Episode: 35 - Breaking the Silence: The Gaps and Needs in Sex Education

In this eye-opening episode of Taboo Talks, Coralie, Amber, and Vicki dive deep into the shortcomings of traditional sex education. They share personal experiences and discuss the lack of comprehensive sex education that left many confused, shamed, and unprepared for real-world sexual experiences. Topics include the widespread focus on fear over pleasure, the exclusion of LGBTQ+ relationships, the critical need for conversations on consent, and the making of well-informed sexual decisions. The trio also advocates for proper sex ed training for educators and the importance of eliminating shame from discussions about sex, pleasure, and relationships. Grab your drink of choice and join the conversation that blends real-world education with unapologetic honesty and sass.

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Transcript

Amber: [00:00:00] Raise your hand if your sex ed class taught you way more about fear than pleasure. If you're watching, if you're not watching on, all three of us have raised.

Vicki: Or if your education was just a diagram, a condom on a banana, and a whole bunch of shame.

Coralie: Today we're talking about the sex ed fails. That left us confused, unprepared, and deeply misinformed.

Coralie: Welcome to Taboo Talks, not Safe for brunch where nothing is off the table. We're diving into real conversations about sex, relationships, and self-discovery with zero shame and a whole lot of sass. 

Vicki: With over 55 years of combined experience in the intimacy industry and plenty of real life lessons, we are here to break taboos, bust [00:01:00] myths, and serve up unapologetic.

Vicki: Real world education, one brunch convo at a time. 

Coralie: I'm Coralie tuning in from Vancouver. I'm a married mom with one foot in the empty Nest club. My superpower is going deep down rabbit holes and getting to the real root of things. 

Amber: And I'm Amber. I'm based in Ontario. I'm married. I'm a mom, a G Ma, and proudly blunt.

Amber: I cut through the fluff and get straight to what matters. 

Vicki: I'm Vicki and I'm from Manitoba. I'm divorced reentering the dating scene. I'm a mom to two grownups, and my magic is creating real connection because intimacy starts with trust. 

Coralie: Grab your mimosa, your matcha, or whatever turns you on, and let's dive in.

Amber: While many Canadian students were taught about birth control and STIs, abstinence first messaging was still deeply embedded in the curriculum. In many US states, abstinence was the only message students received. That, to me, is wild,[00:02:00] 

Vicki: Yeah.

Amber: The result, A generation left, confused, ashamed, and unprepared for real world experiences with sex, relationships, and their own bodies.

Vicki: Right, and then they end up in our events and we're teaching them the stuff that they never knew and wish they had. All these years go by and it's just so unfortunate.

Amber: Mm-hmm.

Coralie: I still don't get the logic behind that because you just think with every single thing in life, if you tell someone, don't push that shiny red button, that's all they're gonna think about. Right? It's pushing that fricking button. And so. When you're like, don't, you are just, you're putting it in a beautiful frame.

Coralie: You're adding glitter to it and making it more appealing.

Vicki: agreed. Yeah, we had all the open conversation. I wanted to make sure that. They knew everything they needed to know.

Coralie: Mm-hmm.

Vicki: I just want good decisions to be made.

Coralie: Yeah.

Amber: Well, and I just, I don't know if this is ever been thought about or talked about or [00:03:00] whatever. I feel like our regular teachers who teach us on a daily basis should not be teaching us this one. I don't think they have enough training, and I'm gonna actually gonna read a stat about, uh, that, but two, I just feel like it should be an outside third party. They come in and they, you know, this is their job.

Vicki: It should be contracted in to the schools and someone completely separate should absolutely be teaching. I agree with you, Amber.

Amber: Yeah. So here are a few, stats. One in four US teens receive abstinence only sex education without information on birth control or STI sources, which is like, I feel like that's the one thing I remember the most is the birth control and STI stuff.

Coralie: Mm-hmm. Same.

Vicki: I remember watching the video when the baby was being born. What.

Amber: That's the ab part.

Vicki: Yeah, as I raise my hand again.

Coralie: Yeah, I remember the photos of STIs. I [00:04:00] think they would go and they would not pick, someone had a bad night, this person let it go for a year, and now we're gonna show you a photo of it, like.

Vicki: Yeah. That fear-based stuff is really working 'cause STIs are not on the rise at all.

Amber: No, never.

Coralie: Yeah.

Amber: Um, and then teens in comprehensive programs are 50% less likely to experience unintended pregnancy according to the Gut Marker Institute.

Coralie: When they're in the programs in comprehensive sex ed programs, they're 50% less likely. Right. So it obviously giving them the information, prepares them better.

Vicki: Knowledge is power. Even when we're young, we start using our voice then, right? Like,

Coralie: Mm-hmm.

Vicki: ugh.

Amber: And then here's the Canadian stat for you. In 2019 reported by Action Canada found that no Canadian province or territory funds sex ed at a scale sufficient to train [00:05:00] educators or ensure standardized high quality programs. So that's where I feel like that needs to happen.

Coralie: Mm-hmm.

Amber: There needs to be funding for outside people to come in and actually educate our students.

Coralie: And we have people here that go through this course. It's, a one year long course to become like a sex educator recognized by our province to be able to do things like this. Yet the schools don't hire them.

Vicki: Now I still feel like we're leaving the, like such a huge portion of this up to the parents, and I think that that's not happening in most homes. So these kids are getting enough to make them curious, not enough to give them any really good information. And then where do they head for the rest of it? To fill in the blank.

Coralie: Mm-hmm.

Vicki: The internet, right? They're getting it from porn. They're getting it wherever. They're talking to their friends in the school yard that don't know anything more than they know it's, it's not healthy.

Coralie: Yeah.

Amber: [00:06:00] Well, no one really explains what to actually expect or how to prepare for your first sexual experience.

Vicki: No.

Amber: Like I, you are right. It is coming from porn, it's coming from movies, it's coming from, um, friends on the, in the schoolyard, right?

Vicki: Right. And it's got, it's coming from those conversations that probably some kid is just made up so he sounds cool, right? And next thing you know, you're like, oh, well that's the standard. And then you start to lean into that standard as opposed to actual real knowledge that if your parents could, uh, get their poop in a group, you might get it right, because we know the schools aren't gonna do it.

Vicki: Don't wait for the schools. But if you need to find an adult that can. Let's do that. Like,

Coralie: Mm-hmm.

Vicki: if I was, sorry, I'm just gonna go on a rant. If I was a parent and I didn't feel comfortable talking to my child about sex ed, what to expect, I, it, it was just way too awkward for me to have that conversation with them.

Vicki: I would then offer for [00:07:00] them to talk to somebody that they felt comfortable with. So maybe it's an aunt or, your bestie or whatever that looks like. I had lots of. Young adults come to me over the years that were my kids' friends and say, Hey, I'm really confused about this. Can you help? Yeah, I will do my best.

Vicki: I will also call your mom and say, Hey, can I talk to your kid about this? But

Coralie: Mm-hmm.

Vicki: it's ridiculous.

Coralie: Yeah.

Vicki: Ran over.

Coralie: Well, depending on the age of the kid, I might talk to their mom. I might not. I

Vicki: Oh. My apologies if they were, you know, 17, 18, 19. I was having a conversation with them. I would, you know, obviously, as an

Coralie: The younger ones though, yeah.

Vicki: no, no. I had kids coming to me at 14 15 and I was like, yeah, but you know what? I need to ask, I need to talk to your mom first. Maybe she wants to come over for coffee.

Vicki: Maybe we could do this together. You know what I mean? So then it's kind of hand over hand, whatever that looks like. But yeah, I just think it's important. I would rather them walk away with information than [00:08:00] guesstimates and,

Coralie: Mm-hmm. I mean, I have to wonder like if a 16-year-old goes to Walmart and buys a vibrator, like can she buy it because it's right there. It's not in a private area. Right,

Amber: self back out. Nobody knows what you're getting.

Coralie: exactly. So I actually

Amber: Unless they, like, are they like flagging? Is it like flashing? I'm gonna go buy vibrator at Walmart now. Is it, does it flash the thing at self checkout to say, this person must be 18, like a video game?

Vicki: I wonder.

Vicki: There's lots of 14-year-old kids though that. Um, and I'm finding when we were kids, certainly in where I'm from, we passively talked about it, but it was not the way I see kids talking about it. Now, you know, we're around the pool with my friends and her daughter shows up with her friends and next thing you know, they're asking some pretty good questions and you're literally going, huh, we might be winning.

Vicki: We might be winning this.[00:09:00] 

Coralie: Yeah. Well, and then also too, I was thinking like the difference between if you have a 16-year-old and a 14-year-old, there is a big difference between 14 and 16 and maybe 16 is where that boundary is. I really don't know. Um, that's kind of where my personal boundary is. Like I'm comfortable 16 and up talking to, um, kids, but yeah.

Coralie: I wonder, wonder where the line is. We're gonna find out.

Amber: So another thing that's not actually happening in these sex ed classes. Is conversations around LGBTQ plus relationships, gender diverse identities, and non penetrative sex were entirely absent. Like these were not talked about. And I don't know, maybe that's changed a little bit, but I don't feel like the curriculum has changed.

Vicki: Yeah, I would. I would guess the same. However, I think the community has changed and I think that our young people are so much more. Accepting and understanding and vocal [00:10:00] and comfortable talking about the lgbtq plus community relationships and all of those things, I think that is where our young people are gonna win for us.

Coralie: Mm-hmm.

Amber: love to hear, like if there's a younger person listening to this or a young adult who had just recently graduated from school, whatever, I would love to know what it looked like and how, you know, because I feel like that would be brought up by the students and then it would kind of force the hand of the teacher who's teaching it.

Coralie: Yeah, totally. And I think it's really ironic that they don't talk about that because just the little situation that happened in my household, my son and daughter are five years apart. My daughter's older. I was not letting her boyfriend spend the night when she was 17, 18 years old. But I did when my son hit that age and she got mad at me as she should.

Coralie: Right. That's a double standard. She said, how come my brother gets to have his lady spend the night? And I couldn't. And I said, well, I didn't know you were, LGBTQ plus back then. So it made me think she could have been having sleepovers and I didn't know, so [00:11:00] why do we even have these stupid rules?

Coralie: Right?

Vicki: Yep, a

Coralie: I was like, and I learned that because I didn't know that you were potentially still having sleepovers because I was learning. So that's what happens when you don't have the queer sex ed conversation. And we had it lots, but we just didn't, it was like, wait a minute. That was dumb.

Vicki: we've talked about that as well. You know, you had a sleepover with your girlfriends, but I never thought that that could potentially have been. Um, more than a sleepover,

Coralie: Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yep.

Vicki: yeah. We needed more of that, but we're learning and look at us. Right. And I think that this is the testament to we're getting better every single day. Just a little bit. We're growing. Right. And that's, that's all I want for everyone.

Coralie: Yep. Same.

Amber: And you know what though? I know we mentioned it [00:12:00] earlier when we have these events and we're like, oh my gosh, we're teaching adults. Even our peers who are the same age as us about, STIs or their body or where their clitoris is, or have they had an orgasm, like we're teaching all these things.

Amber: So many adults still don't know how to use a condom. I never got the banana test,

Coralie: Right.

Vicki: The wooden, either we had a

Amber: no, nothing. I don't remember ever putting a condom on anything until I actually put it on a penis. I was told how to.

Vicki: Interesting.

Amber: yeah. Right. Maybe I just blocked it outta my brain. I don't know.

Vicki: You might let that one go.

Amber: But like so many adults still don't know how to use them. They don't discuss STI prevention. They don't set the boundaries like what the heck's going on.

Vicki: Yeah. I also think that around condoms especially, there's ways to store them that are going to ensure that they are effective and, we're still finding them in the consoles of trucks,

Amber: a good story, please.

Coralie: Yeah.

Vicki: not a [00:13:00] good place. Right. I'm in my fifties. Come on. You still got a condom in your truck? We're not hanging

Coralie: Yeah.

Coralie: Yeah. Also too, like I think something that can be really easy to happen is if you are newly single. Older. You know, say you're in your fifties and you have been in a monogamous relationship for 20 years, 30 years, now you're single again. It can be easy to think that's something you don't have to worry about.

Coralie: That's a young people's concern. But, it's not, I know quite a few older men who have adult children and then they got a divorce, started seeing someone, and suddenly they have a toddler. 'cause they were like, oh shit, I forgot about that. Or STIs are on the rise for that reason because people think, oh.

Coralie: I'm 50, I'm not gonna get anyone pregnant, or I'm not gonna get pregnant, or I'm not gonna get an STI or give one to someone. And unfortunately, we're still susceptible even more so actually, because we have less immunities as we're older.

Vicki: Well, and here's something to think about. The men in their fifties that, I am subsequently dating [00:14:00] also went to the same sex ed course in the years that I went to it. So unless they did some really good research on their own.

Coralie: Mm-hmm.

Vicki: research, not in the field.

Coralie: Yeah.

Vicki: Um, they're still working with that old information.

Vicki: They're still working from the knowledge that they had. So they're coming into the relationships, , in their fifties post-divorce after 25 years of marriage going, oh yeah, but we don't need to use a condom, do we? Well, if you plan to get any further. Yeah. Right. Like it's that thought process that it doesn't connect and , it's such old thinking, and I think that's why I'm gonna date somebody in their thirties.

Vicki: I,

Coralie: That's

Vicki: I want someone with some really new information.

Vicki: Sex ed is often focused on biological [00:15:00] reproduction, leaving out critical information about sexual anatomy, especially anything related to pleasure, desire, a diverse body experiences. Only 43% of women reported understanding their own sexual anatomy when they first became sexually active.

Coralie: Surprised if 43% said they understood it.

Amber: I feel like some of them are lying,

Vicki: Yeah. They're like,

Coralie: either that or it's only Gen Z, 'cause I could see with that generation, not millennial, not Gen X, not Boomer. Mm-hmm.

Vicki: Mm-hmm. We need to encourage get the mirror out, do some masturbating. You're fine.

Amber: I mean, or they think they know. Do you know what I mean? Because I've had a lot of people, like when I've been doing events and stuff, well, I think I've had an orgasm.

Vicki: Mm-hmm.

Amber: Hmm. Probably not.

Coralie: Yeah.

Vicki: Yeah, if you think you might have. Yeah, we, we gotta work on that.

Coralie: Mm-hmm.

Vicki: So that stat was from the Kinsey Institute. Now the clitoris with over 8,000 nerve endings. And there is some [00:16:00] studies that say there's more is central to sexual pleasure, yet it's often not even mentioned in school lessons.

Vicki: Because Why? Because it's only purposes. Pleasure. That's unfair. That's from the NCBI study. That breaks my heart.

Coralie: Yeah. When technically, if you wanna get into reproduction, okay. If they wanted to actually do a good class on reproduction, when the woman has the orgasm, the cervix dips down into the pool of semen and it helps get it into the cervix and up into the fallopian tubes and womb. The orgasm happens because of the clitoris, so that, that's not even a good excuse.

Coralie: They might say that, but then they're not giving full comprehensive education because. It does play a purpose. It's not, you can still get pregnant without it, but it helps. It's been proven 

Vicki: here's one. Over 65% of men believe that vaginal penetration alone should result in an orgasm for women. I will tell you ladies,

Coralie: I wish,

Vicki: that is a true stat though, that[00:17:00] 

Coralie: but don't we all wish it was that easy, like,

Amber: Um, yeah.

Coralie: oh my God,

Vicki: Yeah. You know, honestly, I think that that's the hardest part about being, divorced and dating is that you literally are having to teach, constantly because they just believe, and I'm just like, you know, I'm really sorry. Just someone just lied to you, you know, that worked with somebody else.

Vicki: No, it probably, it might have, but I would suggest that if overall that's , the feedback you're receiving. I am sorry. I'll hold your balls when I say this to you. They lied.

Amber: Oh my God.

Vicki: Sorry. That was from the Archives of Sexual Behavior and Gower special.

Coralie: Oh my gosh,

Vicki: okay. So what parts of the body were included in [00:18:00] sex ed and what was completely left out? Ladies, what do you, what was your experience?

Coralie: the clit, like you already talked

Amber: Yeah.

Vicki: Yeah, yeah. Um, the idea of orgasm was completely lost.

Coralie: Yeah. They would call it ejaculation, right? To

Vicki: Because orgasms for pleasure. Ejaculation was a result.

Vicki: Unfortunate. Just imagine. Whoa, whoa. Imagine if we taught to masturbate, to orgasm instead of abstinence or having sex necessarily with another person.

Coralie: Mm-hmm.

Vicki: What? Teach somebody to take care of themselves to have total and complete autonomy. That sounds like power for women.

Vicki: No.

Coralie: You know what's so funny too, just the idea that, because if you've ever raised a son, they're for a lot of them, they, you have to fight to get them into the bath, into the shower when they're little kids, and then suddenly they start [00:19:00] taking showers all the time. Very long ones daily.

Coralie: Right. You, you know, the change right? When that's happening, and those boys that are taking hour to two hour long showers every day are sitting in these classes, probably going. That's an ejaculation,

Vicki: Yeah, you're right. Yeah. They have no frame of reference..

Vicki: Except what they watched, read or heard from

Coralie: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Vicki: Yep. Um, and again, pleasure's not generally mentioned. It's just all framed around risk and reproduction, and the fear-based stuff that we've been talking about., And these gaps lead to long-term issues like sexual dissatisfaction, shame, misinformation.

Vicki: We hear it all the time when we are doing our events. Women are saying, I don't think I've ever had an orgasm. I'm not sure, like Amber said, I think,

Coralie: Mm-hmm. I literally am here because someone who is about the age I am now told me like 21 years ago, told me she had never had an orgasm, and it blew my freaking mind.

Vicki: Mm-hmm.

Coralie: Blew it.[00:20:00] 

Vicki: Absolutely., Many people learn about their own bodies through trial and error instead of accurate education. again, we were talking about how we're exploratory humans and sometimes we end up in the ER with something strange up our butt or you know, like that kind of thing happens because we are exploratory.

Vicki: We're just naturally that way. And if we're not educated, we'll figure it out. Everything's figureoutable. It doesn't make it right or healthy, but that's what people will do.

Coralie: Mm-hmm. Yep.

Vicki: for you guys once you finally understood your own anatomy?

Amber: Pleasure got so much better.

Coralie: Yeah, for me it was like it used to take anywhere from 20 to 45 minutes of stimulation to have an orgasm, and once I understood how it all worked, I was able to move that down to three to five minutes, and that is a much better use of my time. You guys, I mean, sometimes we can go, I can have way more in that timeframe now.

Coralie: Yeah. It's a time [00:21:00] saver. It's time management really. It's time management.

Vicki: I love that. For me, it was just simply that I could then educate another human being on what felt good to me, how they needed to touch me, to achieve what I wanted. Maybe a little selfish, but rightfully so.

Coralie: Mm-hmm.

Amber: feel like if you're educating them, they're probably responding in the same way.

Coralie: Yeah. Yeah,

Amber: Right? Oh, well.

Coralie: Yeah, Be like, look what I learned today.

Vicki: Mm-hmm. And I also think that it leads to, in healthy relationships, as adults, it leads to that ability to grow and learn together, which is beneficial for everyone.

Coralie: Mm-hmm. Absolutely. If you're not growing, you're dying.

Vicki: That's right.

Coralie: Okay, so this is the no talk zone. We're gonna talk about consent, queerness, and real talk. Sex education rarely addresses the realties of communication, consent, identity, or emotional connection. So for many students, the [00:22:00] silence around these topics is just as harmful as the misinformation. Like when you don't know what you don't know.

Coralie: It's mind blowing when you figure out, oh, I didn't know that. You know, and there's only nine US states that require sex education to include the topic of consent. That blew me away. That's from the Advocates for Youth. I I, I

Vicki: I'm having a moment. Just give it to me.

Coralie: I mean, that is so harmful. And it doesn't just make me think of the girls, of course I'm thinking of them, but I'm also thinking, you know, how are these young boys supposed to understand, like it's putting them in a, in an awful position.

Coralie: It's putting the girls in an even worse position. But if you're not telling them what to look for with consent. That is more harmful than I think, than not telling a girl how to say no. You know what I mean? Like I think overall. So it just blows my [00:23:00] mind because

Vicki: Yeah.

Coralie: what's wrong with society

Vicki: have you ever seen that on YouTube about how consent, comparing consent to t or

Coralie: loved it. Yes, yes, yes.

Vicki: I think that was amazing. You know, I wouldn't pour the tea down your throat if you said you didn't want any tea. Right. So that's consent. Friends, that's consent. It's simply based.

Coralie: And it doesn't have to be, it can be as simple as that. I loved that. I was like, well, you wanted tea yesterday? Well, yesterday, yeah.

Vicki: That's right. Everyone should watch that for sure.

Coralie: I don't, I don't want tea today. So

Amber: Well, and it

Coralie: I wanted hockey.

Amber: it doesn't necessarily mean that it's, you know, yesterday to today. It can be. Yeah. Okay, let's do it. Uh, no, I'm not feeling it anymore. Five minutes later, that is also, you know,

Vicki: Yeah. Yeah. You don't have, you don't have the toll pass to just keep. It's tapping through. Mm-hmm.

Coralie: And then also too, then you come into with that, the whole conversation that a [00:24:00] lot of young boys get about blue balls and about how it's just cruel and it's painful and it's mean, which is all crap. You have a hand you can go use it. Like, and then that can imply again, like a girl, woman who didn't know that it's not her responsibility, his ball's, her like.

Amber: That brings in that guilt and that shame.

Coralie: Yes. Yes, totally. And I would bet, you know, I know the rates for, , assault are pretty high, but I would bet almost every single. Woman has at one point or another, done something that she didn't say yes to, that she didn't say no, that just went along with, because she felt uncomfortable because she was in a position where she didn't have enough power or even confidence.

Coralie: And I'm not saying that that's any, the other person's responsibility, but we shouldn't be raising a society where a girl can't speak up

Vicki: in a society where she, where people and women don't know that they don't speak up and also don't know that they can speak up. [00:25:00] Uh, to me that's phenomenal.

Coralie: Yeah. 50% of teens say they rely on porn as their main source of information about sex.

Vicki: Do because no one's telling them anything. God.

Coralie: I mean, at.

Amber: You know, it's interesting 'cause I just had a conversation with a friend who had said their son got caught when he was younger. Watching porn on his iPad by his dad. And his dad freaked out and got mad, took the iPad over this issue and then said You need to go talk to your son when she got home.

Amber: And she goes, well, what happened? And then she goes, well, what? And she opens the iPad and it's still playing because he had just shut the iPad in such an abrupt thing, and she had to go and then have a conversation. But then she had to get her husband to go and apologize for how he reacted,

Vicki: Yeah.

Amber: it's a totally normal curiosity.

Coralie: Mm-hmm.

Amber: You need to have these proper conversations, even if you catch them and you're like, okay, well that's not appropriate to be watching at your age,

Vicki: Yep.

Amber: but what did you see?

Vicki: to reverse that to reverse that imprint [00:26:00] that he just created.

Amber: Yeah. Because now you just put a, a ton of shame on that.

Coralie: Yeah, and as a parent too, I think it's very normal to get into a situation where your kid, where you have what would seem like a very normal reaction because you were surprised because you weren't. I've reacted horribly sometimes too, when I've learned, you know, whatever. When my kids were young.

Coralie: But fortunately I freaking realized it when, oh shit that was bad and gone back and apologized. And I've grown from it. They've grown from we're not perfect. And if we don't apologize for that stuff, then we're, not showing our kids that we can apologize

Amber: Yeah,

Coralie: and learn and grow. Mm-hmm.

Vicki: Agreed.

Coralie: I think it also too, can create these really great conversations with your kids about how sex was more taboo when we were younger.

Coralie: Like I find it so fascinating to hear my parents talk about their childhood and how sex was perceived. I wish I could have these conversations with my grandparents still, you know, it's, I. It's incredible anyways, also fewer than 20% of [00:27:00] Canadian classrooms include lgbtq plus representation in their sex education curriculum.

Coralie: So, like Amber said earlier, if someone is in that, , age range or has done that recently here in Canada, we'd love to know.

Vicki: And somehow the number of gays in Canada is not decreasing. Hmm. Shocker. Like, why did you What? Like, if we don't talk about it, they won't, they won't engage. What? What? Yeah. No, so stupid just makes me explode.

Coralie: Yeah. So yeah, consent basically was often skipped entirely or presented only as a legal issue, and I think that is where we get hung up to is it's just like. Legality thing. It's beyond that. It's an integrity thing

Vicki: Yeah.

Coralie: more than legal. I mean, legality's important, but it's your integrity if you aren't asking for consent, if you aren't making sure you have consent and yeah, it can it

Vicki: I [00:28:00] could,

Coralie: get it?

Coralie: And was there ever like any masturbation, chitchat? Do you guys remember when you guys, when your kids were going through sex ed? There was none that I can recall from my kids going through

Vicki: Oh, yeah. So in, the school that my children went to, they asked, they had to create a, question box. And then the teacher would pull out the questions and she would answer them. And there was a question that was asked about what exactly is masturbation? And the response was, manual stimulation of one's genitals.

Vicki: That was it. That was the whole. when they asked more questions about it because they were very interested, they were told that it was not part of the curriculum and it couldn't be shared, and that was the end of that. And then they all went outside to talk about it in the school yard. So thankfully my children had very good information and were able to educate. I had to have a very nice conversation with the principal, but.

Coralie: Mm-hmm.

Vicki: You know, I was like, [00:29:00] listen, I've got in a pretty good authority. They've got good information. They're not sharing it inappropriately. They were asked a question, they answered it. Unlike your educators were because you don't allow them to.

Amber: Yeah, that's,

Vicki: I was never the favorite mom.

Amber: that's wild to me. And you know what, and I think, you know, oftentimes it's okay for boys, but it's not okay for girls or, everyone's like, well, this is a sock in the corner, whatever. I don't recall my education ever talking about masturbation, and I don't recall my daughter talking about it either.

Amber: However, I did speak to her about it and at an appropriate age, I gave her her first toy and I was like, I would rather you use this.

Vicki: Yep.

Coralie: Yeah, I, similar with my daughter, I gave her a to, it was actually kind of cute because I had a little brand new bullet, would put it on her pillow, like the bullet fairy, and then the next day it would be on my desk and we played this game for about six months, and then one day her best friend was coming [00:30:00] over.

Coralie: And her mom's, one my besties, and I was like, Hey, can I give our girls this? And she was like, yep, sure. So I gave them both a book, a bullet and a little lockbox. Had a convo with them. It never ended up back on my desk. That was it. She just needed a buddy.

Vicki: Oh.

Coralie: , But you know, I think it's so normal. I get a lot of clients who reach out and say like, Hey, is it okay? Can I get my daughter a to? Is that okay? And I think that if you don't do something that's gonna let them explore, you don't know what they're gonna get into. You don't know what they're gonna find.

Coralie: And it's unfair because it's so easy for boys to do it.

Amber: Yeah.

Vicki: Yeah, it's

Coralie: Yeah. Yeah. Um, and the last thing, the last point with the sex ed in school is they don't really talk about emotional connection, communication, and making sure that everyone's needs are met about making sure that everyone is having fun in that room, but making sure, you know, the only thing I remember saying, you wanna be in love, well, you don't know what that means.

Coralie: You don't underst. That, you know, when [00:31:00] you're taking those classes. But I think when they're in the teen years, you could kind of be like, you know, when you like just vibe with someone, they'd be like, oh yeah. You know, kind of get that more, you get that emotional connection. And how the communication, it can be hard because it's so hard to talk about what you need.

Coralie: But when you are having that with someone that can make you closer, it can make the good time you're having better and. You're gonna understand their needs. They're gonna understand your needs, and they don't talk about that. They don't talk about communication. It's our favorite C word besides clit.

Vicki: You know what? I didn't. Really learn how to express how I wanted my needs met until after my divorce. I, we've talked about it before. They went to this class and they literally put you, paired you with somebody and you had to ask them to meet your need, whatever that was. It wasn't even a sexual need, it was just the fact that [00:32:00] I had to ask for what I wanted.

Vicki: It was so difficult to ask this person for what I wanted, and they asked me for what they wanted in order to make this interaction between us go well. And that was when I really started practicing with the muscle of asking for what I need, asking for my needs to be met in a particular way, and being precise in particular, so that I could be fully, completely fulfilled.

Vicki: Yeah, the last two and a half years has been great. 

Amber: We deserve more than fear, shame, and just don't do it.

Vicki: Sex education should empower us to know our bodies, our rights, and our desires.

Coralie: And it's never too late to unlearn what didn't serve us and to talk about what actually matters.

Amber: Thanks for pulling up a seat at the Taboo Talk. Not Safe for Brunch Table. If today's chat made you laugh, think squirm, or all three. Do us a solid like follow and leave a review. It's basically the podcast world's version of a good tip. 

Vicki: Want more juicy, [00:33:00] unfiltered conversations? Tap the link in the show notes and sign up for our weekly newsletter.

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Coralie: Brunch isn't just about the bites and bubbles, it's about showing up real raw and ready to talk about what really matters. So until next time, keep it bold, keep it curious, and definitely keep it not safe for brunch.