Last week, Nebraskan lawmakers met to discuss plans to update the public school system’s sexual education standards. If the legislation goes ahead, each school district’s sexual health classes will be required to meet comprehensive, medically accurate standards. As this went on, a HIV-Positive Nebraskan woman cited her own personal story, in order to testify in favour of the proposed changes.
Janine Brignola doesn’t believe that she was properly educated about sexual wellness and the HIV virus, and so she wants to prevent other students in her state from making the same mistakes she did. She considers herself to have been “naïve” about sexually transmitted infections (STIs) and she urged lawmakers to ensure that Nebraska’s youth don’t grow up likewise. As a graduate from high school in Lincoln, the 30-year-old claims that she was never warned of the dangers of the virus that causes AIDS at the schools she attended.
Brignola explained that her peers told her it was a ‘dirty disease’ that could kill her, which led her to believe that only the sexually promiscuous or ‘junkies or prostitutes got HIV.’ She commented, ‘I was naive and thought Nebraska was not a place that it could happen.’ However, Nebraska isn’t the only place where there’s a lack of information on looking out for your sexual wellbeing.
According to the CDC, HIV infections throughout the US are most prevalent in regions where students don’t learn about the virus in school. Even the small number of states (20) that mandate both sex education and HIV education may not necessarily require health classes to adhere to basic standards to ensure scientific accuracy. Yet, as Brignola highlighted in her testimony, educating adolescents about effective methods to prevent HIV — rather than feeding them shame-based messages about sexual promiscuity – is essential.
It was at the height of the national HIV/AIDS epidemic, back in the 1980s, that public schools first started teaching information about sexually transmitted infections. However, under the leadership of former President George W. Bush, religious conservatives rolled back much of that progress, replacing sex education classes with abstinence-only programmes in states across the country. The CDC worries that this backwards step has meant that today’s young people aren’t getting the message on HIV, as many young Americans continue to put themselves at risk for the virus. In fact, half of HIV-positive individuals between the ages of 13 and 24 aren’t even aware they have it.
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