What Small Town Sex Ed Taught Me

I come from a small town in the northwest corner of Iowa. Growing up in a small town, with very conservative views on life, I hadn’t been exposed to much. My school was 99% white, 99% (perceived) heterosexual (if anyone came out as otherwise they were made to feel ashamed), and at least 80% of my community were conservative Christians. 

 In middle school we had the “puberty talk”—boys and girls in separate rooms, of course. I will give credit to the school nurse for providing an anonymous question box for us girls to put questions in. The boys weren’t so lucky: the PE teacher was in charge of their puberty talk. How original! 

 In high school, we got basic information about sex and reproduction. We were also told that every time we had sex outside of marriage, we were giving away a petal from our “flower” and if we had too much sex before marriage, we wouldn’t have a flower left to give our “husband.” The takeaway was girls shouldn’t have sex because men deserve an intact “flower”. The teacher certainly wasn’t talking to the boys in the room when she used the word husband, because as I mentioned, heterosexuality was the ideal. 

 So, what knowledge did I have going into college, you ask? I knew that a sperm and egg made a baby and I figured out through context clues that sex was the common method of combining them. I knew condoms were a popular birth control method, they were cheap enough, and you could buy them without anyone really knowing. 

 Imagine my surprise when I had a “class field trip” to a women’s health clinic for a college class (thanks public health major) and they talked about birth control methods that I had never heard about like the shot, the IUD, the implant, and emergency contraception. I had heard of EC but was told it was the same as an abortion pill (let the record show this never stopped me from going with most of my high school friends to get them emergency contraception and a pregnancy test, with the idea that if the pregnancy test was positive, they would take the EC… tsk).

 In college I learned just how prevalent STIs are and how regularly someone should get tested. I also learned how easy getting tested could be. I’ll never forget going to the student health clinic for a prescription and the receptionist asking if I’d like a free STD screening. Now I realize at a college, they’re probably a bit more proactive on the subject, but it was the fact that she didn’t whisper the question, she didn’t make me feel ashamed if I said yes and I wasn’t scared to feel shamed by any of the doctors there if I did do the screening. It was eye opening. 

 In college I leaned towards sex ed as a career. I wasn’t sure what I was looking for because I had never seen an example of good sex ed. In my mind my only option was to become a health teacher and hope I could be better than what I had.

 After finishing my classes, I began an internship with EyesOpenIowa, an organization whose mission is making sex ed better. I learned so much in my few months as an intern. It was truly eye opening, and at times very frustrating, to see just how much misinformation I was led to believe and how much information was withheld from me. 

 After my internship, EOI hired me to teach sex ed to teens in Des Moines! I learn new things every day at work. I still get frustrated, at times, when I think about how much shame I was taught to feel around sex. I think about all the teens who are still being exposed to that type of education and the shame they might be feeling. I have to remind myself that I am trying my absolute best to be the difference, even if it's just for a small portion of the population. You gotta start somewhere, right?

 My hope is that one day, there won’t be anyone left to write a blog like this. That there will be no more shaming sex ed in schools and that teens will finally receive the medically accurate, inclusive education they deserve. Only then will we see teen pregnancy rates at their lowest. STI rates at their lowest. And teen dating violence at its lowest.