Abstinence education is an absolute waste when you’re Asexual.
In middle school, I really didn’t give a crap about the Sex Ed teachers/videos. No one did–We were middle schoolers learning about sex, after all. But also, even back then, we could tell when we were being lied to–
“Taking the pill is the exact same as aborting a week old baby”
(I was just told that one last week.)
So when I watched the videos saying that they knew we all were starting to feel “urges” towards other genders (I still didn’t know that Gay was even a thing), I thought that was another lie too.
They tried so hard to shove abstinence down our throats. It seemed pretty pointless to me. Who would ever want to have sex, outside of making a necessary sacrifice to have a baby? So imagine my surprise when, finally, I realized why they were trying so hard to convince us to stay “pure”–
People actually struggled with abstinence.
It didn’t make sense to me, but it was the only answer that seemed to fit the evidence. Even considering that idea made me squirm, though, so I figured that it was just another “Adult thing” I had yet to understand.
Everything was fine, until it was time to get my HPV vaccine. I HATED shots, would do anything to get out of them. So the idea that I had to get a needle stuck in my arm to prevent diseases from an action that I never wanted to do… that didn’t sit well with me. And I told my parents so.
I remember fighting, and finally yelling that I never wanted to have sex anyway. What did it matter?
My mom thought that was funny.
“Oh, one day you’ll be messing around with somebody. I know better than you do.”
So now I had my school telling me that Sex was practically deadly, and my parents telling me that I would have it anyway. You’d think at this point I would just figure out the truth via Internet, but that’s not quite what happened.
I was confused. I constantly tried to imagine myself in a sexual situation, if only to understand what the big deal was, but I lacked two very important tools to get it right:
1- Sexual attraction
2- Knowledge of consent
I didn’t know what rape was at the time, but when I imagined sex, that’s what it was. What I pictured was brutal, it was painful, and it was never my choice. I’d never been told it could be.
I was scared.
Because my school was so busy trying to teach me to say “no” to sex, that they never told us that saying “yes” could be just as important. That we actually had a choice in the matter.
I’ve heard a lot of people say that Abstinence-Only Sex Ed is all students need, because we’ll find out the rest online. And, sure, I did finally learn about the word “consent” through Twitter, but not until I was almost fourteen. Before that, I spent over three years confused and crying and scared out of my mind. I can’t help but think that, if someone had just told me once that I had a choice, I could have been spared all those years of fear along the way.