Nineteen Fifty-Six Vol. 4 Issue 1

Discussing Sexual
Health Education
With Five Horizons
Jeffrey Kelly
Conversations surrounding sex and sexual health can feel taboo or uncomfortable for many to discuss, regardless
of age. However, it’s crucial, especially for young people, to be equipped with the language a high-quality sex
education can provide to keep themselves and their partners healthy. However, as of Sept. 1, while 25 states and
Washington, D.C., mandate sex education and HIV education, only 18 states require program content to be medically
accurate, according to the Guttmacher Institute, and only 10 states require programs to provide instruction that is
appropriate for a student’s cultural background and isn’t biased against any race, sex or ethnicity. Nineteen Fifty-Six
sat down with Five Horizon’s Rachel Queen, a registered nurse, and Iyana Diaz, outreach specialist and UA alum, to
demystify a few misconceptions about sexual health education.
Q: What are the biggest issues that y’all have seen
regarding sexual health for people in Alabama or,
specifically, Tuscaloosa?
Queen: Having insurance to pay for their testing and
treatment is a barrier for them. Outreach provides free
testing in the community, but not everyone is aware of
that, and then also they aren’t able to test for everything.
So, they do have a rapid HIV test, they can test for
gonorrhea, chlamydia and trichomonas, but they don’t
have a way to test for syphilis in the community, and there
has been a big outbreak. That’s the biggest barrier that I
have seen. Also, some people don’t have transportation,
we try to use those resources that we have— we have
some transportation resources.
Diaz: I will definitely say those as well. And then another
thing, especially like dealing with college students,
depending on what kind of education you’ve got regarding
sexual health, a lot of times there’s a superhero complex,
so it’s like, it doesn’t affect me rather. So, we’re really
trying to put out if you have sex, you need to get tested
no matter what, every three to six months and then also
because a lot of people don’t have that, like sexual health
education, they don’t think— they don’t really know what
all sex entails.
34
So, some people think like, if you just have oral sex, it’s
not really sex, you can’t get like the same STIs or STDs as
you can get in the genital area, but again, it’s oral sex— so
just really knowing what sex is [and] all that it entails. I
think a lot of times, people don’t really understand that.
That’s why we really try to be out in the community as
much as possible while we’re always on campus doing the
sexual health forums and education sessions.
Q: When y’all are reaching out to the community, what are
the most common questions that you get when it comes
to sexual health?
Queen: I will speak to some clients that come in the clinic
and maybe have an oral like gonorrhea chlamydia in their
throat. They do not realize that they can get gonorrhea
and chlamydia and their throat from performing oral sex,
and then they don’t realize that someone performing
oral sex on them can allow them to get gonorrhea and
chlamydia in like they’re penis, vagina, rectum. That’s a
common, I guess, question people have for us.
Also, I think, you know, the CDC recommends that anyone
who’s sexually active is on PrEP, which is HIV
prevention medication. A lot of people think that, you
know, they are not going to contract HIV; that’s just
more in the gay community. Well, everyone is at risk for
contracting HIV, and also people do not realize that it
does not matter if you have insurance, or you do not have
insurance; we can get your PrEP medication for free.
Diaz: Another thing about PrEP is, like, I don’t even have
sex that much like it only takes one time. Another
one is like condom usage; people don’t like
using condoms. A lot of times, I hear
it doesn’t feel the same, or it doesn’t
fit a lot of time, not knowing how to
put the condom on appropriately. I
didn’t know how to put the condom on
properly until I started working here. In
all honesty, I didn’t know about PrEP till I
started working here.
But a lot of times, they think they don’t need condoms
because they’re only with one person. Yeah, that’s just
another preventative measure that we’re really trying to
put out there and then show them that there’s so many
different condoms; just try and figure out what works
best for you. It’s better to have that layer of protection
rather than not doing anything at all.
A lot of times, whenever I have like
clients, I’ll ask them, “Do you feel anxious
after you have sex, especially when it’s
unprotected?” And they’re always like,
“yeah,” well, another way to combat that
is to make sure you use condoms, make
sure you get on PrEP, even if you don’t get
off PrEP, using condoms, at least just figuring out what
works best for you. And then another thing about that
is like it’s putting the ball back in their court and giving
them like their autonomy over their health.
STD
Q: A 2023 article from Planned Parenthood discussed how
sex education “teaches young people the importance of
treating everyone with dignity and respect, with racial
justice, fairness, and compassion for others as core
values.” What are your opinions on sex education as a tool
for teaching people dignity and respect?
Diaz: For me, it kind of goes back to, like,
eliminating the stigma and treating it like
another infection, like COVID and flu, like I said
before. You wouldn’t stigmatize somebody or
ostracize somebody if they were to have one
of those, and it’s really the same thing, just
in a different area of the body.
So, I definitely feel like it’s a way to show
people dignity because everybody has sex,
whether they want to say it or not. For the most part,
everybody has sex; it’s pleasurable to people, or it’s
pleasurable in general, that’s why people do it. And then
people do it for other reasons, too. So, like, sometimes we
equate it to food, like people, stress eat, when they’re mad,
or sad, people might have sex when they’re sick because
they feel better. People might not have housing or things
like that, and that’s a reason why they have sex. But it’s
just people come from every different walk of
life, people have different reasons why they
do things, and that applies to sex, too.
Yeah, I just feel like, unless you look at
them as a person, because that’s who we
are at the basis, we all have desires and
wants, just because other desires and wants
may be different. Or you might have differing views on
these things. That doesn’t mean that you get to ostracize
somebody just because of the choice that they made.
Test
35