Comic: Sex Education utterly failed you and that’s not our fault

Editor’s Note: This month at BYP, we will be exploring Education & Schooling, and we are interested in publishing works that address these topics. What are the implications of charter and private schools in communities of color? How do we counteract anti-Black textbooks and teachers in our childrens’ education? How did you heal from bullying or other school-based trauma? What tactics are most effective in deconstructing the school to prison pipeline? What role do alternative schooling methods play in Black liberation?

by JeCorey Holder

A lot of cishet people haven’t upgraded their knowledge on human biology since middle, and it shows, especially when but they come loudly, proudly, and wrong into queer discussions about sex and gender. Let’s be real, though. A lot of that information was scarce to begin with.

With how often we need to restate the obvious and remind cis men that “cervix” isn’t a brand of pain medication, it feels like most cisheterosexual people outright refuse to update themselves. I find it all funny, considering how heavily they lean on “Scientific Facts” while refusing to acknowledge how they continue to change around them and reshape our vocabulary. The simplistic shit they told us in grade school simply doesn’t apply anymore.

RELATED: We can’t talk about sexual health if we never talk openly about sex

As of 2019, 24 states require Sex Education to be taught, and only 10 of those states require it to be medically accurate. If Facebook comments have shown me anything, it’s that a lot of the information being taught to these students is woefully incomplete and focuses only on the cisheterosexual side of the spectrum. 

The subject of LGBTQ people is often glossed over briefly and shamefully, if not ignored entirely. To this day, we have people fighting against the very idea of teaching pre-college students about LGBTQ existence in history let alone about our safety and sexuality.

Can we fully blame so many cisheterosexual people for their utterly tragic lack of knowledge and nuance on the subject considering they were, and I use the term loosely, “taught” such inaccurate ideas on sexuality and gender by dispassionate teachers who didn’t want to teach such lessons in the first place, or were themselves woefully ill-equipped?

Yes. Yes the fuck we can. With as much accessible information that is available, both concise and extensive, it is on them to use the energy they spend on aggressively maintaining their proud ignorance to seek it out, and to simply listen when queer folks talk.

RELATED: Comic: The education system stifles LGBTQ+ students and kids of color from the start

Gamer, geek, and social activist. JeCorey Holder has been weaving tapestries of shade and fury since the early 2000’s. Pro-LGBTQ, pro-black, and pro intersectional feminism, he is full of feelings and opinions that try to call out and tear down the oppressive status quo