Sex and relationship education.

[Moussemoose]

A thread I inspired by another thread.

I work - think teacher but not quite - with young people from challenging backgrounds. Every year I have to deliver 'Sex and Relationship' education. When working with traditional groups, inner city boys and girls, we cover most issues you would expect and it is quite easy to add a feminist slant. Think indoctrination

The point of the thread is when dealing with boys and girls - we teach them this separately - from outside the UK (asylum seekers, economic migrants)
what are the key messages to get across from a feminist perspective?

You can't get everything across. You need to pick key points to focus on. You have to be non aggressive or you loose the whole message. Some don't know the basic facts of life.

At the moment I cover a lot but focus on:

1. basic biology
2. wear a condom
3. no means no

I'm going to integrate it more this year so will have a bit more scope. I want to cascade this to colleagues so we are all pushing the same message.

What will enable the women to control their lives and the boys to move towards a less patriarchal mindset? I say that because I am not going to win this battle just shift the ground a little we need to be realistic.

I'd cut exercise and have a discussion group instead -. you won't be able to change much in a short timeframe, anyway, unless you are incredibly lucky and they just happen to love the activity proposed.

Info on true women-only gyms and swimming hours, etc. would perhaps be more useful for Muslim girls than a hour of playing football? I guess some of the lack of activity is due to the impractical clothing / fear of the clothing being displaced during activity.

Muslims aren't gay or lesbian. I am told that regularly.

You could talk to girls about women who don't want to marry, perhaps? Or is that taboo, too?
For those who are lesbian, figuring out how to avoid marriage will probably be more of a problem than the maintaining a relationship with a woman. (Some homophobic cultures don't believe women can have sex with each other at all, so would turn a blind eye)

Thanks for the input. The boys (Afghani, Somali) often have no concept that consent is even an issue let alone that they could ignore it.

Perhaps the tea metaphor might help there ...

What are their morals? Do they leave girls alone and just expect to be owed sex when they marry, or do they think rape is okay in any case?

Do they realize that it is wrong to kill a woman? Hit a woman? What level of violence do they think is acceptable? Obviously, if they feel it is okay to force a woman to drink a cup of tea, the tea metaphor video won't help ..

It is probably easiest to operate in the frame of morals they know and bend those to your purpose.

"You aren't supposed to rape girls you aren't married to. Do you know why? Have you considered that an unwanted pregnancy would ruin an unmarried girl? How do you think she feels if this happens? Do you feel people should get to decide for themselves that risks they want to take with their own life? Could a married woman have reasons to not want to be pregnant? What are those?"

Not sure if you can teach basic empathy in the time frame of a couple of hours, but one can at least try.

Information about forced marriage and the fact that forcing someone into marriage is a criminal offence in this country? And that if they are being taken abroad "on holiday" they can tell teachers at their school prior to departure/ ask officials at the airport to step in and help. Maybe mention Karma Nirvana as somewhere they can seek help.

"You aren't supposed to rape girls you aren't married to. Do you know why? Have you considered that an unwanted pregnancy would ruin an unmarried girl?

Really ? You want to give even an iota of credibility to the idea that rape "ruins" a woman in that sense.

So this is a bit of a stream of consciousness planning.
For the girls..
Ofsted love a bit of exercise so i'll have to bodge something if they turn up - go for a long walk perhaps.

The girls get to have an hour a week talking about issues. See if I can pull a counsellor in. We can call it Conversational English. Or (I'm thinking while I type) we could call it a Feminist Club Ofsted might like that. So I need to pull together a list of topics. Consent, marriage, periods, health - start with anatomy and move on from there.

We work closely with the local Forced Marriage Unit so we have connections there - perhaps a guest speaker?

The boys...
Are lovely - to me. They are massively respectful - to me. They are charming, funny and helpful - with me. Not so much with girls from their own culture.
A boy told me "a woman is like a table of food if it is laid out in front of you of course you will eat from it". I struggled with that particular young man.

A Syrian boy told me that in his country women are revered. They are the most special things a man has and must be treasured and looked after. That I can work with.

If Ofsted are inspecting, there must be guidelines to follow for SRE.

Are there no female workers from a culturally similar background to work on these sessions?

JasmineGreen post 16 the government recommendations are crap. The guidelines cover basic topics but not with any details. Anyway, I want us to do something better than.

We have some Muslim men on staff, but while willing to cover these topics if asked, they have explained they find it very embarrassing. Also, there are some areas of 'cultural agreement' between the male staff (from all backgrounds) and I went some feminist infiltration. Stealth feminism if you will.

It sounds like your organisation needs to advertise for a female worker from a specific cultural background.

A Syrian boy told me that in his country women are revered. They are the most special things a man has and must be treasured and looked after. That I can work with

Presumably as long as she isn't ruined? It is no better than the first quote about a table of food. What do you mean by "work with"?

JasmineGreen

It sounds like your organisation needs to advertise for a female worker from a specific cultural background

And pay them with what? Government cuts. Youth work & post 16 education that is not A level is a long, long way down the governments agenda. No one cares about, or votes based, on what is good for poor, urban, non English speaking young people.

Really ? You want to give even an iota of credibility to the idea that rape "ruins" a woman in that sense.

Being thrown out of the house by your parents and possibly being murdered sounds like ruin to me, you know?

I wasn't talking of some invisible nonsense thingy. Getting pregnant out of wedlock ruins the life of a girl in a very real life in those cultures.

Once the boys are convinced that their religion promotes empathy with women, then you can work with that.
"Your religion is misogynist bullshit and totally wrong about everything" is not a good starting point, even if it is true.

It sounds like your organisation needs to advertise for a female worker from a specific cultural background.

If one can get a feminist, that'd be splendid.

Those Muslim girls I mentioned I met at uni were told by the lecturer (also from a Muslim country, possibly not so religious though) that, yes, unwanted pregnancy can happen to everyone. Was a joy to watch. Not sure if they thought about it, but coming from her, I think they gave it more thought than if it had come from someone with a different background.

"LassWiTheDelicateAir"

I could work with him because on some level he loves the women in his family he wanted to protect them. You can chip away at his beliefs. We talked about birds in a cage. The cage is gilded but it's still a cage. The idea that if you love someone let them go.

I didn't change his views but I think, I hope, I nudged them a little made him consider issues in a different light. Small victories.

Being thrown out of the house by your parents and possibly being murdered sounds like ruin to me, you know?

I wasn't talking of some invisible nonsense thingy. Getting pregnant out of wedlock ruins the life of a girl in a very real life in those cultures.

Once the boys are convinced that their religion promotes empathy with women, then you can work with that.
"Your religion is misogynist bullshit and totally wrong about everything" is not a good starting point, even if it is true

And at what point would you propose telling them that all of those consequences happen only because of misogynistic religious bullshit ?

Mousse, but somebody must have the decision when the current employees were taken on not to advertise a role for a female worker from the appropriate background.

That should be rectified in the organisation's planning now for when a current staff member needs to be replaced or other funding becomes available in the future.

In the meantime, is there somebody appropriate on the management committee who can mentor the current staff on these issues?

A volunteer befriended scheme would also be useful - maybe with undergraduates from similar cultural backgrounds.

And at what point would you propose telling them that all of those consequences happen only because of misogynistic religious bullshit

Yeah I tend to avoid that

And at what point would you propose telling them that all of those consequences happen only because of misogynistic religious bullshit ?

Not at all.

I'd count on it that he arrives at the conclusion himself after learning that a) things are not done like that in the UK and b) condoms exist and there's the fact that he wants to have sex.

I understand the urge to just tell such a man that he's an misogynist asshole, or to want to kick him in the balls, but Moussemoose asked for advice on how to change their attitudes.

The things I'd intuitively want to do aren't going to work there.

JasmineGreen
In the meantime, is there somebody appropriate on the management committee

No. That would in fact be a, hell no.

I think the Forced Marriage Unit might be my best bet.

'No. That would in fact be a, hell no.'

Then you should be whistleblowing on the organisation that you work for, because it will fail these young people, and fail them badly.

JasmineGreen

Whistle blowing on an organisation where the management are not as skilled as the those working at the coal face would mean a lot of whistle blowing.

Also, we could do better, more resources would help but I don't actually think we are failing the young people.

But you're not skilled in this area.

You asking a bunch of random people on an Internet forum how to provide specialist SRE to a group of very vulnerable young people from a totally different background, many of whom have been victims of trafficking and abuse.

JasmineGreen, I don't think whistle blowing would be any use. If the government doesn't want to spend the money to get specialised professionals, they don't.

Besides, asking random women on an internet forum how to feminism isn't a bad approach. You cannot expect the men in power to know how to feminism. Hiring a specialised feminist who did gender studies at university would get you someone who knows zero about feminism, in many cases.
Real feminism has always been done by ordinary, random women.

That's not to say there aren't some professional feminists who are really good, but even with the recent no-platforming, I am not sure someone like Germaine Greer would have the time to help Moussemoose to feminism correctly.

I am actually quiet skilled. I have a few qualifications and a couple of years experience.

I'm not asking "how to" I'm asking for input on "what to include".

I'm in the throwing ideas around planning phase. We used to call it brainstorming. I have had some excellent resources suggested (thanks again pp) that I can fully integrate into a series of planned and organised sessions featuring language acquisition and (God help me) British Values.

You are all British aren't you?

They are your values aren't they?

See British Values based on an extensive internet research project.

I suggest that you approach one of the specialist organisations that works with these children and follow their approach.

www.newpathways.org.uk/group-therapy/

They're experts on how to talk about rape and consent to a group including victims of abuse and child trafficking.