The stories we tell about sex—and why they matter | Emily Morehead | TEDxTWU

Welcome. I hope we got you lubed up and ready after three sex talks this morning. One of the first questions that I ask my clients in sex therapy when they come and share the room with me is how did you learn about sex? So I ask you to join me today with that curiosity. How did you learn about sex? This question is powerful because it gives us education, information, and empowerment to understand how the stories that we were told about sex wire in our bodies, how they may have disconnected us from pleasure, connection, arousal, and desire. Because the stories that you were given about sex and how they were told to you by parents and society about sex, well, it lasts a lifetime and it actually impacts how we feel when we have sex. Talk about a turnoff, am I right? So, here's why it matters. In early very pivotal years, we have the opportunity to teach sex education to our children with messages of consent, empowerment, and voice. And would you believe me if I told you that we can teach these messages to our children all before the age of three years old? So these messages can show up in how we talk to our children. And I'm going to give you an example. If we tell children that their body parts are nicknames, if we force them into touch that they don't want, like a hug. If we tell them that it's gross, bad, or not okay to touch a part of their body, well, that message, it lasts a lifetime. That message tells them that they must listen to adults when they tell them to do something. It tells them that their body is confusing and it doesn't give them actual anatomically correct language to understand what to do with their body. And if I'm being honest, it's a terrifying way to teach children about their bodies. And the data shows it with the number of children who experience sexual abuse before the age of 18 years old. So, let me show you a different way. If we tell children about their bodies with anatomically correct language, we help them understand what touches are okay or not okay. And we let them say no to hugs. Look what we just did. We created consent culture, bodily autonomy, trust, voice, and advocacy. And as a parent, we told them that no conversation is off limits and that if something happened to their body that was not okay, that you would be there for them. Guys, we can teach this in our children before the age of three years old. But the problem with this message is that not all homes are equipped to offer it. We must hold tenderly that our stories that we understand about sex and bodies, well, they were wired from people. And sometimes those people don't understand how to have these conversations with their children. Not out of a pa place of wanting to cause them harm, but out of a place of having their own stories and sexual scripts wired in ways that weren't okay for them. And there's a trickle down effect. So this is why sex education in schools matters because if we ask families to just do this in the home, we leave children behind. If we offer comprehensive based education with science and evidence in a school system, we open the door for access. Comprehensive sex education is not just telling children about sex.

It's not. It teaches them about their bodies, about respect, about safe relationships. It empowers them to use their voice and understand their body's cues, emotions, and experiences. It allows them the opportunity to keep themselves safe, and it helps them understand how to keep others safe. That message is what the United Nations and World Health Organizations call comprehensive sex education. But here's a startling statistic. In 2024, there was several studies done that ranked how we're doing in the United States with sex education. And the results are jaw-dropping. Did you know that only five states require the sex education that we teach in our schools to be researchbased and science informed? Five. Let's do a little bit more math. Three of the states in the United States are only ones that are legislatively required to teach that education. Three. So what happens is we teach abstinenceonly education. We teach girls about ministration and we teach boys about erections, which teaches women that they are objects of desire. And it teaches them that they're responsible for the prevention of pregnancy. And boys learn about pleasure. Yeah. Comprehensive sex-based education teaches our children values and relational skills. It teaches them to trust their bodies and respect the bodies of others. This does not allow them to run wild with sexual liberation. And the data even shows this. When we provide researchbased sex education, we see a reduction of age at first sexual onset. We see reduced sexual activity. We see increased voice and autonomy and consent culture. We see more condoms and contraceptives being used at all and correctly. A win. And when taught with gender and power language interwoven in the curriculum, it is five times more effective at decreasing unintended pregnancies and sexually transmitted infections. On the other hand, abstinenceonly education that's offered traditionally, well, it's been proven ineffective. It does not decrease sexual activity. It does not increase education. We don't see the data change. But yet, we're still doing it because as adults, we have to understand that if we don't teach these children, how will they know? And if we weren't taught, how do we know how to teach them? You see, comprehensive sex education allows children to avoid learning about information through a website search bar, where they learn that sex looks like the free porn website says it does, which frankly it doesn't and it won't. And it teaches them that they must search in secret silence and shame. This message lasts us a lifetime. As adults without evidence-based research, education, we are responsible for understanding how these stories took up space in our bodies and how they have taken pleasure, desire, arousal, connection, body trust away from us. But there's good news. We're not stuck. We get to relearn what sex is in adulthood. We can unpack the relationships that we have with our body

and the shame that we've carried all of these years. And through doing that, we can reorient our relationship with sex education. We can experience sex for family building, aging, grief, loss, the variety of body changes that happen across the lifespan. It can be a way that we learn to love our bodies and the bodies of those that we love. Sex no longer has to be this thing that we're scared of. that family building is done in secrecy and silence, that menopause is this weird space where our sex life just goes to die. And guys, don't get me started about how we don't think grandma has sex. When we heal our relationship with sex, we offer the opportunity to welcome back pleasure, desire, and connection to ourselves. And that matters so much for how we understand the stories we tell future generations about sex. Because if we know our stories and can excavate shame, we can allow future generations to also walk behind us with strength, courage, empowerment, voice, and choice. All because we understood the stories of how we talk about sex. Thank you.