AIBU to think teachers should not be teaching sex games to children?

[2fallsagain]

Article In today's Times about teaching resources for RSE from the proud trust.

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/government-gives-pupils-sex-advice-on-the-roll-of-a-dice-80hmsplws

In summary "The government has funded a tool kit written by the Proud Trust, an LGBT charity, which includes dice featuring words such as “anus”, “vulva”, “penis” and “hands and fingers”. Children are encouraged to throw the dice twice and talk about the sexual acts that can happen using the two body parts".

AIBU to think this is deeply inappropriate and any school using Proud Trust resources needs investigating? WTF is the government doing funding pornographic material for children?

I’ve just googled some of the words of Warwickshire council website. I’ve got three girls, I’m no prude - I worry for my daughters I really do but bloody hell I wouldn’t want my young son to see that either then go down a bloody rabbit hole on the Internet searching for it.

It make me feel really sad that girl and boy’s are being told this is what they are to expect.

It’s not even as if the NSPCC could intervene as they are just as bad.

Is there any organisations that are monitoring this across the board?

This is the thing, isn't it? Kids all develop at different rates and have different life experiences. This approach to sex education assumes kids need to know much more than is necessary. It's putting things into developing minds before they need to be there, things beyond the basics that I suspect a large number of adults are uncomfortable with - in fact, many here have expressed as much, myself included. My 13 year old self would have been mortified. My son would too, when he was that age.

I'm also struggling to believe it's real, it can't be possible. Opening your hand??? It's not a cat's cradle. Bloody hell. Can't begin to imagine how it would feel to have a resource apparently made for children present this idea to me at 13 or 14. Many children would trust it as accurate, why wouldn't they?

I’ve actually followed the link on the page from the campaigners to get it taken down. I just get my head around it. The website says it’s aimed at 13 years old and up yet it has a question from a 12 year old girl that’s apparently mastabating all night to porn. I really fucking doubt it. The person that wrote that is a very twisted person.

You're right Reubenshat. No way was that written by a 12 year old girl. It's unbelievable that a website like that would publish it, it's the work of a perv.

Not appropriate for that age group.

And young adults don't really need sex manuals. They are normally perfectly able to work it out themselves.

@Reubenshat

I’ve actually followed the link on the page from the campaigners to get it taken down. I just get my head around it. The website says it’s aimed at 13 years old and up yet it has a question from a 12 year old girl that’s apparently mastabating all night to porn. I really fucking doubt it. The person that wrote that is a very twisted person.

If a 12 year old is managing to access & masturbate to porn it's a big parenting fail

Some teens are genuinely really intimidated by all this.

Absolutely. I remember being 11 and some friends talking about how old you should be to give a boy a blow job. The general consensus was around 13.
The idea of blow jobs seemed to me so disgusting and degrading and I found the idea of my friends doing that really disturbing and upsetting. I told them I was never ever doing that and they all told me I was being weird and that I'd change my mind once I had a boyfriend.

Of course I never told anyone how upset I was by that conversation and bottled it up. I'm sure many young people would have a similar experience playing this "game".

I remember being in an art class at 13 and another girl mocking me in front of a bunch of boys for not knowing what various sexual acts were. I found out at 16 that the girl and her sisters had been sexually abused.

Now as an adult it is so obvious that certain kids have been sexualised and/or sexually abused as children, yet we’re using their experiences as a model for sex Ed classes, rather than actually helping them.

Indeed. How do we spot the red flags of abuse and exploitation now? It's all just education now innit? Shudders........

I’m so glad to see the turn this thread has taken. I wrote to my Conservative female MP about this in May and have been met with silence. The responses at the beginning of the day on this thread were all - yay, fisting

I honestly feel sometimes I must be all alone in feeling horrified at all this. Then I go on FWR or now, on this thread, and I see how many women get it. They just get it. Of course they do. It’s all kinds of wrong and it takes a grown up to say so because children can’t. Apparently our government, our local authorities and our charities have been completely captured and are willingly colluding in this. If someone can tell me what to do about it then please do. The Conservative MP for the Cities of London and Westminster apparently does not think my letter on the issue or my two chasing emails are worthy of a response so I’m all out of ideas.

@Stripesgalore

I remember being in an art class at 13 and another girl mocking me in front of a bunch of boys for not knowing what various sexual acts were. I found out at 16 that the girl and her sisters had been sexually abused.

Now as an adult it is so obvious that certain kids have been sexualised and/or sexually abused as children, yet we’re using their experiences as a model for sex Ed classes, rather than actually helping them.

Absolutely this! ^^

I would also like to know what to do about it. And how do I find out if my kids school or my Council is using this material?

@IfNotNow123

I would also like to know what to do about it. And how do I find out if my kids school or my Council is using this material?

Contact the school and ask. Schools are obliged to consult with parents on the new RSE guidelines (I got myself involved in the process at my daughters primary back in June - I was the only parent volunteer 🙄)

You’re entitled to know what materials are being used and to ask what outside groups are providing resources.

There’s a template letter on the Safe Schools Alliance website. Scroll down to “Relationship and Sex Education”: safeschoolsallianceuk.net/resources-2/letter-templates/

Ah that's brilliant thank you Cave having a template is really useful.

Sunflowering... Deary me. I wish I hadn't come back to this thread

Glad to see so many sensible people discussing this here. I haven't got time to read everything but I'm wondering if there's a petition i can sign or something I can do to help get this rubbish out of schools?

Jeez. I send my kids to school to learn enough to get a decent job that they enjoy, not to be porn stars. Ridiculous. If I haven't needed to learn about these acts in 30 years they certainly don't need to learn them from a bloody school. I would have been mortified as well - it might have been the last straw driving me out of school at the time. Mine was not a friendly place. There was something on the news about how kids' anxieties have dropped outside school recently.

@MillyMollyFarmer

unfortunately with internet, before I was even 13, I had already seen porn and whatever else parents would be horrified to find out kids my age looked up online

My child didn’t have unsupervised access at that age to the internet.

You seem to have missed the main discussion points of the thread Linning as we focused a lot on the fact this game focuses on Male pleasure so it’s not even applicable to lesbians very much. Perhaps you should read the thread a bit

I 100% agree that female pleasure should be talked about. How do you suggest it is done without being explicit? Hence why I don’t think the fact that Sex-Ed is explicit is problematic. People, teens included, will engage in sex, potentially some they have seen in porn and might as well talk about those act in class so they can be taught about the risk and safe-practices regarding them.

Most adults I know don’t even know that people who have cold sores can end up giving genital herpes to their partners, most women as a result end up letting strangers or partner go down on them unaware that it’s a risk. So yes, things like oral sex and specific sexual act need to be discussed.

Not discussing them won’t mean they won’t do it, just that they will figure it out as they go.

Genital herpes would be covered under a class on STDs, as it has been in the past.

The explicit element of sexual pleasure would be covered in basic anatomy. A diagram of the clitoris is very similar to a diagram of the penis.

Other elements of sexual pleasure are covered in issues around emotions, boundaries and relationships.

Porn is not a useful starting point because lots of kids aren’t watching porn.

There’s nothing wrong with figuring many things out as you go. That’s part of developing into a responsible adult.

@Stripesgalore

Genital herpes would be covered under a class on STDs, as it has been in the past.

The explicit element of sexual pleasure would be covered in basic anatomy. A diagram of the clitoris is very similar to a diagram of the penis.

Other elements of sexual pleasure are covered in issues around emotions, boundaries and relationships.

Porn is not a useful starting point because lots of kids aren’t watching porn.

There’s nothing wrong with figuring many things out as you go. That’s part of developing into a responsible adult.

You have been to a fairly modern school because none of this was mentioned. Genital herpes yes BUT never that you could get it through oral sex if someone is prone to cold sores. We were taught the risks of giving oral sex to a man but not the risk of receiving it as a woman.

There was absolutely no mention of pleasure either just “that’s a vulva, here is the clit, here is the vagina, oh and that’s the urethra!” anatomy doesn’t teach kids pleasure, the point was to teach us where to “stick it in” it felt like, way more than trying to teach us (healthy) sex.

We also never had class about boundaries, emotions and relationships. Sex-Ed in my days (less than 10 years ago) was focusing on sex and sex only and never made a link between emotions and sex which I think is heavily detrimental and never even talked about the emotions present in sex (which could have led to a MUCH needed talk about consent and pressure and whatever else.)

I am glad you were taught about all of this at school but I definitely wasn’t, hence my stance than in general sex-Ed need to dig much deeper.

I went to school in the late eighties. My kids were both at secondary school in the last decade. We were all taught about STDs including genital herpes. DS’s class had a nurse come in from the local STI clinic and go through appointment making, what you could expect to happen, how to get advice etc.

The emotions and relationships element is what is coming in in the new SRE curriculum that is about to begin.

There are diagrams of the clitoris on this thread. They are really informative because many young people only know where the clitoral head is, not the body. They don’t understand where the rest is, that it becomes engorged and then the blood dispersed after orgasm. All of that is really informative as it ties in with the Science curriculum and how the penis works in reproduction. It also really helps to explain with a diagram that there are no nerve endings In the majority of the vagina - very useful for understanding female sexual pleasure.

This won't be used as a lesson alone. Those complaining about it not containing clitoris that's part of the vulva, while I agree it would be good to have it separately it will be involved in a discussion of the vulva. The sheet isn't showing less options for any of the body parts, it's got vulva match up with all of the other parts as it has penis etc. (It's like a times tables chart but without the repeats from what I can see couldn't see well enough to read each section though).
No teacher is going to force children to role the dice it will be used to generate conversation not an instruction manual or encourage children to do anything in particular.
It's been about 10 years since I was a secondary teacher, I once had to stop an re lesson with yr 9 (so the age group this would be use at and above) and turned it in to SRE. I had a girl in my class known to be active tell the class that most boys won't use condoms (it was part of a discussion about Catholicism and contraception). I stopped the Catholicism and dealt with the condoms, safety, that it's not for the boy to decide alone etc, then came the comments about showers stopping you getting pregnant 😳 and then we got to porn, no condoms, men doing whatever they want and women accepting it. The boys genuinely thought if a girl consented to sex then that meant they could do anything, including anal, cumming on her face etc. Porn is so dangerous to our kids they're watching it thinking it's normal, kids are seeing all sorts of things with zero consent involved. These acts need to be explained as being different and each requiring specific, continued and active consent. Both girls and boys are being exposed to porn and feel the pressure to have a sex life like they see on their phone. Unfortunately I was at a religious school that had specific sre days and I was bumped from a talking session with the pupils in each year to showing the video about the biology of conception 🤦‍♀️ however news had spread of my re lesson so I still got a few questions which had nothing to do with egg and sperm.
The situation with porn is imo getting worse, we need to equip these children with the information to know what they're seeing and what they can do to keep themselves safe and how not to pressure each other and empower them to say no, teach them about active consent.
My lo is only 7 but I hope when he gets to secondary there's plenty of lessons on porn and consent, obviously this will be a continuing discussion at home too but we need to change the porn expected culture to a realistic one. Also sex Ed does need to contain more than piv children will be of different sexualities and all deserve decent information about safety and consent.

This won't be used as a lesson alone
It doesn't matter.

If anything using a game that entirely ignores safeguarding and boundaries in the same lesson as talking about consent is a bit creepy as the message is 'you don't have to engage in anything sexual if you aren't comfortable with it... Unless it involves someone in a position of authority dressing sexual content up as a game in which case you're expected to go along with it because it's just a laugh right, don't be so uptight, I've been understanding because you don't have to roll the dice, but you still have to be subjected to the same explicit content.'

No one is saying that sex acts shouldn’t be talked about and that same sex relationships shouldn’t be part of the discussion. What is being said is that these resources are exploitative and inappropriate, bordering on pornographic and abusive, and likely to confuse and upset many young people.

@LolaSmiles

This won't be used as a lesson alone It doesn't matter.

If anything using a game that entirely ignores safeguarding and boundaries in the same lesson as talking about consent is a bit creepy as the message is 'you don't have to engage in anything sexual if you aren't comfortable with it... Unless it involves someone in a position of authority dressing sexual content up as a game in which case you're expected to go along with it because it's just a laugh right, don't be so uptight, I've been understanding because you don't have to roll the dice, but you still have to be subjected to the same explicit content.'

Absolutely this.

The 'game' has been designed by adults who are concerned about removing boundaries. And who have had ample sexual experience.

The intended players are kids. Younger teens, some of whom will not even be through puberty. In the public forum of a classroom, with their peers. And in this environment, they will be challenged to discuss the minutiae of sexual stimulation.

It seems not least to be entirely without any regard for the natural boundary of shyness. I wouldn't discuss this in a group of consenting adults. These kids aren't even consenting - they're obliged to be there and do as they're told.

What the actual fuck.