Tasha Elizarde, a Juneau-Douglas High School senior, told the world last week that she used to know nothing about sex.<\/p>\n
\u201cI didn\u2019t even know a lot of stuff about health things, too. Like, I didn\u2019t know about my period. That\u2019s the one story that I always jump to because it was so big. I didn\u2019t know about it until I got it and even when I got it, I ignored it at first until my mom kind of forced me to talk about it,\u201d Elizarde said during an interview last week. \u201cI really didn\u2019t know anything until, like, actually this year. I didn\u2019t know a lot of things.\u201d<\/p>\n
The 17-year-old wrote about her journey \u201cfrom knowing nothing about sex to becoming a sex-ed activist\u201d in a post she wrote for MTV News titled, \u201cThe Power of Understanding Your Body.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n She wrote that she\u2019s not alone when it comes to being na\u00efve about one\u2019s body and she hoped to reach those teens through her writing.<\/p>\n \u201cLess than a quarter of Alaskan schools taught the recommended HIV, STD, and pregnancy prevention topics during the 2013\u201314 school year, beating all but three other states for lack of access to sex education,\u201d Elizarde wrote in the post.<\/p>\n Elizarde credits her newfound self-awareness to Teen Council, a peer education program of Planned Parenthood. Every week, Elizarde meets with nine other teens and a Planned Parenthood educator to discuss various sexual health and relationship issues. She first joined Teen Council in May 2015.<\/p>\n \u201cYou could easily say that sex ed is important, but it\u2019s completely different to say that it\u2019s also empowering. It just gives us so much information about your body and through that, you are kind of able to accept yourself more and, in a way, knowing the information is almost like having another support system behind you,\u201d Elizarde said.<\/p>\n She added: \u201cKnowing yourself and knowing your body allows you to just progress farther in life.\u201d<\/p>\n In the MTV News article, Elizarde wrote about her transformation from \u201cthe shy kid who sat as close to the classroom door as possible\u201d to testifying in the Alaska State Capitol \u201cfor the first time against a legislative attack on sex education.\u201d<\/p>\n [Juneau teens say banning Planned Parenthood is bad for students<\/a>]<\/p>\n She was speaking against Wasilla Republican Sen. Mike Dunleavy\u2019s Senate Bill 89. Parts of that bill, in a transformed version, got attached to House Bill 156, which becomes law next month. The Juneau School District has already taken its first step in adhering to HB 156, presenting a list of sex ed educators to the school board for approval. Elizarde said the vetting of educators, their credentials and the curricula \u201creally hinders access to sex ed in a lot of Alaskan communities. Our state really took a disappointing step in the wrong direction with this new law.\u201d<\/p>\n