I tweeted recently saying that I’m going to start discussing different topics on my blog such as mental health, topical news stories, sex etc. - things that I’m interested in, in general, rather than just sticking to the usual beauty and fashion based stuff. I LOVE posting about beauty & fashion but I kind of want to make my blog more like an online magazine which encompasses everything that I’m interested in. So, when I seen a news story the other day stating that MPs voted against compulsory sex and relationship education in schools, I thought it was the perfect start.
At university i studied Psychology and Sociology and I did a module called ‘Sex and Intimacy in the 21st century’, so this is something that we discussed in great detail, and I actually wrote about how sex education in schools is failing young people in an exam.
Sex and relationships is an inevitable, natural part of life and because of that fact, we need to know about it. Sex education as it is now focuses too much on the biology of sex anyway! Think back to when you were taught sex education at school, what did you learn? I know that I was basically taught minimal biology of the reproductive organs and condoms and thats pretty much it. A survey by YouGov in 2008 found that more than 1/3 of teenagers relied on sex advice from friends, the internet, magazines and pornography because the information they received at school was so vague. Just imagine how damaging it is, particularly for a young girl, to rely on something like porn for information about sex! It’s no doubt leaving young women with a distorted idea of sex and relationships which can lead to body insecurities. Not only that, but porn (and portrayal of sex in the media in general) is heavily focused on male pleasure - so how is a woman supposed to learn about her own?
On top of this, sex education in schools doesn’t teach young girls about their sexual anatomy in enough depth at all. A lot of women, even as adults, don’t know the correct biological terms for the different parts of the universally referred to ‘vagina’. As a result, many young women enter puberty (already a confusing time) uneducated about their own sexuality and their own body. I remember reading an extract from an article by Ford (2015) that said some women that had been interviewed about their sexual experiences, said that as adults they found orgasms too overwhelming and anxiety inducing because of the lack on information they had received about female sexuality. Like… WHAT?! Girls are already caught up between being deemed ‘slutty’ or ‘prudish’ - they need to be taught that there is nothing wrong with female sexuality, that it’s normal!
The lack of sex education is leaving young people sexually illiterate. It’s already vague and biologically focused - but now it’s not even compulsory?
Of course there is always an issue when it comes to what you should and shouldn't talk to young people about and so there will probably always be an issue when it comes to sex education. But it seems absurd that in a time of such social change and technological progression that sexual relationships, intimacy and sexual pleasure remains as such a taboo subject within schools. Young people WANT to know about sex - they’re looking for the answers to their questions anywhere that they can find them and it’s causing them to look to things like porn which can cause them to interpret sex and sexual relations in a really damaging way.
I hope you guys found this post interesting, it's just my interpretation on the whole thing. Let me know your opinion & let me know what you think about the idea of making my blog like an online magazine?
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xoxo Kayleigh
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