We’ve Gotta Talk About Sex!
Honest, fact-based, comprehensive, developmentally appropriate, inclusive conversation about healthy sexuality
In honor of Mental Health Awareness Month, MTSE Advisory Board member and nationally certified school psychologist (NCSP), Justin H. Dove, outlines the connections between comprehensive sex education and mental health.
Read MoreMTSE’s student intern shares her experience with the community and solidarity found on TikTok after her PCOS diagnosis. She explores how the platform can help raise awareness and create meaningful conversations around the health condition.
Read MoreEndometriosis Awareness Month is observed in March. This month aims to raise awareness about endometriosis, its symptoms, and promote early diagnosis and treatment. Our guest blogger, Dr. Joanna Palmieri, wrote a piece to help readers better understand Endometriosis and the importance of early detection and treatment.
Read MoreMore Than Sex-Ed’s Director of Curriculum & Instruction, Emmalinda MacLean was a guest on this week's episode of the "In the Den with Mama Dragons" podcast which focused on queer-inclusive sex ed, and how it keeps ALL students safer. You can listen online, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Read MoreHappy New Year! The United States Congress designated January as Cervical Health Awareness Month to raise awareness about cervical cancer, HPV, and the importance of early detection. To help you to learn more about cervical health and cervical cancer prevention and take steps to help eliminate this preventable cancer, our board member, Dr. Cara Linay Quant wrote a blog More Than Sex-Ed.
Read MoreOn this World AIDS Day, AHF and more than 40 AHF country teams will hold commemorative events to honor all who have lost their lives to AIDS-related illnesses and support those who carry on the fight.
Read MoreTrans Parent Day is an annual event established in 2009 that honors both transgender parents and parents who have trans children. It always falls on the first Sunday of the month. We just celebrated on Sunday, November 3. According to a new study by the Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law (2020), an estimated 19% of transgender adults in the U.S. are parents.
Read MoreSeptember is Sexual Health Awareness Month—a theme that feels especially significant to us at More Than Sex-Ed. Our work is all about nurturing healthy development through “open, honest conversations about sex.” This new month energizes us to redefine sexual health education, address myths and misinformation, and help connect people to the tools and resources they need to take care of their own bodies!
Read MoreHow schools teach sexuality has changed a lot since I was a kid; today, More Than Sex-Ed helps schools make sure that when students learn about bodies, about puberty, about healthy relationships, about love—we make sure that those lessons include and respect everybody. How cities celebrate pride has changed; how people understand what it means to be lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or queer has changed. But let’s be clear, that’s not because being LGBTQ is a new thing: gay and trans people have existed for as long as humans have existed.
Read MoreSo the short answer has to start with,”How do you define having sex?” Sex encompasses the physical activity between people that involves touching each other’s genitals. That touching can happen in many different ways including genital to genital, anus or mouth, as well as fingers and even objects. All of these can lead to the transmission of an STI or sexually transmitted infection, so let’s define that while we are at it. An STI results from the exchange of infected bodily fluids or skin cells. Bodily fluids including semen as well as pre-ejaculate, vaginal fluids and blood. Other STIs can be passed to partners via skin to skin contact with an infected body area.
Read MoreA glossary of slang we’ve gotten from students recently
One of the joys of teaching is how much you learn from your students, and sex-ed class is a great place for a rich vocabulary exchange. Sometimes they’re testing us; sometimes it’s to make their classmates laugh. Fortunately urbandictionary.com provides a wealth of resources for cracking the code and showing the youths that yeah, we know a thing or two. Read on for some of the new terms we’ve seen most often in the past few months–mostly from 7th, 8th, and 9th graders–and the “teachable moments” they’ve offered.
Read MoreHelping Survivors* is an organization on a mission to help heal, educate, and empower people who have been impacted by sexual assault and abuse. They have provided us with a really important resource addressing the difficult topic of child sexual abuse.
Read MoreHow to Talk With Your Kids About Porn is a book all of us should read. Although the term “porn”, referring to pornography, is in the title…and we do learn a lot about the current state of porn…the most important takeaway from this book is its emphasis on the need for communicating with young people. This is a book that’s accessible, non-judgmental, inclusive and fun to read. It offers a how-to format that guides us step-by-step toward becoming better communicators about sex, sexuality, media literacy and porn, describing different ages and stages and the topics and approaches that work best at each age. It helps us think, broadly, about online safety and general sex education while honing in on the topic of porn.
Read MoreLet’s get our kids vaccinated and prevent HPV related cancers!
There are quite a few reasons why and here are some very important HPV facts:
Read MoreLet’s face it, not many people really want to talk about the smell of a vagina. Yet it is, after all, just another body part that deserves to be talked about. So here we go! The vagina has many different smells that can indicate a wide range of conditions; which could be healthy, or require evaluation and treatment, or signal different stages in our lives, or are affected by what we consume, the activities we engage in, and even our hygiene practices. It is essential to normalize open dialogue about the vagina and its composition, just like we talk about our mouths, noses, ears and other body parts without embarrassment.
Read MoreOur new volunteer team member, Dr. Joanna Palmieri, she/her, is a dedicated Obstetrician/Gynecologist bringing a wealth of experience and compassion to her work in the medical field.
Read MoreIt’s a rough time to be transgender (trans) in the US. It’s not that it hasn’t been before, but these last few years have made it particularly difficult (especially if you live in a “red state,” and even more especially if you’re under 18). Trans rights, and queer rights in general, are under attack to an alarming degree. More than 500 bills targeting the rights of LGBTQIA+ people were introduced in 2023. And seeing the direction things have been going, there’s so much at stake for queer rights in 2024.
So much of this recent wave of trans panic stems from disinformation about trans and queer people.
I love what I do. I’m grateful every day to have meaningful work that I know benefits young people, even when it’s hard. Sometimes it can be challenging to have such a short amount of time with a class; relationship building is immeasurably valuable to education, and we often don’t get to know the students the same way their regular teachers do. But it’s beautiful to see the impact we can have, even with just a few sessions, and to know that those messages will last for years—even decades—after we’ve left their campus. Here’s a short list of some recent highlights from the classroom:
Read MoreWe help children develop an understanding of autonomy so that they recognize that they are unique, independent and capable.
Children have a right to live free from physical acts, such as touch, to which they do not consent. And to reinforce the right to bodily autonomy in all the spaces that children exist, we make it clear to the parents, caregivers and educators that bodily autonomy requires respecting boundaries, affirmative consent, and self-defined personal comfort with affectionate touch.
Read MorePlease join us for a donation yoga class benefitting More Than Sex-Ed on Saturday, November 18, 2023. The class will be taught by Advisory Board Member and certified yoga instructor Alix Kelsey.
Read MoreMORE THAN SEX-ED is an educational outreach initiative. Our goal is to partner with groups in our community who already serve youth, in order to create and implement sexuality education programs based on guidelines set by the Sexuality Information Education Council of the United States.
a Los Angeles area non-profit project of
Mailing address:
7439 La Palma Ave, Box #265
Buena Park, CA 90620
909-257-8714
Community Partners EIN: 95-4302067
