A Humble Call for Revolution
Muffled laughs and hushed whispers as our biology teacher presented us with a somewhat oversized dildo and a couple of condom packets are all that I remember from my sexual education in high school and when I say all, I mean all. Surely, our curriculum was a bit more extensive than that; yet, when I graduated high school and I started feeling the desire to explore my sexuality for the first time, I realized that although I was quite knowledgeable on how to prevent unwanted pregnancies or contracting any STD’s (very important too, I will say), I had no clue how sex was actually supposed to be enjoyed.
Feeling too flustered to ask anyone, I resorted to a place that I am sure many of us have turned to for their most intimate, uncomfortable questions: Internet Forums. Using an anonymous username (naturally, the thought of my old classmates ever finding out that it was me asking these questions occasionally kept me up at night… The horror!) I had dozens of strangers advise me on what to do and what absolutely not to do during sex, tell me how it would feel “down there”, and even convince me that after that first time, my life would never be the same again. Supposedly, both my body and my mind would be forever changed, and I would never be able to go back to the person I was before. Based on that last sentence alone, I think I do not have to emphasize that although some responses were helpful, some of them were most definitely not. However, those forums did encourage me to think about something that I hadn’t necessarily considered before; namely how intrinsically personal, contextual, and ever-changing people’s sexual experiences really are- a notion that I felt was missing in my formal sex education.
As it turns out, I am not the only one who feels that way. In a national survey that was conducted in the Netherlands between 2017 and 2023 (called “Sex Under the Age of 25”), the average grade young people (aged 12-25) assigned to the information on sex that they received in school was an awkward 5.8, using a scale from one to ten. Participants indicated that they specifically would’ve liked to learn more about topics like sexual harassment and consent, sexual pleasure, and sex in the media; which raised the question of whether the current sex education curriculum in the Netherlands is sufficiently based on the actual needs and wants of young people, especially considering the multitude of social developments that they go through as they first begin to navigate their sexuality. The study results from the same survey are clear: no, the current sex education curriculum is not sufficiently based on our needs, and especially the strong focus on prevention tends to overlook the conversation on sexual pleasure and other equally important (social) dimensions of sexuality.
Yet, the ambiguous nature of sexuality in itself naturally poses a challenge to its educative possibilities within formal education. Sexuality is a topic rooted in taboos; and in most cultural and social contexts (if not all), a topic that is nearly impossible to separate from society’s major social institutions such as religion, the family, and even the state. When we also take cross-cultural variation in terms of norms, values, restrictions and freedoms regarding sex into account, a universally standardized, all-encompassing, and “right” sex education curriculum seems near-impossible to establish (and we should probably forfeit the idea of ‘universality’ entirely, as any decent anthropologist would say).
Considering this multiplexity and multiplicity of sexuality then, perhaps a useful question would be: where should we start?
I would say that it’s the peculiar combination of repressiveness and permissiveness that has sexual education in a chokehold right now. Sex is everywhere – especially with the recent explosive rise of new media – yet it remains a conversational topic that’s only to be addressed behind closed doors.
At the same time of my life when I was trying to pull a condom over that dildo in front of me, I was confronted with every flavor of flashy pornography on the internet (curse those terrifying “Linda is only 5 km. away from you...” advertisements that would pop up on any sketchy website back then and almost had me desperately tell my dad that someone had doxed us), some of my classmates furiously engaging in “revenge cheating” (guess that’s a thing), and questionable suggestive billboards next to the highway (the ones with the seductive silhouettes promising married men a “good time”). Already back then, learning about sex as a simple mechanism of reproduction seemed to me largely at odds with what it was that sexuality actually entailed.
I first approached that question as something that should be considered on some kind of sexual moral compass (I’d think: married men, really?), and then increasingly began to wonder how exactly this whole thing was supposed to be fun one day. Although I did not feel that any information was necessarily restricted from me as I was trying to work through these thoughts – I am now sure my lovely parents would’ve answered any question, but nothing beats a teenager’s sense of shame – the inherent taboo of the topic was socially and culturally unmistakably omnipresent.
I would say that repressiveness, in that sense, should thus not be mistaken with oppression, but in the case of sex education in the Netherlands rather refers to the extent to which talk of sexuality is acceptable for (public!) conversation. Permissiveness, then, would include fostering a safe and encouraging space for these conversations to happen; without fear, and without shame.
And what would those conversations ideally be about? Well, preferably about slightly more than just the flickering projection of the anatomy of the penis on the smartboard in my old biology classroom and the extensive list of diseases in my textbook that I always forgot all the abbreviations for. The Dutch sexual health agenda – which is the model that the current sex education curriculum in the Netherlands is essentially based on – would truly benefit from a solid, fresh upgrade.
This would require a critical review of what our needs as young people actually are; needs that may range from learning more about sexual pleasure (spare us youth the Internet Forums, please!), to putting emphasis on the fact that sexual experiences are inherently personal and individual. Educational topics related to prevention will always remain relevant and important, but I believe that additional learning goals centered around sexual self-efficacy and sexual selfhood – think of elaborate teachings on matters like sexual self esteem, sexual justice, and the social and cultural determinants of sexual experiments – would undoubtedly add a new, crucial dimension to any sex education curriculum. After all, school owned dildos and biology textbooks can only teach us so much; and for goodness’ sake, don’t let the Internet fool you either.
Image: Mean Girls (2004)
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