Reggaeton Was My Sex-Ed

Salomé Gómez-Upegui
6 min readJan 12

In fifth grade I received mandatory “sex-ed” at school. We sat, squirming with suspense in a dark musty room, as numbers relating promiscuity to high school dropouts and poverty glowed on a teleprompter. Every single contraception method was portrayed as ineffective — abstinence was the only safe and respectable option. The message delivered in that room: sex is a dangerous drug and the biggest looming threat to a young girl’s value. Sex was…