Sexual Health on Campus: Sex Ed & Student Life

Liv Taylor is joined today by Shane Anguhan and Deepali Upadhyaya for a lively discussion on sexual health and student life. They blend student insights with expert advice, covering essential topics like safe sex practices, protection from sexually transmitted infections, and the importance of consent. This podcast episode is your quick guide to navigating university life while staying informed and having fun!


Resources:

Peer Health Educator Volunteer Opportunity
Volunteer with Wellness | MRU (mtroyal.ca)

Mount Royal University Wellness Services
Call: (403) 440-8877
https://www.mtroyal.ca/CampusServices/WellnessServices/

Pride Centre  (Z211)
Hours of Operation:
Monday to Friday, closed weekends
Fall - Winter 9:00 am to 4:00 pm
Spring - Summer 9:00 am to 4:00 pm
(403) 440 5604

Society of Obstetrics and Gynecology
Sex & U (sexandu.ca)

Transcript

Liv Taylor  0:06  

Welcome to the Live Well Podcast hosted by the Healthy Campus Team of wellness services. My name is Liv Taylor and my pronouns are she/her and I'm a fourth year general science student here at MRU. I'm also a senior lead Peer Health Educator with the Healthy Campus Team. I wanted to acknowledge that we are on treaty seven land and we're excited that you're here with us today. The Live Well Podcast is a series focused on the voices and experiences of our students, staff and faculty here at MRU. We intend this series to be conversation based, informal and all about the experiences and insights of our Mount Royal community. I'm joined today by Shane Anguhan and Deepali Upadhyaya for part two of our sexual health podcast series. Before we start, I'd like both of you to introduce yourself your pronouns and your major or your affiliation with the University.

Shane Anguhan  0:53  

Hello, my name is Shane Anguhan. I am in my last year of university in the Psychology program, sorry, she/her pronouns. I am also a Peer Health Educator. And I'm about to graduate. So thank you for having me here, Liv.

Liv Taylor  1:08  

Awsome thanks for joining us and Deepa.

Deepa Upadhyaya  1:11  

Hi, everybody. I'm Deepa Upadhyaya. I'm associate professor in the School of Nursing and Midwifery here at Mount Royal, and also the Academic Director for the Bachelor of midwifery program. And my pronouns are she/her. 

Liv Taylor  1:23  

 Awesome, thank you both so much for being here today for our second part of this podcast. So I wanted to start off our discussion on sexual health today by asking you, Shane, what does sexual health mean to you?

Shane Anguhan  1:35  

Um, so sexual health to me, is basically knowing about your body, knowing about what could go wrong in terms of if you were ever to have sex or to ever engage in sexual activity, just knowing how the things that could go wrong with you, or the things that could go right. Just having that knowledge about what you're going into, and the ways in which it could affect you is what I believe sexual health to be and that's such a small term for it, I feel with how broad and how so many things that go into it, but just when I think sexual health, I think I think a lot of people just think like sex and sexual activity and all the things that go into that. But obviously, there's more beyond that. I'm excited to learn more about that, if anything.

Liv Taylor  2:19  

Yeah, me too. That's a that's a really good introduction, just in terms of your kind of student experience in your student perspective. And alongside that Deepa, I was wondering if there are any topics that might be a part of sexual health that maybe Shane didn't mention?

Deepa Upadhyaya  2:32  

Yeah, thanks, Shane. The I think before we define sexual health, maybe we could define what sex is, versus gender, for example, which I think sometimes can be conflated. Sex is natural and normal activity between individuals or between one person and it's meant to be an intimate act, whether it's self pleasuring, or shared with somebody that you trust. It's defined in different ways. But some examples of sex and sexual activities include touching, kissing, masturbation, sexual intercourse, cyber sex and phone sex, and oral and anal sex. The difference between sex and gender, sex is typically being male or female, and it's determined by biological sex or a sex assigned at birth. It's what the body parts chromosomes and hormones that an individual has. Gender is, being a boy or girl, man or woman, or a different gender as defined by the person refers to feelings of the gender, right feeling, being a man feeling being a woman, both neither or somewhere else along the gender spectrum. So gender may be the same or different as a biological sex that was assigned at birth, or it can be fluid, and it can change over time. So kind of defining sex and gender starts a conversation of how to define sexual health. So sexual health is, it goes along the continuum of, you know, starting sexual activity throughout your lifespan and how you might engage in healthy practices that make people feel good and feel good about themselves in the people that they're having sexual activities with.

Liv Taylor  4:08  

Awesome, well, thank you both for for providing us your understanding of sexual health. And I feel like it is important to start off with that so that our listeners can get an idea of what we're going to be talking about today. So Shane, one of the things that we talked about before recording today is contraception and kind of general student knowledge around options for contraception. So I wanted to ask you if you feel like this information is readily available and explained well to students.

Shane Anguhan  4:34  

So I was a peer health educator, or I've been one for the past two years. But I do have to admit that before that I knew nothing except for the basics of what you hear from your friends or what you see online. I do feel like being part of the healthy campus team and being a volunteer. I feel like I know that it's readily available and all the information is there. I just feel like not a lot of students. And so we'll initiate going to the healthy campus team specifically, just because there is information readily available to them, whether it be through their friends, or through the internet. And that's just from personal experience. But I do feel like it is readily available, students just haven't taken that step to reach out to learn more about it. 

Liv Taylor  5:19  

Right, that's actually a really important point, just the student initiative in terms of actively seeking out that information. And I know you mentioned that, since you become a Peer Health Educator, you've learned a lot more in terms of contraception or maybe sexual health. Are there specific places that you get your information regarding these topics? Or is it just through your work as a volunteer.

Shane Anguhan  5:41  

So it is mostly focused through my work as a volunteer with the healthy campus team, we do a lot of our research on our own, but we do seek out with the staff that specifically focus on that and learn most about it most of the information through them, which is very helpful, because I don't think a lot of people realize how much staff there is that focus on this and specialize on this that they could reach out to. So I just bringing that acknowledgement for students to know and just for them to be comfortable with reaching out in general, I think is very important. But yes, most of it is through like my volunteer work.

Liv Taylor  6:20  

Yeah. Well, thank you so much for sharing that. I feel like it is a really important topic to talk about this idea of having students reach out to faculty members or staff members who are knowledgeable who do have the information we need. Luckily for us, we have one of them sitting here with us today. So I was wondering, Deepa, can you tell us a little bit more about the broad options that are available for contraception? 

Deepa Upadhyaya  6:42  

Yeah, I think for students especially we were lucky we have some good resources, right in Canada that people can look to one of them is from the Society of Obstetrics and Gynecology called www.itsaplan.ca. That one has pretty up to date information on contraception that's available. Broadly speaking, there's kind of four different categories of contraception that are available to people that are sexually engaging in sexual activity. So hormonal, non hormonal, natural and emergency. And just to kind of list some of the different options in those areas. For example, hormonal contraception includes things like the hormonal inter uterine contraception or IUC. You might have also heard it called IUD, intrauterine device injectable contraception, so things like depo provera, vaginal rings, the patch, oral contraceptive pills, progesterone only pills and the implants that you may have seen people use nonhormonally we have IUDs or UCS that don't have hormones in them like the copper IUD, the SEC dummies for males tubal ligation, male condoms, female condoms, diaphragm, cervical caps, contraceptive sponges and sperm asides. Natural methods include withdrawal are also known as pulling out, fertility awareness methods, which I'm understanding are more popular on Tik Tok these days, abstinence Lactational amenorrhea method and then emergency contraception are available in morning after pills or the copper IUC your IUD. 

Liv Taylor  8:15  

Wow,thank you so much for that, I think I'm starting to understand a little bit about why students might not initiate these conversations, because it can be a little bit overwhelming to talk about it. There's a lot of options. There's a lot of information. And that's why it's important that we have discussions like what we're having today. So one of the reasons we wanted to talk about contraception today is that we know approaching these topics, like I said, can be a little bit uncomfortable, especially if you're talking about this for the first time with a partner. And Shane, I wanted to ask you, have you ever had to approach this topic with a partner? And do you feel comfortable bringing this up with partners?

Shane Anguhan  8:50  

I do think in general, with this generation, it is a bit harder to approach these topics. I found myself with previous partners bringing something like contraception up and then them getting offended or them saying "oh, don't worry about it". Like, you know, just wanting to have a serious conversation and being met with a wall is very hard to deal with sometimes. And I think just in general, there is still stigma embedded in the topic, and people are still uncomfortable, especially with all the media right now, that's going on and all the information being spread through the media. People have this general knowledge that "oh, that's what's being talked about, then that should be correct. And I shouldn't have to learn more about it", sort of thing, but that's just been my experience with it. 

Liv Taylor  9:34  

Yeah. Well, thank you so much for sharing that with us. Shane, I know that kind of for myself. These conversations have often felt very one sided in relationships where I felt like I'm the only one responsible for making decisions about contraception and that can be a huge physical, mental and even financial burden. And it's important to talk about these things so that our listeners who might be going through similar struggles or experiences don't feel alone in that And these conversations about contraception aren't just important for our own sexual health. They're really important for practices of safe sex. And alongside these kinds of difficult conversations, we do want to talk about safe sex and consent here today. So Deepa, I wanted to ask you what exactly does safe sex mean? And within that kind of what is an STI?

Deepa Upadhyaya  10:21  

Yeah, thank you for that question. I think everybody has to kind of individually understand what safe sex means for them, because it's going to be different. But some of the common topics or areas around safe sex include protection from sexually transmitted infections and consent, to engage in sexual activity. So, broadly speaking, sexually transmitted infections are infections that are more likely to be sort of transmitted through sexual activity, so that exchange of bodily fluids, blood through semen, vaginal discharge, with oral anal, sex, or genital touching. So it's STIs, or any infections that can be transmitted. For that in the previous podcast, we talked about HPV or human papilloma virus being transmitted between individuals. There's also things like chlamydia, gonorrhea, syphilis, which is on the rise right now in Alberta and throughout parts of Canada. Consent is any, like sexual activity or engagement, sexual activity must be freely given. We know that now. And we know that there's a lot of trauma and damage that can occur, if that doesn't happen. Consent can't be given by somebody who is unconscious, intoxicated, or otherwise, not capable of giving their consent. So it also cannot be given if it's followed by threats to personal safety or to harm for others. So when people are thinking about their own sexuality and engaging in sexual acts with partners, it's sort of best to just reflect on what can I do to protect myself from a sexually transmitted infection? And what does consent look like for me when I'm trying to obtain it from somebody or when I'm trying to give it to somebody?

Liv Taylor  12:00  

Awesome. Thank you. That was a very thorough explanation. I think that's super helpful. But I also think that it's important to mention here that just because someone doesn't have symptoms of an STI doesn't necessarily mean that they don't have an STI. I've had conversations myself in the past with just close friends or even romantic partners, where I've asked them if they've been tested, and they say, "No, I don't need to be tested". And I say, "Well, how do you know that you don't need to be tested". And they're like, "well I don't have any symptoms". And obviously, we know that that's not necessarily true, even from our previous podcast before we talked about HPV can sometimes be prevalent with no symptoms. So I think it's important to talk about that as well. And kind of alongside these, these ideas, and what we talked about earlier, if a student is concerned that they may have an STI, can they get STI testing done at MRU? 

Deepa Upadhyaya  12:48  

Absolutely. Yeah, at our Wellness Center, there are nurse practitioners and medical doctors who do STI testing. There's also centers all around us in Calgary that provide that testing for students. So yes, you can absolutely get that done at Mount Royal University. 

Liv Taylor  13:02  

Awesome. That's good to know. And we also know that this idea of sake safe sex, just like you were talking about earlier, Deepa doesn't necessarily have to only do with preventing STIs. It also has to do with these conversations surrounding consent, which I know you touched on earlier. And she and I know that, you and I we talked a bit before this podcast about verbal consent and non verbal consent. And I know that the waters can get a little bit murky there. So I wanted to ask you if you could tell us a bit more of your understanding about consent and non verbal consent?

Shane Anguhan  13:33  

So I like to go by a very I think it's a very common statement regarding consent, where it's like "No means no, but yes, doesn't always mean yes". And I think that goes a lot with non verbal consent, because a lot of people engage in non verbal consent more than they think they do. And especially with university students, they just don't acknowledge that it is nonverbal consent and with nonverbal consent comes nonverbal cues. And there is a fine line between understanding of nonverbal cue that initiates a yes and a nonverbal cue that's just trying to say no, but it's just, I believe, it's very basic human understanding of how we interact with each other. But also, there has to be that understanding of your partner and how they act. And also even if they aren't your partner, just knowing and seeing if they're comfortable with you, and seeing if they're rejecting you in any way. Nonverbal consent is everywhere, to not even just with sexuality, or sexual acts, and it just isn't as talked about, and I believe that's why people don't know a lot about it. But when you look at it, it's in everyday life, which is so important, but talking about it will really bring out our understanding of why things might go wrong, or why people might interpret or misinterpret certain things. And I think that would be very important to talk about.

Liv Taylor  14:50  

Yeah, no, you're you're definitely right. I think even from what you're just talking about there, it is really difficult to kind of discern what is maybe nonverbal consent. That's a Yes or leading to a yes or non verbal consent that might be neutral or maybe a no. And I think that these conversations are really difficult to have. And like you said, it's important that we have them. So Deepa, I was wondering if you had anything to add in terms of this idea of verbal consent versus non verbal consent? What might that look like? 

Unknown Speaker  15:19  

Thank you for that. I think the hardest one is to think about what the nonverbal cues look like, when you're sort of saying no, or stop. So it's something to think about when you're engaging in activity and obtaining consent or giving consent, what do nonverbal cues look like, which can really look like if somebody's silent, not responsive, they appear distracted, they can get kind of rigid or stressed, tensing, stressing, sometimes you can see somebody take a sharp or sudden deep breath, sudden changes in behavior, for example, no longer offering eye contact, or avoiding eye contact, looking away, pushing somebody away, avoiding the touching, crying, looking fearful, sad, shaking their head in a no, feeling cold or freezing, or just laying still can all be signs to stop, that that those are nonverbal cues, verbal cues are a little bit more easy to know when, like you said "No means no." When you're thinking about stopping, but even the more sort of responses like "I'm not sure", 'I don't know how I feel,"  "I've never really done this before". Maybe I guess those all can be reasons to stop or pause and say, You know what, this is a reason to stop. And the more kind of obvious things like this hurts, I need a break, I don't want to do this stop, quit are all reasons to stop in terms of, you know, signs that to keep going where you are getting consent. So nonverbal cues are also there. So when people are providing direct contact, the reciprocal in their sexual activities, like pulling somebody closer versus pushing somebody away, nodding, yes. laughing or smiling or paired with other cues, and just having a relaxed sort of open body language, and verbal cues, obviously, to keep going or are the yeses, right? The I want to I feel like doing this keep going I'm into that sort of verbal cues for people to help realize when consent is there. 

Liv Taylor  17:26  

Great, thank you for that Deepa, I think these conversations can be a little bit heavy, a little bit uncomfortable to talk about. But I really want to thank you, Shane, for initiating this conversation today because it really was you who brought up this idea of verbal and nonverbal consent. So I really appreciate that and and both of your your knowledge in that. So now that we've given our listeners a broad overview of sexual health, including contraception, STIs, and consent, we want students to really feel empowered to take charge of their own sexual health and to take opportunities to learn more about it. So Deepa I want to start with you. Do you know of any resources available on campus for students to access services related to sexual health?

Deepa Upadhyaya  18:06  

Yeah, so on campus, as we mentioned earlier, the MRU Wellness Center is a resource for students to talk about sexual health and understand more, there's lots of practitioners and resources available directly in office, which is located near the entrance to the Rec Center. Another place that you can get things that are the barrier protection against STIs condoms are available outside of I151. And helth, Healthy Campus Team office. In terms of online resources. I mentioned the Society of Obstetrics and Gynecology has a really excellent site called Sexandu.ca. So it's sex a n d, u like the letter u.ca. And there's just a plethora of Evidence Informed information written in easily digestible tabs and areas to go to for students and any buddy in the Mount Royal community, or anybody to refer anybody to Canada and elsewhere to get information that's evidence informed on sexual health. 

Liv Taylor  19:10  

Awesome, thank you for that Deepa. I really appreciate you coming prepared with all of these resources for our listeners today. And before we wrap up our podcast, I also wanted to ask you, Shane, do you have any advice for students who might feel uncomfortable having these kinds of conversations or asking questions about sexual health.

Shane Anguhan  19:28  

I definitely say to take your time, the information will always be there for you. There's no pressure or force to get into it and to know everything about it and to just be knowledgeable about all of the topics we've talked about today. But also at the same time, I feel like a lot of students and people reach out when they need help, which is very unfortunate, but it is good to be prepared and just to be mindful that there's so much going on around you and we are going to eventually engage in sexual activity, um, depending on the person. But it's also, we're into recognize that you are part of a community that has all of this knowledge and all of this advice and information and just support there for you. And although it may feel like just like a small person in this big campus or big world, people will be there for you, whether it be the staff or volunteers or just your friends or students you might not even know it's important to know that you're surrounded by people who are going to willingly be there for you and help you out. Which I learned with volunteering with a Healthy Campus Team that yes, that would be my advice to students.

Liv Taylor  20:32  

That's a really great advice and super meaningful for for the end of our podcast today talking about sexual health and our whole series on sexual health as well and, and really just that that focus that there are people who do want to talk to you about this, there are people who do want to support you in your own empowering journey and taking charge of your sexual health, including the three of us in this room today. So thank you so much. That's all we have for our podcast series on sexual health. Please make sure to have a listen to the first episode of this series as well as special thanks to Deepa Upadhyaya and Shane Anguhan for joining us today for our discussion on sexual health. The Live Well Podcast is run by the healthy campus team at Mount Royal University. You can find us online at livewell.buzzsprout.com. We're also available on Apple podcast, Spotify or wherever else you can get your podcasts. Thanks to artist Scott Holmes for our theme The song is called Feeling Sunny. You've been listening to the Live Well podcast and I'm your host Liv Taylor. Thanks for tuning in.