As many of you will know by now, I have vaginismus. If you want to know more about this follow this link and you can check out all the posts I’ve done on vaginismus so far: https://www.a-day-in-june.com/category/vaginismus/. I suffer from primary vaginismus, meaning I’ve never been able to have painless penetrative sex. People who have secondary vaginismus were previously able to have sex, and their vaginismus was caused by a trigger such as sexual assault or menopause. A lot of the time, there is no obvious cause for primary vaginismus, which makes it difficult to treat. Today I want to talk about my experience with sex ed growing up.

Sex Ed Classes

I went to an all-girls grammar school between the ages of 11 to 18. Every year we would have a ‘health day’ where we learned about various things from the effects of alcohol on your health to smoking and drugs to sexual health. Before this, I remember at the age of 9 or 10, having my first real sex-ed class. They put all the girls from years five and six into a room and explained puberty. We learnt all about periods and boners and so on. I don’t remember much being mentioned about sex or sexual health at all.

Moving forward to sex ed in secondary school more was talked about. I remember there was talk about sex, but mostly about contraception. The most vivid memory I have about it was being taught that the best form of contraception is to just not have sex. Now yes, that is factually correct. However, teaching that to a bunch of teenagers is not going to work. It’s very clear that if teenagers want to be having sex then they will; there’s nothing stopping them. It’s better to teach about healthy relationships and contraception. I even remember my form tutor (who wasn’t trained in teaching sex ed) told a room full of girls that, while quite unlikely, it was possible to get pregnant from a toilet seat!

Scared Into Submission

Using scare tactics with teenagers to get them to refrain from having sex doesn’t work. Sure, you may scare a couple of kids into not doing it until a bit later, but it could have more severe consequences. In the most part, teenagers just learn how to get away with it in secret, a lot of the time risking their sexual health in doing so. You risk teens not feeling comfortable buying condoms, so they just go without. Or not going to a sexual health clinic when they should be because they feel that it’s dirty.

I remember going to the sexual health clinic for the first time. It was quite difficult to find and there wasn’t much information online about opening times. It was really nerve-wracking sitting there in the waiting room, feeling judged because already being 17, I look much younger than I am.

Pain and Sex

As a girl, I was told that sex might hurt. Yes, it’s possible that you could feel a little bit of discomfort your first time, but mostly that can be fixed by using more lube. I think this probably scared me a little bit. I don’t know what I really expected from sex, but I did expect it to hurt. Especially as I’m quite small. Turns out, the amount of pain I experienced was not normal. And even the first woman I saw at the clinic told me it was just first time pain, even after hurting me by inserting a Q-tip.

It’s really not good to tell girls that pain is normal. Being told that repeatedly may have been one of the things that led to my condition. And in some cases, it could harm girls who persist through the pain thinking it’s normal. There was also never any mention of vaginismus or other conditions women could have. It would have made me feel a lot less scared if I had been told about vaginismus. I would have known to stand my ground at the clinic, and have them take me seriously. Teachers need to distinguish between slight discomfort from dryness or stretching, to excruciating pain. While on this topic, when you’re told that you could bleed, they need to specify how much. There should only be very small amounts of blood, and if it keeps happening, that’s probably something you should go to the doctors about.

Sexuality

When I had sex ed classes, there wasn’t much discussion on sexual orientation, and anything other than heterosexual relationships and sex. I think this is changing a lot, but I’m sure there are still schools with this issue. I think this point is fairly self-explanatory so I won’t go on and on about it. Simply put, it’s important to talk about relationships other than heterosexual ones because there are more than just straight people in the world. And while we’re at it, there should probably be more discussion about gender too. In order to be inclusive, all of this is very important.

Healthy Relationships

I think this is a very important factor of sex ed that is simply not talked about enough. Everyone, regardless of gender, should be taught more about what an unhealthy relationship looks like. As well as if I had had more self-worth and better mental health at the time, I would not have stayed in my last relationship if I had been taught better. I keep looking back at that past relationship and realising that I was quite damaged by that relationship. Parts of it could be classed as emotional abuse, even if it wasn’t intentional on his part.

As well as this, there really should be more information on rape. Consent should be better taught, and rather than teaching victims how to avoid it, teach people not to do it. Don’t just teach girls they can be raped, teach everyone. It’s not just women who are at risk, and it’s important to educate everyone on issues like this.

Sex Ed in the Future

Hopefully, as society continues to evolve we will see some better things in sex ed. Kids deserve better from us, and we need to give it to them. Teenage pregnancy, abuse, rape, and STDs can be so easily reduced by better sex ed and hopefully, the school system can start to realise this.

So I hope you enjoyed reading my thoughts on this important topic. Let me know your experiences with sex ed growing up, I’d love to hear from any and all of you. If you want to sign up to get notified when I post, fill in the form here: https://www.a-day-in-june.com/join-in/. You can unsubscribe at any time, and you won’t get spammed with emails from me! Love you all, stay strong!