nwatson: How To Put a Condom on a Banana | La Petite Feministe Anglaise

?and other things I?ve never learnt about sex.

Confession: I?m 22 years old and, unlike all the (probably made up) 7 year olds that Dorries knows, I?ve never put a condom on a banana.

By the time I started university, the number of girls my age I knew who had babies was in double figures.

Only a few weeks ago, my 21 year old boyfriend asked me to explain the difference between a uterus and a womb. (Sorry, J!)

It comes as little surprise to me, therefore, that a new study by Brook suggests sex and relationship education (SRE) is seriously lacking, with just 6% of secondary-school pupils actually receiving the information they need. Admittedly, I left secondary school over five years ago, but the report suggests that pupils are as ill-informed as I was; the myths that you can?t get pregnant first time and that only gay people get HIV remain prevalent.

Interestingly Brook?s study has been reported in the same week as another big sex education story ? the news that the UK?s four biggest internet service providers (ISPs) are to launch an opt-in system for online pornography. I refer to this as a sex education story for two reasons: firstly, the Brook study, and others like it, suggest that for many young people porn plays a big part in learning about sex; secondly, right-wing, Christian ?think of the children? ideology has been an important driving force behind the new porn-block. The problem is that this same ?think of the children? attitude is also behind criticism of primary school sex education and Dorries? campaign to introduce abstinence education for girls only, and is thus a major stumbling block to the comprehensive sex education that young people so desperately need.

I?m very openly anti-porn and I find it abhorrent that so many young men and women learn so much about sex from what they watch online. Sure, there?s feminist porn out there, but the vast majority of young people aren?t watching it.?The mainstream, widely and freely available porn that young people do have most access to is largely violent, abusive, degrading and misogynistic. A generation of young people are growing up with that as their model for sexual relationships. I would dearly love to see this kind of nasty porn disappear from the internet forever, but a porn block is not in itself a quick-fix solution to the sexualisation of children or their ignorance.

It?s not exactly clear how this filter on ?sexually explicit? content will work, but I imagine it would include an awful lot of the very unpornographic websites from which I, like many young people, have learnt an awful lot about sexuality. In fact, in the?absence?of a proper sex and relationships education, much of what I now know I learnt from the feminist blogosphere. Aside from the application of condoms to pieces of fruit, sex education also never taught me:

That female pleasure matters or even exists
That any kind of sex exists outside of heterosexuality (the internet is a seriously important resource for LGBTQ young people)
The difference between the vagina and the vulva (two keywords I imagine will be included in the ?porn? filtering)
What the clitoris is or does (another obvious keyword)
The importance of mutual consent
Anything at all about coercion, rape, domestic violence, sexual assault, sexual harassment or abuse
That rape committed by husbands, boyfriends, friends or dates is still rape
That abstinence is a perfectly acceptable option (which is?important, as long as it?s taught alongside all the facts and taught to both girls and boys)
The massive responsibility involved in having a baby
Anything about relationships or feelings
Anything about masturbation
Anything about pornography and its relationship to real sex
That gender really doesn?t matter as much as everyone makes out
Anything even remotely useful about abortion (which I?ve only ever been taught in the context of highly theoretical ?ethics? debates)
What a smear test actually is and when you?re meant to start having them (thank you to?The F Word, September 2011, for finally enlightening me on that front!)

Essentially, I was taught the biology of heterosexual intercourse and given a leaflet about different types of contraceptives. I don?t imagine that my experience of sex education is identical to every other young person in the UK. In fact, I?d like to hope that the situation has improved slightly since I was at school, but relationship education is still not?compulsory?(schools are only obliged to teach the biology of sexual reproduction) and the pupils quoted in the Guardian suggest my experience remains reasonably representative:

[Teachers]??viewed us as ?just kids? and thought ?they shouldn?t be doing it, so they don?t need to know?. They tell you how a baby is made, but there were loads of teenage pregnancies around so we knew that. The media teaches you a lot about sex, but it?s like education tries to hide it from you.?

?Those were mostly about different STIs and condoms, but there wasn?t a lot about what to do if you got an STI. There was nothing about different relationships like same-sex.?

?The other danger is people might think they should just get [sex] over with and see what happens and learn from experience.?

The government and ISPs may block every instance of word ?clitoris? from the internet, censor every photo of a penis and wrap children up in protective anti-sex cotton wool until they reach 16, but that?s not going to address the real problem. Until they provide a decent, comprehensive sex education syllabus, they can?t possibly hope to raise young people with healthy, well-informed attitudes to sex.