Stephen Fry backs P Tatchell's call to revise sex education

[Imnobody4]

www.petertatchellfoundation.org/stephen-fry-backs-our-call-to-revise-sex-education/
I think this sounds reasonable but still some niggling suspicion. IF the quality and calibre of the training and trainers were beyond reproach, if there was a broad consultation beyond just LBGT I might accept it.
I'm pleased to see they acknowledge asexual. What do you think?

Where in the proposals is it suggested teachers demonstrate masturbation?

Peter tatchel gives not one fuck about the boundaries of women and girls. Gender all the way through it no mention of sex. He is is no position to provide resources about consent. It would be laughable if it wasn't so serious.

From what I have read on twitter, Peter Tatchell doesn't think you can catch STDs through oral sex, so I'm not sure that his opinion carries much weight.

I also suspect that his idea that people don't need to worry about contraception as long as they avoid PIV in sex has led to many pregnancies. "Don't worry, we'll stop before we go that far".

Quote from the link in OP

"As well as warning pupils about the risks of sex, lessons should also inform older pupils about sexual pleasure and how to achieve it for both themselves and a partner, with the aim of helping them secure mutual sexual happiness"

That sexual pleasure for both partners - within a setting of mutual consent, respect, liking for one another and the absence of coercion of any sort - is the aim of having sex should be made clear. As the TED video upthread makes clear, there are far too many young women who think sex is about "giving him what he wants, or part of what he wants, to make him stay with you/get him out the door" (delete according to circumstances).

But I think bring the how into the classroom is wide-open to abuse - a tiny, but non-negligible minority of creepy teachers using it as a springboard for abuse, peer-on-peer abuse and humiliation in the class room - so many places this could go horribly wrong.

Here BoomBoomsCousin
RSE for pupils aged 16-plus should include advice on how to achieve mutually-fulfilling, high quality sex; including the emotional and erotic value of foreplay; the multitude of erogenous zones and how to excite them; and methods to achieve pleasure for one’s self and one’s partner.

It's a boundaries issue. You don't teach children / young people about giving sexual pleasure in compulsory lessons in schools. It's a predator's dream.

There is a strong argument for ensuring that young people have access to good quality sex education rather than accessing porn. But enforcing it in schools in compulsory mixed sex classes, removing parental rights to withdraw children thus ensuring that all children, no matter what their emotional development, any SEN, any religious factors MUST attend these classes is just crass.

"...advice on how to achieve mutually-fulfilling, high quality sex; including the emotional and erotic value of foreplay; the multitude of erogenous zones and how to excite them; and methods to achieve pleasure for one’s self and one’s partner."

I'm fairly sure that's a lot of words to euphemistically cover wanking. This is not appropriate in schools. Really.

Indeed FermatsTheorem On occasions, the teachers most desperate to teach sex education were the teachers who had to be actively prevented.
Health professionals were often (not always) the best, matter of fact adults when working with whole classes. Their neutrality, matter of fact approach and lack of a 'personal' relationship with young people in schools helps.

I am a fairly broadminded woman who doesn't mind discussing sex, but even I would find a mixed sex classroom when I was 16, a mortifyingly embarrassing place to be discussing my erogenous zones and how to excite them.

Absolutely FloralBunting It's the complete lack of boundaries - the assumption that it is a school's place to teach children about sexual pleasure in Tatchell's compulsory mixed sex groups.

SRE lessons need lengthy discussions about content, appropriate staffing, group composition, adult knowledge, how to answer questions, how to endure that discussions remained boundaried and age appropriate, how to manage groups with some children who were completely 'inexperienced' in relationships alongside others who were sexually active. Not to mention accommodating the needs of abused children, different religious / cultural beliefs, minimising personal disclosures so that nobody was subsequently targeted / bullied. Such a complex area. Tatchell's demands offer nothing to help.

advice on how to achieve mutually-fulfilling, high quality sex; including the emotional and erotic value of foreplay; the multitude of erogenous zones and how to excite them; and methods to achieve pleasure for one’s self and one’s partner.

From another standpoint too, how is this sort of thing, or discussions of how to masturbate, supposed to work in a school system that sees itself as being secular and serving a diverse multi-cultural society from all kinds of backgrounds and belief systems?

truthisarevolutionaryact none of that says anything at all about a teacher demonstrating masturbation.

While a hands-on all class orgy with the teacher joining in could be one way to cover that point it wouldn't be a very good way. Models, diagrams and non-personalised discussion about the wide variety of ways people get excited, the fact that what works for one person doesn't work for everyone and the need to listen to your own body and your partner and communicate with your partner would probably do a much better job.

People don't need to be having discussions with teachers about what get's non-personalised people excited.

I am really having a hard time thinking of kids that would want to discuss that with their teachers.

Tatchell’s proposal seems to assume a very old-fashioned classroom, where teachers divulge information to non-participating pupils.

I cannot for the life of me imagine many students wanting to speak up in these lessons. Except perhaps some immature, suggestive bravado by loud boys. Could you honestly imagine any girls, in this mixed sex setting, speaking up about their own pleasure?

Why do so many gay men invest so much in the sex education of all children?

Except perhaps some immature, suggestive bravado by loud boys. Could you honestly imagine any girls, in this mixed sex setting, speaking up about their own pleasure?

Quite. Which is why the mention on the thread, from people who seem to think this is a good set of proposals, of how important it is that girls understand that their own sexual pleasure is important, is really striking an odd note.

It's like no one has actually met a mixed sex group of teenagers. Do you seriously think talking about mutual masturbation in a room where there are bound to be gobshite lads looking to impress each other is going to give girls the message that their pleasure is important? Whatever the lesson plan might indicate, I can promise you the girls in that room will hear loud and clear a very different message.

And yet again the proof we live in the age when comedy is redundant. Did anyone post this from Monty Python’s Meaning if Life yet??

Lolololol @ the cross posted Python clip!!

Crossposted!

Floral

Absolutely spot on description of what the reality of such "lessons" would be, especially for the girls.

Something does need to be done to improve sex education, sex shouldn’t be a dirty word and talking about sex really shouldn’t be a taboo.

I didn’t get any sex education, we were removed from all the lessons at school (yes, even the ones covered in science) and nothing was ever mentioned about sex at all at home.

The problem is the only place to find anything out is porn, that was my only sex ed and the thought of having to let (because when you think it’s normal, you don’t realise that choice comes in to it) anyone do that to me was terrifying, but when you’re educated via porn you don’t know what normal expectations actually are. How I didn’t end up absolutely riddled as a teen is an actual miracle.

If you want young people to have a healthy view of sex, then it’s something that needs to be talked about and normalised. Obviously finding the best way to achieve that is difficult, and there will always be someone that is unhappy, but the most important thing is fully informed young people who can be safe, say no and feel confident doing it, rather than being considered ‘frigid’.

There is lots of sex advice online that isn’t porn.

Stephen Fry didn’t even go to a mixed sex school.

This is just wrong on so many levels. The words used on the website such as 'explicit'

Specific sex education should begin from the first year of secondary school and become explicit from the age of 16 – not in order to promote sex, but to ensure happy and safe sexual and emotional relations for those teenagers who become sexually active.
*
Sex is described as wholesome* which just sounds creepy

Love the way pornography and abuse are thrown in for good measure to try and throw people off the scent that this is being done in good faith

It's actually very scary

The replies to this tweet are gold. I need to make a new Twitter account.

Twitter comment:

"Are you out of your fucking mind?"

Perfect.