While the lessons from Sexy Sex Ed had a positive impact on me and the way I felt toward my body, I left the workshop feeling angry. Angry that my classmates did not receive this education. Angry that it took me 18 years to receive the sex education I knew I needed and deserved.
Sex Ed with DB Podcast Interviews Tanya Turner
Sex Ed with DB is a feminist podcast bringing you all the sex ed you never got through unique and entertaining storytelling. In this eighth episode of Sex Ed with DB, Season 4, DB talks with Tanya Turner. Tanya is an artist, organizer, and creator of the Appalachian sexual health project, Sexy Sex Ed. As co-host of political podcast, Trillbilly Workers Party, she reaches 50,000 listeners a month and is creating an animated comedy series about rural leftist organizing with MeansTV and Appalshop.
Meet The Queer Activist Teaching Sex Ed to LGBTQ Appalachian Youth
People have provided pro-bono help with logos and website mapping “the floodgates of queer fucking godliness have turned this into something wonderful.” The website has a streamline booking process and created a map of the reproductive sexual health work being done in Appalachia, both in major cities and small towns. “People have come out of the woodwork to help because almost all of us have a horror story from our sex education. And we’ve lived through it and want better for everyone.”
New Online Map Shows Sexual-Health Resources in Appalachia
WHITESBURG, Ky. -- The traveling sex-education workshop that teaches about consent and anatomy in rural Appalachia has created a unique new online map that shows the locations of reproductive-justice-related organizations and health-care providers in the region.
Tanya Turner, who founded the group Sexy Sex Ed, said resources in rural Appalachia often are not included on national maps, which tend to focus on urban areas.
"We mapped all of the sexual health care and reproductive justice that we knew about going on in Appalachia," she said.
Traveling ‘Sexy Sex Ed’ Workshop Aims to Educate Appalachian Youth
Public News Service
WHITESBURG, Ky. — Access to sex education is on the decline in rural areas, but one eastern Kentucky native aims to fill the knowledge gap with a traveling free sex education workshop called Sexy Sex Ed.
According to the Guttmacher Institute, in 2006, 71% of rural women were taught about birth control as an option to prevent pregnancy. That number shrunk to 48% by 2013. Tanya Turner, creator of the Sexy Sex Ed workshop said growing up in Bell County, she didn't receive any kind of instruction on sex or her own anatomy.
"I hope I'm not the only person teaching progressive, body-positive sex education in rural Appalachia, but all the stats show sex education in rural places is in on a huge decline,” Turner said.
Where Sex Education Lacks in Appalachian Schools, This Kentucky Program Is Attempting to Fill In
100 Days in Appalachia
“I just think the reality is that as 17-year-olds, we’re going to have sex no matter what. If we’re going to have sex, we might as well be able to do it safely.”
The need for comprehensive, medically-accurate and age-appropriate sex ed is real, especially in areas like Appalachian Kentucky where 47 percent of pregnancies are reported as unplanned, and the teen birth rate is 68 percent higher than the country overall.
Tanya Turner, creator of Sexy Sex Ed, is from Appalachia— specifically from Bell County, Kentucky,— and she said it was finding out about the need for sex ed in the region that moved her to begin work around reproductive justice in 2012.
We Need to Talk About Sex Education
The Humanist
These national efforts aren’t out there on their own. To spread healthy sexual education in Appalachian Kentucky and surrounding rural communities, Tanya Turner designed a Sexy Sex Ed workshop that focuses on consent, safety, and anatomy. “When a kid starts talking, and they touch their ear, we give them language for ‘ear.’…[B]ut when they touch their vagina, we’re like, ‘Don’t touch yourself there.’ And we don’t even call it vagina. We don’t even give language—the bare minimum—that someone needs to advocate for themselves and about what’s going on in their world.”
Only 13 States Offer Medically Accurate Sex Education. Here’s How to Fill in the Gaps
Yes! Magazine
“When somebody calls you and says they have a big group of kids that need sex ed, and they don’t know where else to go, it’s very difficult to turn people down,” Turner said. “It’s taken on a life of its own at this point.”
Requirements for sex education vary broadly across the country. Only 24 states mandate general sex education, with just 18 requiring information about birth control and only 13 requiring medically accurate sex education. The Guttmacher Institute reports that declines in formal sex education, especially concerning birth control, for young people are most concentrated in rural areas. It reports that the percentage of rural young women who were taught about birth control decreased from 71 to 48 percent from 2006 to 2013.
Podcast: Sex & Sex Ed
Season of the Bitch is a podcast hosted, run, and produced entirely by a leftist gaggle of women. In this episode featuring Tanya Turner, they talk about sex and sexy sex ed, while exploring some serious questions: How is sex related to capitalism? How is sex ed taught to us?? WHY IS IT TAUGHT THAT WAY??? How can we switch that??
