I was sitting in health class like any other Thursday afternoon when the teacher reluctantly announced our new topic for the semester: sex.
Immediately, my peers burst into giggles, as you would expect in a room full of bored and sexually repressed 16 year olds. I knew exactly how the rest of the period would go because two years earlier a group of sex educators had marched into our school and given us the exact same speech — don't have sex, but if you do, use protection.
From what I hear, my health class experiences were better than most. We learnt about consent, contraception and sexually transmitted infections. We even got taught how to prevent them, how they were treated and how to protect ourselves by using condoms. One thing that was seldom mentioned in the four years I spent at school, however, was LGBTQ sexual health.
The term 'LGBTQ inclusive sex education' is closely associated, if not synonymous, with comprehensive sexuality education. The United Nations defines the latter as 'a holistic approach to human development and sexuality' with the goal of equipping 'children and young people ... with the knowledge, skills and values to make responsible choices about their sexual and social relationships'.
While difficult to talk about, inclusive sex education remains an important discourse in our society. Imagine being an inexperienced young person, feeling fundamentally different from your peers, and further imagine having your gender or sexuality dismissed by the people meant to help keep you safe. This is how it felt as a young queer woman in what at the time seemed like an all-straight classroom. With so little information and extreme feelings of exclusion, it is no surprise many young gay, lesbian and bisexual people turn to the internet for sexual advice. Unsurprisingly, this is almost always unreliable and sometimes even dangerous.
Luckily, countries across the world are adapting their curriculum to be more inclusive and better fit modern times. In England, new government regulations mean that from September 2020 all secondary schools will be required to teach Relationships and Sex Education (RSE), though how they choose to approach this is completely up to them. In high schools across the nation queer youths are making their voices heard by creating safe spaces in their schools, from Gay Straight Alliances to celebrations of LGBT history and important figures.
In Canada, Australia and some states in the USA, LGBTQ inclusive sex education is already compulsory, though insufficient time and inadequate training mean there's much left to be desired. It is not rare for educators to gloss over or skip the LGBTQ component of health class altogether. When it is covered, it seems to forget that LGBTQ students actually exist.
"For us as students, inclusive teaching shows that you appreciate and respect our identities."
Another big obstacle for LGBTQ inclusive education is that all too often queer youth are referred to as outsiders in the classroom. Many times this is done subconsciously by the educator in charge.
For example, when talking about straight sex, I remember my teachers speaking to us in the second person, saying things like 'you need to make sure you're safe and use protection'. When talking about homosexual relations, teachers tend to switch to the third person: 'gay people should ... ' or 'lesbians do ... '. Although generally not meant to be harmful, such language serves to create a barrier and push those already at risk further into the closet.
When I speak about this topic, people tend to assume I am focusing solely on my experience at religious schools or schools in isolated areas. Throughout my teenage years, I attended a wide range of schools all across the country, from Sydney to Queensland to Perth. Prior to that, I had been a student at a Catholic private institution overseas. While today I don't recall much about the early sex-ed classes I received as a young teen, I can tell you the content did not differ much from school to school. Incomplete, inaccurate and exclusive sex-ed classes are not just a private school problem, it's something that needs to be addressed across the board.
I'm under no illusions that implementing LGBT inclusive sex education into the school curriculum will be easy and I am sure it will be met with strong opposition from vocal minority groups. But inclusive teaching is important, particularly for a population that still experiences higher rates of bullying just because of who they are.
If you're a teacher, acknowledging that you most likely have an LGBTQ student can give a whole new sense to your sex-ed lessons. It means you understands you're not just teaching straight kids about gay sex, but helping the queer teen in your classroom make smart decisions. For us as students, inclusive teaching shows that you appreciate and respect our identities. On another level, it's also about acceptance for those who are not what's considered the norm, whether that be due to sexual orientation, faith, race, gender or disability.
Sol Kochi Carballo is a Western Australia-based writer and Economics student. She frequently writes articles for small businesses and is passionate about covering global affairs from a unique perspective.
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