Vagina! Penis! Sex! Oh my! Laughter, awkward anatomy lessons, and bananas wrapped in condoms are frequently the focal points of the dominant discourse on sexual health education in the United States. However, at Health Connected, we recognize the significance of approaching sexual education as a living, breathing, constantly evolving creature that calls for regular updates. The two student interns I worked with this summer—a high school senior and a fourth-year university student—inspired me to consider the state of sexual education in California right now. Uncensored sex movies

I worked at Health Connected for four academic years as a health educator, teaching puberty and sexual health classes to students in fifth through twelfth grades in dozens of California schools. Our team engages in intense curriculum development sessions during the "off-season," when the majority of schools are closed for the summer, in an effort to keep up with the times. This year, we were fortunate to have Halle and Natalie, our brilliant and capable interns, to keep us motivated during those long summer work days. As a result, I came to the realization that the three of us together represent a kind of time-lapse.

We are three young adults who all grew up on the Peninsula, a region south of San Francisco, and went to high school in the same district. Our age difference of almost ten years corresponds to a period of rapid development and change in the Bay Area and the field of sexual education. The most comprehensive sexuality education standards in the country must be met by CA schools, according to the California Healthy Youth Act (California Education Code Sections 51930-51939, effective January 2016). The advocacy of parents, educators, and communities who want their children to be informed and self-assured is reflected in this legislative change. In working with Halle and Natalie, I identified a few key themes that pervaded our sex education experiences:

1. Gender discrimination promotes secrecy. Let me take you back to 2002, to my puberty class for fifth graders. I recall the teacher asking all the boys to get up and go to the door next to them. The girls then watched a video about a soccer player who experiences menstruation, cries while holding a box of tampons, and speaks with her aunt. My teacher simply asked, "Any questions?" after the movie. I want to say, "YES!! How do I start? " I was curious as to why this occurs, what the boys were watching, whether boys also experience this fictitious period, and many other things.

No one else was raising their hand in the tense and impersonal setting, so I wasn't sure how to ask. My head was spinning with questions after this cannonball strategy. Fifth-grader Natalie, who was in these gender-segregated classes in 2008, perfectly captures the atmosphere. "I didn't understand the division and thought that the details provided to each group were kept secret from the other sex." Moments like these added up to teach me that sex was taboo and strengthened the binary narrative. " Despite the fact that her classes encouraged open, ongoing conversation with adults, even Halle, the youngest of the three of us, experienced gender-segregated puberty education. She remembers the weekly "circles" that her teachers led, where students discussed a range of health-related subjects and teachers responded to their anonymous questions.

She claims, "I can now see the significance of these "circles" in retrospect. I started to feel more at ease discussing my health with my friends. " This model echoes a core idea from Health Connected's Puberty Talk; we believe that students will develop empathy if they communicate consistently with adults and with one another.

2. Everyone is harmed by gender expectations In that gender-based class I took at puberty in 2002, there was no room for students who did not fit the girl-boy binary. I had a transgender classmate, though I was unaware of this at the time. They didn't "come out" to their classmates until high school, but I wonder how the period video made them feel, hearing about changes to their bodies while internally questioning who they were. Natalie, who witnessed her friends struggle as a result of gender norms, describes her own experience as follows: "It can be very oppressive to believe that sex and gender can only exist in one of two forms, either masculine or feminine." People who don't fit the masculine and feminine stereotypes are marginalized by this system. My friends and I could have been exposed to a variety of gender narratives through comprehensive sex education, preventing us from feeling "wrong" or unworthy when we didn't live up to those expectations."

As health educators, we see firsthand in our anonymous question box how concerned students are about gender norms. Is it acceptable to have a penis that is smaller than average? What if everyone believes you prefer boys even though you prefer girls? In addition to harming underrepresented groups like non-binary and queer students, gender expectations also set unattainable standards for everyone.

3. Sex Ed Is So Much More Than Just Sexual Education Halle's sex education session was by far the most in-depth of all of our experiences. She benefited from a 20-year collaboration between Health Connected and her school district, which guided our ongoing revision of sexual health education in her school in response to input from teachers, parents, and students. The following is what Halle had to say about her first-year experience with the Teen Talk High School course in 2016, shortly after the California Healthy Youth Act became law: "I learned how empowering sexual education can be thanks to Teen Talk.

It's important to understand your body, respect others, and foster healthy relationships in addition to knowing which birth control to use and how to avoid STIs." When I was a freshman in college in 2006, I distinctly remember wanting to talk about these subjects but feeling limited to asking friends indiscreet questions or looking up words in dictionaries. Yes, when the early 2000s began, some of us had very limited access to the internet.

The mission of Health Connected is to provide young people with the knowledge, abilities, and support they need to make informed decisions about their relationships and sexual health throughout their lives. The concept of sexual health goes far beyond simple physical changes and interactions with others. Halle, Natalie, and I are proud to be change-makers who support more inclusive, more pertinent sex education for the subsequent generation of young people as members of Generation Z.

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