I took a standalone course through Mohawk College’s continuing education program. The course was not part of any initiative to a diploma or certification but it was interesting. I learned about Human Sexuality. We used this textbook and the professor took us through the various chapters with additional statistics, quizzes, and readings. It was a fascinating exploration of a personal view on sexuality.

I cannot say that I learned a lot of new information (though that young people in Canada are less informed now than 20 years ago about STI prevention and statistics is troubling if not surprising), but it did grant me a fantastic opportunity to explore my feelings and thoughts around some of the baggage we have in our public discourse around sexuality and crimes of a sexual nature.

My findings are thus: We need to talk more. With ourselves, with our partners, with the children in our lives, with our neighbours and colleagues about what consent looks like, about what we like and don’t like, about why “normal” doesn’t really exist and “abnormal” lives everywhere. We need to talk about kinks and fetishes, about what’s harmful and what’s celebratory, what’s predatory and what’s passionate. We need better representation in our media of healthy and diverse relationships.

We need to talk in facts - about anatomy, about biology, but also about social constructs like gender and “sexy.” What is normal for one culture is wildly inappropriate for another, and the same goes for people. How do these values of attraction, or these roles of interaction, or the script we use change over the generations? How do we change these scripts in different circumstances? Why? To what effect? Are they built from within or from external forces in our lives? Can we change them? How? Why?

Let’s talk about it.