Last week, two Ole Miss students traveled to the state capital to advocate for the implementation of a more effective sex education to be taught in middle and high school.
This program, called “personal responsibility education,” operates to reduce teen pregnancies and to curb sexually transmitted diseases. If the Mississippi legislature passes this bill, this is great news for Mississippi. Why? Because sex is rad and anything we can do to make sex safer for more people is awesome.
If you are having sex before college without a pregnancy or a sexually transmitted disease, I’d say that you’re probably having the best sex your lack of experience can muster. This education is essentially about good sex and removing the stigma in front of it.
But when you’re in college and the greater part of the population is on birth control and condoms can be easily accessed, meeting these two standards no longer equates to good sex. I won’t profess to know what the standard is, but generally I’m inclined to say that it is playful, partner-responsive, and we’re both getting off, frequently.
So where are we learning this? Even in a hyper-sexual environment fraught with dark grey corners that push students to the brink of their own concept of personhood, this is not taught.
How do you teach “good sex” to college kids? You teach sexuality itself. You spend weeks on the social history behind the female orgasm, you learn that what you considered to be the complete array of sexual preferences represents just one sliver in a much larger pie—you even discuss consent, but teaching consent in a vacuum, without the context of good sex, is like teaching abstinence only. We need a personal responsibility program. Teach good sex and consent will follow.
Spencer Durden is a juris doctor law candidate from Jacksonville, Florida
