Assistance needed: Research on Sexuality and Sex Education

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The part about sexist people happened to me at my parking lot/landscaping job two years ago in the summer when I had one guy who had problems with my male gender identity bellowed to our supervisor who was going to set me up to mow along one side of the parameter of our main job site, "SHE CAN'T DO THAT! SHE'S A GIRL!"

Nine months later after the main course of the Easter Dinner at Stepping Stones, I gave him a piece of his own medicine by bellowing as loud as I could while standing in the doorway of the main dining room, "SHE CAN'T DO THAT! SHE'S A GIRL!"

Referring to the time Mick got his drum set demolished by Dave - I guess that was my drum pedal to the head moment and I don't think I'll have another moment like that for as long as I live.

Yes, but that is only the obvious cases. The less obvious are when you are talked into something you don't want to do. Saying no in that case is a lot harder.

General Questions:
1. What did you have/do you currently have in terms of a sex education?
VERY basic sex education that included cutting open various chicken eggs to see the developing chick. I remember that the biology textbook had a drawing of a naked man and woman but that's just about it.

2. What did you think was beneficial about your sex education?
Nothing
3
. What was lacking about your sex education?
Some coverage of human sexuality would have been nice

4. What aspects about sexuality/sexual relationships/intimacy/sexual health did you wish you knew when you around 10-14 years old?
By 10-14 I knew what bits went where but that was it. We knew nothing of sexual health, nothing about intimacy and only the basics when it came to sexual relationships. Basically, I wish we had covered EVERYTHING!

5. What aspects about sexuality, sexual relationships, intimacy, sexual health would you like to know more about now?
Nothing, been there, done that, got the t-shirt. Having said that, I've never been able to handle the 'no sometimes means yes' thing.

6. What do you wish neurotypicals understood about autism in the context of sex or sexuality?
I wish they understood how difficult it was to make the initial approach, how hard it is to handle continuous rejection and how intense shyness means that a lot of aspies are lonely.

7. How much should we be integrating aspects of interpersonal communication and perspective-taking into a sex education curriculum?
Please do this as much as possible, any sort of social skills training is most welcome.

Agreed. This is part of where social skills lessons interface with sex ed. Teach people how to detect when someone is trying to push them into doing something they don't want to do, and teach them that it's okay for them to say no, how to say no without offending the other person, and what to do if "pushy" starts to turn into "date rape" (cf. kick or pepper spray).

By the way, guys need to learn this, too. I know that traditionally it's the guys who are supposed to be the sex fiends, but there are girls who are pushy and even manipulative; plus, not all guys will stick to dating just girls.

I'm going by the Kinsey institute's stats, here:
http://www.kinseyinstitute.org/resources/FAQ.html#Age

14 would seem to be a very young average age; it would mean that half of fourteen-year-olds are sexually active. In my experience, that is not the case; people at 14 still talk about kissing the way adults talk about sex. But it does not seem to be uncommon for a fourteen-year-old to have had sex; according to the above link, about a quarter of teens have lost their virginity by 15.

Thank you for all of your responses to these questions! Please continue to reply to the questionnaire as we would like as much input as possible!

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Hi Steppinthrax -

Thank you very much for your responses! I am another student working on this project.

In response to your questions, we had thought that teaching students with autism about communication and communication techniques, as well as techniques to see the same issue from different perspectives, would be beneficial for these students, but we wanted to see if people with autism believed these are important areas to be covered in a sex education program.

Also, would you be willing to specify if your children have or have not been diagnosed with autism? We didn't make it very clear in our original post, but the questions for parents are specifically geared toward parents of children with autism.

Thank you so much!

Thank you so much for all of your responses!

Just to clarify, since we didn't specify this well in the original post, the "Questions for Parents" are specifically geared toward parents of children with autism; therefore, if you're a parent with autism with a child (or children) who also has (have) autism, we would love for you to answer both sets of questions! If you're a parent with autism but your child does not have autism, please just answer the first set of questions (and not the ones for parents).

Thanks again, everyone!!