Your bag is empty.
I was walking down the street not too long ago, and I overheard a full adult woman say, “I didn’t know you could get pregnant on your first try!” That’s when I realized the world desperately needs better sex education.
I’m including myself in that statement. I had a mortifying moment in college when one of my friends explained how the guy she was sleeping with only wanted to do “doggy style.” I responded, “That’s crazy. He only wants to do anal?” There was silence, and one of my friends slowly asked, “So…do you think when dogs have sex they’re always doing it anally?” And I guess when you say it out loud, it sounds dumb. Of course they’re not always doing it anally—most of them save that for birthdays and bribes. But I wasn’t thinking of the logistics of canine coitus. I honestly wasn’t thinking of sex at all, because I was taught not to.
I was raised in Indiana, and my sex education was pretty much “don’t.” I remember a slide show of STIs in my middle school health class featuring images of cauliflower sprouting out of someone’s ass, or blood and pus oozing from someone’s eyeball, and those were used as evidence for why we should abstain. I went to a public school, so they weren’t telling us to save ourselves for religious reasons—they just weren’t telling us anything.
Our class participated in the Baby Think It Over program, in which students take care of a robot baby to learn how hard it is to care for a human baby. I guess we were supposed to “think over” whether or not it’s worth it to have kids while still in school. I had killed multiple Tamagotchis by this point, so I wasn’t feeling good about my chances of being a good robot mom, but I wanted to at least pass the assignment.
The baby had a computer in it to record how often I fed, held, changed and nurtured it (which is kind of what I currently do in my relationship). It would also cry, and I just had to guess why (which is what my partner does in our relationship). It was so annoying. Sometimes I just let the baby wail because I was busy with other homework. There was one day when I ran to the bus while holding my bundle of joy, and her head was flopping back and forth, so that probably wasn’t good. At the end of the experiment, the teacher pulled together all the counts of neglect and abuse to give me a grade. Apparently I had a lot of counts of neglect and abuse. Someone from Child Protective Services—I’m hoping an intern and not someone who could be helping real children—came to my school to talk to all the bad student-parents. They took me into a room and warned me that if this were a real baby, they would take her from me. And my response was, “Good! I didn’t ask for this baby!” They didn’t care about my protest.
The only thing more terrifying than sex-ed scare tactics is the way I treated my mechanical child.
I wish I had said, “You know what would’ve been more useful? Telling me how not to have a baby instead of showing me how hard life is with one. Embarrassing me in class by making me roll a condom over a banana so I’m not too embarrassed to do it with an actual penis in front of me. Giving me language I can use to ask my partners about their sexual history and health so I’m not speechless in the moment. Teaching me that sex can be an enjoyable experience between consenting parties and doesn’t have to be a shameful, detrimental act.”
It can be easy not to have a baby if you don’t want one—you just need access to resources and information, which is getting tougher these days. Let’s keep spreading knowledge so people can have more control of their lives and know how to get rid of the cauliflower in their butt.