So what we’re talking about here is a penis or a...
vagina.
What’s the opposite of a penis?
-clitoris.
Clitoris!
Thank you!
How’d you know that?
Have you taken this class before?
Ok yeah, so we’re talking about a penis or a clitoris.
Being isolated is a very universal experience in the gay community, and for a lot of people
it’s in the sex education classroom.
Sex should be normal for everybody and it’s ok to talk about it.
We’re only being taught that a vagina and a penis is the only way to have sex.
If sex ed were more comprehensive then it would shape a lot of the policies that we have.
We need protection.
Trans women of color are being murdered at an alarming rate.
My mother passed away when I was four, and as a result, I ended up living at a number
of kinship care, youth shelters and foster homes.
I know exactly what it feels like to be a young person and feel misunderstood.
I am Nefertari Sloan.
I am a non-binary person of color who teaches sex ed.
Who can tell me what HIV is?
Anybody know?
The thing with sex is everybody has a relationship with it to some degree and it’s one of those
things that we never really formally discuss in school the way in same way we talk about math.
How are we talking about how to put on a condom?
How are we talking about how to negotiate boundaries with our partners?
These are the things that people actually need more help with as they graduate and come
into their adult lives.
What do you do if you don’t know someone’s gender identity?
There are huge health consequences for not having proper sex education.
Queer people are not getting the proper education on how to protect themselves from HIV and AIDs.
And not just HIV and AIDs - we have a serious problem with gonorrhea right now
in the gay community.
My name is KC Miller.
I am the executive director of Keystone Coalition for Advancing Sex Education.
I’m 18 years old and I’m a freshman at the University of Pennsylvania.
I went to high school in a boarding school in Westchester, Pennsylvania, but I was also
one of the only gay students at school, so in a sense it was also pretty isolating.
The overarching theme of the class was that the end goal of a sexual experience is to
be with a man and a woman.
Announcer: Today is a high point in the romance of Bob and Mary.
For them, the future looks bright.
Tyunique: Too often I feel like the LGBTQ community is looked at as sort of, like, predators
because we’re out of the norm and I don’t think that should be the case.
My name is Tyunique Nelson.
I am 21 years old.
I live in West Philadelphia.
I serve LGBTQ youth, 13-24 . This is where I meet with my youth
and we talk about our wildest dreams.
My experience with sex ed was very difficult.
There was always the “How does gay sex work?”
“If there are two lesbians, who’s the woman and who’s the man?”
questions like that, that were never sort of, like, “How can LGBTQ people be included?”
I can remember being younger and having sexual feelings and thinking that was wrong or disgusting.
I didn’t feel safe enough to come out until I found somebody that I actually wanted to date.
So a short while after we came out, me and my partner were called into our school’s
counselor office and we were threatened with suspension if we continued to hold hands and
show PDA and things like that in the hall.
Now I know that those are opinions that my school or society or those sorts of things
projected on me, and now I know that I’m fine.
Society kind of makes us assign different labels to people with these identities without
knowing that much more about them.
In school, I don’t remember having a formal sex education class.
When I was younger, I was actually, verbally homophobic.
I didn’t realize I was a lesbian until I started dating masculine women.
And I said, “Oh, wait! This is an option?”
I’ve been teaching sex ed for about three years now.
I think being a sex educator, to me, means giving people permission to, like, explore
their desires and figure out what their identities are
in a safe space that isn’t going to judge them.
When I was 16, I realized this huge need for inclusive and comprehensive sex education.
I started Keystone Coalition and I became an advocate.
Right now we’re launching our big petition drive initiative,
so our goal is to have 15,000 signatures in the next year,
sent right to the Pennsylvania legislature saying that
we believe that sex education needs to be comprehensive,
medically accurate and inclusive and that
all of us are ready to vote on that.
I think we need our own piece of legislation and I think we need to make it very clear.
Because what’s happening is, with that lack of legislation and with that ambiguity,
we have school boards making up their own curriculums,
hiring outside people who aren’t actually health professionals.
Who don’t know medically accurate and factually non-biased sex education programs.
I see more and more young people taking charge of their own education and their own pleasure
and their own sexual rights, so yes, I am very hopeful.