Sexual Relationships 
Sexual Health 
After slogging through so many semesters of your standard required college course work, I decided to shake things up and take Understanding Human Sexuality. The only requirements for the course were that you had to have previously taken four semesters of Psych classes, which I had. Let me tell you, the second the class opened up online, it must have been a cattle call, because no sooner did I check the box for the class, than was it filled.
I walked in the first day of class, and the room was as the sign up suggested, filled to the rafters. It was a loud chorus of student voices mixed with excitement, and nervousness, and not knowing what to expect. I think just about everyone there had taken their state mandated health course in high school given by that gym teacher who made everything way awkward, but here we were all of us adults now in an auditorium style classroom, ready to really learn about sex without all the pretense of what could and couldn't be taught to young and impressionable youth.
I fully expected this Doc Brown looking teacher to walk in with a clinical air about him, but to my surprise and many others, in walked this young woman. If I had to guess her age, I would have said no older than 25 or 26. The best way I can describe her would be to put the vision of Britney Spears in the "Hit Me Baby One More Time" video into your mind, except sans the blonde hair and pink puff balls. She was legitimately wearing stilettos, a really short pleated plaid skirt, grey sweater, and a tight white top. No one could really believe she was walking up to the front with a briefcase, but she was, and she did.
After she explained her impressive credentials, we were given a bullet point list of how this classroom was to be a safe place where we should all be comfortable with discussing what is usually a private topic and how laughing at or ostracizing someone over a question would get you kicked out of the class, a rule surprisingly no one broke. After the initial introductions, we got down to the business of learning about the business. I have to say, the class was absolutely amazing. The teacher had no fear or apprehension about discussing anything about sex. It was like you were having a conversation about the days weather with how unfazed she was about all the questions and discussions we had in there. Nothing, and I mean, nothing was off limits.
The class definitely had its moments. There was the day we had to watch part of a porno. Just imagine for a minute, these like dozens and dozens of students all watching this porn on a big screen in a classroom for credit. I kept looking around like, is this real life?!? Are we allowed to do this?!? It was so crazy. Then there was the week we were learning about sexual deviations like BDSM and there was this film of this guy completely dressed like a horse, with other, uh, horse men being led around like they were actual animals, and a vast majority of the class was just totally weirded out. Or there was the time spent in sexually transmitted disease hell, where we had to see it all. You just can't unsee it, you just can't!
At the end of the semester, our final for the course was to challenge ourselves to do something sexually that we'd never done before and write a paper about it discussing our own experiences and relating it to the material we'd learned over the semester. This was our final! If you read that and so many questions are racing through your head, she did preface it by saying, I'm not telling you to do anything that is dangerous or unhealthy, but the paper should be about exploring a sexual aspect you haven't already like maybe it's exploring masturbation, or some new position with a partner, or talking to a partner about sex for the first time, or getting a first HIV test, etc. The room that day was so silent, you could have heard a pin drop. Everyone had this deer in headlights look on their faces including myself.
For my project, I ended up going to a sex shop. I still feel mortified to this day about it. I thought it would be all seedy and gross, but at least the one I went to was filled with people like our teacher, who talked about sex and sex products like the weather. It wasn't a big deal at all to them, but to me it was like, I didn't know these people and they were asking what I liked and making recommendations, and I was looking at my watch like, okay, have a reached what I think is the required amount of time to be here. The teacher was right though. It definitely challenged me because it was something I never in a million years thought I'd do and I just couldn't fathom why others would willingly go out in public to a place like that where they might be seen or have to talk about something they do privately with the employees there that were perfect strangers.
It's a million and a half years later, and among all the classes I took in college, I would have to say for some obvious reasons, it was one of the most memorable. I actually wish more people were allowed to have the option to take the course, because unlike a lot of classes that felt like high school all over again, where here are the rules, and now sit down and learn what we've pre-scripted you to learn, here was a class where legitimately, everyone had questions, and everyone wanted to discuss, and it wasn't the same as what had been taught last semester or the year before. The longer the class went on, the more comfortable people felt talking about sex and sharing their personal stories, and blunders, and even pain. It was one of the few classes where I actually experienced any real freedom in learning in one of the subjects that tends to be one of the most restricted in terms of access to knowledge.
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