In September 2021, School of Sexuality Education published Sex Ed: An Inclusive Teenage Guide to Sex and Relationships. We’d been delivering sex and relationships education workshops in schools for a few years by then, and we wanted to put all of the experience we’d gained in that time to good use. We decided that the best way to do that would be to write a book together – one that could be accessed by teenagers all over the country, no matter who they were or where they were.
It felt important to us to make sure that lots of different perspectives and voices went into the book, not only in terms of expertise (our team’s made up of doctors, teachers, activists and academics) but in terms of life experiences too, and the unique combinations of things that make us us. As such, it was a genuinely collaborative effort, and to be honest, we are pretty proud of it! We think that the end result is a positive, practical, and empowering guide for teenagers which tackles tricky topics in inclusive and non-judgemental ways.
It's made up of nine chapters in total, each of which focuses on a different one of those tricky topics: consent; gender, sexuality and identity; relationships; the body; what is sex?; reproductive health; sexual health; body image; and online life. Across them all, we aim to answer the questions that young people (people of all ages, really!) might not feel confident enough to ask elsewhere.
Alongside the main text of each chapter, we added in a few other sections too. One of these is the ‘myth versus reality’ boxes, which provide accurate information to challenge some of the common ‘myths’ out there about sex and relationships which often come up in the classroom. There are ‘did you know?’ boxes too, which share fun or interesting facts, ‘tips and tricks’ sections, and ‘consider’ boxes which give extra details to help readers to grasp the ‘bigger picture’. Lastly, the chapters also include all kinds of ‘unembarrassable moments’ where different members of the team share anecdotes about personal experiences, to connect the information to some real-life stories, and to prove that we really are unembarrassable!
With such a range of topics and features across the book, it really is jam-packed with information, but readers aren’t expected to take everything in in one go. We designed it so that teenagers can dip in and out of the chapters at their own pace, or even just flick through to the different sections as and when they’re interested in learning more. We’ve popped some notes in the back for teachers and parents too, in case they want to use the book to spark conversations with the young people in their lives – it really is for anyone and everyone.
When we wrote the note for teachers, we did so in the hope that Sex Ed could be used as a resource for planning and teaching, which is why we’re so pleased to already have had several teachers tell us how useful they’ve found it for clarifying information, generating discussion points, and figuring out how best to frame concepts. In light of this praise, we’re now working towards getting at least one copy into every school library in the UK. Not only will this help more teachers, but it will also mean that every teenager in the country will have access to the important information the book contains, and will therefore have the opportunity to better understand themselves, their relationships, and one another.
We’re crowdfunding to send free copies of Sex Ed: An Inclusive Teenage Guide to Sex and Relationships to UK school libraries. Please click on this link to find out more and to donate.
Click here to purchase a copy of Sex Ed: An Inclusive Teenage Guide to Sex and Relationships.
