Archaic sexual myths seem to have made a worrying comeback. I am not just a bit worried, I am very worried about the impact on young people. Girls are being led into sexual situations by boys who have an equally ill-informed perspective on how to navigate sex safely. I’m talking about boys and girls of similar age, not older men or women somehow taking advantage.
Let’s start with the myth of ‘Withdrawal’ being suggested as a means of contraception. The promise that the boy will somehow be able to predict the point of orgasm and make sure no sperm ends up in the girl. It never worked, it hasn’t been recommended since the 60s when The Contraceptive Pill launched, it’s totally unreliable, and anyway sperm can ‘leak’ prior to orgasm, therefore it’s not a method of contraception at all. The problem is some teenage boys are being told it’s a viable option and low risk, which it’s not. It’s gambling with the future of both the girl and boy involved . It massively increases the risk of another unwanted pregnancy and all that heartache for both parties, whether the child is born or not.
My worry is that accurate sex education has not reached those teenagers through the teaching they’ve had in schools, or from family and friends. Why? My worry is that the facts are not correctly stated or not clearly stated at school. My worry started when my daughter in the school that ‘Aids is a gay only disease’ by a teacher who denied having said it when I complained to both the headteacher and governors. My worry is that information is hidden in politically correct, dense language that the young people just do not understand. Or is fundamentally just wrong.
Recently I heard at a publishing conference, that a School Librarian had been fired for stocking an age-appropriate LGBT book in the school’s library. This Librarian also faced a child safeguarding accusation which means until that is revoked she cannot work in another school. It’s censorship. She was fired because of parental pressure on the teachers and governors, and for some reason those groups allowed parents to dominate the conversation. It’s not on. She lost her job due to censorship which we do not have in this country. One person commented that there is no protection for that Librarian, but there is, it’s called The Equality Act. We don’t ban books in this country. We do have laws that protect freedom of speech. We are a democracy and our institutions should not be subject to this kind of pressure to prevent our children getting the information they need in a clear, age-appropriate format.
I will stand every time for the Librarian that wants to educate. I will stand every time for the freedom to disseminate knowledge. I will stand every time for my daughter and her peers to have access to the information she needs to help her make good decisions in her life, including her sex life.
We are not helping our children to make good decisions through censorship, we are disabling them from thinking for themselves.
I’ll give you another example. I heard of a situation recently where a late teenage girl fell pregnant. Not unusual but does involve a life-changing decision. She decided to have an abortion. And this is where it gets interesting… she was told that because the abortion was induced in tablet form and not an operation, that it wasn’t really an abortion. I suspect this kind of misrepresentation is happening quite widely. She was pregnant, the foetus was aborted, it’s an abortion.
Being a single parent is tough, being a teenage single parent is tougher. Girls being misinformed in this was does not help them protect themselves, it’s distorts the truth and therefore they are less likely to insist on contraception prior to having sex.
If you are a girl and have sex without contraception, you can get pregnant, even if no penetration is involved. Think about it before you’re in a situation of having sex, plan for it. I would rather a girl took the contraceptive pill even without the intention of sleeping with someone, rather than end up in some boys bed wondering why on earth she got so drunk! The morning after pill does not always work, the contraceptive pill or implant mostly does. Condoms can split. Being in bed with someone can result in going further than you planned sexually. It’s worth protecting yourself as a woman because the pregnancy is in you. The responsibility for parenting a child often ends up with the mother. The boy does not get pregnant, the girl does.
And finally, the last sexual myth heard among my daughter’s friendship group, is that oral sex is not really sex. Full stop. The misinformation out there is distorting our children’s choices. Let’s not do that!
End of rant. I think we were better informed in the nineties when there was no internet!
Let me know please if you hear of more myths out there.
Love Ruth xxx
