Jeana Jorgensen, "Sex Education 101: Approachable Essays on Folklore, Culture, & History" (Fox Folk Press, 2023)

Do

you look back at your sex ed classes and wonder WTF?! Are you a parent

looking at your kid’s curriculum and asking the same question?

Sex Education 101: Approachable Essays on Folklore, Culture, & History (Fox Folk Press, 2023) is

less of a how-to of sex education and more of a why. Why does

abstinence-only sex ed receive so much federal funding? Why do

instructors show gross images of STIs to scare students? The answers, believe it or not, have a lot to do with folklore.

Folklore—informally

transmitted traditional culture—has a lot to say about sex. And it is

often people’s first point of contact with information and messages

about sex. Folklore encompasses urban legends, moral panics, and rumors,

which influenced early U.S. policies around sex, and also