I’m a little behind on posting this, but last week kicked off a fund raising initiative over at Scarleteen, a sex-ed website for teens run by my friend and colleague, Heather Corinna. Scarleteen has been offering solid, straight-forward information about sexuality and health to teens since 1998, which is practically forever in Internet years. You should donate, and to encourage you to do so, I will re-share this story of my own sexual mis-education in 1986:

In my sixth grade health class, where many of my classmates were getting their fledgling education on sex, my mousy and shy teacher walked us through diagrams of male and female genitals. As we looked on in our textbooks, she read off each body part and gave us a medical definition of what it was. These are the testicles, they produce the sperm. These are the vas deferens, which transport the sperm. This is the labia majora, the outer part of the vulva. This is the anus, where feces exeunt the body.

But she skipped one. I was following along carefully in my textbook, and my teacher had definitely skipped one of the parts of the female genitalia. There was a small cashew-shaped portion of the diagram that the teacher had overlooked.

Ever the brown-noser, I raised my hand. “Excuse me, you left one out.” My teacher apologized, and asked me which one she’d omitted.

“You didn’t tell us about the clitoris,” I gloated, pleased with myself for having caught her in error. I had no idea what the clitoris was. Even my parents, in their liberalized “sex is ok!” mind frame, didn’t think that an 11 year old needed to know much about the clitoris.

The teacher answered simply, “Ah. The clitoris is the nerve center of the female genitals.”

“Huh, no wonder she left it out,” I thought to myself. “That sounds boring. Just nervous system stuff.” Little did I know.

Naturally, now I slightly resent this teacher for her glaring omission. Was it really just an oversight? Or was this some sort of morality call on her behalf — that girls don’t need to be educated about their own pleasure, only their baby makin’ plumbing? There are too many adults who have no idea where the clitoris is, and education begins early! Think of all those 11 year olds who could have been educated!

I’m certainly not suggesting that the teacher should have winked at the class and leered, “Hope all you kids are paying attention, ‘cuz if you know where THIS little button is, you’ll be very very popular in high school!” No, no. But at least she could have said, “Class, that’s the clitoris, the nerve center of the genitals and an area crucial to sexual health and well-being.” That would have been good. But she didn’t, so I went home to my mother’s books and did a little more research before I understood.

… Now, go donate to Scarleteen. Why? Because every curious sixth grader deserves to know all she wants about the “nerve center of the female genitals.”