While you may not always agree with her, you have to admit that Shailene Woodley is not afraid to speak her mind. Between her longtime protest of the Dakota Access Pipeline or her proclamations that eating bugs is the future of food, Woodley is essentially a Bernie Sanders-loving wood sprite. As part of the promotional tour for the upcoming Oliver Stone film Snowden, Woodley tackles another hot button issue in an interview with Net-A-Porter: female sex education.
While most would agree that American sex education is lacking in many regards, Woodley believes that the lack of information about masturbation, for girls in particular, is a real oversight.
“As a young woman you don’t learn how to pleasure yourself, you don’t learn what an orgasm should be, you don’t learn that you should have feelings of satisfaction,” Woodley said. “I’ve always had a dream of making a book called There’s No Right Way to Masturbate.”
On top of all that fun stuff, Woodley argues that self-pleasure would also cut down on the STIs that are becoming more and more prevalent, as well as possibly cutting down on teen pregnancy.
“If masturbation were taught in school, I wonder how [many] fewer people would get herpes aged 16, or pregnant at 14?”
While attributing teen pregnancy to just an outcome of a search for pleasure is a bit simplistic (there are many reasons why teenagers are having sex), she’s not necessarily wrong. By teaching young girls that they can and should have orgasms when they’re ready is an important step in bodily autonomy and personal ownership. Taking control of your sexuality instead of either fearing it or letting it control you is a beautiful thing.
Something tells me that One Million Moms is going to be boycotting that Divergent television show, though.
(H/T The Huffington Post)
