Why Are People Frightened That Kids Will Learn About Sex?

CW: very brief mention of SA

Here’s what mystifies me about all the right-wing panic about sex education: I have never really understood why nude bodies cause some people such horror. I mean, we’ve all got bodies. Everyone, no matter how young, has seen at least their own genitals before, so it’s not like the existence of genitals is a surprise to them. Why do we have this weird taboo about certain parts of the body?

Prudish attitudes toward sex and nudity have always seemed one of the strangest aspects of our culture. I genuinely don’t get it. Why would a parent be horrified at little cartoons showing what testicles are? Why should a child not understand what a testicle is? Ismail says he was startled and shocked by the book’s casual nudity. But what I wish he’d reflected on more deeply is: why? Why do you recoil when you see the normal processes of human development and reproduction depicted in a matter-of-fact way? What is there to fear about this?

Obviously part of it is that there is a kind of mental alarm bell that goes off anytime “sex” and “children” are in the same sentence, because everyone is rightly horrified by child sexual abuse and pedophilia. But protecting children from sexual abuse (which It’s Perfectly Normal has a whole section on) is not the same as protecting them from a knowledge of what sex is. Why is it so hard to keep this distinction clear? Why care whether kids find out about sex when they’re young? Like I say, I read about it when I was four. I didn’t understand it, in fact I forgot most of what I’d read except the little pictures. But it did absolutely nothing to hurt me, and I don’t see how cutting out the reproduction pages of How Your Body Works would have made my development any more healthy.

The central, and I guess radical, premise of It’s Perfectly Normal is exactly what the title says: sex is normal. Many parents are disturbed that the book tells young people that masturbation is natural and okay. This is an idea so shocking in the U.S. that Bill Clinton fired his surgeon general when she endorsed it. But come on! Everyone knows it’s true. Aside from the “NoFap” movement, most people masturbate. Why pretend this isn’t true? Why try to stigmatize it and make young people feel ashamed over something everyone else is secretly doing?

I say thank God for sex-positive education. Repressive taboos do not help young people. Consider the taboo on discussing menstruation. I recently interviewed Congresswoman Grace Meng about her “Menstrual Equity For All” act, and she noted that even though access to period products is crucial and the lack of access causes significant harm, there’s still a frustrating widespread idea that discussing menstruation is embarrassing:

Periods in general have very much been a taboo topic in our society. You can ask any person who gets their period: we all share the experience of hiding the product in our sleeves, of making sure no one around us knows that we are at that time of the month, even though it’s a natural part of our bodily functions. We just really haven’t talked about this enough. I’m pretty sure that some of my colleagues have signed on to my bill because they wanted me to stop talking about periods on the floor of the House.