As adolescents, the first lessons we learn in school are about the birds and the bees.
Everyone recalls that fateful day when the school gym teacher put a condom on a cucumber.
Despite those awkward memories, we got the picture. We’re taught how to use these genitals as a team, and yet, are left simply clueless about how they work alone. How are we expected to know how to use them together if we can hardly figure them out on our own?
Could lack of proper education on one another’s anatomy be to blame for our ignorance?
The media along with our peers most times promote sexual intercourse amongst one another, but not necessarily the knowledge of one another’s sex organs this could also be to blame.
As young adults, many of us are prone to believing most sexual myths. Whether it be about the size of a male’s penis correlating with his race or a woman’s booty size correlating with hers, many times we tend to believe what we hear. Believe it or not, even the brightest of us seem to fall for these fables as universal truths and it is usually not until we disprove them ourselves that we realize and put to rest these falsities.
In one of my classes earlier this semester, a male student asked whether women urinate from the very hole that they use for intercourse. Strangely enough, that same day I overheard a conversation where one female asked another, ‘If our vaginas are self-cleaning organs, then why do we need to clean it in the shower?”
To put things simply, I was shocked. I thought maybe it was a personal lack of knowledge, and just a rare case of unawareness here at this prestigious university of ours. It wasn’t until a male friend most recently asked me whether milk comes out of a woman’s breast when sucked really hard.I concluded the clueless guy in my class weeks ago was not alone.
Who am I to judge though? After all, I too at one point or another believed the myth that black guys are packing while white guys are lacking. I had heard it for as long as I could remember and felt like I had no choice but to believe what I had heard usually from older and presumably wiser sources.
Clearly my ignorance of the opposite sex was once just as prevalent.
We all are so accustomed to health classes in high school, health fairs in college, and sexual health awareness groups on and off campus, but why aren’t there fairs to teach us about one another and how our sexual organs work?
Why is it that only the curious Googlers or the anatomy students alone are regularly exposed to this information?
We all love sex but seem to only love to learn about the juicy details the topic has to offer.
We enjoy hearing about threesomes, girl-on-girl action and karma sutra, but when it comes to learning about how the penis ejaculates and why females go through a menstrual cycle every month, then most of us could care less.
From genius to fool, male to female, young to old, we are all guilty of not knowing much about the opposite sex, and there is always room for more knowledge and understanding of this topic.
It is not only important to know why our tools and jewels function the way they do for knowledge purposes, but also to recognize differences in them, whether good or bad.
What we should have as a campus community is more awareness of the opposite sex both physically and biologically.
Not only would it answer the burning questions that make us look foolish amongst our peers in class, but maybe it could save those of us who are still virgins the awkwardness of not knowing what to expect during our first time.
Cooper is a member of the class of 2011.
