Key Vocabulary and definitions

What is sexuality?

Sex-ed and its importance

If sexuality is not just “having cisheterosexual intercourse”, sex-ed is not just learning how to make safe sex, preventing STIs and unwanted pregnancies. Well, this is an “old-school” vision of the matter: the most current one is named Comprehensive Sexuality Education (CSE in its acronym), and wants to take into account all the complex dimensions of sexuality, thus talking also about emotions and relationships, gender issues, consent and boundaries, and intersectional aspects such as cultural background or disability – just as this Guide.

We believe that CSE is important because the more knowledge you have about how to live a positive, confident, safe and pleasant sexuality, the more chances we have of achieving such a result!

Taboos on sexuality and their consequences – Myths vs reality

Despite the recognized importance and positive impact of sex-ed, sexuality is surrounded by taboos, myths and misconceptions which have been used throughout history as a control tool or way to oppress some bodies and subjectivities who do not fit certain “standards”! 

The table below illustrates you some of the common ones:

To get informed – what a difficult task!

If nobody wants to talk about it, where do we take information?

Before writing this Guide, we met several groups of young people, as well as their parents, family members or educators across Europe, and we asked questions about this topic. Many people from older generations have not received any education at all, while younger generations are starting to receive it, also thanks to technologies.

What is very common from the testimonies we collected is that the whole discourse on sexuality is often left to “random” experiences: can be discussing with peers (73% of adolescents), on the internet (69%), within families, at school or in educational contexts, seeing specialists…

Often the first people we turn to when we have a problem or a doubt are friends, especially in adolescence. We feel that they are the ones who will understand us best because they won’t judge us. That’s why it’s easy to talk to them about sex. Whoever first kisses or starts with a partner becomes the “expert” and we think they are the right person to explain our doubts. But that person, like us, has a lot to learn about sexuality. Therefore, it can be good and even fun to share our concerns or ideas about sex with our friends, but not to take to heart what they tell us. Sometimes the sources of information are not the right ones and the point is that if this information is not very structured, planned or backed by scientific knowledge, you can go through bad experiences!

“Before my first time, I would have liked to know…”

Of course, you can or not have a “first time”, whatever it may mean. But what emerges from our researches with other young people is that many of your friends arrive there with a lot of negative thoughts and feelings, and that they would have liked to know many things before that moment: for instance, they would have liked to know that a sexual relationship should be based on mutual trust, equality, honesty, good communication, active listening to understand the needs of the other(s) and caring, and more importantly, on consent. 

Another aspect which came out often with girls and their first times is about desire, a topic invested by many traditional conceptions about sexuality: for instance the heterosexual ones placing cisgender hetero man as a desiring subject, while cisgender heterosexual women relegated to the level of objects of desire – according to this notion, a sexual intercourse should end after the man’s ejaculation, completely forgetting about their own pleasure. This is not only outdated and based in discriminatory and violent presuppositions, but have its roots in a normative and reproductive approach to sexuality, fueled by context in which social factors (like politics or religious backgrounds) place penetration P-in-V (penis into vagina) as the only valid practice, reducing the wide range of sexual practices to the coitus.  

If you want to learn more on first times & how such conceptions may lead to gender stereotypes and power imbalances, read Module 4 on Sexual Health.

Also, it emerged that managing sexual and reproductive health can be difficult at a young age:  that girls, trans boys, nonbinary people and other people who menstruate don’t receive adequate information prior to their menarche, which is their first period or first bleeding; while they may be suddenly exposed by society to the fact of being “grown-ups”, or even worse, fertile.

In this introduction, going through some theory and mixing it with some concrete experiences has given us the opportunity to show you, through the words of your peers, how important it is to embrace sexuality and affectivity education and not leaving such an important matter aside, that we see as the main solution to live sexual life in a positive, fun and healthy way. Did we convince you enough?

So go ahead and follow us through the next 6 thematic modules!