Let's talk about (safe) sex, baby!

When the Criminal Homicide and Abortion Amendments bill passed in Utah at the beginning of March, both Shine and Marie reached the end of their rope when it came to women's rights and issues consistently being pushed backwards rather than moving forwards. They decided to have a day in which any blogger could write about women's rights and issues and bring them to the forefront so that we could speak up and make all of our voices heard. Here is my story. Know it. Write it. Say it.

I can't remember where I saw the call to write about women's issues, perhaps it was Marie's blog, which I've only recently started reading. Anyways, I decided that this was something that I wanted to participate in. Since I saw the post, last week or whenever it was, I've been wracking my brain, trying to think of something that I feel strongly about, in regards to women's rights.
I mean, obviously, all of them are important, but some of them just hit closer to home, you know?

And then I realized that the right to reproductive and sexual education was something that I felt I could talk about.

My parents (my mom, mostly) made sure that when we were young, we knew exactly where babies come from, and how they are made. She answered our questions honestly, and when we started hitting puberty, she started buying condoms and giving them to my brothers and I. Through her and the sex ed we were receiving from public school, my brothers and I all knew what a condom was, the basic idea of how to use one (we've all been in that giggly, embarrassed place where we're fumbling to actually use one), and why it was imperative that we always use them.
We not only knew where babies came from, but we also knew that there were such things as sexually transmitted diseases.
We were also taught that it is more than just penile penetration of a vagina that constitues sex, meaning we realized that any sort of foreplay that we might be engaging in with partners, still counted as sex. Which meant we still needed to protect ourselves because there was still the potential of diseases being passed to us.

I believe it is only right, as girls become women, that they are equipped with enough facts that they are able to make informed decisions. As more people are diagnosed with STDs, it seems like more and more young people are saying that they don't have sex. These young women must be allowed to learn that oral sex, anal sex, using hands, things like this, these are acts of sex too. And this means that they are opening themselves up to the possibilities of diseases. They need to know that it's easy to cross a certain line when you are in intimate situations, and that you need to always be prepared. However, with the push in recent years for abstinence-only sex ed, especially in schools, young women and young men are not learning how to protect themselves. They are not learning what other options are open to them to be intimate with each other, while still getting that physical release that they might need. Telling kids not to do something, is a pretty awesome way to convince them to go right ahead and do it, as many parents can attest to.

At 15, when I first had sex, I had the presence of mind to stop my boyfriend from even getting near my vagina without a condom on him. And the only reason I knew this, was because my parents knew how important it was that I receive a factual, honest, education in safe sex.