Why I decided to write a sex ed program

I thought I had received excellent sexuality education as a teen. In the late 80’s and early 90’s I was in several different iterations of a year-long Comprehensive Sexuality Education (CSE) program. I was very proud of being well-informed, so 30 years later I went looking for a similar program for my own teen children. As I carefully reviewed the available programs, I slowly came to a horrifying realization: I had been harmed by CSE.

Turns out that “comprehensive” is more of a slogan than an accurate description. Major aspects of human sexuality had been deliberately excluded from my education. Moreover, I had been carefully manipulated to fear filling in those gaps myself. While the word doctrine was never uttered (and would have been considered anathema) that’s the most accurate word. I was taught a very specific doctrine around human sexuality, and this doctrine was called “sex positivity.” Heresy against this doctrine was described as “sex negativity.” CSE doctrine states that sex negativity is the source of all sexual harms throughout history, so obviously students were heavily motivated to avoid any possible appearance of sex negativity by asking the wrong kind of questions.

For example, the statement “all children are sexual from birth” made me uncomfortable as a teen. I was assured that my discomfort was purely due to misunderstanding and ignorance. I accepted that the folks with advanced degrees in sexology knew more than a teenage virgin who hadn’t even dated much. I deferred to the authorities. I trusted the experts. 30 years later, I was feeling less deferential and less trusting as I looked through the updated version of the same CSE curriculum. A particular passage leaped out at me, and memories came flooding back. Here’s a brief excerpt to avoid any copyright violations:

“She stroked the nape of his neck. He nuzzled her erect nipple first gently with his nose, then licked it, tasted, smelled, and absorbed her body odor.”

That’s the description of a 4 month old infant breastfeeding. It’s part of supportive evidence for the doctrine that all children are sexual from birth. The curriculum states that “some people find it difficult” to think about breastfeeding as sexual, and encourages the group to “broaden their thinking.” 

Let’s take this apart, shall we? 

1. Breastfeeding was described in a pornographic way.
2. People who felt uncomfortable about this were told to overcome their difficulties.
3. Anyone who openly objected to this characterization risked being accused of being narrow-minded.

In this welcoming, inclusive group that prioritized emotional safety, every one of us had been subtly intimidated into remaining silent. I remember feeling this was wrong at the time, but I didn’t have any tools to challenge it except a vague idea that it felt gross to characterize breastfeeding as sexual. 

Now, I have more tools to challenge this passage. Virtually anything can be framed as if it’s sexual, including entirely mundane activities like gardening and driving. This “sex positive” description imposes adult sexual interpretation upon a hungry baby and is deeply wrong on a moral level. It’s also wrong from a factual perspective. Having breastfed two infants, I can say with confidence that there is no slow titillation involved! One of my infants briefly got the nickname “alligator” for the urgency and desperation involved!

My teachers did not intend to harm me. They were following the curriculum as instructed and they did a good job at it. They meant well.They weren’t groomers in the traditional sense of predators attempting to reduce the inhibitions of their targets in order to increase vulnerability. 

And yet, I was groomed.

I’ve chosen to embrace the term proxy grooming. Proxy grooming is when a population or individual is rendered more vulnerable by systematically discouraging, dismantling, or undermining the boundaries that would otherwise offer some protective effect. My teachers were not groomers. Nevertheless, I was groomed. CSE wasn’t all destructive. I was never shamed or coerced into accepting something that I didn’t want to do with my body. The anatomy lessons were top-notch. I genuinely benefitted from CSE in many ways. However, CSE also groomed me to become a proxy groomer myself. I was taught lessons that severely impaired my ability to protect my own children. It took a great deal of personal work to repair this damage. Coming to this realization has been unspeakably painful.

Do you remember what started me on this journey? My own kids were entering adolescence and they needed sex education. Providing no sex ed at all meant leaving the matter to peers and the internet, which seemed like a spectacularly bad idea. The school curriculum was all CSE.

Now what?

I went looking for alternatives. One of the first things I discovered was that the Purity Culture sex ed that was common in conservative churches during the 1990’s had also caused major problems, and the founder had renounced everything he taught. Despite my serious concerns about the doctrine of CSE, other doctrines did not appear to be an improvement. I checked out Sexual Risk Avoidance Education (SRAE) programs, sometimes referred to as “abstinence only” or “abstinence plus.” They seemed appropriate for school, but woefully incomplete. I wanted my kids to know more.

I read some fascinating books by various religious philosophers on the meaning and purpose of sex. I learned about evolutionary behaviorism. I read some of the newer research on human sexuality and how it contradicts some older theories. I studied how cultish influences work to manipulate people. I read intriguing new research regarding the physiological effects of ritual. I learned new definitions of religion. I read the rather horrifying writings of Alfred Kinsey, John Money, and many other sexologists. I questioned most of my old assumptions and had myself a nice little worldview crisis while I sorted this all out. To translate: I plunged into significant depression for almost two years. My loving husband watched this whole process with understandable alarm and dismay.

Meanwhile, my kids kept getting older. The need hadn’t changed. I had done years of research and still failed to find anything even remotely helpful. My family is not part of any Judeo-Christian faith tradition, and several members are assertively non-believers. Any faith-based program was a nonstarter, and I hadn’t found any faith-based programs that seemed very complete anyway. Several different secular programs were available, but all were built on CSE ideals. At this point, I wasn’t even sure precisely what I wanted my kids to learn. A major worldview crisis had left me shaken and uncertain.

Slowly I turned away from seeking certainty and embraced humility. As I mentioned previously, I am incredibly stubborn. Humility does not come naturally to me. When I stopped searching for a new Truth and started reaching for questions, everything changed.

What would it be like to have a sexuality education program that didn’t claim to have all the answers? What if a sex ed program could be about discussing questions, and trusting that people could find their own answers? What if the point of the program was to integrate all the ideas from all the different sex ed programs into one location, and trust participants to evaluate them fairly on their own merits? What if a sex ed program was about finding a personal path to true sexual integrity?

Would that even look like?

Could I write such a thing?

How could I write a curriculum starting with the basic assumption that I could be wrong? Exploring many different conflicting ideas is much harder than trying to teach a particular truth.  Was such a thing even rightly called a curriculum?

I slowly began to put something together for my own teen children. The project was more complex than I expected. I would try to write down a simple idea in 15 minutes, discover it wasn’t simple at all, and end up spending 20 hours in intensive research.

Integrative Sexuality Education (ISE) was born. The first trial run with my family and one other family succeeded beyond my wildest hopes. My relationship with my teens improved. As my kids enter adulthood, I can trust that any mistakes they make will be the normal mistakes of a human being entering into adulthood, rather than a personal failure on my part. I have done my bit. I trust them to do their own thinking. As an unexpected bonus, ISE also improved my marriage. Parenting teenagers is a stressful experience. Turns out that ISE also functions effectively as a form of DIY couple’s therapy, a basic relationship tune-up that facilitates better communication and increased intimacy.

The ISE program is a work in progress, but in some ways it will always remain deliberately incomplete. Both Comprehensive Sex Ed and Purity culture had utopian goals and made utopian promises. I’ll settle for more modest goals: let’s make things just a little bit better. I believe that meaningful conversations between parents and teenage children nearly always has a positive effect, especially since those conversations can continue for many years. I can’t go back and confront my sex ed teachers about their mistakes, but I’m still talking with my parents. Integrative Sex Ed gives parents and teens a structure and a framework to have those vital conversations, hopefully for a lifetime.

Integrative Sex Ed is my gift to you and your family. Please take Integrative Sex Ed and turn it into whatever your family needs.