She scratched her head for a second and slowly placed her hand back on the table.

“I guess the most important thing that I’ve learned is that feminism isn’t about hating men, but…well…more about equality of the sexes.”

The process of interviewing had been long and tiring but here, at last, was what I had been waiting for all day. Finally, here was what some might call the breakthrough moment when this student understood that something that she had learned had actually changed the way she viewed the world. I left the interview room happy that this student had come to a deeper understanding about a subject, but didn’t think much about our conversation for a couple of days.

Then, while catching up on e-mails, I happened upon a news story where a group of men marched against domestic violence. “Great!” I thought, “It’s always nice to see a male’s take on this issue.” But as I looked further into the event I realized that the primary focus of the march was to end domestic violence inflicted by men on women.

Okay, sure, if you play the odds, male on female violence probably represents the cases that you hear about most often. However, the question that I had was, “Why did it matter?”

While I certainly don’t want to imply that any type of domestic violence is necessarily less deserving of attention than any other, why is it that we are so eager to get fired up about protecting women but not about protecting men from females? Or even from other males for that matter?

The Sex Ed Guru Says: "True, much of the domestic violence statistics and resources in the community focus on women who are victims, and gender roles definitely influence this."

Can you make a case where a male is physically able to defend himself from a woman and therefore doesn’t need outside help? What about non-physical abuse?—Yes, how often does someone recognize non-physical abuse as abuse, or report it as abuse? It’s much more difficult to recognize emotional abuse or neglect over physical abuse (battery)?

The Sex Ed Guru Says: "If so, what does this say about your assumptions about gender roles? What happens when the aggressor and the victim are of the same sex? Is this any worse or better than an assumption that feminists hate men?"

For me, sex education is not just about the act itself but also the host of things that surround the deed. Gender roles, gender stereotypes, and perception of gender all inform the various ways that we interact with our sexual partners. How do our expectations for our partners (or others) depend on our preconceived notions of their gender? For that matter, how do our expectations of ourselves hinge upon this?

Sometimes I think that it would be easier if we had been assigned roles in life—we would know our job, our lines, and our costume. The other way to think about it, though, is that we have the freedom and the opportunity to define ourselves as we see fit. Instead of asking ourselves “Who should I be?” we get to inquire “Who will I be?”