Girls & Sex: Navigating the Complicated New Landscape

Charis Denison, a youth advocate, presents accurate and nonjudgmental sex ed information to high school students throughout California. Her curriculum includes sexual consent, assertiveness skills, gender roles, and more. She also discusses sexual pleasure with her students. Research confirms this approach is the best for reducing risk. Her work is controversial, but programs like hers are gradually gaining acceptance. Organizations such as the World Health Organization, UNESCO, and the United Nations General Assembly all worked with the Population Council to put out an online curriculum that promotes similar approaches to sex education.

The inception of the birth control pill in 1960, followed by the publication of The Feminine Mystique and then the Supreme Court’s guarantee of abortion rights, all led to a distinct turn in the United States’ approach to adolescent sex. Politically, though, sex among teens was spun as risky and a “crisis” needing control. Teenage pregnancy, mostly among African American teens, was blamed for perpetuating poverty. In 1978, Senator Edward Kennedy established the Adolescent Health Services and Pregnancy Prevention and Care Act, which championed sex education programs that focused on risk management, contraception, and abortion education, and discussed the idea of “readiness” rather than waiting for marriage.