Before there were condoms slid onto bananas, and videos warning of the consequences of sex, there
was abstinence only. But what was sex education like long ago when medieval kings ruled the land?
Sex education has come a long way since the Middle Ages, but not quite as far as you might think.
To be fair, sex education got its start way before the Middle Ages.
Most attribute the Kama Sutra as being the first book to really discuss
sex in any great detail. Therefore, we can look at this book and its teachings
as the first form of sex education. The Kama Sutra was written sometime between 400 BCE and 200 CE,
and would be one of the few books in existence about sex until relatively recently.
As Europe entered medieval times, religion dictated many societal norms. This meant
that the main form of sex education came from the Church. Church court records, and documents
from the Middle Ages, can give us a glimpse into what sex education was like during this time.
At the most basic level, the main recommendation around sex from the church was:
don’t do it. Sex was supposed to occur for a single purpose,
and that purpose was to make babies. However, people during the Middle Ages, like the rest of
history, were promiscuous, and didn’t exactly follow the sex ed teachings of the church.
Interestingly, religious leaders began to roll out a sex education campaign in Paris,
France when they realized how much sex was happening not in the bedroom,
but in stables. This may surprise you, and it definitely surprised the church,
until you think about what was actually going on. Male servants often slept in the stables, so if he
had a female admirer who wanted to get busy back at his place, they would be doing it in a stable.
Since the church was the moral law in medieval Europe,
they were responsible for getting the sex crazed people of the society under control.
One way they did this was through sex education using the word of God. The church of the Middle
Ages continued to push in their sermons and teachings that sex was sinful, unless it was
used by a married couple to procreate. In fact, one of the largest sex ed campaigns put on by
the church was about how men needed to stay away from lustful women. This was reinforced by sermons
reiterating that all sin originated with a woman who got humanity thrown out of the Garden of Eden.
This was not just a Christian or medieval tactic however.
Across history, and across time, women have been blamed for the lusts of man.
They have also been blamed as the main source of STDs and the vector by which they spread.
It was almost always the female’s fault when adulterous behavior occurred during the Middle
Ages and the years that followed. It seemed that no matter how much time passed, or sex
education changed, women were still being blamed for the bad decisions of men when it came to sex.
You can probably guess why having religious organization being in charge of sex education
would cause some issues. And this would continue for a couple hundred years
since sex education would not be taught in schools until much later.
As the 1800s rolled around, slight changes started to be implemented in the way sex
education was disseminated amongst the public. Contraceptives became more widely available.
There were some very basic forms of contraception in the Middle Ages, but nothing that was super
effective. Interestingly, even though advances were made in contraceptives in the 1800s,
governments such as the United States banned them as a form of birth control.
The sex education messages from the government in the 1800s were very similar to that of the
church in the Middle Ages: don’t do it unless you’re trying to have a kid. It wouldn’t be until
the following century in the landmark Supreme Court case Griswold v. Connecticut that married
couples could legally use contraception. The idea in the 1800s was that talking about sex,
showing sex, doing sex, basically anything sex-related caused more harm than good,
so sex education was put on the back burner.
Not only was the government refusing to talk about sex education, but the church was backing
this strategy as well. Like the church of the Middle Ages, the church of the 1800s
spread the message of abstinence being the only sex education people needed. That being said,
the church seemed to be preoccupied with another aspect of pleasure as well.
During this time churches created religious pamphlets and books that served as the main
source of sex education in the United States and other parts of the world.
One of the main points in these teachings was that people should not masturbate. In fact,
the focus of many of the most popular religious sex education texts was on masturbation. Some
ministers taught that masturbation could lead to memory loss, extensive exhaustion, and even death.
Sex education had a long way to go in the 1800s, but at the turn of the century, things began to
pick up speed. It would be during the early 1900s that sex education started to move away
from being taught by religious leaders like in the Middle Ages, and started to be taught in schools.
In 1909, Ella Flagg Young became the first female superintendent ever to oversee a major
school district. Young was in charge of schools in the city of Chicago where she had big plans
for the curriculum, especially when it came to sex education. Although the program Young would want
to role out was disguised as “hygiene” courses, they were really the precursor to sex ed classes.
Young, and many of the higher-ups in the city of Chicago, were worried about the rapid spreading
of STDs and the “harlots” that walked the streets of the city. It is interesting to
note that females are once again blamed for the spread of STDs along with making men do lustful
things. So, in that particular aspect of sex education, things still hadn’t come very far.
When Young proposed her “sex hygiene” curriculum to the public, there was immediate pushback.
She pitched it as a course that would help students stay both pure in mind and body.
Rather than talking about sex in the schools, the board wanted to just ignore the problem.
It didn’t help that when local Catholic leaders received word of what Young was trying to do,
they put enormous pressure on the government to stop this early form of sex education.
Many asked for Young to be removed from her position.
Inevitably, the outcry against sex education won out,
and a few years after becoming superintendent, Young was forced to resign. The world was not yet
ready to have its youth educated about safe sex practices and how the reproductive system works.
Actually, the United States seemed to be taking steps in the wrong direction around this time.
You won’t believe the sex education campaign that was rolled out next.
In 1914, the first-ever movie that can be considered a sex education film was released.
Unfortunately, it was full of misinformation. The movie was called “Damaged Goods,”
which probably gives you an idea of where this is going.
The basic premise of the movie was that a man slept with a lustful woman on the
night before his wedding. This harlot ended up giving the man syphilis,
which was eventually passed on to his wife and the baby she carried. Spoiler alert:
the main character was so ashamed of what he did, he took his own life.
Although the movie was not meant specifically for sex education, it does show the thoughts around
sex during this time. The only concrete messages people received so far since the Middle Ages were:
sex is sinful, women are harlots, and that STDs will be the death of you.
Basically, people in power still viewed the best form of sex education to be abstinence,
and this still wouldn’t change for many years.
In fact, the next source of sex education material would come from war.
As World War II raged in Europe, and the United States decided it was time to get involved, the
government released pamphlets and posters warning soldiers about the dangers of loose women and
prostitutes. The government actually took things a step further and decided that every woman could be
a source of STDs. And since the soldiers weren’t receiving any kind of sex education in school,
this may have been their first introduction to engaging with the opposite sex.
This campaign had a clear objective. The government needed to keep their soldiers healthy,
and if they caught an STD that made them sick, they couldn’t fight the Nazi threat.
This meant men needed to be educated about the consequences of sexual promiscuity.
That was why posters were made as a form of sex education around STDs.
To be fair, the posters weren’t so much educational as just another way to try and
convince people to remain abstinent, but like always, this never worked.
Between the world wars, the government did try to introduce some form of sex education into schools.
In the 1920s, the U.S. Public Health Service created a manual that had suggested topics
about sex that might be discussed in the classroom. But like many times before,
there was pushback. People still didn’t want their children to learn or talk about sex,
therefore, sex education was to be kept out of schools at all costs.
As the 20th century progressed, schools, religious groups,
and anyone else talking about sex education doubled down on abstinence.
The 1960s was a sexual awakening for many, but not for sex education. Mainstream information around
sex gave two options: either you get married, or you don’t have sex. But progress was slowly
starting to be made during this time. Although sex education curriculums tended to remain the same,
more and more organizations argued that the way sex was being talked about needed to change.
Advocates for better sex education argued that teaching about sex shouldn’t just be
about abstinence and shaming people—mostly women—who wanted to engage in the activity.
Instead, the education around the carnal act should be more comprehensive, and safe
sex practices should be discussed. It was also during the ’60s that contraceptives became legal,
so sex was no longer seen as an act of procreation alone.
As you can probably guess, this led to major backlash from many people and organizations.
There were actually protests outside of government buildings and schools
to try and stop the teaching of sex education.
Then, in the 1980s, people were forced to confront the lack of sex education
as the AIDS epidemic swept across the world. Public health organizations all advocated for
safe sex being taught in schools, and to inform students of the dangers of HIV and other STIs.
There was still pushback from many conservatives including George Bush Sr., and later on his son,
who both ran on a platform to fund sex education programs that only taught abstinence.
But the right changes to sex education finally began to occur at the end of the 20th century.
By 2015 sex education took the form that we have today.
Public schools began to include not just topics about sex and STDs in their curriculums,
but also unwanted sexual advances and positive communication.
To be fair, even today, sex education classes are not always great at delivering
the information students need to practice safe sex. Oftentimes in the United States,
health classes are taught by teachers who are forced into doing it,
and are not trained on the subject. These courses rarely meet every day.
Sex education is something that is required, but isn’t always taken seriously by the school.
The reality is that most young people today get their sex education from movies or the
shows they watch. Many places have come a long way from abstinence-only teachings,
but not all. There are still public schools that implement this type of curriculum, and
in religious institutions around the world, this form of sex education can be much more common.
So, even though we know a lot more about sex, pregnancy, and how infectious diseases work,
unless this information is taught to every student and adult,
we still have a long way to go in the world of sex education.
Now watch “What Happens to Your Body While You
Are Having Sex?” Or check out “Why Do We Actually Have Sex?”