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 don't want anal sex normalised in schools for my daughter thanks very much. Anuses are not supposed to take penis'. They're not designed for it, not matter how much anyone pretends otherwise and anal sex comes with risks to health for all concerned. Fine to consent to it if you wish in a consensual sexual relationship but I certainly don't want it presented as an essential part of every woman's sexual repertoire! And that's what this "game" does.

Lol at Part Of The Problem

And let me speak up for all the shy girls (and boys). I would have been completely silenced and mortified by being required to play this “game” at any age in secondary school

Well our teacher sexually assaulted us in the classroom most days and we were threatened with the police when we told the head, so I definitely wouldn’t have been comfortable being taught explicit sex Ed in school and my daughter recently had a teacher leave because of historic sex grooming claims, nobody even asked his present students if they wanted to talk about anything and the head focused on the historic part and organised a goodbye card for him soooo....I do not trust schools to teach this game appropriately AT ALL nor do I think forcing shy or abused students into discussing it in this detail is ok.

Call me a prude, I don’t care.

I was fuming when my 11 year olds class got told wanking is normal. Not saying it's not but to 10 and 11 year olds pissed me off. YANBU.

@TomNook the fact you fail to acknowledge the safeguarding problems being presented here, and your general attitude towards posters raising concerns raises many red flags with me.

I thought that the argument for having sex education was to prevent teenage pregnancies and STI's and to talk about CONSENT. There does not need to be lessons on technique and different forms of sex. It is not that difficult to work out surely. I am talking as a female who married in my 30's, having never had sex before, married a virgin, had fairly basic ' how babies are made' sex ed at school and yet we were both fine on wedding night.
Sex is illegal until age of 16. I know younger kids are not prosecuted but age of consent is there for a reason, and to be teaching that amount of detail about an illegal activity would be considered ludicrous. Imagine a dice with different drugs on and all the different ways to partake of them. Would that be useful? A dice with alcoholic drinks and different games with which to enjoy them.
I agree with PP who say this is an agenda to normalise anal sex and this imperils our daughters. I have worked in an A& E dept and can tell you that the anus is not designed for sex whether you enjoy anal or not, but it is not much talked about. I have seen male patients who cannot even sit down.
Secondary schools have focused on the science of how babies are made because it is an important biological fact and it ensures that children know how to avoid pregnancies. IMHO, phse lessons should pretty much focus on respect, consent, dangers of porn addiction, healthy relationships etc etc and not whatever this dice intends.

Very male centric and patriarchal for that alone it should not be used.

I don't think sex should be taught in mixed sessions either, or at least not all of it. I think girls need sessions about safety and saying no, boys need the same but taught differently and they both need to understand consent. And consent doesn't mean tapping an app, it should be enthusiastic consent which can be withdrawn at any time for any reason

Imagine sitting through that lesson if you are being sexually abused?

Imagine sitting through that lesson if you have been raped?

Imagine sitting through that lesson if you are 13/14 and not wanting sex (which is illegal at that age) despite pressure from your boyfriend.

It strikes me that you could probably teach an excellent sex ed lesson by showing the students this game (not playing it) and then going through all the reasons it's problematic.

This does not seem appropriate. Sex education to include consent especially is important as porn or the ideas of some so-called musicians should not be the source of information for children and young people. Just not as this scheme/resources proposes.

Imagine if you simply don’t want to have to consent to talking about sex with members of the opposite sex. Why should you?

Consent first and last; what grooming /sexual bullying looks like (it looks like people who say “Don’t Be Such A Prude”)

This. I hope kids are also taught about how words like 'prude' are used to push/erode and dismiss boundaries and undermine informed consent.

Completely agree with everything you've said Mollscroll. This 'educational tool' is as dodgy as they come. Uses money earned from taxing women's bodily functions to fund something not actually aimed at girls but seemingly aimed at removing their boundaries. How much better would it have been if money from women was used to teach girls that porn isn't normal. The commodification of women"s bodies isn't ok. That staying safe and having strong boundaries is actually what young girls need in an increasingly pornified society. That saying no to teenage boys and older men on the internet when requests for nudes and anal are made is fine and what is in their best interests.

I may be ancient but I'm not so old that I've forgotten that teenage boys well on their way to learning that the female of the species are second class citizens were already treating teenage girls like sex objects. I'm not so old that I've forgotten one of them running around the playground getting others boys to sniff his fingers after he'd been digitally penetrating a girl. I'm not so old that I've forgotten how mortified that girl was that one of her first intimate experiences became a public humiliation. The PPs comments about girls being told theyre homophobic if they don't want anal sex is merely a continuation of that kind of total disregard for females. This 'game' would absolutely feed into that.

This seems more like a tool carefully aimed at grooming still young kids to accept that all sex acts are equal and normal. Some women will never have anal sex and yet here is a game for 13 years olds encouraging it, because let's face it children will think that if it's been taught in a mixed sex class openly that it must be pretty mainstream and therefore acceptable.

The lack of information about the clitoris really does say it all.

There are six sides to the dice and breasts and clitoris don't appear but object does. I don't want my 13 year old to think it's normal sexual practice to stick objects into orifices. Nor that anal sex is a normal part of a healthy sexual relationship.

The game teaches children that girls' sexual pleasure is of no interest or relevance.

Anyone who thinks these are an example of a good sre teaching aid doesn't belong anywhere near pubescent children.

@TomNook

Lol at Part Of The Problem

There are really no LOLs to be found here, unless you have a perverted sense of humour.

Imagine how radical it would be to make a "female pleasure dice" and to have a whole class of 16/17 year old girls just focus on understanding the female body. You could put: boobs/nipples, clitoris, inner thigh, mouth/kissing, the elusive G-spot, neck.

And then you could talk about how some of these things feel amazing for some women and very boring for others and how we're all fascinatingly unique. And that good sex is about feeling safe and loved and cared for, not about ticking boxes or performing for someone else.

That I could get behind.

The argument that “they will learn it about porn in the playground so let’s teach it in schools” is a terrible one.

Because of porn girls and boys need to learn about boundaries and consent and emotions. Not - let’s get creative and rub our anuses together.

Agree that it’s been created by men, for men.

The money from the tampon tax could have gone towards addressing period poverty, or providing girls and women in less developed countries with sanpro/education on how to deal with menstruation. ANYTHING female centred. But not this pornified nonsense.

@TomNook

Lol at Part Of The Problem

There you go again. You should not be teaching anything, let alone SexEd if you are so blinkered and dismissive.

When was your safeguarding training last updated?

@ItalianHat

And let me speak up for all the shy girls (and boys). I would have been completely silenced and mortified by being required to play this “game” at any age in secondary school.

And I can bet that it would have been the basis for teasing and bullying from the moment we left the classroom.

I’m of the generation that got the first Rubella shots at school. The general cat-calling from the boys about why girls had to have these vaccinations was Neanderthal.

I’m 32 and would have been horrified at this lesson in school. It’s fair to say that even now I’m probably quite prudish but I have enjoyed good sex previously and enjoyed exploring with my partners. I would not have benefited from a game where you had to roll a dice and talking about sucking and licking and inserting as a 13-16 year old.

I used to teach primary aged children. I know all about using gimmicks and games to encourage learning and discussion. I would hope any teacher worth their salt will look at that material and adapt it to the children they are teaching, if not disregard it completely.

I think there needs to be much more normalisation of relationships outside of man and woman. I absolutely think lesbian/gay relationships should be represented in any and all lessons on an equal basis. I don’t think that objecting to this material is homophobic in any way, shape or form. If anything, this material is incredibly harmful to girls and women as, like many PPs have just said, there is very little mention of female pleasure.

DS is 4 so it’s a long way off, but i will make sure to be looking at any schools sex education policy and will strongly protest anything that looks like this. It does all our children a great disservice and, IMO, just compounds the damage that porn has inflicted on both our boys and our girls.

I recall not long ago when dd was 14/15 A school nurse went into school and good a sex ed lesson. She got out a cucumber and showed the girls how to put a condom on it. No reference to consent, no reference to the age of consent, no reference to the fact that sex could (let alone should) form part of a loving relationship.

Quite apart from all the other things deeply wrong with the sex dice there is a significant issue around who provides the sessions and what their personal views are. Sadly one the views of the sort of people providing these sessions do not recognise the views of the decent majority who care about their childrens' physical, moral, social and yes, sexual wellbeing.

It was a perfect example of where parents should be informed, in advance of the content of such sessions and where Head teachers would be well advised to be mindful of the law as it relates to under 16s and sensitive to the high standards of care and love that prevails still in the majority of families.

Asking 13 year olds to talk about sex - a combination of what could easily be fist/anus, mouth(tongue)/anus, is alarming. Many (including my DD) wouldn't want to think about this, let alone be forced to talk about it in class. Normalising sexual activities to children is a safe-guarding alarm - it's grooming. There are some tenuous links between the Proud Trust and Peter Tatchell - who has tried to get the age of consent lowered to age 9. See his writing on adults raping children ('consensual sex' with children is rape).
Anyone who thinks this is okay needs to have their hard drives checked and I don't give a shit what anyone else thinks here (and I'll be counting the minutes down until this gets deleted).

Gay kids are entitled to learn about anal sex in the same way heterosexual kids are entitled to learn about PIV sex, without it being labelled a kink

Would you stop trying to paint this as homophobic. Anal isn’t something all gay men do, no lesbians do it and most women don’t- plenty do it under pressure because it’s normalised despite not being enjoyable for most of us. I’ve discussed this with my male gay friends plenty of times and I’ve heard horrific stories of even minor injuries or problems caused because of engaging in it- like regular leakage. Is that being taught? Sorry but I don’t support sacred castes or not talking about things because gay people engage in it therefore it’s untouchable. That’s dumb and an insult to gay people.

School is meant to teach the basics in sex Ed.