Adult sex education: what they didn’t teach you at school and you can’t learn from porn

What they don’t teach you at school

What they don’t teach you at school about sex is pretty well everything you really want to know. All across the world, in sex education taught in schools there are major and minor gaps and, basically: wrong information. If you doubt me, try putting “bad information in sex education” into your search engine. Sex education is absent in many countries, including so called ‘first world” places like the USA. Sexplanations offers an excellent series of short, rigorous sex-ed clips, including a great 7 minute video on ‘what is not sex ed’ — a well-presented eye-opener that’s great fun as well!. Nearly all sex education disregards pleasure as a legitimate subject for children to discuss or to be taught about.

What you can’t learn from porn

As for “not learning much from porn”: there is considerable evidence that younger folks are getting their sex ed from porn. While this dilemma can be presented in an amusing manner, as Kitty Flannagan manages to do here, there is serious research going on into these effects. As Maree Crabbe points out 'Pornography is now the most prominent sexuality educator for many young people'  (https://itstimewetalked.com/)

The problem is that the quality of education — sex ed by porn — is technically, complete crap and also gives students a highly inaccurate idea of what sex is and what normal people look like and do.

So, what is adult sex education?

Adult sex education is just that: education for adults about sex. But, hang one, why would any adult want to learn about sex? Don’t they already know? Well, many adults want to learn about sex when they discover that what they do know doesn’t allow them to have satisfying and pleasurable sex, particularly in relationships that endure past the early, often heated first encounters.

Adults want to learn about sex when they get frustrated. Adults want to learn about sex because they find themselves getting frustrated and they can’t control ejaculation or even ejaculate at all. And they want to learn when they get a bit bored or less enthusiastic with sex. Sometimes they worry that their sex life may not be what it should be: is it normal or not… and what the hell is “normal” anyway? Sometimes they wonder if they could be doing something a bit differently that would add pizazz, panache, or vitality to their lives. Adults are querying if they should be getting more from sex than they are at present. It’s not really “good” or even “bad” — just a bit too ‘Meh!’

Adults want to learn about sex when they fight about it with their significant ‘other’. Or they wonder why one partner wants more and the other wants less; or one wants something the other definitely does not want. Sometimes adults want to learn more because they are being asked to give up their desire for pleasure and sex and are not sure if that is reasonable. Often, adults become curious when they are just about to give up on pleasure altogether. Sometimes adults begin their enquiries because one or both partners experience some type of pain during intercourse or sex more generally. When people are completely unable to discuss sex together in a calm sensible friendly manner they may reach for help.

I write ‘may reach for help’ because most people in relationships do not talk about sex at all, as I wrote about here. Mostly adults become interested in sex education when they discover that everything they learned in sex education at school, everything they learned from porn, most of what is present in movies and on TV and romantic novels and erotic novels, what their doctors tell them, and what their friends tell them, is total nonsense.

It’s not a magical thing

Adult sex education is not a mystical magical journey. It starts at the anatomy and physiology level and includes practicalities like: what hurts, what doesn’t, what feels good, what might feel good. There are the serious subjects of arousal, relaxation, and pleasure with time frames for each: how long does arousal take? how long should arousal take? how long does it typically take for different body types to lubricate? do you want to use bottled lubricant? Contraception, medications, and recreational drugs and their affect on your sex life. What about touch for you and for others — receiving touch as well as giving touch: what do toys do for people’s bodies. There is a lot to learn at this level and very little of it is taught at schools in sex ed and none if this is taught in porn.

It’s all about relationships

Adult sex education includes learning about relational and social elements such as: communication and talking about consent, which means learning to ask for what you want and asking others for what they want and learning to listen to their answers. It includes pleasure and seeking pleasure, creating a space to explore what you might want to try out, checking out partner expectations around sex, discussing porn, visual and written erotica, and everything else to do with communication. It takes a lot of talking and talking and talking and talking!

You get to know yourself in a way that you have never known before

Adult sex education has a very personal component that includes getting to know your own sexual pleasures and desires. This is personal despite having spent your whole life with yourself there is still some you may not know. In other words you may not realise what you don’t know about your capacity for pleasure and erotic play. Essential to this learning process is talking about your desires and pleasures, how to give them to yourself, how to ask from others, and how to listen to the answers.

Learning to learn is the rocket fuel for this adult sex education

There are many ways to find out what you do and don’t know about your own sexual pleasures and desires, but this requires an intention to learn. An intention to learn means you may face the challenges from what gets in the way of you or your partner: embarrassment, shame, worry, fear of rejection, trauma, a strange early family life or religious life around sex. You will need to be gentle with yourself and your partner and learn to be a better learner.

As a student of adult sex education, you will develop ways to pay attention to what is happening to you and to your partner. You will learn about paying attention, and being flexibility about where attention is placed. You may learn to stop blaming yourself or others and know that nearly everyone has big gaps in their sex education. We can all develop a creative response to vulnerability, shame, shyness, embarrassment, ignorance, blushing, nervousness, getting it wrong, and making mistakes. You will need to take self pleasure seriously and be your own experimenter as well as inviting other to experiment with you.

Adult sex education provides adult students with a set of principles that they can apply with flexible sensitivity in each situation in order to maximise the potential for mutual pleasure and engagement for everyone concerned. Self-knowledge, awareness of what gives you or another person pleasure, how to use straightforward communication in intimate sexual situations, and how to a gain a profound knowledge are all key elements of adult sex education. All that is required is a keen desire to learn.

All that is required is a keen desire to learn.