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.”
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.
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.
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.
