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Transcript:
A little less than two months ago, the Trump administration’s Administration for Children and Families sent a letter to the health departments of 46 states and territories ordering them to “remove all references to gender ideology,” including any acknowledgment of the existence of transgender people, from their schools’ sexual education materials or else risk losing federal funding. Why not all the states and territories? I’m not really sure but I suspect it has to do with the fact that some states, like California, already made it clear they wouldn’t be doing that and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. wanted to save money on stamps.
The administration gave the departments two months to comply, which means that the timer is up in the next week. We know by now that this isn’t necessarily an empty threat, and it’s a very serious threat to many of these districts. The State “Personal Responsibility Education Program,” or PREP, was established in 2010 as a way for the federal government to issue grants to states to offer evidence-based education to high risk kids aged 10 to 19 to reduce the incidence of teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases. PREP replaced earlier Bush-era initiatives that forced states to teach abstinence-only sex ed, despite the mountains of evidence that show that doesn’t work. At all.
Which makes perfect sense: nobody is advocating for teaching abstinence-only driver’s education. “How do you avoid a car accident? Just don’t ever get in a car!” “But what if a car hits me while I’m just walking across the street?” “Then you shouldn’t have been wearing dark clothing near dusk. Always wear an orange safety vest if you are planning to be anywhere a car might be.”
As historian Emma Cieslik wrote last week in The Advocate, the rush to delete LGBTQ+ people from sexual education is just the natural extension of the rightwing’s longrunning “Purity Culture Movement:” an attempt to control girls and women and to punish anyone who seems to challenge heteronormative and misogynistic norms. Conservatives have long fought against any attempt to, for instance, make sure young women and men understand concepts of consent, or to help girls avoid unplanned pregnancies that would not only threaten their health but also hinder their ability to complete their education and begin a career. Hell, they even oppose giving HPV vaccines to kids before they might become sexually active–not because they were anti-vaccine but because they wanted girls to die of cancer for the sin of having sex.
By the way, in February of this year the CDC published the results of a 10-year study on the effectiveness of the HPV vaccine, which was first approved in 2006. They found that “During 2008–2022, cervical precancer incidence decreased 79% and higher-grade precancer incidence decreased 80% among screened women aged 20–24 years, the age group most likely to have been vaccinated.”
So yeah, we have a vaccine for cancer but the Purity Cult doesn’t want you to have it because they want women to die from having sex.
Anyway, as gay rights activists made gains in the 1980s, Purity Culture was equally opposed to schools acknowledging that some kids may be gay and giving advice on how to practice safe sex and avoid diseases like HIV/AIDS.
And so it’s no surprise that they are now equally outraged by the existence of transgender and nonbinary people, and educating kids about them in case, you know, they are one or know one or have to one day provide sexual health services to one.
I’m thinking about all this right now not just because that 60-day timer is about to run out, but because of a new study published recently in the International Journal of Sexual Health: “If I Only Knew Then: Single Adults’ Perceptions of the Impact of Sex Education on Their Romantic and Sexual Lives.” I found it interesting because most studies illustrating the dangers of bad sex education (rightfully) focuses on the immediate effects on children and young adults. For instance, we’ve known for more than a decade now that abstinence-only education is the actual cause of the US having at the time the highest rates of teenage pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases in the developed world. But what are the knock-on effects of that? How does growing up with a lack of comprehensive sexual education impact adults later on in their lives?
That was the question researchers at the Kinsey Institute set out to answer by reviewing the surveys of nearly 4,000 US single adults between the ages of 18 and 98 who participated in an annual poll called the Singles in America (SIA) study. About a third of the respondents reported never receiving ANY kind of sexual education, in school, from parents or relatives, or anywhere else. And of 16 topics regularly covered in comprehensive sex ed, only one was taught to the majority of respondents, and even that was a slim majority: 55% of people learned about reproduction or pregnancy in sex ed. Great job, America. Hardly any of them learned about concepts like consent (17%), or even just healthy relationships (7%). Only 4% learned about how to make themselves or a partner feel good and how to communicate.
But sure, maybe the respondents skewed older, and it’s a bunch of boomers who don’t think that kids should be learning about “woke” shit like “talking to your partner before you have sex might improve the experience for everyone.”
But no: it turns out that a significant portion of the respondents showed a real desire to have had that kind of education. More than 90% said that if they had had more education on those topics, their life would be better now: they thought they would have more sexual confidence, a better understanding of their own body, a better understanding of how to be a good partner, healthier relationships, a better understanding of their own sexual health, a better quality of life, or the resources to make more informed decisions.
And you know what? I think they’re absolutely correct! Comprehensive sex ed doesn’t “just” prevent unplanned pregnancies and STIs. A massive review of 30 years of research published in 2021 found that comprehensive sex ed compared with abstinence only sex ed resulted in a reduction in homophobia and homophobic bullying, better health outcomes for LGBTQ children like less alcoholism and better school attendance, a better understanding of gender and children feeling safer pushing back on traditional gender roles, a reduction in misogynistic bullying, a reduction in domestic violence (both among perpetrators and victims), and healthier, more respectful and communicative relationships. The teaching of consent and personal boundaries directly resulted in kids understanding their own bodies, what constituted inappropriate touching, and what to do in the event someone violated their boundaries.
That’s not a comprehensive (pun intended) list of the benefits. It just makes sense: giving kids more information about their own bodies and others helps them feel more positively about themselves and others, which has benefits in the bedroom and out in the world. Giving them the tools to build healthy relationships helps them in every aspect of their lives, not just sexually but in interacting with friends, peers, and future coworkers and clients and bosses.
So I need you to remember this when these states cave in to the Trump administration. Refusing to teach kids about themselves and the grand spectrum of humanity, refusing to teach them about dignity and respect, refusing to teach them consent and boundaries–this isn’t “just” about neutering sex ed and seeing the resulting increase in teen pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases. It’s about creating miserable and bigoted adults who will continue to give power to the miserable and bigoted people in power. And if we don’t speak up about these dangers, then unlike the people in this Kinsey study, they probably won’t even know what they’re missing.
