Tovi, Abella, Lilly F., Eden, Sara (not pictured)
For too long, our society has stigmatized the idea of sex education, demonized the people who advocate for it, and promoted inaccurate, homophobic, and misogynistic ideals. Schools are prohibited from teaching, the internet is unreliable, and parents are under-prepared or unwilling to fill the gaps in teenagers' understanding. This leaves sexually active teens at great risk of disease, pregnancy, and even injury; abstinence-only teaching doesn't prevent sex, it prevents safe sex. The Just Sex Dlab team asks: “How Might We bring holistic sex ed to our community?” Well, the first step was to cut out the middle men. The Just Sex team is creating a peer-to-peer, expert-verified, informative, and fun resource in the form of a Zine. This way, they can go over the heads of conservative school boards and get accurate information directly into the hands of people who need it. The team arrived at this solution after months of conversation over personal experience and the current state of sex ed legislation. They found how common the experience of inaccurate and insubstantial to straight up harmful sex ed classes were among their peers, and how they all shared a feeling of great frustration. This shared anger is what drove them to create a solution that was not only outside the system, but anti-systemic.
