What You Need to Know | Act Now
Support Comprehensive Sex Education
Locally-appointed officials and school boards often shape sex ed curricula. Push for sex ed reform in your community by researching the curriculum currently in place and compiling a proposal for improvements.
Advocate for your proposal by attending relevant meetings (e.g. school board meetings) and making your voice heard. Bonus points if you bring a group of advocates with you! You can also utilize people power by collecting petition signatures for your proposal; use this opportunity to raise awareness about the current state of sex ed in your community and call attention to the benefits of shifting to comprehensive sex ed.
Host a Sex Positive Game Night
Sex education, or a lack of it, has failed tons of young people by the time they get to college. Help fill in the gaps on your campus by hosting an educational, sex positive game night to demystify STIs, contraception, and healthy relationship practices and dispel myths about gender and sexuality.
Try Condom Bingo (sample bingo cards) or Sex Jeopardy (example) for starters! You can get condoms and dental dams either from your school’s health center, a local reproductive health clinic, or through the Condom Collective.
Get SafeZone Certified
SafeZone training is meant to develop, enhance, and maintain environments that are culturally competent and supportive to LGBTQIA individuals. Spend a meeting with your feminist group getting SafeZone certified and encourage others in your university community to do so too!
Have a Sex Talk
Facilitate a sex positive conversation on campus to debunk myths, share lived experiences, and broaden understandings of other experiences. Start with a safe space conversation within your group. Once your group feels comfortable, plan to host a broader sex positive conversation and invite the general student body. It may be helpful to seek out a sex positive speaker to guide and moderate the discussion so that students have the opportunity to both learn and bring their ideas to the table. After these experiences, reflect on where to go next: what have you learned from facilitating these conversations? Can your college or university do more to support sex positivity on campus? Arrange a meeting with school administrators to advocate for sex positive changes on campus!
Celebrate Love Your Body Week
Love Your Body Week is an annual campaign to celebrate our bodies as they are. Lead the celebration on your campus by:
- Posting body positivity notes on mirrors in residence halls and other common spaces.
- Screening a sex positive, body positive movie followed by a discussion about body image.
- Encouraging your peers to share what they love about their bodies on social media.
- Dedicating a meeting topic to body standards in the media and how they impact our view of sexuality and gender.
Adopt Your Local Clinic
Comprehensive reproductive health clinics provide not only much-needed care, but often access to sex education and safe sex resources. Clinics often love working with students, and can even come to your campus to help educate people about sexual health.
You can build a relationship with your local reproductive health clinic by volunteering, escorting, and interning. By working with your local clinic, you can also help de-stigmatize the relationship that many people have with seeking reproductive health care. For more ideas on how to support local reproductive health clinics, check out our Adopt-A-Clinic campaign.