Sex Ed and Respect
When looking for a topic for today, I came across an article about how respect and consent should be part of sex education. My first thought was, “Well of course, how bloody stupid”. Then I took a moment to think about it, what I concluded was, I may see that consent and respect as obvious, but I wonder whether I would have seen it quite as clearly when I was a teenager as I do now.
Now, don’t get me wrong, I was a good kid, but I can certainly appreciate that boys will employ whatever tricks they can to get their objective. Now in my day we did not use words like grooming and guys did not use date rape drugs, but rather they used alcohol to make things easier for them to get a girl to consent.
I know that women are leading the charge to change the way we interact sexually. I suggest that this is a task for both men and women to lead together. We must change the way we view consent and certainly the way we look at respect. Men mush fundamentally change some of our beliefs about what it is to be a man. This is a fight worth winning, we all deserve to be able to interact in a spirit of safety and respect.
