Transformative Thursday: I believe that an enormous amount of sexual pain, violence & trauma could be prevented with extensive, trauma-informed, culturally competent sex education delivered not only to youth, but across the lifespan.

Sex education initiatives are almost always limited to youth, and is in many cases outright harmful, eg abstinence-only approaches. But even in the best case, #sexed is limited to 1-2 workshops across a LIFETIME, and can be boiled down to "ask for consent" and "use condoms"

Human beings encompass a vast range of diverse sexual expressions and experiences. We change sexually over time as we age and grow. We need different types of sex ed for each developmental period, tailored to our cultural contexts.

Imagine: What if #sexed was 2 YEAR long courses - 1 in middle school & 1 in high school, with follow up continuing ed workshops (for free!) throughout adult life? Focusing not only on sexual health, but also relationship health?

What if #sexed was made available to everyone and taught such topics as: recognizing healthy/unhealthy intimacy, how to approach and handle rejection appropriately in a sexual context, how to have conversations about STIs in a non-shaming way

What if #sexed also taught us about our own sexual development and orientation? Helped support us through discovering attraction to various bodies and gender expressions? Gave us room to be both sexual and asexual, as the case might be?

What if #sexed also included skills, strategies, and ways of thinking for responding to sexual violence? If we were taught how to protect ourselves and people around us AND also how to safely confront friends & loved ones who are doing harmful behaviors?

Until we create a healthy sexual culture, we will never be able to heal our culture at large. And for that, we need transformative justice-based, trauma informed #sexed