I’m Disappointed in Both Myself and the American Education System (Rant on sex education)

I’m not sure if this really belongs here, but it’s the best subreddit I could think of to share my frustrations.

I’m going to start this off by saying that my sex education was more lacking than the other people I went to high school with. We were supposed to learn the entire curriculum, but an autistic kids parent (who worked for the school) refused to sign the consent forms. So my class specifically was taught the bare minimum. “Don’t get pregnant, but if you do, it’s okay because women’s rights and whatnot.”

I graduated years ago, I’m 20 years old and only today did I learn how my period works. While I fell down that rabbit hole, I also learned what ovulation meant and the stages of pregnancy. I learned at 19 that pre-cum was a thing from my boyfriend who had to explain to me how his body works too. I learned sexual safety from him as well. And this is going to sound ridiculous, but it took me a SHOCKINGLY long time to figure out that pee was not actually stored in the balls for men, and that was just a meme. I have no idea what stds look like, or how to tell if you’ve been exposed. I don’t know how to apply a condom, and it took me a while to figure out that they also expire. I had to learn from the back of the tampon box how you’re supposed to use them. And I still find myself learning what others already learned a while ago for the first time today.

In short, I’m very frustrated having to find all of these things out on my own over years of time, trial, and error. I feel like the education system in America really failed me. So many things could have /did go wrong because I wasn’t taught the things that I needed to know. And now with this woman’s rights situation going on, it makes me really scared. Not only for myself, but the young girls who might be in the same situation as me. If not for my boyfriend, I could have easily gotten pregnant or abused.

TL,DR: I had almost zero sex ed and continue to pay the price for it because of how Americas Education system works.

Submitted August 14, 2022 at 05:06AM by SocialAnxietyHere https://ift.tt/JqlbTLr