How a lack of sex education impacted my sexual health

One day in primary school, a group of around ninety 11/12-year-olds were told that we would be given “the talk.” We weren’t totally sure what this meant since our teachers treated it as some secret or surprise course we would take. Instead of being split into our usual classes though, we had to be separated. The girls went to one room and learned about our bodies (well, the basics anyway). Meanwhile, the boys learned… well, we weren’t sure. I remember being confused as to why we had to be split in the first place. Were they learning things that we weren’t? This just sparked our curiosity even more. 

When learning about periods, I quickly understood the need for separation. Some of us had intimate questions that we probably would have been uncomfortable with asking if the boys were in the room. But looking back on this now in my 20s, especially knowing what I know now, and especially with the ever-lasting stigma surrounding women’s bodies still to this day, I think we would have been better off had we gotten over the awkwardness of having to learn about intimate topics with students of all genders.

More confused than ever

I distinctly remember the day we finished up those lessons. Suddenly, it was like it never happened. We had to pretend like we didn’t just learn any of it. We all felt incredibly awkward, as any kid would be, having just learned what sex was for the first time. But we never knew what the other class was taught, and so we were far more confused than ever. 

Kids being kids, we wanted to know what we were not supposed to. Unfortunately, this is where the Internet comes in. Through porn alone, we discovered what sex was and what it looked like, and most of us (rightly so) were terrified. Because (as I later learned), both the boys and girls learned about wet dreams and ejaculation with regard to penises, but neither of the groups learned about women’s pleasure. It was non-existent. 

I personally didn’t think women’s orgasms were a thing until I was about 15 or 16. When we saw what was happening on our screens in porn, we assumed it would be painful, not pleasurable. Secondly, we noticed that these women had perfectly toned and hairless bodies… but weren’t we just told that women have body hair too?

More questions than answers

My experience with sex education left me with hundreds more questions than answers. Even in my 20s, I’m still learning new things. The more knowledge I gained, I found that the sex education we received was very barely scratching the surface. The most prevalent issue being that the Internet taught me more than my own teachers, even in secondary school. In an age now where social media has taken over the web completely, I wonder how the children of today are getting their information and how young they are when they stumble upon it. 

However, throughout these last ten years, there has been a huge shift towards overall acceptance of the LGBTQI+ community and lack of traditional conformities, as well as a new wave of feminism and the body positivity movement. So I just hope that for the sake of young people in Ireland today, although there are probably many of them still receiving a lot of sensitive information online like we did back then, hopefully their mindsets aren’t as closed off as ours were. 

The need for queer inclusive education

We knew nothing about the many different sexualities or gender identities, or even different types of sex. We were never taught about queer sexual relationships. We never knew that we didn’t have to necessarily conform to our ‘masculine’ or ‘feminine’ roles. We were not taught about the importance of consent and healthy boundaries. I’m glad that these topics are now being highlighted everywhere, rightly so. 

It is good to see that more diversity in our sex education is on the horizon. We must remove the feelings of shame that our nation has held onto for so long. We need to modernise the curriculum and open those conversations for young people, as opposed to separating them. These conversations are not shameful, they are liberating. The next generation of Ireland needs to embrace that.

This piece is part of ‘Under the Sheets‘, the National Action Panel’s Voices campaign to raise awareness of the importance of unbiased fact-based inclusive sex education for all young people. Access more information and supports for sexual health.

Illustrations by Ezra Pinkerton.

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