Skip to main content

Sex and Relationship Education across the sexuality spectrum



Today I read this article by Louise Tickle "Does Sex Education exclude young gay people?" Personally in my work I have always tried to be gender and sexuality neutral in all my lessons. I always use the term "partners" or using the full phrase "a boyfriend or girlfriend" in every sentence to any gender student. But sometimes I still find myself falling into hetronormative language. It is not a choice but an unconscious accident. 

For example I had a interesting situation doing a condom demonstration in a school with a girl constantly talking over me (which I find so annoying). 

I asked " Please listen for a few minutes then you could speak with your friends."  
She replied. "But I don't need to know this" 
I replied "you never know what might happen in the future and it both a male and a females shared responsibility to know how to minimize risks" 
"But I don't need to know this" 
I plowed on "it is good to be prepared with information, even if you never plan on using a condom during sex" 
"But I don't need to know this because I'm a lesbian "

I felt like a fool, plowing on, insisting it was relevant and she was just trying to get out of trouble for talking over me. I suspect I'm not the only person who has made similar gaffs. But it highlights how easily people can get caught being insensitive on the topic of sex. In this situation once we had the class going on the condom applications I went over and talked through dental dams in more details for her. I wanted to make sure she was still getting the key information about minimizing STI risks. 

This incident also raises another connected issue. I wish schools would give us more time to cover dental dams for cunnilingus and analingus, especially for those young gay people. Sadly teachers have actively asked me not to go into the details of dental dams. As the think it is too explicit!? but condoms application is very much wanted?. This doesn't seem fair or right. I believe that current sexual trends will encourage more young people, of all sexualities, to experiment with cunnilingus and analingus. I think we need to make room for dental dam in the SRE curriculum. But with the SRE curriculum being squeezed on all sides how can we include it without missing something else out?  

 http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2013/jan/11/sex-education-young-gay-people

 P.S. My offline work has been so busy I have not posted for some time. One of my new year aims is to make this a higher priority. Hopefully this will mean more post about more topics. 
Labels:

Comments

  1. Unknown15 January 2013 at 17:12

    The student shows a limited view when she stated "But I don't need to know this because I'm a lesbian" Why should lesbians exclude themselves from safe sexual practices? STI's can be passed on through female to female sex, so lesbians should always practice safe sex by using condoms/female condoms and dams. Covering sex toys with condoms is another way of protecting yourself. Regardless of a person's sexual orientation they have a responsibility to protect themselves and others from infections. Regardless of how she saw her need, she clearly has no manners, it is rude to talk over or during a teaching session as it disturbs everyone and while she felt she had no need the person she was talking to may have had a need to know. J Wild Sexual Health Trainer

    ReplyDelete
  2. Gareth Cheesman15 January 2013 at 17:31

    Hello Janet,

    Thank you for your comment. It is true she was expressing a limited view point and after the initial conversation I spoke one on one and she saw the importance of learning about general safe sex practice. At the time i did not think about the covering of sex toys (even though i know it in theory) Thank you for reminding me. i will make sure I keep that in mind if the situation ever happens again.

    People talking over me always gets me SO annoyed even though I clearly remember as a school pupil myself getting confused why teachers got so mad. Now i understand. I feel I owe my old teachers an apology :)

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A RSE reading list

Sometimes people ask me what reading I recommend around RSE, so I thought I would put together a bit of a list.  Key (free) articles and reports  Young people’s RSE UK poll  Sex Education Forum (2018) RSE outcome variations due to facilitator differences  Young et al (2018) What do young people think about their school-based sex and relationship education? A qualitative synthesis of young people's views and experiences Pound et al. (2016) Review of sexual abuse in schools and college s Ofsted (2021) National and International RSE Guidance  UNESCO international guidance on RSE  UNESCO (2018) England   Department for Education full guidance on statutory relationships education, relationships and sex education (RSE) and health education  Department for Education (2019) Wales Curriculum for Wales guidance and code for Relationships and Sexuality Education (RSE)  (Consultation stage) Welsh Government (2021)  Scotland  Guidance for teac...
1 comment
Read more

Creating a physical RSE resource - See It Shout It

I love making new relationships and sex education resources. " See It Shout It ", is the latest resource I have made to help young people grow in confidence to verbalise sex related words. I was asked how I choose the 31 icons that made the resource and I thought the creation process might be interesting to talk about.  Normally I create activities that can be shared digitally and then printed out or used with a projector. But sometimes I am involved in creating physical products. The process is similar for both but there are a few extra steps with making a physical product to be sold. The barriers to start making your own high quality resources is lower then ever and new creators can always bring a fresh perspective to a topic.  I have worked in the sex education field for over 15 years and this topic is what I know best but I'm sure that the same basic process can be applied to many different subjects. I am going to share the process I went through creating " See I...
Post a Comment
Read more

Sources and reading from " 5 cool things AI can do for your youth work (and what's coming next)" workshop

Thank you if you came to my workshop at NYMW 2023 about how youth workers might consider using AI within their work. Obviously there is a lot of areas we could have looked at. We only scratched the surface, especially around the ethics. But with the current attention on generative AI I hope it was useful. Below I have included both a copy of my slides and links to some further reading/research about the topic.  Slides Download a .pdf of the slides here Edited further reading and research list Atlas of AI (2022) Crawford *. A good book about ethical aspects Automating Youth Work: youth workers views on AI (2023) Pawluczuk . EU study into the attitude of youthworkers towards AI Blood in the Machine (2023) Merchant *. Who were the Luddites and why did they hate new technology  Here's What Ethical AI Really Means (2023) Philosophy Tube . Long form video essay about the ethical aspects of AI, especially in regards to the creative arts   How AI chatbots like ChatGPT o...
Post a Comment
Read more