Sex. It’s arguably our most primitive instinct, and possibly the best time a human being can have with another human being. Like breathing, it is a completely natural part of our existence. Sexuality is not a black and white issue, and this is something which society is becoming increasingly aware of. As a result over the past few decades, we have seen increased awareness, understanding and acceptance of LGBTQIA people in our society. School aged students in their formative years need to have a healthy understanding of sex and orientation in order to not end up repressed or bigoted adults. But as we’ve seen recently, there are large swathes of society who do not think that young people should have a robust, well rounded sexual education. The recent controversy surrounding the implementation of the Safe Schools program in Australian schools highlighted this issue. The program was designed to increase awareness amongst young people about LGBTQIA issues and create safer spaces for those who identify as LGBTQIA. But the conservative factions of our society saw the program as some kind of attack on traditional values, or ‘gay propaganda’ and subsequently railed against it. A member of the Western Australian parliament, Peter Abetz, was one of the program’s most vocal critics. “It really is little more than a gay, lesbian, transgender lifestyle promotion program,” he said in 2015. “The militant gay lesbian lobby is trying to get this into our schools to ‘normalise’ what they consider the LGBTI agenda.”
This doesn’t just boil down to the Safe Schools program. There is an aversion to detailed sex education, particularly at Catholic schools, which can be rather dangerous to the development of young people. The fact is that sex is a natural part of life, and something that school aged people need to see as normal, and healthy. We chatted to a sex education teacher from Melbourne who is doing her thesis on our current sex education system. She spoke to us on the condition of anonymity due to her employment requirements. For the purposes of this article, her name is Penny. Penny thinks that the state of sex education in some schools is dismal – “I know 21 year olds that were taught abstinence education, in Melbourne. It’s terrifying. Not having the right sex education can have lasting ramifications; leaving kids in the dark about it is really dangerous.” Sex eduction in modern Australia is still always up to the school itself – they are required to teach it, but not told how to teach it. This leads to some institutions offering limited or misleading sexual education to students – “There are schools that don’t allow the discussion of LGBTQIA issues – but I wouldn’t teach there,” Penny said, with conviction.
As we discussed the public aversion to the Safe Schools program and the discussion of LGBTQIA issues in general, it became pretty clear where the problem lies. “When you talk to young people about these issues, they’re just like ‘ok cool, that’s interesting.’ They’re not bigoted, it doesn’t bother them. It’s the parents. When you think about it, there has been such a big change for these parents since they were kids. There wasn’t gay or trans rights when they were young, and now they’re taking their shit to the table. The young people themselves are pretty cool with it all.” In Penny’s opinion, much of the problem is tied up in a broader societal context of conservatism. “Australia is a pretty conservative culture, and we sometimes delude ourselves into thinking that we’re not. Safe Schools is a program that was developed to help schools be more accomodating and respectful to young people within their schools who identify as LGBTQIA, making it a safe space for those students, and helping educate other students on different sexualities, and the rights of all people. There is this attitude of demonising gay, lesbian and trans people, this idea that there is something inherently wrong with them – which is so misguided and disgusting. The whole focus is protecting these kids. They have higher rates of depression, anxiety, suicide, and bullying. This program was designed to protect them, to make those kids know that they are safe and deserve to have the same rights afforded to them as heteronormative kids do. People are losing sight of that.”
The problem with something like Safe Schools is that it becomes a point of blame – a scapegoat for a larger bias. Religious lobbying groups and conservative politicians leapt on one program that was only designed to help people, and turned it into a fictional enemy. The ability of these groups to change the narrative like that is truly frightening. “I think it’s based in fear, and a lack of understanding. At the end the day, it comes down to whether or not we want to raise the most tolerant, loving open minded people we can. Don’t we? People are becoming more open minded. But I think with something like Safe Schools, religious groups jumped on it and gave people a lot of false information. Safe Schools is a tiny program – it just became a target.” During the height of the Safe Schools debate, the director of the Australian Christian Lobby Lyle Shelton said “Changing the definition of marriage to entrench motherless and fatherlessness in public policy and teaching our kids their gender is fluid should be opposed,” as well as “the cowardice and weakness of Australia’s ‘gatekeepers’ is causing unthinkable things to happen, just as unthinkable things happened in Germany in the 1930s.” In case you missed it, that last one was a thinly veiled reference to Nazi Germany, implying that Safe Schools is somehow on par with those atrocities. The Australian Christian Lobby spread flyers around covered in false information, with quotes from the program taken out of context to appear malicious.
If young people don’t receive the right education in sex at school, they will source their knowledge from elsewhere, and that information will often be misleading. Pornography is a rather scary example of this, and Penny believes it is one of the biggest threats to young people’s perceptions of sexuality. “Mainstream pornography is violent, it’s degrading to women, it doesn’t promote safe practices, it doesn’t promote consent, and for the most part it entails horrible ideas of body image. You end up with all of these young boys having warped ideas about how their supposed to look, how girls are supposed to look. It’s a minefield.” When students do receive sex education, they do so eagerly, as Penny explained. “The kids love sex ed. For the most part, they’re so attentive and so engaged. They’re so curious about what’s going on. They’re going through so much, and there are things they want to know about their own body which are so relevant. It’s a really awesome environment wherein they can ask the questions they want to ask, and piece things together.”
Though she acknowledges that she may be biased due to her line of work, Penny sees a well rounded sexual education as paramount to the development of young people – “I think it is one of the most important things that you can equip young people with – comprehensive, truthful, honest sex education.” However many educational facilities don’t necessarily teach the field in the right way – “What you find is that a lot of schools only focus on physiology, STD’s and STI’s, the safe scientific things to cover. They leave out a lot of the more complicated issues like consent and LGBTQIA issues, pornography, all of these things that young people are really interested in and really want some guidance on, and they’re not being provided that. Statistics back it up, sex education is vital. The more sex education they receive, the later kids engage in sexual practices, and the safer the sex they have is. The right sex education, in my opinion, leads to a more fulfilling life in general.”
Penny has chosen to specialise in sex education because she can see the importance that it holds for young people, and seems to cherish that importance, and hold it in the highest of regards. “I want young people to know that they’re on their own time frame. You’re going to get to these things at your own rate, when and how you want to. You have the right to make decisions for yourself in everything. Your sexual life should be pleasurable and wonderful. It’s not all scary, pregnancies and rape and STD’s, it’s also…” She paused, seemingly trying to find the right wording – “bloody awesome.”
“I want young people to have really empowered lives as sexual autonomous beings, not being fearful of it.”
When I asked Penny if she thinks sex education in Australia is becoming more progressive, she snickered. “Slowly. Maybe.” Even though there is still a large public backlash to wholly inclusive sexual education, she sees it as something that is moving in the right direction – although we still have some way to go. “There are some amazing providers, I work for a great company and there are a lot of other amazing companies offering good sex education. But, its still at the schools discretion how and and when they teach sex ed, and I don’t think there is enough focus on it. I don’t think it’s young enough yet. In the Netherlands they have programs that start in kindergarten. I think slowly we’re getting more progressive. But I want to see more. I want to see it everywhere. I want to see it taught by people who are passionate about it, and not just have it taught by whoever is available like a lot of schools do. We’ve got a long way to go, I think.”
It is of paramount importance that young people are exposed to not just heteronormative sexual education, but sexual education which helps them respect and understand the various orientations and complex gender identities of people around them. This is beneficial for everyone involved, and helps to feed a more accepting society in the future. It all starts in those formative school years, and that early education will influence these people’s views for years to come. Their understanding needs to be comprehensive, broad and diverse to transition into being the accepting society we know we can be.
