Sex Education Needs to Be Less Straight
What does an inclusive version of ‘the talk’ look like?
When Alex Clavel was in eighth grade, in 2015, his health teacher started the class’s “sex unit” with a familiar activity. Posting signs around the room with the names of reproductive organs — uterus, cervix, testes — she called them out, one by one. The students were supposed to run toward the sides of the room labeled “male” or “female.”
When the teacher yelled “uterus,” every student flocked to the female side, except Clavel. Stationed in the middle, he remembers asking: “What about transgender men?” The teacher didn’t contradict him, but said that for the purpose of this lesson, the uterus is something only women have.
This was the only school-based sex ed that Clavel, now 19, received as a teenager in Ithaca, New York. His experience is not unique: Across the country, many American students receive sex education that’s limited in scope, or doesn’t teach safe sex behaviors at all. LGBTQ teens can feel the limitations acutely, and many say they are overlooked, erased, or willfully ignored in the classroom, particularly when it comes to sex ed. Studies show that sex education that stigmatizes LGBTQ students — by gendering reproductive language or only including examples of heterosexual couples in a lesson plan — contributes to…
