100 organisations ask Labour to abandon Tory revised guidelines on RSHE

[IwantToRetire]

The Conservative government launched a consultation in May on planned updates to guidance first issued in 2019, following a review of the reforms.

It proposed age limits on “sensitive” topics, ordered schools not to teach about “gender identity” and to share materials with parents.

Ministers were accused at the time of stirring up “culture war” issues in the run-up to the election.

The consultation closes today.

To coincide with its closure, more than 100 organisations including the ASCL and NAHT leaders’ unions, the PSHE Association, Sex Education Forum, Barnardo’s, Refuge and Everyone’s Invited have issued a joint statement calling for a “fresh start” to the review.

“We are calling on the next government to discard the draft guidance and begin this process in due course, focusing on the needs of children and young people and supporting teachers to deliver a high-quality, inclusive curriculum.”

Lucy Emmerson, CEO of the Sex Education Forum, said age restrictions would be a “backward step making children more vulnerable to abuse and harm”.

PSHE association chief executive Jonathan Baggaley, warned he had “deep concerns about the development process and shortcomings of the draft guidance, particularly on critical aspects of children’s safeguarding, wellbeing and inclusion”.

And Lynn Perry, chief executive of Barnardo’s, said introducing age limits to RSHE topics “risks children missing out on crucial teaching about abuse and exploitation”.

Continues at https://schoolsweek.co.uk/labour-faces-pressure-to-ditch-tory-rshe-reforms/

What age do people want girls to be exposed to ‘dick pics’ in school because there’s one drawn on a dirty van?

For clarity

Ah we've reached the "pearl clutching" stage of the thread.

😂
A felt tip drawing of an erection by a 16 year old is not a "dick pic". And I guarantee all girls will have been "exposed" to one in secondary school because teenage boys draw them everywhere.
Honestly the hyperbole on here is hilarious. You'd think from the chat that 5 year olds were being shown photos, as opposed to 16 year olds drawing felt tip erections 😂

Apparently we have 😂

"I have teenage boys. They think drawing "dick pics" as you call it, is hilarious."

"[my teenage boys] might as well have at least some clue that...porn style banging..."

Sorry but I don't believe you. Mothers don't talk this way about their sons.

I call bullshit.

What age in school was the question

Are you going for 16?

Here's a direct link to the pre-print of that research paper:

Play-Doh Vulvas and Felt Tip Dick Pics: Disrupting phallocentric matter(s) in Sex Education

"I have teenage boys. They think drawing "dick pics" as you call it, is hilarious."

Plus the pp used the term dick pics anyway

Does it move on to the same in public and cat calling women? All sounds a bit that culture we try to avoid. What’s the term again

Hmmm. Looks like the vulva exercise was with much older people:

The moments of these various experiences of teaching “glowed” (MacClure, 2013) or “stuck” (Ahmed, 2008) for us as an intra-activist research team, generating affective intensities (Ringrose and Renold, 2014). For instance, some students became reflective about their own experiences of RSE and how they had never even heard the word “clitoris” in their education at school. In the cases of teachers, some commented that they would like to use the exercise as part of delivering RSE in their own classrooms because it offered a way to connect with anatomy in ways that diverged from the normative focus on protection and harm against disease and pregnancy. Some students commented on the unique ability of the exercise to combine anatomical learning with discussions about pleasure

Sounds awful. Why teach teenagers that sex should be fun for females?

I would be very suspicious of any group that is against age-appropriate sex education. Remember when the gay rights groups in the 70s were against any age of consent?

This is no different to in Florida with age-appropriate sex education which then got deliberately mis-labled as "don't say gay" bill. Certain groups have got away with teaching children inappropriate material or false information (like gender ideology), and when found out claim "culture war" when they are legislated against.

I would be very suspicious of any group that is against age-appropriate sex education

Handily, now we have a great big list of who those groups are.

😂

Always interesting when people don't quote a post and then alter what it says. I said "Boys might".

I said this:
I have teenage boys. They think drawing "dick pics" as you call it, is hilarious.

I think its pretty unremarkable to say/know this about their teenage son. But imply what you like, no need to let the truth get in the way of a good story.

Exact same tactics employed incidentally for the other goal of getting men in to women's spaces where women are undressed or doing intimate things.

Always interesting to note who is passionate about sexual freedoms and with what end in mind. And with whose benefit in mind.

I don’t think it’s a ‘good story’. The opposite

I can see how easily adults contribute to a culture that most try to avoid. Especially if they are pushing for it in schools.

Do they know about respecting girls and do they understand toxic masculinity?

“Porn style banging” is what you wrote as well. I can’t believe you’re a mother, no. I can easily believe you are close to being both 16, and male, however.

Yes. Also always instructive to see which threads get disrupted by posters who are either immature, or say and do as you set out. Got to be one of the two.

Thanks for sharing the paper. It's really interesting to read how this came about and what the educators were trying to do. Here's a bit about "dick pics"

^Across our research, there was a pattern of boys receiving messages of porn-style images of women saying they would exchange images, information, or money. Consistent with a pornified logic of male consumption, the boys almost universally said that responding to this would be “stupid” and they knew they were “bots” (robots) or organised groups seeking to exploit them via what they identified
as “sexualised” content (here we directly meet posthuman techno-sex and its wide-ranging spread and capacities).^

There was also a clear pattern of girls being sent unsolicited genital images from menthey did not know. This was often through message requests or group chats, where the girls clicked onto the image and saw a dick pic or a video of a man masturbating.

Girls, however, had a much harder time across our groups clearly identifying a motive or understanding these as digital group-organised activities; rather they positioned the senders as “paedos,” “desperate old men.” and “flashers”.
^We felt that the dynamics facing girls - of receiving and navigating such messages - was significantly different. For the girls, receipt of these images was almost always perceived as shocking, less expected, and individualized. We found that the majority of girls had received dick pics or masturbation videos from unknown senders, and by age 14, it had become “ubiquitous” (Ricciardelli & Adorjan, 2017). The focus group was, in all cases, the first time that girls had been asked to share their experiences of receiving “unsolicited content”. In nearly
every group, stories emerged about how girls were sent many images from “randoms” (unknown anonymous senders) on Instagram and Snapchat. These were old men (in their twenties!) from America, a range of people they didn’t know, but who sent messages that the girls clicked on and opened up to a dick pic.^

After reading the paper I feel that Safe Schools Alliance has got it wrong. This exercise was about helping teenage girls understand that online sexual abuse isn't okay and mustn't be normalised.

Yes it's a really shocking insight into what teenagers have to navigate.

I like the ruler exercise too.

Year 7 is very early still. They are only 12!

I didn't write it in the context of my children, which is what you altered my post to say.

Don't give a shit what you think about my language. My point, which you seem desperate to distract from, is that teenagers need other sources than porn to learn about sex. Porn is unrealistic and depicts sex that's at best not fun for women and at worst harmful, painful and degrading.

This isn't a controversial point at all

@CassieMaddox here's your whole post.

I have teenage boys. They think drawing "dick pics" as you call it, is hilarious.
Have you not seen the back of dirty white vans?
I also think getting teenage (I.e. year 10 ish) boys to model vulvas out of playdoh and understand what a clitoris is, is a good thing. They are legally old enough to have sex, might as well have at least some clue that women have clitorises and porn style banging isn't going to be that fun for their girlfriends.
Massive amount of pearl clutching going on, under the pretext of "the children". When really we are talking about young adults.

Very easy to read it that you're talking about your own sons. If indeed you are a mother, then I just hope you're nowhere near any other position of responsibility as regards children. Not "young adults" but children. Under 18s are children. You can like it or lump it but that is what they are. Chipping away at this makes it easier for predators to detect weaknesses and access children for - as you call it "porn style banging".

A good friend of mine has an email from Mumsnet HQ suspending her account for saying this exact same thing back in 2018. I don't think she ever came back.

Yes. But unfortunately around 25% of children have seen porn by then.

If society is not going to adequately restrict Internet porn then really the only option is to teach children how to navigate it.

I'd love to see porn ideally banned but at least heavily regulated and access restricted but it appears there is no real appetite to do that.