Blindfish RSE

Today on BBC Three Counties Radio I heard an interview with 20 year old Grace talking about her experience of being pressured into watching pornography by her then boyfriend when she was 15 years old. She was incredibly honest and open about how she felt it had negatively impacted her. If you would like to listen to the interview it will be available for a week at the BBC , skip to 1 Hour 7mins into the programme or you can read my typed up  complete transcript of the interview. In this blog I want to pick out a few of things that Grace said.  One of the first things Grace says is  So the boy I was currently dating at the time, was obviously at that age where he had been watching it since about the age of 12 and he had heard from some of his friends that they watch it with their girlfriends. So he came up with a suggestion to me and I said no and I kept saying no and then he just kept on pushing, so I then said “well ok lets check this out, I’ve never looked a...

BBC3 takes a frank look at how a sexual health clinic operates in Manchester. Following a n umber of young people as they go through the process of testing, waiting, getting results and then if needed getting treated. Mixing true life stories and high quality sexual health advice this show has the power to do some good.  Revealing some shocking attitudes in the youth. Especially in regards to condom use. By both males and females. Plus the voice over guy has some great one liners. You can see the shows official page here  and if you live outside the UK and want to watch this show have a quick look at TunnelBear  .  "I love dripping willies,   because    then you know what they have" For me the best part of the programme is seeing how the staff are professional and friendly. I really hope and believe that this programme will help increase the number of people going as now they have an idea what will happen. The mystery of sexu...

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...

Teen pregnancies at 40-year low This is obviously great news and it is great to have the BBC publish a quote directly crediting this decline to the work of relationship and sex educators. The article does end with a note of caution. Our rates of teenage conception are still higher then the rest of Western Europe. We still have a significant teenage pregnancy problem that needs consistant funding. Maybe i am too pesermistic but I worry that good news like this will lead to people cutting funding to the area "because we have solved that problem now". It is not solved thousands of young people are still getting pregnant when they didnt want to. I hope this good news is seen as a validation of the value of good sex and relationship education. Lets hope those government officials involved in the on going PSHE review will hear and preserve the importance of SRE, it needs to be added as a compulsart element of education. The role of outside expert educators should not be forgotte...

Read this article about how the UK government is rethinking it's decision to only immunise girls against HPV. http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/calls-to-immunise-teenage-boys-after-huge-rise-in-throat-cancer-6292679.html When I read this article I obviously was encouraged that the government was even considering changing the policy. As a male SRE educator I have felt that the current system is deeply unfair ever since the BBC aired a documentary about this on BBC3. The logic of with holding a potentially life saving vaccine on the grounds of cost verges on the ridiculous. Now the body of evidence is growing and hopefully soon the problem will be resolved. But even the original plan to immunise all girls to provide herd immunity seems to have a huge hole that in my opinion show discrimination at the state level. What about the male homosexual population? Now when HPV was seen to be linked to cervical cancer it was also shown to be linked to ...

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...