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Let’s talk about sex

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Time has passed since the news earlier this month about the Ofsted report* into sexual harassment in schools. Indeed, this may seem like a remote topic, apart from those AWers in the teaching profession, or with children of secondary school age, for most of us it’s many years (decades) since we experienced teenage years and puberty.

But I wonder if it is not a good topic to discuss in any case. Can the cause(s) for such harassment be identified? What could change the culture or prevent it? Is it different from/better than/worse than it was ‘in my day’? Is it just a boy thing?

I try to look at it from my perspective and experience, growing up in the English culture of embarrassment and squeamishness and jokiness about sex. As I’ve got older, I look back at how I learned about sex and relationships. The sex education I recall was mechanical, precautionary and limited. Relationship education didn’t come into it. Going to a secondary school single-sex from the age of 13-16, the arrival in the 6th form of girls was like encountering a whole new species – and as strange for them – entering an environment where they were treated almost as exhibits at a zoo. It was only in my 20s that I began to understand and appreciate relationships through several tolerant, and not so tolerant women reflecting back my clear inadequacies and helping me move away from complete ignorance. There must be better ways than that.

And yet little seems to have changed today – in an article** on research by the Higher Education Policy Institute.

“…despite high knowledge levels about sexual health information, the majority of students did not feel that what they had learned at school had prepared them for sex and relationships in higher education”
“From an annual day of workshops, to being sat in front of a video a couple of times a term, to a stumbling talk from an untrained and embarrassed teacher, children have often missed out on the vital education they need. Sometimes dissemination of facts is prioritised over the kind of critical thinking, discussion of attitudes and development of vocabulary and communication skills that underpins effective sex education. However, our own focus groups with year 10 children in 2019 found a lack of even basic sexual health knowledge and reports of their sex education being sporadic and different even between classes within the same school”.

Even new legislation (2017) on relationship education is found to be overly focused on facts and knowledge at the expense of skills; in its scope, relatively unambitious; and its focus squarely on preventing harm (a vital and valid aim), but falling short of fully addressing human sexuality as something natural and potentially joyful.

Is this the best that can be offered to children as they go through the phase of becoming adults – a quick (video) guide to the engine, instructions to always use a seatbelt – and then “off you go sunshine”? The harassment and abuse witnessed in the Ofsted report almost seems an inevitable conclusion for teenagers trying to work it out for themselves in the full glare of their peer group.

Maybe it’s time to introduce etiquette and courtship lessons? Or to dive into the world of squirm and shame as parents/educators and give a more fully-fleshed wholistic guide to world of emotional interactions? While trying to avoid being a seedy old bloke, I do like the idea of sex-positive, pleasure focused education written about in a St Louis planned parenthood article***:

“Sex-positive sex education understands that our sexuality is an integral part of who we are, and is healthiest and most developed when explored with trust, respect, and curiosity. Sex-positive sex education is free of the guilt, shame, and secrecy, thus fostering communication and healthy relationships”.

Any thoughts?

Article links
* https://www.gov.uk/government/news/ofsted-culture-change-needed-to-tackle-normalised-sexual-harassment-in-schools-and-colleges
** https://www.hepi.ac.uk/2021/04/30/brook-relationships-and-sex-education-must-go-further
*** <a href=”https://www.plannedparenthood.org/planned-parenthood-st-louis-region-southwest-missouri/blog/that-8-letter-word-including-pleasure-in-sex-education

2

Comments

  2. Excellent piece Sal. I often wonder if my behaviour in my teens and twenties would get me named and shamed nowadays – I like to think I behaved in a civilised manner, but it’s hard to know.

    Like you I went to a single-sex school, but I had the youth club to teach me about girls and their funny ways. I remember a lad at school pretending to have sex with the First Eleven cricket pitch, which taught me the basics. A photo circulating at school that someone found in a bush hem hem taught me about blowjobs almost before I knew about the rest. My mother left a book lying around called How Life Is Handed On by Cyril Bobby. There was a picture of firemen fitting two hoses together with a caption that said something like ‘ When firemen join hoses the end of one will fit inside the other so no water is wasted. That was a big help. One day in the car my dad said gruffly, ‘’Anything you’d like to know? No? Good.’ I must have been 15 at the time.

    I have no memory of educating my own kids – perhaps my wife did it. We had a Swedish kids’ book about the facts of life which seemed to involve wearing white clogs a lot, so that probably helped. I do have grandchildren – presumably everything turned out ok.

    Easy access to porn has changed everything of course, almost certainly not for the better.

    • “Easy access to porn has changed everything of course, almost certainly not for the better.”

      The effect of this cannot be overstated. It needs to be part of sex education lessons if it isn’t already.

      • Sexual gratification is a drug even under normal circs, and widely-accessible porn is a crackhouse. It also happens to be a crackhouse which has set up in the spare room of every house in the western world and is cheerily handing out vials after the kids have had their tea.

        Most parents wouldn’t know porn blockers or parental controls on devices if they hit them in the face. Most parents don’t check history and usage. Most parents think nothing of devices being kept in kids’ rooms.

        The overwhelming majority of teenagers have been sent images they didn’t want to be sent, pressured to send them of themselves, had porn shared with them, and school sex education is – unfortunate image alert – the little boy with his finger in the dyke. Sex ed can be as good as you like: it’s parents who need to step up. Parents who need to model appropriate human treatment of women and girls. Parents who need to safeguard. Parents who need to ensure their kids know what is acceptable and what isn’t, and to encourage their daughters (and it is mostly daughters) to report harassment and crime when it happens.

        Sharing a nude picture of a child under 18, even if the sender is under 18 themselves and the picture is of themselves, is a crime: to wit, making an indecent image of a child. It could land them on the sex offenders’ register, and maybe it should. We need serious deterrence.

        Is it any wonder the young are apparently having a lot less sex and the number of girls who don’t want to be girls has suddenly multiplied unprecedentedly? If I were a teenage girl, I might not want to be one either.

        • Good points, hedgepig (and good article, MC Escher). To ignore the ever-ready presence and easy access of online porn is poor parenting and wishful thinking. It needs good, parental, guidance, in a similar way to other, possibly less accessible threats, such as excessive drinking, dangerous drugs, personal safety.

          I do think that positive models help to present attractive, healthy, pleasurable alternatives – rather than don’t do that, and present or demand abstinence (at an extreme) as the only alternative. Sure, parents can provide a good, unshowy role model when possible, but improved cultural norms help to set good standards of what is and isn’t acceptable within the per group and those slightly older who they might look up to.

          My daughters are still pre-teen. I’ve no idea if I have a hope of living up to any of this – but it’s good to think it through ahead of time, even if I will fall into many heffalump traps. Better to speak up and be an embarrassing dad, than stay silent and be no use at all.

        • @hedgepig considering under 18’s are minors I am not sure I agree that sharing a nude image should place them on the sex offenders list that could potentially destroy the rest of their life. It is a bit extreme even though the showing of the image is undoubtedly wrong. Far better to educate and rehabilitate them.
          I think the attitude to sex in the media has a large part to play in how teenagers view sex and often leads to unintentional missteps because teenage boys especially believe they have an image/persona to live up to that is far removed from the reality that would most likely make them more sexually successful.

          • The age of criminal responsibility is 10. Half the purpose of law and enforcement is deterrence. Child pornography, even when shared by other children, is an absolute wrong. Ruining a few lives pour encourager les autres is exactly how the law in society works. I’m fine with it for the greater good.

            If you lock up a couple of poster boy cases, where the age disparity is enough that even the biggest boys-will-be-boys apologist can’t argue, the deterrent effect will have enough kids throwing their phones into the sea to make it worthwhile.

            Other opinions available etc.

            • @hedgepig still dont agree with your comments. My daughter is now 22. Between the age of say 13 and 17 the male friends in her school group would have been sexually inappropriate. Did I like that? Absolutely not – detested it in fact. However those same boys are now grown up and act with respect and a whole lot more maturity. Placing them on the sex offenders list would have meant their lives being destroyed because of the failure to properly educate them.

  3. Excellent comments, Sal.

    I must hit the sack now but I will ask our teenager for his views tomorrow as we drive out to celebrate Midsummer and dance around an enormous. floral phallic symbol.

    • Sweden have led the way. Sex education has been part of the curriculum since 1955 and covers ethical, moral and physical aspects. Teenage pregnancies are traditionally low, as are STDs, though they do fluctuate. Sweden is often pitched against the USA where sex education is, erm, less organised and thorough. The differences in outcomes has been stark but the gap is narrowing.

      Teenage pregnancy in the UK is falling, even before lockdown. Sexting does not involve the exchange of bodily fluids after all. Sex education, in itself, is not the answer. Assertiveness training for girls improves behaviours and safety. Perhaps there should be a place on the curriculum for that.

      Personally, I had no sex education at school at all. Like Sal, I learnt by having my inadequacies reflected back to me. The main problem was alcohol. My culture involved heavy drinking, including for the girls. Two drunk people might be disinhibited but are far less proficient and even less safe.

  4. I had a German teacher at my school, he was young, maybe below 30 and a good teacher. He had a relationship with a girl at the school, can’t say how old she was when it started. They later married, he died fairly soon after, suffering a brain hemorrhage while riding his bike.

    My (female and attractive) maths teacher who was married with kids had a relationship with a guy in my class in the 6th form. Her husband was my optician, later they exchanged partners with their best friends.

    She had replaced my previous very poor maths teacher who was arrested. He was in the IRA and kept bomb making equipment in his locker at school.

    Different times …

      • I remember the head teacher calling out the maths teacher for “carry ons” at a school disco. But he was rumoured to have a long term affair with another teacher which was awkward as his wife was a good friend of my mother’s …

    • Zero, and I mean zero, sex education at my all- boys school.
      Same from my parents. Learnt “all” about sex from a dirty joke involving two flies landing on a woman’s naked body.
      Nowadays it seems every teenager shares porn on their phone. Really not sure which era I would have rather been brought up in.

  6. A serious subject and one that shouldn’t provoke flippancy, but, as I read the first para, I was really expecting a different end to this sentence, given our ages:”for most of us it’s many years (decades) since we experienced……..”
    Sorry about that.
    Sex at school? I wish. Some biological descriptions that had us squirming as much as our teacher, an inability to speak to a girl until I was drunk and lots of solo practice. Porn? Well, H&E was available, if alarming, and a lad in the 4th form brought in some “continental” photo romance magazines, always referred thereafter as “pigs and eels”. It didn’t really help at all. Astonishingly, many years later, at medical school, a policeman who played rugby for one of the lowlier XVs, brought in some confiscated films for watching in the bar down at Cobham, the sports ground. And what should be included? Why, it was the live action from the pigs and eels from seven fond years ago…….

      • H&E was yesterday’s news, daddio. For me and my pals it was stolen/discovered copies of Mayfair or if you were really lucky, Men Only or Club. That Paul Raymond really knew his target audience.

        Magazines were never usually discovered in shrubbery as is commonly supposed, but very often under seat cushions in train compartments, for reasons I don’t wish to dwell on.

        • In the 70s, British males considered Sweden as the naughtiest place imaginable, full of nubile, largely blond, visions of loveliness having adventurous sex vigorously and at the drop of a hat.

          I have always suspected that image of Sweden may partly explain the huge success of Abba.

          • In 1969 or thereabouts I went to Stockholm in pursuit of a girl called Ase (my sisters, bless them, called her Easy, as in Michael come, Easy go). The trip was a fiasco, but I do remember the unexpected sight, in a sex shop window, of a woman being given a right seeing-to by a donkey. Don’t remember any donkeys in Abba videos though.

  7. The “reproduction” part of my biology lessons dealt with frogs and locusts rather than with humans. At 14 I probably knew far more detail about how a locust did it than what I was supposed to eventually do.

    I had no formal sex education at school at all. My dad tried broaching the topic once, but dropped it immediately and we never spoke of it again. Mum never talked about it at all. So I think I cobbled together my knowledge of sex through friends, regular practicing on myself, and basic trial and error. I particularly remember, long after I’d grasped the standard mechanics, that one thing that rather surprised me was discovering that women also had specific “urges” and “requirements” and that I was expected to meet these or be considered utterly selfish and unworthy.

    • Thanks, Slug – I think it is that last sentence which is key – there is enormous pleasure in giving pleasure, and that seems to be missing from whatever sex education is provided – including according to what others above have been kind enough to contribute from their experience.

      The morality and ethics in what Tig above describes from progressive Swedish sex education is good as is the idea of assertiveness training. But emotional and relationship education is the missing part even there.

      Without that, it’s just mechanics. and that’s sad and objectifying.

      • A lot of the emotional and relationship training can come from books, movies, TV shows and even pop songs!

        There is a lot of excellent Young Adult Fiction. John Green is a good example.

        Netflix has had some great shows for young adults which have tackled these topics with a lot of humour and panache.

        School screenings of the topics you’ve mentioned followed by classroom discussions can be very effective.

        In Stockholm we have a programme of school screenings and it’s a great way into difficult, complicated or more sensitive topics.

        https://www.sll.se/verksamhet/Kultur/lanskultur/film/skolbio/

        And they’ve even used a photo of the cinema where I work as a volunteer!

        Biograf Reflexen in Kärrtorp!

  8. 10 years at an all boys boarding school from 8 to 18 meant that sex was unthinkable, at least as a physical act, though we were all obsessed by the idea, and girls were unknowably terrifying. And sex ed didn’t exist. Once that was over lack of experience/understanding lead to a fair amount of experimentation, chaos and hurt on both sides for the next few years..

    Then along came marriage which sorted things for a while, until It didn’t. Post marriage led to a further period of chaos and hurt on both sides, aided and abeted by the internet. Finally the internet again seems to have led to the one that truly works by sheer chance and great it is.

    I’m constantly amazed at my teenage daughters’ ability to navigate this side of life so calmly. Must have something to do with mixing with them from 3 three years old. Boys can be easily ignored, best friends, boyfriend material, whatever takes their fancy. Moral of the story for me – avoid single sex schools

  9. For the last decade or so, part of my college-based job has included being a Designated Safeguarding Lead. Apart from the most regular stuff that crops up (mental health issues, bullying, problems at home etc) you will perhaps be unsurprised to know that, despite all the online safety lessons carried out in schools, young people do still sometimes, depressingly, share images of themselves online, believing they were for one person’s eyes only.
    Way back in the late seventies and early eighties thank goodness we didn’t have social media to contend with but I hardly remember any sex education at all. I do remember there was a video showing some rabbits frolicking around in a field with a vague voiceover, after which the teacher asked if we had any questions. To which the only answer was “Erm, why are you showing us a film about rabbits Miss??”

  10. Being a peasant, I went to a school with girls in. I’m not sure that made things any better.

    I was lucky, I suppose – my sister was seven years older than me and not at all embarrassed about answering questions, sparing my parents the necessity of embarrassing conversations that none of us wanted to have.

    Sex ed at school – a couple of tedious videos almost entirely about childbirth – left us mystified because we already knew that most sex isn’t about having babies. It was as if they were trying to justify sex itself: “It’s a horrible business, but if we don’t do it we’ll die out”.

    “When John and Mary love each other very very much…” – no, when John and Mary have just had a few snakebites…

  11. It’s become a standing joke that a whole generation of boys learned about female anatomy from magazines found in the woods, but that was certainly how I, er, came across sexual enlightenment in the 70s.

    Perhaps one day it will be revealed that the Wilson Government introduced a secret programme to teach what couldn’t be taught in schools via strategically-placed bush-based grumble mags.

  13. I was at an all-boys school from ’75-’81, and there was zero sex ed, though a biology teacher once briefly demonstrated masturbation by – and you can look away now – manipulating his dog’s genitals. His dog was always in the classroom with him, and despite being male, was called Tuppence, which added to the confusion.
    A boy in my class used to write short stories that combined horror and porn, Herbert Von Thal meets Razzle sort of thing, and he tended to get bowels and bladders mixed up. He’s now – I just checked this – a top ranked colorectal surgeon.
    More seriously, accompanying the abject unawareness of what/who females were, was a savage homophobia. I dread to think how it must have been for boys who were (obviously secretly) gay.

  14. Perhaps the answer is to make Sex Ed into a proper compulsory O Level…… it may upset the status quo with us nerds not scoring our usual high marks, but the practical exam could be interesting. And then there’s the Oral exam…….

  15. Thinking back, it’s hilarious.

    As a horny teenager, I tried to glean the facts of life from “A Sanskrit treatise (sutra) setting forth rules for sensuous and sensual pleasure, love, and marriage in accordance with Hindu law.” (Wiki)

    Oz magazine has a lot to answer for!

    And while we are in Bonzoville, i just stumbled across this gem.

  16. The sex ed at my 80s school was, like that of many others here, a brief nod to anatomy, centred on reproduction, and barely any mention of sex. It was also entirely in the form of a series of videos shown in a darkened classroom, culminating in a graphic birth. It all seemed to be designed to put people off sex for life, but good luck to the educationalists getting that message across in a mixed sex comp. The impression was that they would prefer it if sex was discussed as little as it was at home (that is, never).

    One of the things which most impressed me about the generation my other half’s daughter belongs to (she is 24 now) is how frank and sensible they were about sex and relationships as teens.

  17. A mixed school in the late 70’s early 80’s and we picked up the mechanics of sex. The what went where part in playground chat, a shared Men Only and older siblings. What I was dramatically unprepared for was the emotional side. Distinguishing lust from love. The repercussions of this could be hugely damaging for both parties. Like death we leave sex, lust and love to be stumbled across. This huge emotional upheaval to be discovered with no prior warnings. How we get through those early fumbling fingering years hopefully unscathed and without unwanted children can map out our whole future. Its appalling really that it’s not addressed properly before puberty hits us like a sledgehammer.

    • Thanks, Dave. Exactly this – addressing the huge emotional upheaval unaccompanied – terrible.

      I was only half joking when I mentioned etiquette and courtship lessons – there is a role for semi-formalising this in schools, I think. It might sound silly, quaint or weird – something from the time of Jane Austen, maybe – but then anything new often does – it’s often our first, instinctive, reaction to something strange.

      Something like a mentoring scheme, involving confident and trustable older kids in the school might help to broach subjects otherwise difficult to deal with, with a significantly older teacher.

  19. When it comes to Cupid’s arrows , I don’t know if the Archers are any wiser than the rest of us.

    But kids that have grown up on a farm with livestock soon learn about the mechanics of love-making. Not much about making hay that they don’t understand.

  20. If I had my time again, and knew what I know now, I would have behaved differently at points, and had a lot more fun at others. I grew up at that shabby time in the 70s where porn was still dirty, when softcore but still ubiquitous, “Confessions…” movies were popular, schoolgirl outfits were a legitimate kink, and sexless gay comedians and their occasional trans colleagues were mainstream but objects of slight disgust. Free love was still affected as a philosophy but it looked hard work for a boy like me with keenly imposed Catholic guilt thanks to my parents, no sisters, and initially looking like Roland Browning. It looked like everyone else was having more fun.

    Eventually I learned that mostly, others – even the more handsome, thinner, cooler than me, weren’t. So much in attraction, sex, and love is in your head. Somehow I managed despite in early years missing many an “open goal”, and having a number of other moments that, in hindsight, were marginally offside. Falling in love and learning what people and relationships were like was crucial. The second relationship was even better, as you don’t make the sophomore mistakes (though I forever miss the sweetness of the first, inept as it, in hindsight, was).

  21. Regarding some of the above, it’s my area professionally to some degree. I’m a social worker for 25+years and it’s been a positive thing in Ireland that the law has moved to de-criminalise what is now regarded as normal consensual sexual activity between teenagers. The Children First Act 2015 and the Sexual Offences Act 2017 essentially mean that as long as both parties are older than 15 with no more than 2 years between them and nothing to suggest the absence of meaningful consent, then the Gardai (police) or social work won’t be interested in pursuing the matter. Similarly consensual sexting is seen as within the norms of teenage interactions. It only becomes an issue if coercion or other means have been used to obtain images or if the images are shared without consent or with the intent of causing harm or upset. That’s probably as it should be so only criminals are criminalised. I’d imagine the UK has similar legislation in place.

  23. No sex education at my school whatsoever, other than from other boys in the lunch queue. Twang Jr’s was well done, over three days a few days apart with a film and Q&A. Everyone had it other than a few religious abstainers. Mrs. T is a TA at the school and saw him afterward in the playground. “I have one question – is that stuff about child birth true?” he enquired. “Yes”, she confirmed. “Well, that doesn’t sound too bad”, he decided, wandering off.

      • I was there for the whole show when TJ made an appearance. The following night I did half a bottle of Laphroaig and a quarter of an ounce of Golden Virginia mind you.

          • Having said I wouldn’t stay for the final act, I got stuck behind the tube for the gas and air. I was at the head end fortunately. As the boy had the cord wrapped around his neck, the room looked like a Tarantino movie when it was cut, spraying blood everywhere.

            • I have witnessed 5 births and part of the joy you feel when you hold the wee bairn is the hours of pain, blood and gore before you get to do that. It can have some harrowing moments but overall the birthing process brings out the best in everyone and they are probably my most treasured memories.

              You can hear other births going on while you wait for things to happen. The staff pause briefly every time a mother’s labour cries reach a crescendo. Then there’s a silence. And then you hear the baby’s first cry. The staff look at each other and grin.

              • I have witnessed, understandably, a lot of births ( and deaths), sometimes even delivering said sprog. Just a witness when my kids were born, mind. But what I was really here to say was you can tell a medic and midwife partnership when they talk about the dog “crowning” (at last) on the last thing at night empty.
                You’re welcome for this enduring image.

  24. Privately educated, all boys nuntil 1989. Some basics around the biological process.

    I think I already know the answer to this, but placing the reliance on schools for providing the biological, social and ethical education around sex just takes away responsiibility from parents. And maybe there is a lost generation there, but more should be placed on parents to teach and role model what’s appropriate.

    Harumph.

    • It’s a process. The schools hopefully get it right eventually and then the parents that the schools taught, pass it on to their kids without the schools needing to do it for them.

    • But my parents never talked about sex, or nothing else for that matter. It was a pretty dysfunctional family unit and a total lack of communication was a symptom, though not the cause, of that. Schools have a duty to cover the essentials which families might not, or might fill in with their own less than healthy version.

  26. Oh…Oh god…Ooo Oh God…Oh…Oh…Oh…Oh God…
    Oh yeah right there Oh! Oh…Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes…Oh…Oh…
    Yes Yes Yes….Oh…Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes…Oh…Oh… Oh…
    Oh God Oh… Oh… Huh…

    For this relief, much thanks, @Moose-the-Mooche!

  27. You little tinker, Salwarpe! Complaining about how your Sex thread is stuck at 69, while all the time you are scoffing your Corsair chicken hamper.

    This really is a case of “It takes a village to raise the child.”

    Parents, school nurses, biology teachers, classmates, novelists, older siblings, vicars, film makers, meal bands, grandparents, pharmacists, hairdressers, stand up comedians…all have a roll to play.

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