Sex

There are very few things in my life that give me more pleasure than teaching kids about sex. They're friggen hilarious. They think they know so much, yet half the time they've been fed a ton of bullshit and it's my job to sort out the good information from the bad. I thought being in a Catholic organization would make it impossible to do my workshops the way I wanted to do them, but thankfully the woman in charge of psychology here (and therefore in charge of overseeing sexual education) is a totally awesome progressive social worker, so she was telling us to include information about homosexuality, contraceptives and masturbation before I could even ask about it.

My friend Vero and I teamed up for these charlas as well. We figured it would be good to have a girl and guy to answer questions after each class, that way they could get different points of view and hear something from an "expert" on each body (though the idea of me being an expert on male bodies is kind of hilarious). Vero and I volunteered to teach all the kids above the age of 14 (probably close to 160 kids) and I'm also in charge of sex ed for the special needs kids (though I have yet to figure out how that's going to work, so all advice from my Willowglen and social worker friends is very welcome).

We meet each group once a month in their sections (that way they're already separated by age and gender) and present a topic related to sex. After the presentations we have open question time where the kids can throw out any wild thing they want to talk about. This week Vero and I decided to allow the kids to write down their questions so we could read them anonymously, so the kids are being a lot more open which is cool (before it seemed like only the more outspoken kids were asking questions while the shy ones were being left in the dark). I thought I would share some with y'all...

-Is it safe to masturbate?

-Does masturbating give you cancer?

-Can girls masturbate?

-HOW do girls masturbate?

-How many times a day can a guy masturbate before he gets cancer? (Do you see a theme here?)

-Why are some people sterile?

-How does someone know if they're sterile? (I was surprised by how many times this question came up. I guess it's because having babies is such a huge part of the culture here? Not really sure. Interesting though.)

-If I pull out can my girlfriend get pregnant? (the classic question)

-Can she get pregnant during her period?

-If she keeps her underwear on during sex will it block the sperm?

-Isn't it true that if my girlfriend gives me head and then we have vaginal sex afterwards, her saliva will kill all the sperm that come out and she can't get pregnant? (AGHHHHHHH!!!!)

They were in an absolute tizzy when I told them that masturbation was healthy and would help them learn about their bodies. Naturally I made sure to talk about the importance of privacy and respecting others. I was told that in one of the sections the boys "race" each other to see who can "finish" first. I've been warning the other sections against that and today I accidentally told them not to "share" (compartir) during masturbation instead of not to "compete" (competir). Of course they thought that was the most hilarious thing in the world, but then again so did I, hahaha. Overall I'm loving these classes and I love the fact that over the next few months, the kids will continue to become comfortable with me and therefore continue to ask everything that's on their minds.