13 June 2019
Today, June 13th, we visited David Lloyd Fitness Club to receive a lecture on sexual education within the Netherlands and on female sexuality. Sanne Klunder began her career as a sexologist with youth, and then moved to more specialized education. Individuals seek out her help in her office when they have questions about sexual health or sexual problems, and she will advise them on how to fix these issues. Some examples of the issues people come to her with are erectile dysfunction, delayed orgasm, and pain issues. In her personal life, she is a mother of a four year old girl with another on the way.
During our lecture, we watched a video called “Dutch Lessons in Love,” which explained the historical progress Dutch society had made in the world of sexuality. It went through multiple decades beginning in the 60s, explaining many of the monumental events and ideals that developed, leading to a more open-minded society surrounding sexuality. In the 1960s, the birth control contraceptive pill became widely available, and one of the lead Bishops in the Netherlands announced that the responsibility of family planning is now on the parents rather than the church. The 1970s marked the liberation of women and homosexuals, which opened the gate in the 1980s to begin the talk about AIDS, STI’s, and violence against women. The video ended in the 1990s describing a sexual culture with highly explicit content, showing the major difference from just 30 years beforehand.
Sanne also gave us a lecture on female sexuality and sexual health as a whole. “Sexual health is the state of physical, mental, social well being in relation to sexuality. It requires a positive and respectful approach to sexuality and sexual relationships, as well as her possibility of having pleasurable and safe sexual experiences, free of coercion, discrimination and violence.” The reason we need facts about sexuality is because it encompasses physical development, sexual feeling, sexual behavior, gender identity, and sexual orientation, which are large factors in all of our lives. We reviewed an image of a vulva that revealed what is underneath the surface, which many have not seen before, showing the organs that cause our sexual reactions due to it being highly sensitive. There is a current “reverse revolution” against the years of progress women have made in liberating our sexuality. With our male-dominanted society, there is a want to push us back into where we were before. In the Netherlands there is a new male crisis of not knowing where they stand because they have always been dominant. She ended our discussion by asking us to reflect back on sexual experiences in our own lives, asking us questions such as when we had our first sexual experience, our first kiss, a time when we may have overstepped boundaries of another, and when we first learned about our body parts.
I personally really enjoyed this lecture because it was very relevant to exactly what we are studying. By comparing the Netherlands to the US in terms of sexuality, it is interesting to see the many struggles people in both societies have, although the Netherlands has gotten much further than the US. Sanne was an incredible speaker with fantastic information that I may have not considered prior. I found the self-reflection exercise very interesting because it forced us to review our own personal lives, which I don’t believe we as American women do enough because we have always been told what we want. The pleasure aspect for both individuals involved in a sexual relationship is highly important, and yet it seems to be so difficult for some women to discuss with their partner because, within heterosexual sex, it usually ends with a male orgasm without considering how the women is feeling.
- Cassidy Clark
Public Health Abroad! 