Excerpt from CNN:
'Too political' for school
That may be traditionally true, but Tanya Turner, 31, is among those women determined to blaze a new path.
Like "Sweet Tater," she takes to the community radio airwaves with her WMMT program, "Feminist Friday."
Turner is also the brains behind what she likes to call "Sexy Sex Ed," an occasional workshop to bring honest conversations to young people to fill the void left behind by homes and schools.
Tanya Turner imagined "Sexy Sex Ed" to give young people information they may not get elsewhere.
She wishes the United States would follow the lead of countries like Sweden, where age-appropriate sex education starts in kindergarten. If left to their own devices, she warns, kids will Google answers to even the most innocent questions and enter the depths of online porn.
She used to run an online program for 21 school districts but quit after attending a reproductive rights rally at the state Capitol. She wanted to write about the experience and was told she could as long as she didn't include the words "birth control" or "sex ed."
Those words were seen as "too political," she says. "It felt like a gag order to not be able to say those words at this unprecedented time."
Children and young adults need safe spaces to talk, she says. They should understand the importance of consent and the way their bodies work. She need only think about the young people who've shown up, including the six transgender students who joined her for a sex ed workshop this year, to know that the hunger for authentic conversation is real.
Though her full-time job now is to raise money for Appalshop, she organizes sex ed programs when she can and draws a steady flow of participants -- which often includes chaperones and parents who have plenty to learn, too.
"I'll say, 'If this gets to be too much, you may want to leave.' But no one will leave," she says. "I get 40-year-olds thanking me."