“I don’t know if I have a uterus or not. They didn’t tell me.”
A few months ago, body literacy instructor Christina Valenzuela presented a live Cycle Prep workshop for girls at a local church in her home state of Massachusetts. Following the event, a mother approached her with an information pamphlet from her daughter’s public school.
“She explained that the presentation was given in a co-ed classroom,” Valenzuela said. “Boys and girls were not separated, which ended up creating some confusion when the kids went home. This mother told me that a friend of hers had a son who attended the same presentation her daughter did. One day he asked his mom, ‘Am I going to get a period?’ The mom was taken aback, but responded, ‘Why would you think you’re going to get a period?’ ‘Because in the presentation, they said that people with uteruses get periods. And I don’t know if I have a uterus or not. They didn’t tell me.’”
As the school year commences, the parents of nearly 50 million children will relinquish their rights to American public schools. This a public school system that, in many states, actively promotes obscene literature, transgender hormone treatment, and parent subversion to push perverse agendas. A trademark of the education institution for the past century, menstrual instruction has swung further and further from reality.
The Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States, founded in 1964, now actively promotes “a variety of social issues … [like] LGBTQ rights and reproductive justice,” the latter of which is often a euphemism for abortion. Basic biology has taken a backseat.
Replacing Body Ignorance with Body Literacy
Valenzuela knows firsthand how blatant gender politics in the classroom are wreaking havoc on young minds. She has instructed couples in natural family planning (NFP) since 2013. An umbrella term for natural methods to increase a woman’s chance of conceiving and avoiding pregnancy based on the rhythms of her individual cycle, NFP has been widely and successfully used to support women and families.
In response to growing “progressive” instruction in schools and a lack of confidence in parents to tackle sex and biological instruction, she developed a series of online workshops for girls leading up to puberty and beyond. Her company, Pearl and Thistle, supports fertility and body literacy for single women, couples, and parents.
“That just teaching the biology of the body could be counter-cultural was never on my radar,” Valenzuela said. “The very first Cycle Prep program was in 2019, at the request of mothers who were looking for education and a value system that explained all of the science of the menstrual cycle and communicated the goodness of the body design. That this is a normal, healthy part of growing up and this is something that our bodies do.”
“I had no idea that in the wake of this, we would be needing more of this education because some school programs are intentionally going a different route,” she added.
Valenzuela is adamant that body literacy should replace body ignorance and that education should start with parents or caregivers. Relinquishing your child’s instruction in even basic truths of sexual anatomy to schools is risky these days.
“The fourth-grade teachers in our classrooms aren’t any more an expert in the menstrual cycle than a parent,” Valenzuela said. “They are working off a script that was devised by the education system.”
And unlike the hyper-sexualized sex ed in public schools today, Valenzuela disagrees with a sex-centered approach.
“We can talk about the menstrual cycle and puberty without going into a detailed conversation of sex and contraception,” she said. “We’ve been taught in our society that they are all combined, but they are not.”
With many schools teaching more gender ideology than biology, resources that help young women to accept and understand their bodies are especially needed.
“I think I would have had a much more positive experience of my cycles in those teenage years if I had felt that there was some sort of community versus being siloed in our own cycles, our own questions, and our own suffering,” Valenzuela said. “I always commission families that if they [educate themselves] as a group they are doing it for each other. They will be equipped to help one another out.”
Valenzuela recommends the following cycle education programs and books for girls:
Cycle Prep: First Period Course (Pearl and Thistle)
Cycle Show (Guiding Star Project)
TeenSTAR (programs for boys and girls)
Mothers of (Pre)Teens Online Course (Natural Womanhood)
Mother Daughter Area (Fertility Science Institute)
TeenFEMM (from Fertility Education and Medical Management, directory of instructors)
FABMbase (a self-described “fertility awareness database”)
What’s Going On In My Body? (a book by Dr. Elisabeth Raith-Paula)
