How the history of sex ed in the U.S. got us here
And why politicians don't know how babies are made
Hey horny readers! The news in the United States in the past few weeks is too much to ignore, so this newsletter is a topical one. How did we get to this place? Let’s look to history to figure it all out.
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Adult Sex Ed comedically challenges why we think what we think about sex. In case you’re new, I’m Dani Faith Leonard, a comedy writer, film producer, and performer. In 2018, I started a comedy show called Adult Sex Ed and launched this newsletter last year. Each week, I take a fun deep dive into a topic that I’ve been researching. Want to know more? Read the whole description on substack here.
Ready to get a little smarter? Okay, let’s go!
On February 16th, the Alabama Supreme Court declared that embryos created through in vitro fertilization (IVF) should be considered children. In the ruling, frozen embryos are referred to as “extra-uterine children,” which is scientifically very much not a real thing.
The one dissenting judge, Justice Greg Cook, was blunt about what would happen next: “The creation of frozen embryos will end in Alabama.” The ruling has already wreaked havoc on Alabama’s IVF industry and several clinics have paused their IVF services in the state, for fear of possible prosecution (sometimes even in the middle of a cycle). It’s common for frozen embryos not to make it through the procedure, and it’s also common for people to discard the remaining embryos, especially if they have genetic defects. Now, the future seems really freaking unsure in Alabama.
In case you need a refresher (no shame), IVF involves combining sperm and eggs in a lab to create embryos, then implanting one or more of those embryos in a person’s uterus. I haven’t done IVF, but I have eggs that are more frozen than Walt Disney, so of course this matters to me personally.
Instead of using science or medicine to back up the decision, the court used the bible. In fact, it didn’t seem like many politicians who were asked to comment on the bill understood the science either. Alabama Senator Tommy Tuberville didn’t even seem to know was IVF is.
How can it be that even our leaders, who have received top tier educations (whatever that means) can completely ignore science when reproduction is the topic at hand? Why can’t grown men and some women answer basic questions about fertilization and other human functions? We can look at the current state of sex ed for clues. Only 18 states require sex ed content to be medically accurate.
What does medically inaccurate sex ed look like? It’s different in every state, so let’s just look at Alabama as an example. In Alabama, sex ed can promote religion and is required to stress abstinence. Instructors also stress the importance of sex ONLY within marriage. They don’t teach about contraception AND they don’t discuss teen pregnancy too much. So, it’s no surprise that in the state that has effectively made it much harder for adults who are choosing to have children, they have the 5th highest rate of teen pregnancy in the country (Alabama has a rate of 30.1 births per 1,000 young women ages 15-19, compared to the national rate of 22.3).
You might be asking, how the *actual fuck* did we get to this point? We can look at the history of sex ed in America for clues. Not long ago, educators thought that students could learn everything they need to know about sex from watching animals mate. I’m here to tell you that watching Planet Earth will not prevent teen pregnancies. But wearing a floral vest will.
Yeah, that’s me. Long before I ever made penile contact.
Here are some key moments in sex ed history: America was founded by puritans and much like repressed puritans who have been running our country today, the early Pilgrims weren’t very educated when it came to sex. The first iteration of sex ed came in the 1830s, when religious leaders, like Reverend Sylvester Graham, traveled the East Coast on anti-masturbation tours. Does that sound fun? Imagine No Nut November, coming to a theater near you. Random fact: this dude also invented the graham cracker, buying into the concept that bland food will prevent people from cracking one off. It was a popular theory at the time, also held by creepy eugenics fan John Harvey Kellogg, who shot gallons of yogurt into his asshole every day (if you missed this post, please go back and read it), so it would be ridiculous to trust him about breakfast.
Sex education continued on its puritanical path until 1913 when Chicago’s superintendent of schools, Ella Flagg Young, tried to implement sex ed but was met with outrage. She was the first-ever woman to be in that leadership role and was a little too ahead of her time. Just a few years later in 1918 - Congress allocated money for sex ed in the military after over 300,000 men contracted STIs during WWI.
The military amped up sex ed programs even more during WWII and this inspired similar instruction in secondary schools. Most sex ed was taught through videos - in fact, over 100,000 sex ed films have been produced in the United States alone. Human Growth was shown in classrooms in 1947 and was the first film to get national press coverage. Disney even made a few sex ed films in the 1940s, which contain some silly advice, but might still be more accurate than anything you’d see in Alabama today (check out Disney’s sex ed here).
In the early 1900s through the 1940s, sex ed focused mostly on scientific facts, like how an egg gets fertilized and how the reproductive system works. Later on, sex ed curriculums focused on the family and making “informed decisions.” Some of the sex ed films in the 60s and 70s would be considered to be absolutely pornographic today. Like Masturbatory Story: a batshit crazy video that features a man happily masturbating in a bathtub wearing a fireman’s hat.
Personally, I watched Philadelphia in class to learn that if you have sex, you’ll get AIDS, and if you get skinny in Hollywood, you’ll win prizes. It sounds awful, but it’s not that surprising because sex ed in its modern iteration started in the 1980s. In the 80s and 90s, the AIDS crisis led schools to teach HIV protection, and the federal government funded abstinence-focused education. This return to our puritanical roots leads us to where we are today.
The thing is, the average age of the Alabama Supreme Court justices is right around 61, so they should have learned better sex ed than me. That is, of course, if they are interested in science at all.
Alabama isn’t the problem. A few years ago, Idaho representative Vito Barbieri asked if a woman can swallow a camera for remote gynecological exam before a medical abortion. The answer is, of course fucking not, babies don’t come out of assholes. A requirement for holding office and making decisions about reproductive rights should at least be knowing how the pipes connect.
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You can access all past newsletters here!