Meet Up Group 7 Azeem Dhukka Reeve Cooper Michaela Montez Azeem Like Michaela my parents never had any kind of talk with me so I learned the majority of what I know through health class and through others Being Muslim talking about sex can be kind of taboo or it could be that it s just a tough conversation to have since most people in our community are conservative In Sugar Land the area of Houston that I am from the schools tried their best to keep students on the right track for success but didn t invest time in the social growth of their students specifically in the contexts of sex Even then most of what I was taught only mentioned abstinence STD s and puberty Those conversations never really felt fully educational but instead to convince us to remain abstinent It wasn t until I was older that I understood more about sex in our society In media sex is portrayed as something fun passionate and even casual Media outlets like music movies tv shows and even radio shows influence the youth and their perception of what sex really is so I also think this can drastically affect people s expectations and cause them more confusion as they try to navigate sex in society After moving out for college I realized that sex is very natural and everything is entirely decided between the people involved I wouldn t change the way I learned about sex however I feel as though I learned what I needed to when I needed to know it Reeve I think it s weird but I can t remember exactly when I learned about sex I ve gone to a private religious school my whole life before coming to UT so my parents left it up to the school to teach us When the school did teach us we had abstinence seminars they explained that sex before marriage was wrong etc My parents weren t very strict because they let us consume any media that we really wanted Because of this I learned a lot about sex through TV movies music and other pop culture resources Sex in most media outlets is super idealized Whenever you watch a romantic movie or anything of the sort sex is portrayed as something fun romantic and special Most of the time it s shown as something positive and normal like any other facet of human interaction I can t think of a specific movie off the top of my head but all romantic movies have a similar plot and they most often end in sex Sex isn t always how it looks in the movies though of course I think my idea of sex could be a lot more conservative given how I was raised I had a lot of access to movies TV and music that sometimes had sexual content and some kids aren t allowed to be around that kind of thing at all Maybe those kids are more sheltered or conservative about sex or talking about sex in general I don t think I would change the way I learned about sex though Michaela My parents never had the talk with me so I mostly learned about sex through health class at school and through peers I grew up in West Texas which is typically conservative My school had a small student body which was conservative as well so when the education came to us it was still very sparse On the contrary there were a lot of details given about STD s probably in hopes to scare us into staying abstinent Since I lacked a reliable source for all the facts I was fed a lot of false information by my peers It wasn t until I was in high school that I really understood what sex was I grew up in a strict Christian household and was taught from my parents that sex was sacred and meant to be saved for marriage and other than that we didn t really talk about it However sex in popular culture gave me a different perspective on the topic I ve never seen a movie where the characters wait until marriage to have sex A lot of the sexual content in movies is either extremely passionate or a hookup kind of situation There s not a whole lot in between I see a lot of movies in which sex is this magical amazing thing between someone you re madly in love with Because of this I think a lot of people get their hopes up when it comes to real life Now I view sex as a natural human thing I think because I grew up in such a strict household I really challenged by beliefs when I moved out and this is a topic that changed dramatically for me I don t think sex or the number of partners someone has is something that anyone should be shamed for