Healthy Sexuality
Inclusive and comprehensive sex education is key to sexual assault prevention.
When people understand their own bodies and sexual desires, and are comfortable with their sexuality, they are more likely to talk about sex openly with their partners. Open, clear communication is key to consent and healthy relationships.
At Speak About It, we want to empower students to make choices that feel right for them in regards to sex. These choices cannot be made if folks don't have adequate information about their own bodies and sex.
We believe that if students have an inclusive and pleasure-focused understanding of healthy sexuality in regards to themselves and their partners, they are more likely to regard each other empathetically and communicate openly. Therefore, healthy sexuality education is a vital part of sexual assault prevention.
What is healthy sexuality?
Healthy sexuality is defined by one’s ability to control, enjoy, and understand their own sexual and reproductive behaviors, so they may responsibly express their sexuality in a social environment. In short, healthy sexuality is about making sure everybody is having safe and pleasurable sex, if they want it.
Healthy sexuality begins with accurate and comprehensive information about sexual and reproductive health. Sexual health is part of a healthy physical, emotional, and social life. Speak About It believes sex education should be sex-positive, inclusive, and pleasure-focused, and strive to include these values in all our programming. This kind of sex education is optimal for helping young people approach sexual interactions from a perspective that is consensual, respectful, and informed.
How can you start your journey towards leading a healthy sexual life? Ask questions about your body, about sex, and about sexuality to your doctor, parents, partners, friends, professors and more. Knowledge is power! Questions are normal! Here’s some resources we love to help you learn more about healthy sexuality.
ScarleTEEN: This all inclusive website by sexpert, Heather Corinna, has a decade-long track record of providing some of the best sex advice on almost every sexual health topic. With articles, FAQs, term glossaries, and more, ScarleTEEN specifically caters to teens and emerging adults across all genders and sexualities. Honestly, our staff looks to ScarleTEEN to answer some of our nitty gritty questions too!
Sex, etc. - Sponsored by Answer, from Rutgers University, Sex, etc. is a magazine and website written by teens, for teens. They cover a vast array of questions about sex and sexuality. There's lots of great info, as well as personal essays about a range of sexual experiences. We also love their Tumblr full of sex ed memes. Who can't get down with a few LOLs about birth control!
Planned Parenthood is a go-to reproductive health expert, and they have a wealth of information on their website, ranging from facts about STIs, birth control, condoms and other protection, consent and healthy relationships, cancer, emergency contraception, pregnancy, abortion and more.
Roo: This chat bot takes the awkward out of sex ed questions and can lead you to some great information about your body and sexual health. We love a resource where you can #justask!
Sex Ed is a policy issue. Check out SIECUS and learn about how lawmakers and advocates make a difference in the kind of sex ed young people receive in schools.
The Center for Sexual Health & Pleasure: A sexual health training and educational organization, with the mission of providing medically accurate, pleasure-informed, and inclusive sexual education. They offer various online courses, in person trainings, and more on various sexuality topics. They also have a great Instagram!
Kimbritive: Real empowered conversations about sexual wellness and relationships, by Black women for Black women and girls.
Teen Health Source. Resource by PP Toronto, that includes blog topics, polls, general information and a helpline staffed by teen health educators.
What does it mean when we say...?
What do we mean when we say “sex positive”?
Sex-positivity is both a movement and ideal. Sex positivity embraces the idea that sex and sexuality are important and valuable for many folks to lead a healthy lifestyle. To be sex positive means that one does not assign or associate shame to the sexual choices a person may make, as long as those are consensual, healthy, and do not harm the individual, their partner, or another person. For Speak About It, sex-positivity means we’re affirming of any and all consensual sexual choices you make: including choosing not to engage in sexual activity.
Advocates for sex positivity encourage comprehensive sex education, open communication about desires and boundaries, and an inclusion of all sexual and gender identities, including trans and non-binary folks, as well as folks who identify as asexual.
Sex positivity is not sex promotion. We don’t tell students to go out and have as much sex as possible; we empower them with information about all their choices and encourage them to make sexual choices that make them and their partners feel safe, affirmed, and healthy.
Check out some of these helpful articles about Sex Positivity:
10 Things Sex Positivity is Not
5 Resources for Being Sex-Positive from the Healthy Teen Network
Or check out Sex Positive Families, Sex educator Melissa Pintor Carnagey has a podcast, blog, and wealth of resources for adults, parents, and people of all ages for building sex positivity throughout a lifetime.
What do we mean when we say “inclusive”?
Speak About It strives to not just include but to celebrate a diversity of experiences, identities, sexualities, and genders in our programs. We believe that sex education should reflect that same inclusivity. This can look like a lot of different things: from including medically appropriate and affirming information for queer folks, to using gender-neutral and non-heteronormative language when talking about anatomy and sexuality. Likewise, this also means representing different types of bodies in diagrams and photographs, with regard to body type and size, as well as race, ability, and gender expression.
We strive to include people of many racial, sexual, gender, socioeconomic, national and other identities in our shows and programs because everyone should be allowed to have and enjoy sex, if they want to be sexually active. Everyone should have access to the information that helps them make the right choices about the sexual activity they want to engage in, with the people they want to engage with.
Inclusion means providing resources for people often left out of the traditional dialogue in sex ed or health class. For example, many queer students are not provided adequate information about LGBTQIA+ sexual health. Likewise, inclusion means listening to and including the voices of sex educators of color, or those of different abilities, nationalities, and more.
Check out the following queer sex ed resources:
Highlights from the SAI blog:
Notes from All the Queer Sex Ed you missed in high school.
Why are pronouns important to consent education.
Inclusive Sexual Health Education by GLSEN
Advocates for Youth student written pamphlets on Gay, Lesbian,Bi and Asexual identities.
5 Things LGBTQ Students Might Not Learn in Health Class - Teen Vogue
Additionally, all of the resources we shared above are queer inclusive and LGBTQ+ friendly.
What do we mean when we say “pleasure-focused”?
Talking about consent is a way to highlight the benefits of healthy relationships and healthy sex for all. While it is important to ensure that there are routes for holding perpetrators accountable for sexual violence, that doesn't mean that the conversation about sexual assault prevention needs to focus exclusively on violence or punishment. Because we view healthy sexuality education as a primary prevention method, we feel it's important to include pleasure in our conversations about consent.
As we say in the show, "You should ask for consent not just so you don't get in trouble, but to ensure that both people can enjoy what's going on." Speak About It wants to re-frame the conversation about consent to focus on how hooking up and sexual activity should feel good for all parties involved. Without consent that is not possible.
All partners should be prioritizing the pleasure and enjoyment of the other partner in order for a hook-up to be a mutually healthy and beneficial interaction. By centering pleasure in our conversations about consent, we can reinforce sex-positivity, encourage people of all genders to enjoy the kind of sex they want to have, and re-brand getting consent not only as something mandatory, but as something fun, sexy, and pleasurable for everyone. Pleasure and comfort should take center stage in the conversation when it comes to sexuality.
We loved this article from Teen Vogue about the role pleasure has in the #MeToo conversation.
