Shailene Woodley Wonders What Would Happen If Masturbation Were Taught in School

Jill Pantozzi | September 19th, 2016

Divergent star Shailene Woodley is currently making the press rounds for her latest film, Snowden, but she’s been known to have a lot to say about the world outside Hollywood. Today’s topic: learning masturbation in school.

Net-a-Porter.com’s The Edit did a feature on the actor in which they got on the topic of sex education, particularly as it pertains to young women.

She has an ardent sense of social justice, on everything from sex education (“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. I’ve always had a dream of making a book called There’s No Right Way to Masturbate. If masturbation were taught in school, I wonder how [many] fewer people would get herpes aged 16, or pregnant at 14?”) to Photoshopping (“I had crazy, horrific acne when I filmed Divergent. [But] you would never know because they retouch you. Yes, it’s a movie, it’s their product and I am playing a character, but, as a human being, why wouldn’t you just let my zits show?”).

Sex ed is a notoriously controversial topic (as I’m sure Woodley’s words here by themselves are to many) but personally, I think it should hold just as much weight as education on anything else in school. The more you know, the better off you are in the world, right?

Sex ed around the world is failing, according to a recent study, but the United States is notoriously bad at it with many arguing against its existence in schools at all. ABC News writes:

In the U.S., 24 states and the District of Columbia require public schools to teach sex education, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. The content varies widely among states from an abstinence-only approach to a comprehensive review, and only 20 of these states mandate that information taught to students be “medically accurate,” according to the conference.

Not to mention a lot of young people around the world find the current sex ed curriculum unhelpful. Maybe someone should give Woodley a crack at a book they can use it in classrooms?

(via Death and Taxes)