Tag Archives: sex ed

Common Myths About Polyamory


Posted on December 20, 2012 by

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Polyamory is one of the topics that I see and hear a lot of discussion around, but it can often be easily misunderstood. A lot of conversations can start with the assumption that everyone knows what polyamory is, or can be based around things that ‘everyone knows’, but which aren’t actually true.

The basic definition of polyamory is “the practice, desire, or acceptance of having more than one intimate relationship at a time with the knowledge and consent of everyone involved.” Wikipedia has a TON of information on specific aspects of polyamory (also called poly), including the differences and distinctions between various types of non-monogamous relationships and practices, like swinging, open relationships, polyfidelity and polygamy.

As for the myths, these are some of the ones I see come up most often:

  • It’s all about the sex. Not really. Sex is a part of most poly relationships, but it’s far from the only part. Polyamory is focused on building and maintaining intimate relationships with more than one person at a time, but it’s focused on ongoing relationships, which involve a lot more than just sexual intimacy. Swinging and certain types of open relationships are much more focused on pursuing purely sexual interactions.
  • Everyone who’s poly is kinky. Definitely not. There can often be a lot of crossover between people who are into different kinks and the poly community, and since a number of people who are ‘publicly’ kinky are often also poly, it can start to look that way. But there are a lot of poly people who are very happy with ‘vanilla’ sex, they just don’t want to limit that to one monogamous relationship.
  • ‘Anything with a pulse.’ Sometimes this gets tied into #1 – there’s an idea that people who are polyamorous are indiscriminate, and will sleep with anyone, anywhere, anytime. Poly people and non-poly people both experience desire for a variety of folks, it’s just that in a polyamorous relationship, there are a number of ways in which it’s possible to act on that desire. However, that doesn’t mean that poly people are dealing with a bottomless pool of need or want.
  • It’s just a nicer way for people to be able to cheat on their partner. Polyamory is a situation that allows people to sleep with more than one person at a time without ‘breaking the rules’, but there are still rules. People decide on guidelines, and agreements that work for them; if you have sex or pursue a relationship that goes against those agreements, you’re still cheating. If someone has a problem being honest in communicating with their partner, or has trouble with holding firm boundaries, polyamory would not be a good fit for them.
  • Polyamorous relationships are all short-term / they just don’t work. There’s not a lot of research on this, since many poly relationships don’t get counted out separately in broader relationship research, but a study in 1986 compared married couples in polyamorous relationships to those in monogamous relationships, and saw no difference in the stability of the groups’ marriages. (The full study isn’t available online, but more good information and citations are in this article.)

There’s a lot of good information about polyamory out there - the Kinsey Institute has a great bibliography of writings and studies on polyamory, and there are a lot of people writing about what being poly means for them, but if you want a general overview, this article in the Electronic Journal of Human Sexuality goes into more (but not too much) depth.

“Don’t Be That Guy”: Ad Campaign Gets Consent Right


Posted on December 18, 2012 by

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Most anti-rape discussion frames the rape prevention as the victim’s responsibility. We’ve all heard that we’re not supposed to walk alone at night, not drink too much, don’t wear this or that, etc. It’s long been a feminist complaint that rape prevention needs to be taught to the potential perpetrators. Teaching the necessity of consent, and for that matter, what consent is, is an important step in stopping sexual assault. One recent campaign does a great job representing this: Don’t Be That Guy. Canadian organization Battered Women’s Support Services is using these ads to spread their “The Violence Stops Here” message. It makes it clear that “sex without consent = sexual assault”, and even has ads that make it clear men can be rape victims, too.

The campaign conveys the belief that consent is an active thing that must be continually given, not merely the absence of a no. “Enthusiastic consent” is a term many feminists use to describe what proper consent looks like. As in, if you are with a person who says things like “I’m not sure,” is hesitant, disengaged, or seems too inebriated to make their wishes clear, you have not adequately obtained consent and should stop. Once enthusiastic consent becomes the standard for sexual activity, it is no longer possible to dismiss rape of women who were drunk, who didn’t fight back hard enough (by someone’s standards), or any other thing society often uses to dismiss sexual assault. Most importantly, enthusiastic consent places the responsibility on us all to obtain consent, not on our partners to say no enough times or in the right way.

Because sexual assault has been framed for so long in our society as something that the victim is responsible for, it’s going to take more than one campaign to change the standard of consent. But this campaign is an excellent start.

All About Asexuality


Posted on July 25, 2012 by

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Asexual FlagAsexuality is one of the more interesting topics in sexuality these days to me, largely because talking about it reveals a lot of assumptions that our society makes about people. Plus, ‘ace’ has become the general term online to describe asexuality resources, and as we know, awesome terminology always makes things better.

First off, what is it? The Asexual Visibility and Education Network defines asexuality as experiencing no significant sexual attraction in others, or lacking any interest in sex. It’s not celibacy – experiencing desire but choosing not to act on it – and it’s not a temporary loss of libido, which many people go through at different times in their lives. Instead, it’s a general, ongoing absence of sexual desire, and an intrinsic part of who a person is.

Other non-straight sexual orientations and identities have evolved and shifted over time, and most people in those groups have experienced being ‘in the closet’ for some period of their lives. However, since they’re all rooted in the presence of a sexual desire that’s outside of the mainstream, any acknowledgement of that desire or action that comes from it involves an active challenge to the status quo – even if it’s not a public challenge.

Asexuality, however, is a much more ‘below-the-radar’ orientation. You might learn that I’m bi because it comes up when I’m talking about my ex-girlfriend, and I might learn that you’re polyamorous because I’ve met two of your partners. But unless you consciously come out as ace, people may never know that about you.

But even if asexuality doesn’t come up explicitly, the issue of sex comes up all the time in conversation, and it’s part of why asexuality as an identity is becoming more widely acknowledged. Asexuality is inconspicuous in the sense that you may not have to explain how you and your ‘roommate’ are happy in a one-bedroom apartment, but there are a surprisingly large number of people who will start to ask really probing questions if you’re consistently flying solo at family events. Pre-sexual revolution, keeping quiet about your sex life was pretty common, but now that our norms have shifted, not talking about sex can end up being a pretty loud choice to make.

There’s a lot more to asexuality than simply ‘not having sex’ – there are a number of people writing and speaking about asexuality, and some of the definitions are still evolving. Folks who are asexual can still have romantic relationships, have families, and get married. There’s no one-size-fits all approach when it comes to describing asexuality, but it’s important for us to be sure to include it when we’re talking about broader policies of sexual health. After all, sometimes a healthy sex life doesn’t involve sex.

Tales from the Field: Teen Pregnancy


Posted on December 14, 2011 by

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Last month I participated in The Great American Teach-In, an annual event where schools invite professionals to come in to talk to the students about what they do and how they got there. The school I was invited to is a drop-out prevention school that ominously sits across the street from the county jail. The 7AM class is a teen parenting class and I decided to take my 20-month-old daughter with me and talk about what it’s like to be a Public Health Professional and a mom. I wanted to show them that they don’t have to give up on their education or passions just because they are mothers.

After that first class, I took my daughter to day care and returned for the rest of the day. For those classes, I told them how I became a Sex Educator and why the job is so cool. I also gave each class a condom demonstration. I talked about male condoms, female condoms, dental dams, and flavored condoms, how to use them properly, what they can help prevent, how to negotiate condom use with a partner, etc. In these regular classes, there was at least one more pregnant teen and several teen fathers, including one who claimed he has five kids.

Once the students realize that I respect them and give them real, honest answers, you can literally feel the tone in the classroom change. Witnessing this shift lets me know that they appreciate my presence, my knowledge, and my willingness to meet them where they are. It feeds my soul.

It’s easy to blame teen parents for being irresponsible but I don’t see it that way.  When I asked how many of them have parents who talk to them about sex, only 2 or 3 tentative hands went up in each class. Combine that with teachers who are afraid to say too much because they don’t want to ruffle the feathers of administration and parents with states that don’t set sex education standards and a general head-in-the-sand attitude about sex and birth control in the country – you no longer get permission to place all the blame on the teens. We continue to provide a colossal injustice to them and then say, “Tsk, tsk, you should have known better.” Really? Just how could they have known better?
One of my new favorite blogs is The Push Back, a “space to push back against all that ignorance, bitterness, and prejudice and show what young parenthood really looks like.” I love when young people get pissed off and find constructive ways of making themselves heard. Often, when I tell people that I teach topics like birth control to teen parents, they give some snide remark such as, “Isn’t that kinda like a day late and a dollar short?” Yes and no.

Yes, they are getting the education too late. Birth control education isn’t offered in middle school and even in high school, nor is one class period enough. Too many parents think that talking about birth control is a permission slip to risky behaviors – encouraging your teen to wear a seat doesn’t give them permission to speed.
And no, it isn’t too late to educate teen parents about birth control. Why? Chances are, they are still having sex or will someday soon. They need to know that they can have control over their bodies. They need to know that we haven’t given up on them. We can’t give up on teen parents because if we do, we also give up on their children and neither deserves yet another layer of injustice.

Sexual Education: Teens Ask the Darnedest Questions


Posted on November 30, 2011 by

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I speak about Planned Parenthood and the services we offer whenever I have the opportunity. Whether I’m in the grocery checkout line talking about cheap birth control pills to the uninsured cashier or giving impromptu pregnancy options counseling to an esthetician, I’m happy to do it. I am haunted by accounts like Margaret Sanger’s Awakening and Revolt, which reminds me what life continues to be like for women of the world who cannot access family planning services: information is power and power is freedom.

Recently I was asked by a teacher to volunteer at her school’s “career day.” I expected that I would discuss my job roles and duties and spend minimal time discussing the organization I work for. What I found, however, was a school that leapt at the chance for me to discuss age-appropriate, medically accurate reproductive health information with their middle schoolers. I was told that many were likely already having sex and that an elementary schooler had brought condoms to school the week before. The parents had signed waivers allowing the school to discuss sexual health topics with them, so I was asked to answer the questions that the kids had about sex! They divided the groups into “girls” and “boys.”

Three hours and one hundred middle schoolers later, I was completely exhausted. I’d managed to talk about my job role for about three minutes before it was buried below an avalanche of compelling and sometimes frightening sex-related questions. I was able to respond to almost all of them, but referred them to their teachers for those I felt were a bit tricky (e.g., “What does it mean when someone drops the soap in prison?”). As a disclaimer, please note that my entire talk was themed on preventing teen sex, and abstinence was thoroughly encouraged.

These kids had serious questions about their bodies, each other’s bodies, and SEX. There are a lot of adults out there giving their opinions about what kids should and shouldn’t know about the birds and the bees, but I’m here to tell you: they already know more than you’re comfortable with!

Here, I give you highlights from questions in the classroom:

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