My sex education was likely similar to most people’s sex education in the USA – pretty basic – the standard “here’s a picture of a crazy scary STI and here’s a childbirth video and these are the two reasons you shouldn’t have sex. Just don’t do it.” But what is “it”? That basic approach to sex ed completely left out anything related to feelings or the development of attachment or the fact that sex goes beyond penis in vagina sex (not that they ever explicitly talked about PiV, which is a whole other issue). One might think that’s innocuous, but it actually ended up being really damaging for me as someone who was pretty confused about my sexual attraction to some of my closes friends. I remember going to sleepovers and just feeling this intensity of butterflies in my stomach of wanting to just get *closer* to my friends. Closer than friends closer. And I never understood it. I’m sure I would have come out as a lesbian far earlier than I did and avoided many terrible relationships with men that made me feel like I was just broken. I wasn’t broken. The sex ed system is broken because it doesn’t acknowledge the diversity of sexual attraction.