Sexplain conference
As mention on my twitter, I attended the Sexplain conference, which was brilliant! And everyone there was amazing and such inspiring people from brilliant organisations and I cannot stress how much fun it was. Though, if you was not there DO NOT FRET! For in this post I will try to summarise and add additional comments onto what talks I heard
The first to speak was Yolanda, who spoke about being Polyamorous. Yolanda spoke about the stigmas and myths about being polyamorous, such as the myth that polyamorous people have more sex or are polyamorous in a way that ‘open relationship’ works. Which is not the case and Yolanda stressed that being polyamorous is equal love. But where did these myths come from? Later I came up with the idea of the monogamy vs polyamory, polyamory being seen as a threat to monogamous relationships, which is not the case but we can see patterns of false myths within many areas which ‘affect’ or ‘disturb’ hetero normality. For example, the stigmatisation of Feminism e.g. FemiNazi and the countless queer myths and stigmas.
The next that I went to was about Sex education being a human right, done by Milly. Milly talked about the importance of Sex education being seen as a human right, like voting and how the sex education we have now does not help and actually violates. So sex education curriculum now is still based on catholic views of when and why sex should happen and is mostly focused on STI’s and sex biological roles , basically it says that sex if for making a baby . Which is not the case. In fact this curriculum does more harm than good as it discriminates, lgbtq+ and those who do not identify as male or female, which is against the law. In that session I also learnt that up to the age of 15, your parents can choose if you can have a sex education or not, to which violates the right to education and health care. There was also certain rules on how it should be taught. A lot of the rules were about mental health, to which I was happy to see some importance, the one that hit me the most was the fact that teachers are free to determine to teach about LGBT. Which makes me think about my science teacher, and if he chose to not speak about it. As it can be seen, our sex ed curriculum is flawed.
Although I didn’t go to their talk, there was something that Sophie had said in her briefing which was so important I had to quickly note down. Sophie mentioned that we have sex for pleasure, but that is not being taught.
The next to speak was Emma and Adam who are junior doctors and have a blog called Squish, Squash, and Squelch. They talked about the anatomy, mostly the xx genitals and we were able to build our own from playdoh (which can be seen on my twitter @blog_wolf) .The reason , they said, for doing this is that many adults do not know their own body parts , such as the vulva and clitoris, and this was due to the barriers of embarrassment and the hetero functions of our genitalia, to make babies, as the clit is not needed to make babies but it is very important for pleasure , which , as Sophie said , is sex. The arts and crafts was very helpful as well as fun as it showed how everyone genitals can look different AND THAT’S OKAY! Because one on the fears on many is that their genitalia does not look ‘normal’. But what is norm? Emma and Adam said that due to porn, there is an expectation of what genitals should look like. Another reason as in to why it was important to know the anatomy is to know where everything is, which is helpful in sexual harassment as you can say ‘someone touched my clit/vulva/vagina etc. ‘
The next talk I went to was about what do we want to include in sex education? Done by Bryony from Level up. She talked about what is missing from our sex education, such as feminism and apparently LGBTQ+ is not age appropriate, yet traditional marriage is. They talked about how when a vote was put in place only 3% had voted to be taught traditional marriage , which 37% had voted to be taught about gender and identity, their voices not heard. Among this group there was a range of ages and genders, yet when speaking about their Sex education, all except from 1, had described it as being shit. I was rather a banana on a condom or a slide show of STI’s . One used the brilliant summary of ‘here’s how to have sex to have babies and a condom but you should do it when married’. So then we talked about what we want in our sex education and here what we came up with:
Why we have sex
The variations in sex ( Not just P.I.V)
Knowing where to go if you need help with STI’s or pregnancy
Consent
Next was with Alex who was from a company called TIGERBristol which taught about gender stereotypes. First he used the brilliant riddle of ‘Father and son get into a car accident. The father dies. When the son is rushed to hospital the surgeon says “I cannot operate on him, he is my son” how can this be?’ The answer, if you didn’t get it, was that the surgeon was his mum. From girls aged 11-21, 73% said they saw teachers acting on gendered stereotypes, and 33% said they see it all around them. Within the group we then talked about how young girls are sexualised through simple things, such as school uniform as in most schools, girls are not allowed to wear trousers and the uniform is strangely sexual. Fair to say we talked a lot about how school uniform is sexualised as when you go to a party, probably will be a ‘sexy school girl’ costume there.
One of the weirdest and most intriguing talks was done by Mathilda who talked about masturbation in animals, more specifically, primates. An interesting fact was that until 1712, masturbation became a taboo and was seen as ‘unholy’ or ‘disgusting’ to which it is still seen as today. But are we the only animals that masturbate~? Thinks to Mathilda I now know that horses, camels. Walrus’, dolphins and penguins all masturbate as well as humans. In some animals, masturbation is seen as a form of grooming, and for females it was a way to ensure they would get pregnant if they did not orgasm during sex. Masturbation is seen as good for us and it is natural as it is rooted in our evolution.
The final talk was from Emily from fumble, who talked about porn. Porn is more exposed to younger kids and PornHub gets more hits than Netflix and Amazon combined. Emily talked about how kids would go to google rather than their parents about sex, which is true because that is what I did, and this is because that the sex Ed curriculum is not that good. They then talked about how there are narrow aesthetics in porn, e.g. Perfect women, no condoms. There is 41% of violence to women which is responded in a positive or neutral way, and there is 56% of domination. There need to be conversations at home between porn and what actually happens and parents need to make sure kids can talk to them. She then used her favourite analogy, which is from a porn star, “using porn as a sex education is like using fast and furious as a driver’s ed”. Emily then gave tips on how parents can talk to their children:
Reassuring , curiosity is natural
Explaining
Healthy relationship s
Kinks
Consent
Not everyone watches porn
Impersonal
And repeat this conversation!
As well as talks, there were also panels, these are my notes from these:
LGBTQ+ panel:
There is not a chance to explore gender and sexuality due to the only gender taught is from a scientific of biological view and not many straight Cisgender teachers are comfortable with these discussions. Students need to do the curriculum for sex Ed because there is missing voice and no youth input. There is still a ‘choosing to be gay’ sense and the way it is taught now and in the past is that you are rather gay or straight. There is a fear of coming out due to environments, especially school environments as they are not safe, due to homophobia. A way that has worked well in saying that homosexuality is about love is using this analogy: Is giving someone a hug when in comfort or food in need a sign of love? (Yes) Can a man do this to a man or a women to a women? (Yes) therefore, a man can love a women. Another way against homophobia within schools is rephrasing homophobic statements, for example, that’s gross = I’m uncomfortable with his.
2 people that were a part of the panel were Ibrahim and Diaz who are 2 youths that associated as queer and a part of an organisation called StraightJacket, which I recommend for young queers.
Sexual panel:
Sex is for everyone and is for pleasure, which is a message that is being hidden in sex Ed classes. Masturbation is healthy as it is good to know your body and what you like before you have sex. Many parts of the xx genitals have been undermined, such as the clit as it is not taught but 80% of women cannot orgasm without clitoral stimulation and not just penetration. There is a lack of discussion of the xx genitals within schools , which I agree with as when I was 12 I knew what testicles are and a urethra on a man , but I didn’t know about the clitoris till I was 16 or the fact that women had a urethra as well. It is reported that women have less sexual pleasure than men in hetero relationships, due to the lack of knowledge of xx genitalia. The idea of female masturbation is still stigmatised due to the fact that it is not shown more of or advertised.
Youth panel (which I was on):
Sexual harassment and assault are not taught within sex education and because of this , people tend to mess up which is which , which can cause harm as something serious can be reported incorrectly and may not be taken as seriously. Embarrassment and shame has come from a lack of sex Ed, especially for girls. LGBTQ+ needs to be included within sex Ed, such as Planned Parenthood for same sex couples and gender identity needs to be explored.
While I am here, I would like to add one final point onto my talk which I had forgotten so I hope it can be read here. That moment you realise you are queer was the most terrifying moment of my life because not only do you have to get others to accept you , you have to accept yourself and I spent months telling myself that I was not gay , or I was bi , because I didn’t want to be fully gay. But not only is it terrifying because of the world we live in , even in 2018 , knowing you won’t get taught the stuff you need because ‘ its gross’ or ‘it’s not age appropriate’ is fucking terrifying! It is as if the world has thrown you into the street blindly, because you cannot get the stuff or resources you need.
I hope this helps anyone who was unfortunate enough to not attend and I would like to give a big thank you to Sexplain for this wonderful opportunity, and if anyone wants my personal view on anything, Tweet or email me!