The Two Parts to Sex Education

As I've recently pointed out in previous blogs, sex education in schools is pretty poor. It's very basic and fraught with problems from outside sources, lack of resources and a whole lot of fear.

Don't tell kids about sex! They'll just run out and have it!

The thing is, sex is multifaceted and such a deep and involved subject it simply cannot be glossed over and treated as an aside to PE or Humanities. It should have it's own specific classes. And when I say classes I mean at least two different ones.

You see, there are two major reasons people have sex and only one of them is ever really addressed (albeit poorly) in schools. The first reason, and the only one we ever really get taught in classrooms is reproduction. Human biology. This, I believe, is suited to the science classroom. We all did our “life-cycle of a frog” assignment in school or the “Birds and the Bees” assignment on pollen and plant reproduction and this is where human reproduction should be taught. Penises, vaginas, sperm and eggs. We should learn about ovulation and periods and the developmental stages of a foetus.

This scientific teaching should, I believe, happen in both primary and high school. In early primary I think learning about the names of body parts and their functions is vital, then in late primary go into more detail about what they do and what they are for, and then into early high school and continuing throughout, we should incorporate the safe sex message and knowledge of STIs and how to prevent them.

If you take the shame and embarrassment and fear factor out of the lessons on body parts and sex with children then you are off to a fantastic start and a way of easier, more open communication as our kids turn into teenagers.

Now we come to the second reason people have sex, and it's actually (according to many surveys world wide) the main reason.

Pleasure. It feels good. It does! It feels bloody awesome. All parts of sexual intimacy, from kissing and touching to having actual physical sex. And, because teenagers are slaves to their own wants and desires, of course they're going to bloody do it! It's what teenagers do. They do stuff that feels good.

Teenagers don't often think of the future beyond the next week. They want to go to a party, they go. They want to eat a cheeseburger, they go get one. They want to have sex, they do it. We can't stop them by trying to scare them or bully them. We just can't. That's been proven time and time again. The rise in teenage pregnancies and STIs in young people is absolute proof that the “don't do it, it's wrong” message isn't working.

I think, like I said in the beginning of this piece, we need to split sex education into two equally important, and yet completely separate classes. Science, to talk about the actual science of reproduction and everything that goes along with that, and an entirely new class that revolves around pleasure, relationships, emotions, consent and all the other things that go along with sex that have nothing to do with babies.

When you single out reproduction in a sex ed class, you completely ignore things like LGBTI sexual relationships, which are equally as important to young people. You pass over things like consent and rape and sexual assault. Where to get help. Who to talk to. How to say no. How to accept no.

We need to focus on the pleasure side. What feels good. Why it feels good. The responsibilities we have in consensual relationships. The balance of pleasure. The fact that there are many other things young people can do to feel that sexual pleasure without actually having intercourse at all. Masturbation is so rarely talked about to teenagers and yet I can guarantee you almost every single one of them is doing it.

We need to talk about the emotional side of sex; boyfriends/girlfriends, lust, heartbreak. The social side like peer pressure, bullying, slut-shaming and the ever increasing online social aspects, cyber-bullying, sexting, online predators.

I also think it's important to incorporate parents and guardians in these teachings (probably not in the same room as their kids. That's a sure fire way to get kids to not talk about anything) but in conjunction.

It really is a huge topic and a massively important one for the future health and well being of our kids, both physically and emotionally.

It's not something we can just slip in at the end of a PE class and feel we have responsibly addressed. That's just plain ignorance, bred from fear and I can tell you, it's costing us a lot more and damaging our children far more than little bit of embarrassment you might get at the thought of telling your teenagers about the clitoris.

Sex Education and the lack of it. Or, Why the hell did I write my book?

I have finally finished writing my book, A Girl's Guide To Getting Off, and other things you won't learn in sex ed.

It all began when I was running a group of skillshare events with a friend about sexual pleasure, sex toys and Gspots and all the good things sex can do and discovering how many women over forty had never had an orgasm or even knew what pleasures their bodies were capable of. They were telling me things like "I wish I'd learnt all this as a teenager. It would have saved me a lot of confusion, self doubt and bad decision making as an adult."
It got me thinking of my own sex education and what I wish for my daughter... And I looked and I looked, and I found very little age appropriate stuff on the matter of sex and pleasure and relationships and all of the things we are supposed to automatically know when we "grow up".
So... Being the go-getter that I am, and a person who knows quite a lot about sex, pleasure and how to get the best out of it, I wrote it myself. And below are just some of the many other reasons this book needs to be out there...

Publishers please take note, and check your slush piles. I'm sure it's hiding in there somewhere

Technology is amazing. I mean, the things we can do nowadays! I can have a live video phone conversation with someone sitting in a grass hut in Africa. I can go on a virtual deep sea dive in an almost inaccessible part of the world. I can read the entire works of Shakespeare and all the Mr Men books and then take a tour of The Louvre while listening to a live Doors concert and I don't even have to get out of bed!

The wealth of information that comes through these little lit-up screens in our hands and on our laps is so far beyond 2000 it's crazy. Everything can be found by Googling it and I mean everything. The good, the bad and the ugly. Really, really ugly.

Yes, technology these days is amazing, but it can be fraught with problems too. One of the main issues that comes from such a huge influx of information is that it can be tricky to separate the truth from the lies, the real from the fake. And, if we lack the ability to process all this information in a way that helps us understand what we are seeing, why we are seeing it and what it all actually means, it can become a very dangerous thing.

One of the groups most vulnerable to the exposure of false, misleading and damaging information are teenagers. The brain is still developing, traits like reason and risk management are still developing or changing, and (as we are all aware) teenagers already know everything, so they can't be logically explained to or told otherwise. And now, with this universe of information in their pockets, they can claim to be experts on almost anything and have the “proof” to back it up.

Now that's all well and good when it comes to the latest Xbox game or the season finale of The Walking Dead, but when it comes to things that can be potentially life changing and damaging we, as adults, parents, friends and members of the universe, have a duty of care to make sure our younger generations are given the right information and tools to move into adulthood with minimum damage. It's fantastic that all this information is out there literally at your fingertips, but giving kids free reign of it all and not helping them process and understand it is as dangerous as letting a toddler play with an oven and figure out for themselves why their hands are getting burnt.

And this is all too obvious when it comes to sex. Proper sex education of young people is in decline. Parents are too afraid or embarrassed to talk to their kids about sex and teachers are afraid of the parents' reactions to their teachings and therefore keep it so basic that nothing is really taught and real questions are not being answered,and so a lot of kids end up in situations they cannot understand or process properly.

It's an illogical circle really. I won't tell my kids about sex, pleasure, orgasms, safety, consent, relationships and then they will never ever do it til I think they're old enough to handle it, and in doing so push their kids to the step of finding it out for themselves and inevitably seeing and experiencing worse.

The thing is plenty of teenage kids are going to have sex. Whether you want them to or not. They will. They have been for generations. And will for years to come. It's normal exploration. Telling them not to doesn't work and telling them not to without any good reasons is even worse. Telling them that sex is dirty, dangerous, bad and wrong is also not going to stop them. What it will do, however is make sure they are uninformed, unsafe, irresponsible and completely against coming to you for any help or advice when things do happen that are less than desired like pregnancy, STIs or sexual assault.

I recently heard of a woman who kicked her 15 year old daughter out of her home because she had got pregnant. Her reason? “I told her not to have sex. She didn't listen. What will the community think of the sort of mother I am who lets her teenager get pregnant.”

I'd be more worried about what the “community” would think of me as a mother who throws a young, pregnant vulnerable child out onto the street... But maybe that's just me.

She hadn't taught her daughter about safe sex. About condoms or the pill. About any of that. She truly believed that no information and “banning” her from doing it was the way to go. It wasn't. It isn't. And it never will be.

In 2011 the Australian Research Centre in Sex, Health and Society conducted a survey among nearly 300 secondary school teachers of sexual health from every jurisdiction in Australia including government, Catholic and independent schools.

Some of the key findings were:

* Most sex education teachers are female teachers trained in PE and health.

* Sixteen percent of teachers had no outside training whatsoever, and the majority of those who did attended a one day seminar with only a single focus, which was mainly reproduction.

* Only a quarter of all surveyed teachers had external help from organisations that specialise in sex education.

* Most sex education classes are given to students in years nine and ten with very little being taught in years eleven and twelve.

* Less than fifty percent of respondents taught about the pleasure of sexual behaviour/activity which suggests that Australian sex education focuses more on the negative outcomes rather than an overall approach.

* Over half of all the teachers surveyed said they found it hard to fit sex education into the curriculum as it wasn't allocated time.
* A fifth of all respondents cited a lack in training and resources as to why they avoided teaching some topics

* Just under fifty percent said they were afraid of community/parental backlash from some topics so were less likely to teach or talk about them in class. (including pleasure and same sex attraction)

* Topics that teachers said they would like to see included in the sex ed curriculum were: Same sex attraction, pleasure of sexuality, communication and negotiation skills, sexual decision making, respectful relationships and contraception.

* Almost a quarter of the teachers surveyed were unsure whether their school had a sex education policy.

Actual quote from survey:
“Teachers indicated that sexuality education should start in primary school and cover topics such as relationships and feelings, names and functions of body parts and reproduction. For most of the topics listed in this survey teachers stated that they should be taught earlier than they were actually teaching them as per curriculum. ...While the majority of teachers (51%) thought sexuality education was very effective in increasing knowledge and understanding in sexuality and sexual health, they judged sexuality education programs less effective for teaching young people about exploring and clarifying feelings, values and attitudes, developing and strengthening skills and promoting and sustaining risk-reducing behaviour.”

 

It's clear from this that most teachers are aware of what should be taught and when it should be taught but are mostly afraid to do so. Especially when it comes to teaching kids about pleasure which, when you think about it, is what sex is. It is pleasurable. It feels good. It is ultimately why most people have sex - for the sensation.

Telling children it is wrong or bad or dirty or beneath them is the first step to creating guilt, shame and confusion. But it feels good! How can it be bad??
In the same way we teach kids to enjoy chocolate but not be irresponsible with it and eat nothing but junk, we need to be able to tell our kids the same kind of things about sex. Sure it feels good, it can be one of the best things out there, but it comes with risks and responsibilities and ways to make sure you come out the other end undamaged. Just telling them how awful it is, without addressing the things they know to be true (like how good it can feel) is only telling half the story. As adults we know you can't build an Ikea bookshelf without half the instructions, why would we send our kids into the world with only half the instructions and then expect that bookshelf not to come crashing down and potentially kill them?

 Just look at these figures.

STI Rates (taken straight from Australian Bureau of Statistics "social trends" June 2011)

Chlamydia... For women aged 15-19 years, the notification rate increased from 569 per 100,000 in 2001, to 2,228 per 100,000 in 2011
Gonorrhoea... The national notification rate for people aged 15 years and over was 65 per 100,000 population, up from 40 per 100,000 in 2001.
Syphilis... The 15-19 years age group increased by 60%, 35-39 years increased by 84% and 45-49 years increased by 129%.

 HIV AIDS... In 2010, there were 1,031 new cases of HIV among men and women aged 13 years and over, or 5.5 notifications per 100,000 population.

 

 This, all of this, is why I have written my book. I believe there is a great deal of information our teenagers are not getting due to parental ignorance or embarrassment, teacher and school restrictions or lack of guidelines on what can and can't be taught.
There needs to be a place where kids can go to get all their information and knowledge from that is not only age appropriate, but correct, respectful, fully inclusive and spoken in a language they understand. They don't need to be told “no”. They need to be told everything, and then make up their own minds as to what they will do. I truly believe if we want to raise intelligent adults, we need to start with having informed children.

Norma-Lising Bigotry

You know those times when someone goes spouting off on a subject they know very little about and, as someone who DOES know a bit about it, you start to get cross that they're misusing information, twisting facts and not really giving out proper, correct information?

Yeah, I hate that too.

Then, imagine that person getting paid to spout these views to a mass of people who really don't know the truth from the lies and so take this person's drivel as truth because, well, they've been PAID to say it in a national newspaper so it MUST be true?

Yeah.

Yeah I really hate that too.

Dr Caroline Norma (a lecturer on Social Sciences at RMIT) has done just this with her poorly researched Op Ed piece in the Age on June 19 2012.

Dr Norma's Piece

Her condescending tone and disgust for the profession is apparent within her first sentence with the obvious use of quotation marks wrapped around the term Sex Worker. Like it's not really a real word. Just one the workers have made up for themselves to feel some semblance of self respect...

She then continues on with her "better than you" type of attitude throwing out "facts" about an industry she has no idea about, as if she were feeding breadcrumbs to pigeons...

Oh wait. She is. Little breadcrumbs of misinformation and bigotry to a bunch of people who really have no idea about the truth.

On the day she wrote her awful piece many sex workers both past and present, both male and female, stood up and said "Hang on,. This isn't right! Can we talk to you about this. Can we offer some real facts, real information, real firsthand actual knowledge..."

And Caroline went silent.

She was appealead to over twitter, over Facebook, over blogs. She was contacted via phone, via email, via calls to her place of work.

Nothing.

For example, Holly (@HollyInAlbury on Twitter) a sex worker from regional Victoria appealled to Caroline in her blog to leave the speaking about sex work to the people who know about sex work. I mean, we wouldn't let a plumber talk to us about heart surgery would we?

You Can Read Holly's Piece Here

Male sex worker, and well-known sex worker rights activist Christian Vega (@ChristianBVega on Twitter) appealed to her on social media and his blog, putting forward a notion that many people don't actually think about (Dr Norma being one of them) that sex workers are not ALL female and that generalisations are harmful and damaging and that stigmas and stereotypes are wrong and can really hurt the movement for acceptance and better laws and regulations.

Christian's Piece is here

Newcastle-based escort Luscious Lani (@LusciousLani on Twitter) has tried to not only talk to her over Twitter, email and phone, she has also extended an invitation to Dr Norma to come to her home. Visit a real sex worker. Talk to her and others about her piece and the ramifications it has to our industry, our jobs and, to be blatantly honest, our emotions (being told you're a down-trodded exploited woman can be quite confronting when you know you're not).

You can read Lani's invitation Here

Has Caroline RSVPd to this invitation?

No.

Has she acknowledged this outcry from Australian sex workers?

No

I too would like to offer myself to Carloine Norma as someone within the industry who spends a great deal of time talking to and talking about sex work and sex workers and who is quite happy and willing to explain some things to her that seem to need explaining.

Like her lack of understanding on the things that most of us Aussie sex workers do NOT have to deal with...Like pimps. Like exploitation. Like drugs. Like sexual abuse. Like danger. Like rape. Like every other bad thing she put through in her piece without acrtually speaking to a single person involved in the Australian Sex industry.

Has she seen that a hell of a lot of us are university graduates and can hold an intelligent conversation?

Does she realise many of us are in relationships and have children and families and great ones at that?

Does she realise that very few of us are drug addicts and do this as a last resort attempt at earning money?

Well, if she doesn't, she will soon because there are a lot of us and we are not happy. All you have to do is search Caroline Norma on Twitter and you will see the army of sex workers, clients and their supporters who have stood up to say "We will not allow your bigoted narrow-mindedness stop us. We will fight for what we believe in and we will prove you wrong."

If you'd like to join the fight for the rights of sex workers not to be exploited and misrepresented in the media by people who claim to be intelligent beings, please head over to Lani's Website (Yep click it it's a link) and look to the left at the "rants and ramblings" tab and add your voice along with many other sex worker supporters, whether they work in the industry, use the services, or just support us as workers in general...

Happy Hooking! - DB!

Video: More Advice For Men

Another of mine and Chantelle Austin's video blogs in our "For Men" series...

What To Do Outside The Bedroom To Get What You Want Inside the Bedroom

Video: Men! Don't be Afraid of Sex Toys!

Another video of the gorgeous Chantelle Austin and I talking about sex toys and what it really means if she wants to bring one into the bedroom

Enjoy!

Why I Should Be On The Circle - Channel Ten

So by now a lot of you know I am pretty keen to get myself on The Circle as their resident sexpert. I think I would be a great asset to the show and think that I would fit right in with the gang too.

Why The Circle, you ask? Well there are a few reasons.

1. I think The Circle is great morning TV. It's fun, friendly, light-hearted and funny.

2. I think they could do with a bit more sex talk on the show. Not smut. Not porn. But sex talk.

3. Women love to chat about sex with their girlfriends, they really do, and I think The Circle would be a great forum for this.

The next, and probably most important part of this is, Why Me?
Well again, there are a few reasons.

1. I know my stuff.
I have been writing and talking about sex for over ten years. I am a published and popular writer on the subject and have a lot of contacts and networks within the world of sex.

2. I am articulate and educated.
I can speak well and intelligently and have a friendly and non-confronting nature. I am approachable and friendly and do not alienate people.

3. I am normal.
This may sound silly, but what I mean is, I am an average Australian woman. I am married with a child. I look like your everyday person. I have no fake anything and can relate to mums and women (proven with the many sex-based articles I write for Mother and Baby magazine). But most importantly I am real. I even have wobbles... But by goodness I am sexy!

4. I have an extensive sexpert resume that covers everything from running a brothel to writing for The Australian Sex Party. I have been a guest sex-presenter on radio and have written everything from erotic short stories to advice on talking to your kids about sex...

5. I have good interview, research and presenting skills and, to be honest, I think I'd look good on telly.
:-)

Of all my goals for 2012 this one and getting my book published are number 1.
Let's DO this funky thang!