A pro-abortion nonprofit has created and funded a project inviting Texas high school students to take a sex education course that includes lessons on gender identity, masturbation, and pleasure.
The Fronterizx Community Project (FCP) pays student interns $15 an hour with a $50 monthly “self-care” stipend to attend workshops, create online content, and advocate for expansive sex education in the Southwest, per El Paso Matters. The project is funded by the West Fund, which helps women in West Texas and southern New Mexico get abortions but paused operations after the overturn of Roe v. Wade.
The West Fund operates as a branch of the National Network of Abortion Funds. The organization received funding from the National Institute of Reproductive Health to launch FCP, which aims to establish more “inclusive” policies in Texas independent school districts through student education and advocacy. This includes presentations to School Health Advisory Councils (SHACs), which help advise ISDs on sex education curricula.
“West Fund was able to assess the policies each ISD had in place at the time to find out how supportive and inclusive they were for all young people, and was also able to recruit, educate, and train volunteers to be advocates for sexual health education policy at their respective SHACs,” the group’s website states.
The program was launched in 2018 and takes intern classes of roughly six to eight high school juniors each year. Students must receive permission from their parents. The interns learn about topics such as contraception and teen pregnancy but also broach subjects like gender identity, masturbation, and pleasure, according to El Paso Matters.
FCP did not respond to a request for comment.
Angelica Bustos, a founder and program coordinator for FCP, said sex education in Texas should teach information relevant to LGBTQ and already sexually active students.
“They don’t have anybody to ask questions to because their teachers don’t always have the opportunity to answer those questions freely without getting in trouble,” Bustos told El Paso Matters. “Then they go home and they can’t ask those questions because they don’t quite feel comfortable asking their parents.”
FCP’s Instagram includes infographics on “queer sex,” abortion, “environmental racism,” and “liberation art.” Its TikTok has videos on “queer cooking,” masturbation for women, and advocacy against crisis pregnancy centers.
Corinthia Fraire, a program coordinator for FCP, said her group aims to help Texas students get a well-rounded sex education.
“There is just so clearly a gap in the school system and students crave the information and want to talk about it,” Fraire told El Paso Matters. “Our goal is to fill in that gap in a way that is welcoming to young people and to create a space for them to be able to have different discussions.”
Such efforts to adopt sex education curricula in Texas with an increased focus on sex and gender identity have been met with opposition from parents in recent years.
Fort Worth parents helped delay the school district’s plan to adopt a new sex education curriculum this year, claiming its lessons were “inappropriate,” “unscientific,” “unnatural,” and “laughable,” according to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.
Texas mandates that sex education lessons in public schools be abstinence-focused and require parental opt-in forms for participation.