Condoms, the No. 1 way to prevent pregnancy and STIs, are still taboo in most schools. Image courtesy of drrichswier.com

I was recently talking with one of my friends about our high school, and we started reminiscing about our old sex education class.

Growing up in North Dakota, I’ve heard some pretty outrageous things about sexual education. My high school taught sex ed almost like the movie “Mean Girls” by basically saying, “Don’t have sex or you will die.”

It’s almost embarrassing how little they teach teenagers about sex and therefore how much they end up learning from terrible resources.

Abstinence was the main thing that was taught at my school, which was ironic because there were so many teen pregnancies. About 75 percent of our time in class was learning about STDs. Our teachers wanted to brainwash students by basically saying that if you have sex you will contract one of these diseases. They didn’t tell us anything about how STDs or STIs were treated.

What’s a great way to prevent getting STDs? Condoms. Well, my sex education class also never talked about condoms. Some of the things said in my class were just unbelievable.

For example, our teacher told us if you put head lice in your pubic hair, you would have crabs. Thinking back on it now you realize it’s not just laughable but pathetic.

There was this emphasis in class that if women allowed themselves to have sex, they would be valued less. It was as if all the responsibility is pushed upon young women. If they do decide to have sex they are viewed differently, but young men are not.

Growing up in this conservative area, you would always hear about young women being shamed for having sex. There was definitely a double standard at my high school when it came to teaching sex education. When you don’t help students learn about safe sex, they will learn it from harmful sources such as pornography which often oppresses women. Female biology was not talked about outside of the process of sperm meeting egg.

The teacher never told us a girl doesn’t actually lose her hymen the first time she has sex: If a hymen was really a barrier inside of the vagina then a tampon would break it before sex ever did.

A hymen can tear from many things, including a first sexual encounter, but if there’s enough lubrication there doesn’t have to be any tearing at all. A woman’s hymen stays with her throughout her life. The vagina doesn’t get loose from having a lot of sex. It can get loose from aging, but the penis also gets smaller and floppier as men age too.

The lies about women’s bodies perpetuate the idea that women who have sex, especially a lot of sex, are damaged.

Giving consent should be the most important part about sex education in high schools but it was never discussed. Rape myths that our culture spreads were the only things we had to go on.

The facts that most rapists are people the victim knows, or that if someone is unconscious, very drunk, passed out, pushing away, or not responding also means that they are not consenting to the activity of sex were never brought up. Most rapists don’t even think of themselves as rapists and only 2 percent of them serve jail time. Consent education has been shown to reduce the amount of acquaintance rape  — which makes up 80 percent of rapes — so it would be a good thing to start in our schools.

It’s time sex education changes to help young teenagers who will only be told myths. Sex education should be about how important consent is for both parties.

Abstinence is not effective so something has to change in these high school classes. It is also time to break the barrier of traditional sex education and discuss safe sex for people in the LGBT community.

By actually teaching young teenagers, some of these myths can be busted.