College is a world full of new experiences and freedom. The safety net is gone, and most people are eager to jump. For many, one of biggest leaps of entering college is sex. True, it happens a lot in high school, but dorm rooms provide a whole lot of new possibilities that your parents’ couch didn’t before. However, college has illustrated sex as such a taboo, that it seems like everyone is either doing it or talking about it. But why does this happen? Well, for one, many college aged students (girls especially) do not receive adequate education about sex growing up. Let’s be honest ladies, how much do you really know about your own bodies? Young people are taught the mechanics, nowadays, but never the actualities of it all and the precautions that must be taken. I believe it is extremely important for our generation to be the first to properly educate those to follow about sex, and to eliminate this cultural taboo.
“Don’t have sex because you will get pregnant and die.” I think it’s safe to say that is a saying we all heard a lot growing up. We can thank Mean Girls for that lovely piece of advice. Now, that one scene from Tina Fey’s 2000’s film is an extreme example of how adolescents are taught about sex today. However, it does not seem to be all that far from the truth. When many kids ask adults about sex, the answer is almost always, “don’t.” This is what places the seed of taboo in our minds in the first place. People want what they can’t have, and when those they trust aren’t going to give the answers, people who are maybe less concerned for their personal safety will. And if not, Google will provide them with enormous amounts of information (or misinformation) and advice that isn’t always helpful.
With that said, here is what I propose. As future parents, we should inform our kids about pregnancy and STD’s, but let them make the choices for themselves. We should provide them with the materials they need to be safe and healthy. We should be teaching our youth that sex is not about a right or a wrong – sex is a personal choice that should be made at the discretion of each individual human being. We should prepare adolescents with as much information as possible to inform their decisions, but a simple, “don’t” should never be our answer. We should also make ourselves available to be the person they turn to when they have questions. But most importantly, we should make sure they know that sex is not something that other people can decide for you. The second someone else makes up your mind, you will want to fight their decision until it is your own. Once we can do this, we can strive to be the educators that the next generation needs. Who knows, maybe then sex will become more of an individual choice and less of a taboo.