think my sexual education has been lacking, I can't imagine the feeling of the vast number of LGBTQIA+ people who are forced to go through the same thing. Sexuality is exciting, and scary, and vibrant: when we only educate people about relationships between men and women, we miss out on a whole host of unique stories, and millions of people don't get the information or the resources they need to be safe. The same goes for gender roles: when we say that men are the ones who initiate sex, and women are the ones sex "happens" to, we ignore the existence of queerness and gender fluidity, as well as the different preferences and personalities of individual people.
Consent is important.
Let me say that again: CONSENT IS IMPORTANT. In a society where 1 in 5 women in college are victims of sexual violence, schools in West Texas have violent outbreaks of chlamydia, and rape cases like the disgusting acquittal at St. Paul's school in New Hampshire, it is incredibly important that everyone, even kids and young teens, knows that. California recently passed a law explicitly requiring an "affirmative assent" for sex to be considered consensual, and while it's not perfect by any means, it's a step in the right direction.
