World Sexual Health Day is September 4th, 2022!
Education & healthy sex
Fortunately for us all, it comes around every year. One of the priorities of the World Health Organization is education. Additionally, they want to focus on care for people who are dealing with sexuality, identity, and sexual relationships. Essentially, comprehensive sexual education and care for all sexual humans.
Humans are sexual beings. We should all be armed with the knowledge and care that we deserve to ensure a healthy and safe sex life. Sex is a basic human need. Outside of procreation, sex offers benefits from helping establish identity to maintaining the symptoms of anxiety and depression. The cocktail of feel-good hormones that gets released when you have sex continues to provide a feel-good response even after the sex has ended.
There is one caveat, though: None of this is a given. Abysmal sexual education, among other things, has created an environment for many where sex, even with a trusted partner, feels unsafe and is ultimately unhealthy.
From having the knowledge to make informed choices about your reproductive health to understanding what a healthy romantic relationship looks like, sex education should encompass all of the tools and knowledge that you need to develop a healthy relationship with sex, your sexuality, and your sexual and romantic partners.
What is comprehensive sexual education and why is it important?
We all have a right to understand our biological instincts, how our sexuality develops, how to develop a healthy relationship with sex, and how to have a healthy relationship with sexual partners.
Children need comprehensive, responsible, age-appropriate, and medically accurate sex education. Without this, we let children discover sex for themselves through the internet, and their peers, meaning they may not learn that sex is about pleasure and mutual engagement. They may also miss the lesson that the point of sex is a pleasurable experience, not just a duty or an orgasm.
Learning about sex solely through pornography may also set unrealistic expectations about body image, sexuality, consent, and sexual experiences. We will get into this in later posts, but suffice it to say: the only way to foster a healthy relationship with sex, body image, and sexuality, and is to provide children with accurate and age-appropriate information.
Sexual identity and sexual health
Every individual deserves to feel safe in their own sexual identity. YIn fact, you can only have a healthy relationship with sex if you have a healthy relationship with your sexual identity. Whatever your gender, sexuality, race, class, etc., you deserve to have access to the education and support you need to help you develop a healthy relationship with your sexuality and understand what sexual health means for you.
Healthy relationships with sexual partners
Oftentimes, unless healthy relationships are modeled for us, many of us grow up and have to learn as we go what a healthy romantic and sexual relationship looks like. Consequently, we may find ourselves without the tools to spot red flags early on or without the tools to leave–or even identify–an unhealthy relationship. Sometimes our role models are abusive and misuse power and control, which can short-circuit our connections to healthy relationships and mutually satisfying sexual relationships.
Sexual education in 2022
Now more than ever, it’s imperative that we educate ourselves about sexual health and our own sexuality. Indeed, there are consequences of sex, but, contrary to what we may have been taught, they extend far beyond STIs and unplanned pregnancy. Your mental and emotional health are on the line when you don’t understand your sexuality or don’t have a healthy relationship with sex and intimacy.
We can do better. For ourselves, our children, and our partners. If you didn’t receive the sex education you deserved, seek it out. Educate yourself and your children. We can be happier, healthier, and more confident in who we are with a better understanding of a fundamental part of our identities.