- Hello, hello, hello.
Happy New Year.
It is 2020.
That is exciting.
I'm Hannah, welcome back or welcome to my channel.
We like to talk about all things sex and relationships,
and disability and chronic illness over here.
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So I often get asked how I became a sex educator,
or like where my passion for sex ed came from
and I don't really have a single answer
to this question.
It's really difficult for me because it kind of
spans lots of years, and it wasn't until
I started really thinking about it,
like why am I doing sex ed,
where did this interest come from?
It wasn't until I actually started thinking about it
that I started to find some clues, shall we say,
in my past that this would be a route
that I might want to take.
So in this video we are going to be going back in time
to my childhood and to my adolescence
to find these clues of why I'm now a sex educator.
And there's some weird stuff.
Is it weird?
I don't know.
Please let me know if you were also like this
as a young person, or if you are like this
as a young person.
I don't know what that says about me,
what that says about us.
We'll find out.
So the first memory that I have
of being interested in sex as a subject,
not as something that I would do, but as a subject,
this is what we're talking about, it's the subject matter.
That was when my parents gave me this book.
This unfortunately isn't the exact book that they gave me.
That got lost along the way and I re-bought it
on Amazon a few years ago.
It's "Let's Talk About Where Babies Come From".
I think my parents gave me this book
when I was about nine or 10 years old.
By then I think I did know where babies came from,
but I think they gave me this to answer all
of my further questions.
It's narrated by these two characters here,
a bird and a bee.
Do you get it, do you get it?
And also look at these inside pages.
It's a big egg and lots of sperm worshipping it.
At least that's how I think of it.
The main things that I remember about this book
is the sex page, and the great sperm race.
Here we go, this is the sex page.
At age 10 I stared at this for ages,
just being like, what is happening.
I can't remember if I was aroused by it or not,
but this to me was like the first graphic depiction
of sex that I'd seen.
I count myself lucky that this was the most graphic thing
that I'd seen by the age of 10.
So this was the sex page that fascinated me,
and then the great sperm race comes immediately after.
The big race, a lovely little cartoon
of the great sperm race.
Aw, look it's the end of a penis.
But this book is also great,
it has like what is love and different kinds of love.
And it shows like different sexualities.
And it has like different kinds of families.
And then this is also wild, where it shows you
the development of a foetus.
Look at this page, this it says is actual size.
One month is actual size.
Oh the ball of cells, there's a dot on the page,
that's actual size.
Six months is actual size.
They're all actual size except for one month
which is a bit enlarged and one and a half months
which is a bit enlarged, but other than that
it says they are all the actual size.
So yeah, this is the first thing that I can remember
about the age of 10.
Now we fast forward a few years to the next thing
that I remember, which was in year nine at school.
So it'd been 13, 14 years old,
and it was, da-da-da-da, the condom demo.
If you got this in school you will remember it.
Is this condom in date?
Yes, 2021.
Okay, basically what happened was we were put in groups
of like four or five and we were given a test tube,
which was meant to be our dildo slash banana.
That's all the school had, science test tubes.
The nurse handed out some condoms
and we had to practise putting the condom on the test tube.
No one in my group wanted to touch the condom.
Everyone was like, nah.
And here's the thing, this is where my bad memory comes in,
I remember stepping up, I remember being the one
being like I will put on the condom,
but I don't remember why.
Like I don't remember whether I felt comfortable around it.
I don't know whether I was like interested in it.
Or I don't know whether it was just
because I was a teacher's pet in general
and I would literally do anything to be good in class.
But all I remember is that I was the only one in the group
to touch the condom, 'cause everyone was like, ew.
I don't even remember if I was grossed out by it.
This was definitely my first time seeing,
touching a condom I think.
I'm gonna show you how I did it.
I don't have anything to show you.
But basically I put it on the wrong way around,
and it started rolling back up the test tube,
and I was like what is going on,
and the nurse came over and she was like,
you've put it on the wrong way around
it needs to go on this way around.
So good job that I did have that lesson
before using condoms for real.
So it's supposed to like roll outwards like that,
however I'd put it on this way around
and it was rolling inwards.
And so as you can see, it wasn't good
and it just like rolled back up the test tube
and now I have really lubey fingers,
and I didn't think this through.
If you do find that you've put a condom on
the wrong way around do not then inside out it
and put it on the right way around
'cause you may have already got some semen on the condom
and then now that is on the outside of the condom,
which is where you don't want it.
So just FYI.
So yeah, I was more than happy to step up
and be the one in my group to put the condom on,
but I don't know why.
I cannot remember what was going through my head
in that moment.
The next thing I remember happening
was around the same time, and this is the first time
that actually there were signs of maybe
me becoming a sex educator rather than just interested
in the subject, and that was around periods
and period products specifically.
Around the age of 13, 14, boys started to be curious
about what the girls were up to.
Obviously now I know that it's not as binary as that,
but when I was at school it was like,
girls get periods and boys find them gross and disgusting.
But what I would do for some reason,
I don't, again, don't know why,
this is just something that I did,
I would take it upon myself to educate the boys
about periods and I would show them how pads
and tampons worked.
We'd just be hanging out at my house after school
and I would grab a tampon
and I would take the boys into the bathroom.
This story is actually not going
where you might think it's going.
What I would do is I would just basically,
oh my god I never used these tampons
when I was in school though.
Take the tampon, just this bit of it,
and I would run it under some water.
Basically, ooh!
Look at that.
And I would just basically show them how it expands.
But then I had to kind of reassure them.
I was like, it doesn't get this big inside,
because obviously the amount of water
that this thing has soaked up
is not like the amount of blood.
So I would do that with tampons.
Just to be clear, I wouldn't actually
demo it on myself, on my body.
That's not what happened.
And then I would the same for pads.
I don't think I ran the pads under water,
'cause it was like less cool to see a pad expand.
That doesn't really happen.
But I would show them like how it works,
and like just what one looks like.
Like what it actually looks like.
So I'd be like, here is a pad.
It's sticky.
We put it in our knickers.
And then, you know, it's got the wings
and they go around your knickers.
Oh god.
That was sticky.
I do also remember a game of dares that we played once,
and one of the boys got dared to put some ketchup on a pad,
and like stick it onto his forehead and run down the street.
And I'm pretty sure he did it.
Yep, good times.
Good times.
So yeah, that was definitely like the first memory
that I have of teaching other people about bodies
and like sex related stuff.
There you go, like 13, 14 I was.
It was in me from a young age.
Okay, so this next one is a really funny one,
and I only realised that it happened recently.
Like I only remembered it, and actually remembered like,
huh, that's weird.
Not everyone would've done that.
Which was, when I was like 15, 16,
and me and my boyfriend at the time
were thinking about having sex,
I asked my parents for the talk.
I think I got it in my head
that the talk was a rite of passage.
People talk about the talk so much.
It's like, have you had the talk?
Have your parents given you the talk?
But that's not what it is.
It's not the talk, and then you're like, done.
It's like, lots of little talks throughout your entire life.
And my parents were always really open about sex at home,
and mom like, you know, offered to buy me condoms,
she had stacked up on period products
before I'd even started.
It was a very chill household
when it came to that kind of stuff.
And so I thank them for that,
because then I felt comfortable like going to them,
and like asking them questions.
But I had clearly, very much internalised the fact
that the talk was an event,
and it was something that I had to tick off
before I had sex.
Anyone else?
Just me, yeah sure.
And so, I asked my parents to give me the talk.
And I think they were just like, what?
'Cause it's not a thing.
The talk is not a thing.
It's not an event.
Oh my god.
So my mom has lots of baths,
and when it's my mom's bath time, that is like,
time for you to kind of like, sit in there
and like have your deep chats
and have conversations with her.
And so I was like, okay mom's having a bath.
This is like the perfect opportunity.
And so I grabbed my dad as well.
I can't remember the logistics of this.
Maybe they remember, I don't know
if they would remember this.
So it was like, me and my dad sat in the bathroom,
and my mom in the bath, and I was like,
so I might be thinking about having sex,
is there anything that you want me to know beforehand?
(Hannah laughing)
What?
But they were just lovely, and was just like,
oh, well you know, just make sure that you're ready
and like, use protection, and da-da-la-da.
That's all I remember from that.
But I just find it weird that I asked
to have the talk from my parents.
I don't know.
I think this maybe also ties into me being like,
a goody two shoes, and never wanting to get into trouble
at school or at home, because I was thinking
about having sex, me getting the talk from my parents
was also like them giving me permission?
I don't know.
Maybe I need a therapist to like,
dive into all of that stuff.
Now we move on to sixth form college.
For anyone who's not from the UK,
sixth form college is where you go for two years, 16 to 18.
So I arrive at sixth form college.
I have had my sexual debut, and I'm meeting other people
who maybe had different upbringings to me,
maybe went to a different school to me.
So we didn't get the same sex education.
So there are two things that happened in college
that indicate to me, that I was interested in sex ed.
One, there was a boy that I really, really fancied.
He went to a different college,
but we had lots of mutual friends,
and oh my god, I would pour over his Facebook photos.
I was a little bit obsessed.
It was bad.
After months and months of pining or fancying this boy,
and it never happening, it happened.
I don't know how, it was at one of the parties,
and we start making out.
And I was just like, oh my god.
I was in, I was like, this is the best thing ever.
There was an after party at like someone's house,
and we continue canoodling and da-la-da-da.
And we're like going for it.
We find a bedroom, and we're like, gonna have sex.
However, neither of us have a condom on us.
And so I'm like, well, it's not gonna happen,
'cause I got taught sex ed.
And you know, I did the condom demo.
I did the condom demo.
Not afraid of condoms.
And he said, it's all right, I'll just pull out.
And I was like, that doesn't work.
And I remember being so shocked
that that was something that he was willing to do.
We didn't have sex, that didn't happen.
And I can't actually remember then what happened
for the rest of the evening.
But we did not have penetration.
I remember at the time,
not being a difficult decision to make.
I was just like, no condom, no sexy time.
Like for some reason, I could completely
disassociate my feelings for him,
and wanting to bone, with rationality.
And I was drunk as well.
How did I manage that?
I'm like, well done past Hannah.
But that for me was the first time
that I really understood that not everyone
was coming to sex with the same knowledge,
from the same place, with the same understanding.
And I was like, wait, how did he come to that conclusion,
and I've been taught that the pull out method
isn't reliable.
And also, STIs, STIs guys.
That was incident number one.
Incident number two was during an RE class.
Religious education.
It was a class about healthy relationships.
And I raised my hand and I was like,
are you gonna teach us about contraception, and abortion,
and all of these things that I just assumed
that we would be taught about now that we were like, 17.
And our teacher was like, we can't talk about those things
in this college because it's a catholic college,
and it goes against the catholic church rules.
So like, no abortion, no contraception.
And I remember getting angry.
And like, as we've seen from previous examples,
I'm a goody two shoes, I'm a teacher's pet.
I don't want to upset anyone,
I don't want to get myself into trouble.
I remember yelling, I probably wasn't yelling.
But I remember arguing with her,
and challenging her on that, and just being like, but why?
We're all 17, we all need to know this information.
I think I remember saying something like,
we're all having sex.
But you know, in hindsight,
I know that not all 17 year olds are having sex.
But at the time, I was just like, this is horrendous.
Like we all could be having sex,
and we need to learn about this kind of thing.
But no, she was having none of it.
And we did not get taught that in school.
And so that was the first time
that I really felt there was something wrong.
So this boy didn't know that the pull out method
isn't a reliable form of contraception,
and you can still get STIs from using the pull out method.
Also, our school is refusing to give us education
around contraception.
And so I was like, hmm, this is bad.
And then there were two years of my life
that I have no idea what happened.
No, I know what happened in those years.
I just have no examples of like, me getting into sex ed.
The next thing I remember is being 19 and finding YouTube,
and suddenly like opening up this whole can of worms
and learning all about sex
from sex educators on the internet.
I don't know what was happening between 17 and 19,
other than I had a long term boyfriend,
so I don't know whether I was just like, I know it all now,
and I just like stopped being interested
in learning about it.
I don't know.
But yeah, and then 19, discovered YouTube,
started making videos,
and also then started making my own sex ed content.
There you have it.
There is the history of my sex ed journey, I guess.
Those are all of the things that I can remember.
And yeah, some of them are a bit hazy.
I can't remember specific details.
But I hope that gives you like a general idea
of how I became me.
(Hannah laughing)
Who I am.
I would love to hear in the comments,
how you became interested in sex as a subject,
not as a thing that you do, but as a subject matter.
'Cause I imagine that a lot of you who watch this channel
are also interested in sex as a subject.
Please like this video.
If you liked it and you liked my demos, my demos,
my water tampon demo, look at that, look at that.
Don't forget to subscribe, and hit that notification bell,
'cause I make new videos every week,
and I'll see you in the next one.
Bye.