Let's Talk About Sex, Baby

At the end of last term we had Dr Tessa Opie from In Your Skin visit the Y8 HPE teachers for a Relationships and Sexuality Education PD. I was proud to see how ahead New Zealand is in this space - there were even Kiwi resources used such as the notorious pie ad.This year Pedare has started an RSE programme with the Y8 students and this was the prep for it. 

As many know, sexuality education is one of my passions (see here some posts that reflect this). As a result, there were lots of reminders throughout this PD around gender, sexuality and stereotypes (the key topics of the unit). If you are learning or new to this area of the curriculum, the genderbread person is always a great place to start. The visual clearly helps to differentiate between sex, sexuality, gender and expression. So much discussion comes from this picture alone. I often then use the Real Sex Talk videos (especially the gender one and the sexuality one) to create further discussion.

Without elaborating on each of the below points, these are a few things that I was left thinking about after our session with Tess. I feel leaving them as points may encourage you to also ponder and complete further research;

- "The issue isn't porn. It's the complete lack in our society of an open, healthy, honest conversation about sex in the real world." (Cindy Gallop - Twitter here)

- Consent is a noun, not a verb

- Body autonomy can be taught at any age including kindy - Do you want a hug or a kiss?

- "Don't put the red dot on the traumatised kid's folder" (Tess). This was referring to removal of students from sexuality education - just because a student has experienced trauma, does not mean they don't deserve the education or want to be there. 

- "There is a very real difference between feeling uncomfortable and feeling unsafe" (Tess). 

- We are aiming to empower students. If they can own their own Medicare card at 15, can we empower them to feel comfortable to go and get an STI screening and/or contraceptives? 

- "The more positive you feel about your own sexuality, the more likely you are going to have positive sexual experiences with someone else" (Tess). 

- The impact of having teachers that aren't competent or confident teaching sexuality education can be significant. 

- "Pornography is the most prominent form of sexuality education for young people today unfortunately" (Interview with Maree Crabbe as embedded below).