I have few memories of it in action, aside from it being limited and not terribly formative. Something I hold much closer is the informal sexual education from my experience as a camper (then camp counselor) during my teenaged and college years.

I first become sexually active one summer outside of camp (certainly without the guidance of any informed adults) and suddenly had so much to TALK about with the other campers. I remember a counselor very kindly asking us to discuss this in private overhearing us in a bunk bed. This felt significant: they didn't shut us down, and instead warmly asked us to be a little more conscious of who might be in earshot, in the off chance that another camper might not be as comfortable.

I later became a counselor and remember hearing my campers talk about the same things a handful of times. I let it slide, I asked if they had questions for me, and I tried to embody the same warmth, all while trying to channel a much older and more self-assured version of myself at the tender age of nineteen.

I did have formal sex education in school, but I remember none of it. Probably active disremembering. Sex education to me personally has meant a challenging process of discovery, a strengthening of intimacy, an integration with my body as someone much more comfortable in my mind, and the slow realization that pleasure, my own specifically or my pleasure in gifting pleasure to others, is at the heart–has to be at the heart. I say a process, that process is FOR SURE still ongoing and many of those statements are things I practice towards more than things I feel are completed.

The most formal sex education I have had has been in school; conservative catholic education from middle to high school that was not very helpful. The informal sex education I have received from the internet, my peers, and media has been both more beneficial and more actively harmful.

Sex Ed: (1) Middle school: sex ed was divided by gender, and for the girls it was actually lessons on dieting. I was the only fat person in the class. (2) The gUrl Deal With It book was amazing and actually taught me everything I needed to know, including handy masturbation tips. (3) In high school my sex ed teacher asked really invasive questions because I was trans. I had a great time raising a baby with my crush though. (4) Since I’m on testosterone, I have a lot of weird body things with my uterus and stuff that aren’t really documented or researched. But sometimes my friends or doctors at trans clinics have heard of them. I learn and teach how to do things like set boundaries around safer sex on grindr from my friends and community as well.

In high school, maybe 9th or 10th grade, the gym teacher split the boys and the girls into separate rooms. We watched a video by a guy named Orv Owens. (I may not be remembering that correctly.) Then the teacher led us through a discussion. Which quickly devolved into boys making boasts for laughs. It was overall a pretty useless exercise.

Omg I had the opposite of sex Ed…I have never have sex Ed. Like the worst sex Ed ever. I cannot even!

I've had very little sex ed in school, all we were taught was how to put condoms on chairs. Sex education through peer to peer and through books has been life changing to me.

It was very rushed, hush hush separate the boys and girls. I grew up in a state that was abstinence only sex education. Sex was taught through a lens of fear when it came to STD's and that it should only occur when married. There was no conversation on how to have sex with a partner, how to say no, where to get STD tested, queer sex etc, and pleasure in general! It sucks that i had to listen to a podcast on urology to realize a problem with my pleasure in the bedroom might have been due to anatomy that no one talks about!

I was raised in a household where sex and sexuality felt like off-limits conversations, not to be breached by parents who were under the impression that ~that~ was something I would learn from teachers and health professionals when the time came. The time came and went and I completed the mandatory one-semester health class where the course’s two-week unit on sex education consisted of watching a white cis-gender, British woman give birth, and an activity where we (the 14 to 18-year-old students) used transparent cups or water and food coloring to visually represent that the more times you poured water into someone else’s cup (a metaphor for a “hook-up” or having sex), the darker and dirtier your water would get. Despite attending a California public high school known to have a very liberal campus culture, the sum of my sexuality and relationship education consisted of scare tactics that implied that all sexual encounters meant giving a part of you up and receiving something dirtier or less-than in return, a decidedly sex-negative approach to educating teens and young adults in 9th through 12th grade. This activity continued the work of facilitating the myth that sexual innocence is moral purity and to deviate from that would mean agreeing that I was a sexual object that deserved to be disrespected rather than someone growing into a sexually mature and autonomous person. Later in high school I was sexually assaulted by someone who had received the same sex education as I had, and while I was processing and grieving that incident I thought a lot about how I did not even know what sex was before that (despite having completed sex ed), I also did not know about consent in a sexual capacity, or at least felt like I did not have the ability to take control of my body in a meaningful way in that moment. When I started undergrad I took a deep dive into advocacy for survivors of sexual violence and became interested in the future of sex education.

When leaving for college, I was packing up my things and found a letter to my future fiancé that I wrote for an assignment in my high school health class. It detailed all the reasons why I am glad that I saved my virginity for my husband on our wedding night, including statistics about STIs and the meaning of sex. I believed these words when I wrote them, and since I have been unlearning them. My family didn't talk about sex either and hold conservative ideas about sex and uphold them with cultural practices. Between 2016-2020, I was a university non-reporting sexual violence resource navigator and I spent time volunteering at a culturally-competent South Asian domestic violence shelter.

My formal sexual education experience was that of Catholic conservative teachings. I learned abstinence and cis heterosexual exclusive doctrine. Despite these teachings I desire expansion and inclusion and education that sees me and my community as valid and deserving of truth!

I never had any formal sexual education in school. I think in HS I might have had some of it covered during our "Health Ed" class but for the most part I've had to piece meal my education through personal experience, conversations with peers and on my own as a birth worker. Even within my family dynamic and despite being the youngest of 4 girls, sex was never discussed. Sex education for me then is very much informed by what I experience with the people I chose to engage with in a pleasurable experience. I've been fortunate enough to not have had severe trauma where I carry shame or guilt around my body and how I use it. Thus, I am able to make informed decisions and choices around my sexual and reproductive health.