Can We Talk About Sex, Baby?

“If you never learned to read, and I then showed up and was like, ‘You’re 18 now. Here’s the New York Times, 18-year-olds are supposed to read the New York Times.’ You would be totally out of your depth.”

“But that’s how we treat sex education.”

Lux Alptraum’s clear, crisp voice floats out of my cell phone. A writer on sex, feminism and pop culture, Alptraum has been working in sexual education for 21 years and is set to release her debut book Faking It: The Lies Women Tell About Sex — and the Truths They Reveal this November. Her words and tone have a casual cadence to them and yet each sentence packs a hard punch — a consequence, no doubt, of a career dedicated to talking and writing about one of the most notoriously difficult subjects.

According to the Guttmacher Institute, between 2011 and 2013, over 80% of high school students received formal sexual health education, which predominantly taught about STDs, HIV and AIDS, and how to say no to sex. However, only about 60% received any formal information on methods of birth control. Additionally, only 54% received formal instruction on how to use a condom. These numbers were down significantly from 2006-2010, while percentages went up for teaching adolescents about saying no to sex.

In a world where Planned Parenthood is chronically attacked, abortion is a heavily contested subject, men are constantly accused of sexual assault, and even readily accessible birth control isn’t a guarantee, sexual education is more important than ever. The truth is in the numbers: things need to change.

Curious to see how my peers felt about their sex ed experiences, I conducted a survey.

“I learned all my sex education from being promiscuous and researching on my own as I’ve grown older. Also through conversations with other people,” one person responded. “I don’t remember sex ed in grade school having anything to do with real life actually. It didn’t feel super encouraging of sex in fact. If anything it felt awkward, binary, and separate from life.”

With brown hair so dark its nearly black, a beard to match and kind, laughing eyes that pair warmly with his smooth voice, it is easy to imagine high school students being willing to open up to Fabio Alexander de Fabbrizio about all the awkward questions they might have. Fabbrizio is a senior at New York University where he works with Peer Health Exchange, a nationwide organization dedicated to teaching high school students about sex ed, substance abuse, and mental health.  After briefly discussing his abysmal sex ed experience in high school, Fabbrizio makes a good point, “The reason we call it Peer Health Exchange is because these are college volunteers, so there’s only ever at most an eight-year age difference,” he says. “I really hate that the default sex ed teacher is the gym teacher. We promote this framework of choosing for yourself and discovering information on your own, and I think that’s a really important aspect of the curriculum.”

Another person from my survey, like Fabbrizio, pinpointed a common awkwardly comedic scene that crops up in many teen films: “The health teacher was also the wrestling coach. Not qualified.” There is something rather devastating about the instant relatability of this quote, bringing to mind an image of Coach Carr (Dwayne Hill) in Mean Girls misspelling chlamydia to an inattentive and uncomfortable class and cautioning them about death as a consequence of engaging in sexual activity. (In an interview reflecting on the inspiration behind the movie, screenplay writer Tina Fey discussed conveying much-needed information through comedy.)

Fabbrizio has experienced firsthand the educational value of comedy, “There’s a British comedian named TomSka that has a really good video on puberty, the concept of consent, and like ‘What is sex?’ “generally”. While the comedian and those videos do have a funny texture to it, they’re actually one of the most comprehensive videos that I’ve seen in a while.”

Consent seems to be a key point when talking about the holes in our society’s sexual education. Shelby Marne, a subjectively promiscuous individual, has attended “play parties” throughout the city where there are strict rules about consent and creating a safe environment. With a curly bob of auburn hair and an hourglass figure molded from ivory skin, Marne is a Robert Fowler painting incarnate. In her bright, bell-like voice, Marne proclaims, “If you need to learn about consent you probably shouldn’t be having sex. I think consent is something we can teach very young, and societally we haven’t done a great job with that.”

In the end, sex ed is about fundamental human interaction.

“We should instill these very basic messages of how to have a healthy relationship with your body and with other people’s bodies from a young age,” Alptraum makes it sound so simple because, really, it is.