Blindfish RSE

Please make use of all these notes/links from my session today at the #SASHevent2013  Conference looking at the topic "Let’s talk about porn" Firstly my presentation Documents Sheffield Centre for HIV and Sexual Healthwith Brook, FPA, The National Youth Agency People and Pornography - A Briefing for Workers NSPCC sexting study Summary report of the qualitative study Full report of the qualitative study   McAfee The Digital Divide: How the Online Behavior of Teens is Getting Past Parents  Digital Divide BBC Newsbeat Survey  Men worried about Porn Sex Education Vs Pornography statistics taken from show episodes, they are currently unavailable but you can find useful stuff at their   sexperince website   Youtube clip   from Friends episode about the need to turn off the porn Books I may not agree with everything in these books but they have some interesting bits. Wired for Intimacy: How Pornography Hijacks the Male Brain   William M...

I was reading this article today  Campaigners say the young don't know enough about HIV  on BBC Newsbeat. This is a key concern for myself in my work and not something that should be quickly ignored. From my experience awareness of HIV is dropping, even in just the 5 years I have been teaching on HIV. I talked about this in a blog post in February. Young people really don't seem to have a decent level of understanding they mistakes and myths they believe have two dangerous consequences.  Consequence one - stigmatization Stigmatization of HIV+ population continues. It is the simple everyday myths that can do the most harm. "HIV can be passed by sharing cutlery/cups/bathroom/holding hands". When people think HIV is infectious like the common cold they get scared, combined with fears of AIDS being terminal this fear turns to stigmatization. Pushing HIV+ people (or suspected HIV+) away from mainstream society. As levels of awareness remain low then communities...

Pattaya - the Thai city of sin? Both Thailand and Great Britain share a number of the same issues in Sexual Health but these issue express themselves in different ways. I want to learn from the situation in Thailand, especially how people are responding, to improve my work in the UK. I have just returned from a 12 week trip around South East Asia as part of this trip I visited a number of projects in Cambodia, see previous posts and I spent a month in Thailand. In Thailand I visited three projects all tackling different sexual health issues. "The House of Grace" A HIV orphanage, "The Tamar Centre" helping people who wish to leave the commercial sex trade and "ACET Singburi" a schools based prevention programme and HIV+ home visit team. Traveling around South East Asia I became aware of a number of cultural differences that permeate society and impact sexual health in complex ways. I cannot claim to understand the social sexual health situation ...

Fighting for love? I love dystopian future stories. I don't know maybe there it is the part of me that loves to watch how things might fall apart. From the bleak Joss Whedon Firefly and Dollhouse  TV shows or the amazing Metatropolis  anthology to this new trilogy of books and 1st film the Hunger Games. By Suzanne Collins this triology explores a bleak near future where America has collapsed and ruled with an Iron Fist the capital city holds 12 districts under its thumb treating them as slave labour. Barely able to survive, working back breaking jobs the vast majority of the population serve the few rich capital city dwellers. As part of the capitals drive to keep the districts under heal and broken they city forces each district to select 2 young people to fight to the death in a televised event called the Hunger Games. The games themselves unfold in a very similar way to the 2000 Japanese film Battle Royale  but the world they are set in is ...

Treating the Sex Ed past of america as a learning opportunity Just posting this info graphic by a guy called G reg Voakes  who contacted me letting me know it was online to be shared (thank you). Whilst it is focused on the USA lots of the statistics are very informative for our work in Chester and the UK. I have always thought about the USA as a grand experiment in SRE approaches, we different approaches applied in entire states. But the experiment should be wrapped up. I think that it has conclusively proven that abstinence only education is not effective and that condom only education is not enough. We need comprehensive education that covers it all from the right to say no, emotional well being, relationships, STIs and contraceptives. (plus in my opinion, sex and technology for the next generation)  Created by: PublicHealthDegree.com

Could you explain how HIV impacts the body? I ask this question at the start and end of every HIV lesson I teach. Its a way of trying to monitor if my lesson is making a difference. Asking if they could explain a topic to someone else is a reasonable test to see if people understand the topic themselves.  Today I asked this question at the start of a lesson and none of the 32 young people (13-14) could say yes. Now I am used to most young people not knowing that much about HIV but usually 1 or 2 say yes. It reminded me just how low the level of HIV awareness is in the general population. Now I know that HIV rates are low in the UK but they are on the rise . If we are not careful it is very possible that we could have a significant problem with HIV if we fail to educate people about the risks. The role of ARVs may help make people live significantly longer so that HIV can be seen as a chronic condition and not a death sentence, yet the co...

76% of teenagers have not thought about how porn distorts what real sex is. Figures come from my research in this trial run of lessons Over the last few weeks and months I have been researching and writing a lesson looking at how the media distorts sex and relationships. Pornography has been a big issue to tackle and this week I have tested my lesson and I wanted to share my early results. I've posted the lesson plan, print out resources and powerpoint on my website , just scroll down to the Distortions of media section.  The Lesson progresses through a foundation of media distorting what is beautiful, moving on to how films/TV distorts relationships and finishing with an exercise that shows how porn distorts sex and what the consequences of believing porn could be. At the end of the lesson i hand out a feedback sheet. one of the questions asks them to write down what words they associate with porn. I've made their results into a wordle for you. (the bigger the word the mo...

The BBC is currently running a season on sex on its BBC 3 channel and the first show was a programme called web sex. You can watch it on iPlayer here  http://www.bbc.co.uk/i/b019gc2h/   (If you live outside of the UK  http://www.tunnelbear.com/  can get you around the country restrictions).  The shows was trying to explore how young people are using the internet and mobile phones for their own sex lives. Now the programme starts with two interviews with a guy and a girl who claim that the interweb has had a very positive impact on their sex lives. The guy has a pretty rotten attitude towards women (in my opinion) with him using social networks to maximise the number of women he can have sex with. The 2nd interview talks to a girl who has found social networks as a way to build her personal confidence and improve her self esteem.  The show moves on to the detail other ways social networks, mobile apps and websites are used by young peop...

A single  research  project can be reported on in  different  ways depending on what you want to do. Take the following two articles both reporting on the same research by the Archives of Pediatric & Adolescent Medicine. The research shows how many girls in the study thought the HPV vaccine also reduced their risk of catching other STIs. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2083260/One-teenage-girls-thinks-HPV-vaccine-cuts-risk-contracting-STDs.html http://www.healthnews.com/en/news/Some-Girls-Overestimate-HPV-Vaccine-Protection/3hFUdOev1E8wSjg313QPZq/  The daily mail report  emphasis  1 in 4, I  believe  this is because they are trying to show how it is a big problem. Where as Health News states "show that a small percentage of girls" I believe this is because they are trying to  show  it is not a big problem. Both quoting the same study with the same figure of 23.6% of girls having the HPV vaccine  bel...

I am writing a lesson plan looking at how the media (TV, Film and Porn) distorts our image of Sex and Relationships. First half of the lesson is focusing on relationships and seeing how soaps, sit coms, and rom coms portray them. Second half is focusing on how Porn portrays sex.  One of my exercises will be handing out a collection of statements about what people can learn from porn. Their task will be to then decide if that think a lesson learnt from porn is true, false or some where in between. This is my list so far. Please let me know what you think, can you learn all this from porn and could you separate true from false It is normal for women to have hairless vaginas All men have big penises Sex is better when it is fast, forceful and rough Anal sex is clean and simple  Penis shape can vary from one person to another Nipples can get erect when people aroused Males normally ejaculate about half a cup of semen Sex is possible all ove...