Of all the sexual aberrations, chastity is the strangest -Anatole France

As everyone knows, I come from a very privileged area when it comes to everyone’s sexuality; sexual shame has never been a thing in my life or the lives of my friends back home because having weird sex and the person who you have this weird sex with is normal to me.  Warner wrote, “power lies almost exclusively on the normal side” (44), the normal side, to me, is being yourself and doing what makes you happy.  The first time I experienced sexual shame was when I moved out to Colorado and my peers got quiet when I would talk about sex.  I realized that the majority of the country is not like where I am from and people are more insecure when it comes to talking about sex.  My sophomore year roommate even told me that she had grown up not discussing sex because it was a private matter.  I was shocked that people were programed to shame something that is all over our society today especially in the media.  Although my friends here are still shy about discussing sex, I have gotten the majority of them to talk to me about it because of how confident and how pushy I was for them to open up. 

Where I am from, there is no sexual shame from the community because we are so accepting of everyone and we want to make sure that everyone is educated.  I believe that if the rest of the world were to put an emphasis on sexual education, not only abstinence and false information, the sexual shame will start to disappear.  For me, I was taught about sex every year since 5^th grade to senior year in high school; it started with more biological aspects of sex and when I got into high school it became the fun aspect.  We would play with sex toys, different types of contraception, write on the board all of the weird sex things that we would look up on urban dictionary with our teacher.  The best part was, my teachers for these sex classes were very religious women; one is even married to a deacon.  In a quote by Elizabeth Taylor who was an American actress, she said, “It is bad enough that people are dying of AIDS, but no one should die of ignorance”.  I agree that everyone should be educated equally on their bodies so they don’t make mistakes that they did not even know could happen.  Since my high school taught us about sex, my classmates and I were able to explore our sexuality freely and didn’t feel like it was something to be ashamed of compared to schools that teach only abstinence and that sex is bad.  I think that was the best part of the curriculum at my high school, learning about all sides of sex: abstinence is the only 100% way to prevent pregnancy and STDS, how our bodies work, how to use conception and what type works best for each body, what makes sex enjoyable, etc.

I also think that sexual shame comes from people who haven’t had sex and experienced it; they go off of what they learned in school and if they learned that sex is bad, they will shame whoever talks about it.  When I came to Colorado, I was faced with individuals who were shy about their sexuality because they had not explored it; not saying that its bad to be a virgin, but its bad to be a closed minded virgin.  Once these girls experienced a sexual relationship their sexual shaming went out the window.  This also can connect to the fact that these girls did not have an educational sex Ed class and they only know that sex is shameful until they experience it.

I found a quote that I struggle with.  It is by Indira Gandhi who was the prime minister of India, she said, “The greatest of all contraceptives is affluence”.  This is because every school around me, rich or poor, was able to have a sex ed class that I believe is one of the best forms of birth control.  If having a real sexual education was required for schools by the law, I believe that: the teen pregnancy rate would drop significantly, people would not be shamed for their sexuality, and that people would learn to be more accepting. 

When it comes to being more accepting your sexuality and the sexuality of others, I again think it can be solved with education and not education that is taught with a religious emphasis.  Although I went to a catholic school, my school was very liberal and knew that the girls would not stand to be taught abstinence and they knew that it was unsafe to not teach young girls about what could happen if they were unsafe with their choices.  This made it easy for us to know that there is no normal way to have sex since we learned about so many different ways (25-26). 

Overall, I believe that sexual shaming has been disappearing since our generation is more accepting and in tune about this issue.  However, without proper education and knowing that it is a very normal thing for every individual, I don’t think that this will ever go away. As Deborah Meier, who is an American educational innovator, said, “Good schools, like good societies and good families, celebrate and cherish diversity”.  If you are not educated in: people, sex, locations, culture, etc., that are different than yourself, how can you come to accept the differences that everyone has.