Inclusive Sex Education: Why It Matters for LGBTQIA+ Youth

Welcome to Let’s Be Perfectly Queer Podcast, your go to Queer Australian podcast for all things LGBTQ+.

This week, we’re tackling a vital and important  topic, sex education. We dive into the unique challenges and opportunities LGBTQIA+ individuals face, as well as the broader issues young people encounter when learning about their bodies, identities, and relationships. From breaking down misconceptions to promoting inclusive and respectful conversations, this episode is for anyone who wants to be informed, empowered, and supportive. Whether you’re part of the LGBTQIA+ community or an ally.

Resources:
https://transformingfamilies.org.au/
https://gdhr.wa.gov.au/


Below is a list of organisations that provide further information and support  information sourced from Health direct.

QLife — counselling and referral service for LGBTIQ+ individuals: call 1800 184 527 (3pm to midnight

daily) or chat online.

Lifeline — support for anyone having a personal crisis: call 13 11 14, 24/7, text, or chat online.

Suicide Call Back Service — for anyone thinking about suicide: call 1300 659 467.

Beyond Blue — for anyone feeling depressed or anxious: call 1300 22 4636, email or chat online, 24/7.

Headspace — mental health space for ages 12-25 years.

Kids Helpline — mental health support for young people aged 5-25 years. Call 1800 55 1800 anytime.

ACON — LGBTIQ+ health and HIV prevention and support.

TransHub — ACON’s digital trans and gender diverse platform.

Head to Health — a guide to digital mental health services from some of Australia’s most trusted mental

health organisations, including a list of phone support services.

PFLAG — Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays.

ReachOut — mental health resources for young people.




Links we found extremely useful when researching for this topic:

Transcript

00:00:04
Welcome to let's Be Perfectly Queer, a queer podcast creating space to talk about all things queer. My name is Archie. And I'm Katie. And we are your hosts. We sure are.

00:00:15
Questions of how you identify seeking answers to clarify whether you're queen or somewhere in between. Let's be perfect quickly queer. Just cutting in to say a quick trigger warning. In this episode, we're going to be talking about sexual health, genitalia, and sexual assault. So if this is not for you, maybe it's time to skip this episode and try one of our other ones.

00:00:39
You got to say hosts. Sometimes it's such a weird word to say. We are your hosts. Yeah, just like hosts. It's hard.

00:00:45
It's a hard one, isn't it? Yeah. So every time I get to about to say host, I always like, stumble a little bit because I'm like it's a really hard word to say when you're over focusing on it. Yeah, fair. I like the fact that I do the bit that I do.

00:00:58
No, I get it. But you could always just add I know. Post. No, I was meaning every now and then I do nearly stumble. Like, I nearly stumbled on that one.

00:01:06
Just stumbling day. The universe is telling us not to record. There's been some challenges. There's been some challenges, but we're here. We're queer.

00:01:16
Get over it. My shirt's fluffy. Oh, honey, you know how I am with fluff. Yeah, you are fluff. Cat hair.

00:01:24
Dog hair. Why do we have so many animals? I know, right? Love them. Yeah, basically.

00:01:28
Yeah. Okay. Are you okay? Yeah, I'm all right. I'm dealing.

00:01:32
Start. Okay. Yeah. What are we talking about this week? We're going to be talking about sex education.

00:01:39
Like the show, not the movie. Not the movie. There's a movie, not the show. I'm sure it will be a movie at some point. I'm sure at some point they're going to turn into a movie.

00:01:49
Yeah, totally. But no, we're going to be talking about specifically education of sex in our school systems. Okay. Because I think it's such an interesting topic. And after we were talking a couple of weeks ago about how there's been an amendment to the bill, and there was that period bill that says we can't talk about reproductive health in school.

00:02:08
And I've been thinking about it since then, and it's kind of just sparked an interest in my mind in thinking about what we learned when we were in high school and how important it is having appropriate sex education in high school. Correct. Or just primary school, because people are having periods younger. And we need to know about this. There are so many unplanned pregnancies out there with abortion being illegal in a lot of different states in America.

00:02:31
The only way to actually get people understanding how important pregnancy is or how important safe sex is, is to talk about it. You're 100% correct. I know I am. Which is why I did this topic. Anyway, before we start, is there anything that you would like to chat about?

00:02:47
Anything that's popped into your head, anything that you would like? We're talking about movies and possible movies. Did you hear there's going to be like a high school musical fall? Oh, gosh. Who's going to be in it?

00:02:57
Oh, I would love it if they brought Vanessa Hudgens. And so Zac Efron. Vanessa Hudgens. And who was the person who played Sharpe again? Ashley Tisdale.

00:03:07
Yeah. None of them are coming back. So it's not really a high school musical without those. It's not. But also, everyone looks very different.

00:03:13
I think Vanessa Hutchins and Ashley Tinstell look the same, but Zac Efron looks like a totally different person. That if you even bought him back to do. Who was it? Troy. Troy.

00:03:23
Troy. Yeah. But it's the wonders of CGI and AI. You'd be able to get away with it. Yeah, they probably could.

00:03:28
Yeah, his mannerisms are the same. Yeah. So you could get away with it. Yeah, it's true. It's true.

00:03:32
Anyway, no, that's pretty much it. Only if they bring back all the dance moves. Yeah. We're all in this together.

00:03:42
We've all done it. Anybody listens. I've never done it. Yes, you have. You've tried it at least once.

00:03:48
Exactly. And it's a safe space, so don't live with judgment. Just come along to the dance party. I love it when people are in silent discos and they're just like, yeah, there's no cares. I don't know.

00:04:01
Sometimes some people get a bit self conscious when everybody can hear the music, but when nobody else can hear the music, they just do not care. Do you know, this actually links into what we were going to talk about the other week, where we went to Strange worlds. Strange Perth. Strange Perth. Oh.

00:04:15
Yeah. We went to strange Perth. We did. If anyone else went, like, link us in the Bio. Link us in the bio.

00:04:20
Link us in the bio. Pop it in your comments. We saw some great artistic talent out there. It was very cool. And we spoke about this.

00:04:28
I really like the ones that were very hands on and kinesthetic and things you can touch and where you can impact on the actual artworks. And it reminds me of team Labs and stuff, what they're doing over in Japan. So it's very your part of the work as well. It wasn't to the level of Japan, but it's kind of cool to be able to move things and touch things. Yeah, it's true.

00:04:47
So, just to sum up again, what strange Perth was it was there are some empty stores around the center, perth CBD and that were taken up space by artists who had artworks showcased there, which happened to be a lot. Very immersive art, where you could walk through interactive, like you were saying, sometimes it was just displays that you could look at. But they were all very eclectic and very diverse and kind of questioned what art is and how is art. Yeah, some of them were really annoying. It was just like noises and they were overstimulating and we just couldn't there's some we were going to walk into and it was just too stimulating.

00:05:23
But then there's some really cool ones. So my favorite one was either the VHS store that was really cool because the person there was just the essence of a blockbuster, kind of early 2000s kind of blockbuster person, you'd see. And then also I really liked the pirate demon one. That was really, really cool. It was just all the work that was put into that one I found with some of the exhibits, it was kind of like, oh, they left the boring floor.

00:05:49
And it was like it looked like an empty shop with artwork in there. But that one, it was like even the floorboards were completely done to emulate. That kind of felt like a pirate ship. You're walking into. Demon pirate ship.

00:05:59
That was really cool. That was really cool. My favorite one was was it Slow Rainbow by Lema? Something Rainbow. Something Rainbow.

00:06:06
Yeah, yeah, I can't remember what. I'm so sorry. But we met the lovely artist that was behind the curation and bringing through all these different artists together for it. But it was called Something Rainbow and it was the old RM. Williams store in the city and it was just kitted out.

00:06:20
You walked into this room and it was all immersive. You get to put the headphones on. And you had three different DJs in that space with different soundtracks that were all really like they got you into it, they got you feeling. And you got to walk into these different rooms and each of them showcased a different aspect to it. It was great.

00:06:36
It was like these little mini rooms within boxes that you could peer into and feel like you were looking into a little fairy wonderland and a bird cage that was in the front that was full of messages from everybody. Yeah, it was very cool. A lot of things in there really wish that I knew that you had to take your shoes off because my socks were holy. They were when you pulled them off, weren't they? Oh, no, I didn't think about this part.

00:06:58
So, yeah, I had a holes in my socks and had to walk around this whole art exhibit and have my little Tootsie's got a bit chill. Little just a little bit chilly. Just a little bit chilly. But no, that was so much fun. It was a lot of fun.

00:07:09
And I'm glad that something like that did come to Perth and they are definitely trying to get it back because I'm really intrigued. What are they doing with all those empty stores? Basically carillion is empty. Yeah, completely empty. And I remember I used to work in Carillion, but it was a dead zone.

00:07:24
It wasn't an easy path to get through. It wasn't just a straight path like some of the other alleyways. It's made sense. So people get lost. You wouldn't know where all the stores were.

00:07:33
But it's empty. It's just completely empty. So what are they doing there? Yeah, I guess it's just a watch this space kind of deal and we'll see what happens in the next coming years. Because you can't leave it empty forever.

00:07:42
It's the center of the city. Yeah. And they're wondering why nobody's going to the city. It's like you're not having as many stores as you used to have. There's nothing there.

00:07:49
There's nothing open. No. And people used to go there because of the amount of stores you used to have. And back in the day it was one of the only places you go for Myers and David Jones and now they're everywhere. It's an interesting point.

00:08:00
We'll see what happens. Hopefully they bring some life back into it. But I really like how Art's coming back to Perth and how things are being utilized. It was really cool. Yeah.

00:08:08
And when we were talking to that lovely person who created the Rainbow Place Lima, they were talking about the fact know, not much happens in winter in Perth. So it was nice to have something for the yeah. Yeah, it was. Wasn't yeah, we have had stuff the past couple of years. It's just that whole thing of like braving the elements because when it rains here it rains.

00:08:28
Yeah. And it's miserable. You don't want to go out. You know what, there's going to be all these UK listeners and be like, you don't know what rain is. Yeah, I guess.

00:08:36
Yeah. This is exactly it. It's true. That's enough sporadic brain. Anyway, so we're doing sex education this week and I thought, like we were saying for what's come up in the past, previous weeks about this new legislation in America.

00:08:49
It's just something that I've actually always been passionate about is people understanding their bodies and understanding how they feel. And there's so many different things apart from just anatomy that comes into it and a lot of people feel uncomfortable about it. Yeah. I think there's been a lot of relationships I've had in the past as well as a lot of friends that I've had in the past don't understand anatomy that we've got between our legs and how that changes and how it shouldn't be a taboo topic. Yeah.

00:09:16
So I've always thought that it's a very important thing and it's one of those things that if you don't know how to articulate it, there's so many negative connotations behind that as well. Anyway, so I'm going to get into the definition and I specifically wanted to look up what in America they were actually counting as sex education. So I went to the American Academy of Pediatrics because really that's where you want to go. All in all, it said that sex education needs to be utilized in an evidence based, medically accurate curriculum that is adapted for youth that includes those with ah, cool. Right.

00:09:51
I thought that was really forward because there's not much in the space when it comes to disability and understanding how that is impactful to your sexual journey. I've never actually thought about that, and I've never seen that embedded in curriculum before. Yeah, so it came into having six fundamentals to the topic. So the first one was human development. So that was looking at anatomy, puberty, body image, sexual orientation, and gender identity.

00:10:17
Second one was looking at relationships. So families, peers, dating, marriage and raising kids. And I thought initially when I looked at the marriage and raising kids, but I thought, no, that's actually it's such fundamentals because nobody teaches you how to raise kids as a basis when you're younger, and there's a lot of teen pregnancies happening, so it needs to actually happen earlier about what your expectations are. There's all these people who have young marriages and it's not really understood what your expectations for marriage are because it's based around different attitudes and maybe more family or more cultural or more religious basis. For the third one looked at personal skills, so values, decision making, communication, assertiveness, negotiation, and help seeking.

00:10:59
This is all in sexual health. It's very interesting. The fourth one was sexual behaviors. So abstinence, masturbation, shared sexual behavior, pleasure from sex, and sexual dysfunction. So number five was sexual health, looking at contraception, pregnancy, prenatal care, abortion, STIs, HIV, sexual abuse, assault, and violence.

00:11:22
And number six was society and culture, looking at gender roles, diversity, and the intersection of sexuality in the law, religion, media and arts. I thought that was great. I thought that was it encapsulates everything that you really should be seeing in sexual health and everything that that affects throughout your life. Not just it being pregnancies, not just being sexually transmitted infections, not just being the things that are immediate. It's looking at your sexual health throughout your life as well as the values and ideologies that will follow you forever and sexual assaults as well, because that's something that's not taught.

00:11:55
I think it's only in recent years that we've really had this consent understanding and having informed, enthusiastic consent, and it's just been such a sad thing that it's come to this stage, and now it seems to be going out of our curriculums again. Consent's, not consent is part of the curriculum in australia. I'm not sure if it's the same way in the US. But every year they have to do a consent talk and it's part of the curriculum where they actually talk about it in health ed. And it's good.

00:12:22
I'm glad. Yeah. So if you were creating a curriculum of comprehensive sexual education, what kind of things would you include? I have no idea because I'm not qualified. I'm not qualified enough to be able to say, hey, I'm going to include this, I'm not going to include this.

00:12:37
So I don't feel like I you don't want to? Okay. Not particularly because I don't have enough information or knowledge to be able to say, this is what I would say, or this is what I'd talk about. Sure. That's all right.

00:12:46
That's all right. I respect that. The kind of things that tend to be included, which is really good because I think it needs to be like we're looking at the pediatric society. It needs to be quite broadened. It needs to cover a lot of different things.

00:12:58
Like we were saying, there's a lot of facets that affect it. So good sex education, the great effects that it has is it increases the rates of contraceptive and condom use because of course, you're understanding why you need to use it. And people put it on the flip side and be like, well, if they know how to use condoms, and if they have access to condoms, then they'll end up getting pregnant. But I'm like, well, if they're already having sex and finding a condom, they're going to find an alternative in which they'll either use the pullout method, which is not effective no, or they're going to do makeshift things which also could harm them, or they're just going to end up getting pregnant anyway. So what's the bad point to supplying a condom in a safe environment and them actually being able to use one?

00:13:41
That's like saying, hey, you're going to ride a bike, wear a helmet. Do you know what I mean? Well, if we don't give them a helmet, they're not going to ride a bike. No, they're going to ride a bike anyway. But the helmet just protects them a little bit more totally.

00:13:52
If you have understanding about condoms and contraception, then you have less unpairing pregnancies, you have less STIs, you have less HIV because it's transmitted through blood. And then you also have delayed initiation of sexual behavior. What's that? So it means that you may not have sex as earlier as people who don't have sex education. So if you understand that the ability, like if you understand why to have sex, you understand the values behind having sex, then it can give you the idea of being like, well, if I don't want to have sex, I'm not being forced to have sex because I understand what I want.

00:14:28
And sometimes that gets taken away and being like, well, you have to have a sex if the education is not there behind it's your body, it's your choice. You have to have enthusiastic consent. Also having comprehensive sex education, it enhances your understanding of gender as well as sexuality. Because if you think about it, you can have all these movies talking about gender diversity. You can have all these movies having sexual content in them, but you don't generally have and granted, a lot of parents are not very good at sitting down and being like, well, this is what this means.

00:15:05
It's an uncomfortable situation. I don't blame people and not wanting to sit down with their child and being like, all right, so this is what a penis does, and a penis goes in here. And there are a lot of different ways to have sex. And also the talk about gender is that if you don't come from somebody who's gender diverse, or maybe not necessarily have gender diverse people around you, you might not know how to open up that conversation. And without having the resources of where to look for them means that there's a high potential that it might be ill informed, or they just miss out on that topic altogether, and then we lead to people coming out later or people remaining in the closet for a long period of time, people not understanding or identifying with who they might actually be.

00:15:48
There's all these other things that factor into it. It also talks about promoting healthy relationships and communication skills. And I thought that was great because I don't know about you, but when I was younger, I didn't really have healthy relationships that were out there that I could see, that I could really look at and be like, oh, that's what I want my relationships to look at. So having these kind of conversations in a safe environment of being like, well, this is what the good value system is like. As long as someone respects you in this way, having communication and being able to actually have a discussion about feelings when topics are quite heated or things can be quite uncomfortable is very important.

00:16:28
I don't know if were you ever taught how to communicate? Have you found that it's difficult to talk about sex with your partners? Not particularly, no. Because I had a good group of friends who helped when I was at university, I went to Murdoch, and so they were quite open and I lived on campus. So you learn to talk about everything, so not particularly.

00:16:52
Yeah. Well, the thing is, I've never really talked about sex with friends. It's not something no, not the explicit details and being like, well, this is how we have sex, or this is what feels pleasurable or masturbation, all that kind of stuff. Yeah, but maybe not to that exact level. It also says that comprehensive sex education should have how sex is portrayed in the media as well as social media.

00:17:15
And if you just look at what the media portrayals of sex is, it's very different to what real sex is. And even if looking at porn is very different to what expectations our sex has. And if you're using that as your test of what should be and what shouldn't be, then it can lead you to quite a warped ideology of how sex should be. Like, where do we derive pleasure? What is normal, what isn't normal?

00:17:41
All these kind of things need to come into the conversation to be able to give people the best chance of talking about things that they need to talk about, but also being comfortable and being able to have that open communication with their partners. It also takes away the shame of sex, it takes away the shame of talking about it, and normalizes having those open conversations. So if there is something that is abnormal or if there's abuse of some sort, you're more likely to be able to talk about that with your family and your friends if you open up that line of communication. Yeah, it's true. And it's also about taking the sexual desire away from the human body as well, and understanding that there is certain anatomy that you have in your body.

00:18:21
That's just anatomy, that it's only sexual because people make it sexual. Yeah, just like when we watched the film, we watched no Hard Feelings, and there was one part I'm going to give it away. If you haven't watched it, stop listening for 30 seconds. So basically there was one part where Jennifer Lawrence was completely nude, but with that there was no sexualizing of the body, there was no sexual content of any sort when her character was completely nude and we were talking about it. Why do we feel like it was so normal?

00:18:52
We weren't weirded out, we weren't grossed out, we didn't feel leave feeling like dirty or disgusting uncomfortable. No. And it was because they did it in a way that was yep, that is a naked body. That is the naked form. And it wasn't overtly sexualized at all.

00:19:06
And it was just normal that that's the human form, that is the female body. And it was really a nice way to say, hey, that's a body, who cares? It's funny in that as well because I never really grew up around naked people. We never really were naked in our house. And I think that's probably normal for most households.

00:19:24
But when I went to Japan and I went to all the onsens over there, I just found it beautiful that you could be naked around other people and it not matter because you all have the same parts. It's all the kind of same parts, but they're not the same at the same time. And that's what makes it normal. And it was really good in that way because I went to a lot of the onsens with one of my mates and just being like, oh yeah, cool, it doesn't matter. I think it's a cultural thing as well because I know growing up with my cousins and stuff, we all just got naked and got in a bath together or a shower.

00:19:54
Yeah. And I think we did that to like ten or eleven and it was just very normalized because you all have the same body. Who cares? Just go shower. Yeah, it doesn't and I think then going on and doing art when I was younger and going and doing life drawing so drawing naked people.

00:20:10
And I still enjoy doing that today because I find such body confidence and such body positivity behind it. Specifically, if I'm not feeling great about my body. I love going to these classes and finding so much beauty in other people's bodies. And there's nothing sexual about it. It's just seeing the curvatures of the body, seeing the different ways that the body is like the muscles, how everything's just around.

00:20:33
No matter if you're size 24 or if you're a size two, there's so much beauty in it, and I just love it. And something about it is just like, we just all have bodies. We should be talking about them. Yeah, the more you talk about them, the less taboo, the less shame you have over your own body and the body of others. Yeah.

00:20:53
So with lack of education, so these kind of topics become taboom, which is never a good thing. It's where you start seeing the raises of unplanned pregnancies. You see rises in STIs, you see rises in HIV, which there's a lot of HIV even around Perth these days, and I don't think people realize it. And in all communities, not just in the LGBTQIA plus community. And there's other things, like if you're not talking about how normal genders are and how normal gender identity is and the diversity behind it, then you end up starting to get stigma behind it.

00:21:27
If you don't have the yeah, there's people part of who are lesbians, there's people who are gay, there are people who are intersex. If you don't have these conversations from people at school, which is resource based information, it's evidence based information, then you kind of have to gather it from other areas. And maybe you just never interact with somebody who happens to be you. Also, you're starting to see a lot more non binary actors and actresses coming forward. And I think it was Liv Houston recently, they came out as non binary.

00:21:56
Who's Liv Hugheson? You'll have to look that up because I can't explain who that so, Liv Houston, they came out as non binary, and they did a beautiful photo shoot where you can see their top surgery and that kind of thing. Lovely. And they got a lot of hate and a lot of, you've ruined your body, all this kind of thing. What utter crap.

00:22:13
Yeah. And I also think the problem is when you're looking at the sex education and you're looking at the female form and you're looking at the male form, you also have to look at people, like, who are non binary and intersex. And I feel like not all physical education teachers have that kind of openness or the education to be able to talk about sexual education as a whole. So if you're looking at that, it might be time for schools to bring in a sexual health expert for those units. Half of it should come under human biology and the other half should come under some kind of psychology or sociology.

00:22:49
But I still don't think human biology teachers have the breadth of information to be able to talk about all of the human bodies as of do you know what I mean? I do actually agree with you. I feel like it needs to be a sexual health expert who understands all different genders, who understands all different ideologies of the body and the identity and all that kind of stuff, needs to come into schools and do. The unit because it needs to be for our kids, because this is the most important time, is when people are going through puberty and their bodies are changing, and they change in different ways, and they change in different ways depending on how much oestrogen you've got, how much testosterone you've got, what kind of chromosomes you've got. Some people have XXY chromosomes, some people are intersex.

00:23:33
There are so many different factors behind it, as well as looking at disability, like we mentioned before, that's a huge factor in it as well, that these kind of things are all bypassed because it's just all we look at is putting a banana on a condom. Sometimes they still do and they don't go into the amount of detail that you need to be going into. And if you're looking at people with disability and you're looking at people with different chromosomes because I know when I was growing up, I felt abnormal. Imagine someone who's intersex sitting in a classroom and not feeling like anything aligns with them. You're alienating them.

00:24:09
That's it. You're alienating them away from the rest of the class so they're already going to feel uncomfortable because they're going through puberty. And then you've adding on this element of this is normal health education and this is not. I know that now in schools they are starting to talk more about LGBT relationship. They said that?

00:24:24
Yes. It's part of the thing that they are adding that into the Health Ed curriculum and they talk about relationships can be male, female or non binary. And they are bringing that into the Australian curriculum. I'm not sure if all schools are, but it's meant to be coming in. But again, not everybody's comfortable in having those conversations.

00:24:40
So kids are like dogs in a sense. They can smell when you're not comfortable. Yes. And so if you're not comfortable talking about a topic like that, they're going to know it and then you're going to add, unfortunately, without realizing it, alienate the students who may be non binary intersex, asexual if it doesn't apply to them, as well as it looks at the ideologies of what is normal. What if there's somebody out there who has a micro penis?

00:25:08
It doesn't apply to them putting a condom on the banana then, does it? No, because they're going to feel like they are extremely abnormal when they're not. But they're going to feel like that when they're. Like, oh, if they say, oh, this is the average size, or whatever it may be, they're going to be, well, I'm below average, and then you're going to have a lot of confidence and mental health issues that arise from stuff like that. Totally.

00:25:28
And what about people who have periods? There are people who have periods when they're twelve these days. There are people who have periods when they're nine. There are people who have periods when they're 17. There's all these expectations of when you should be developing these things.

00:25:42
What if you've got alopecia and you never develop pubic hair? And that's also another tick in the box and be like, oh yeah, I've got facial hair. Oh yeah, I've got pubic hair. What if you have alopecia? You're never going to develop that.

00:25:54
Or potentially not for a very long period of time. So the curriculum needs to change in order to better capture the sexual identities of all Australians. And I don't think we're going to get anywhere in the next 1015 years, if I'm being completely honest, with how slow not slow, but how there's so much red tape to get things into the curriculum. So I don't think, unfortunately, it's going to happen anytime soon. And most of the time with things like social media and online, kids are finding out all of this before they even get to the health education classroom.

00:26:24
Which is almost good in one way, because at least they come. With some information, which you could then kind of be like, well, that doesn't necessarily match what we're speaking about, but I'm glad you brought that topic up and we can discuss it further. And I can tell you with evidence based resources and clinical proven facts, that this is how it is. And so I think it's not necessarily bad that it's broaching those topics. I just think it's incredibly important that they have the appropriate resources to back up the information.

00:26:51
So I did have a look at what the curriculum has these days in Western Australia specifically from the ages of year seven to well, year ten, because that's basically it when it comes to the sexual health curriculum, and it's still in our cases in WA, it's taught by physical education teachers. I don't know where that comes into it. I don't know why that's always been it. I don't know that's the way it used to be years ago. Except my school when I we were taught sexual education by a priest.

00:27:23
Probably the worst person to be teaching you sexual education. Yikes, that opens a whole different priest and nuns. They were the ones who taught you sex ed anyway. Yeah, I don't know. I guess because it's physical education and it's physical health and because it comes under health.

00:27:37
Right. It's just so wrong and outdated now. And like you mentioned, we need to have professionals talking about this because it's a lot more important looking at year seven. There was only one thing that actually seemed to cover what we would class as sexual education. There was a lot of things talking about relationships, which was just how to develop relationships, not necessarily from a sexual standpoint, but then it said there was one facet in weeks five to eleven that talked about puberty, emotional and social changes.

00:28:03
And it's just the very basic stuff. It's very basic. But it wasn't even talking about anatomy. They had nothing about anatomy in there. I think they do, though, from the conversations that I've heard, I think they do go into the anatomy.

00:28:15
I think it's on a basis of as per the person who's teaching. I think this is very broad, and I will preface this to being like this is what the outlines are on the curriculum, but it's very much the Cliff Notes year eight. It said that where it started talking about anything related to sexual health that might come under. What we talked about comprehensive sex education was it looked at respectful relationships in week one to four, which showed changing feelings, developing sexual identities, impacting of physical changes of gender culture and sexual identities. Yeah, so I think it's year eight is when you start to look at the body as more and I think year eight is the one where they do the condom, but I could be wrong.

00:28:55
But it's all very refined. So it's all very much based on each individual, on how much they're feeling comfortable to teach. That's the thing. It also is based around which class they've got. So if they've got some difficult characters in the class that might not talk so much about the sexual identities sexual identities?

00:29:14
They might not feel comfortable talking about genitals specifically, or they might actually not have the understanding. Totally. About? I mean, what are you guys taught when it comes to if you're a physical education teacher, how much is based on your experience and how much is based on what you've actually learned in your role, like being a teacher? How much do you learn about anatomy?

00:29:36
How much do you actually learn about being trans? How much do you learn about intersex? There's so many different factors that come into this as well, because it'd be interesting. So someone who is currently studying to be a physical education teacher, it'll be interesting to see, because I don't think teachers who've been in the profession for ten OD years would know anything about transgender asexual intersex. But it'd be interesting to see if they're actually adding it into the university curriculum and if that's part of what they need to study.

00:30:03
So if you are listening right now and you are a physical education preservice teacher, or if you're someone or someone you know who is studying it, get in contact, because it'd be really interesting to see if they're actually adding it in. Or is this something you have to find out for yourself once you get into the profession. Yeah. And what resources are there for you to actually further your knowledge? Because it is a space that is constantly growing, so it's not something that's really stagnated in the last ten years and we have to grow along with it and have the appropriate information to pass on to younger generations because of course that's going to affect them as well.

00:30:36
But looking at consent as well, and the amount of sexual assaults that happen from family members and friends of children, if they don't understand what consent is, if they don't understand what their genitals are, then the higher nature of them actually being assaulted and them not telling anybody is going to be dreadful. So with consent, I think it might be part of the WA. We have to have talks every single year. So there's people who come out who specialize in consent. I think it's from seven eight nine, they have a specific talk and every year they have that same talk.

00:31:09
Seven eight, nine, they'll have the consent talk and I think they get separated into boys and girls and then the tens, eleven s and twelve s will have a different talk, which is a bit more intense. And again it goes girls into one room, boys into the one, but they also ask if someone's non binary or trans, which one would they prefer to go to? And if they're not comfortable going to either, then the nurse will sit them down and go through the same talks as well. So I'll give the WA curriculum and the education department credit where it is due that they do add that that is part and I'm not sure if it's every school, but I know it's embedded to every year. Like every year seven, eight, nine have a consent talk and then every year ten 1112 have a consent talk.

00:31:44
Good. Yeah. Well, maybe this outline really is just the cliff notes, but I think that's got nothing to do with health education. That's from a school policy. Yeah.

00:31:55
So you can just have a really good school that happens to understand the needs of their students. Yeah. Interesting. So year nine, there was actually nothing overtly about sexual health. So it did mention some things about relationships and developing relationships and consent with alcohol, but there was nothing actually about sexual health, which I thought is actually kind of sad seeing as the years that you're in year nine is you peak puberty, like you're really getting in there, and you've got a lot of hormones racing.

00:32:26
And I don't think this is ever like a conversation. You have just one year and then you meant to remember all the way through. Our kids don't remember anything from the previous year. Oh, flip. No.

00:32:34
Hey. And it's such a journey that you go on that's ever changing and just because you had to talk about how to put a condom on year seven or like how to use a tampon on year seven. What if you didn't get your period until year Nine? Yeah, there are so many other facets to it. There are so many other things.

00:32:52
You teach them everything. One week, they nail all the questions you ask. That week you come back, they have a weekend, they've forgotten everything. And what if somebody started questioning their sexual identity in year twelve? Who are they going to talk to then?

00:33:05
If they had a chat briefly that some people have parents that are of the same sex, which is basically all we got told. You'd usually talk to the chaplain or the Psych. That's who you usually go to, which is that's a one on one situation, and that's very difficult in itself. And trying to get in with the Psych or the chaplain is a little bit harder as well. Yeah, that's true.

00:33:24
So in year ten, you've got exploring Identity Health in the Media and Positive mental Health, which I thought was quite good as well. I think it's great that they're integrating mental health into all of this as well. But again, because this is a Cliff Note, depending on the teacher, it could be, all right, let's do one lesson on this and move on. Tick the box, let's move on. Where some will go into more detail.

00:33:45
So I just don't feel like we don't have enough expertise to be able to teaching the full breadth of everything that is health education. Totally. And when we're talking specifically sex education, because I feel like the majority of this has not gone into health. No, I feel like this has gone into the values, I feel like this has gone into the conversations, but not very much has gone into health. And there's a lot of things that happen with genitals and there's a lot of things that happen with bodies that aren't being discussed.

00:34:14
I feel like human bodies in general don't get discussed enough when they're younger. Like, I don't think that you understand what's happening to you. I don't think you get taught how to do a breast exam. I don't think you get taught what kind of discharge comes out. I don't think you get taught what genital warts specifically might feel like when it's starting off and not thinking that you're going to die, or like, that it's actually just an ingrown hair sometimes rather than a genital wart.

00:34:39
There's so many different things that you need to have these conversations, because some people come from backgrounds that they can't have these conversations with their family or friends, and then it's like, well, where are you getting your information from? Or they're getting their misinformation. Yeah, exactly. From their family or friends or something like that as well. Yeah, it's an interesting topic, isn't it?

00:34:59
And it's one of those things that it's hard to know what to go and what not to go. And what I mean by that is there is so much that you could talk about. You could talk about what kind of different sex that people have. You could talk about polyamory, you could talk about the fact that people have anal, that some people don't have anal and happen to be in same sex relationships as men. There are a lot of things that are normal that you could talk about, but then how much do we talk about?

00:35:31
And I don't think it's ever bad having the conversation or being able to express that a conversation is there and open that arm and being like, hey, if you want to have it, let's discuss see, but the hard part there is parents. Yeah, parents are a massive block into what you're able to teach with students, and then you're also going to alienate a group of kids because if the parents don't want them to learn, then they're going to be bullied and alienated for the fact, oh, your parents are prudes, or whatever it may be. Do you know what I mean? So it's that hard part of trying to keep everyone happy. And I think that's the problem sometimes with the Australian curriculum is trying to keep everyone happy rather than teaching everyone what they need to know.

00:36:10
Yeah, I agree. I think the things that I thought that were lacking in what I saw with the curriculum, just because this is just the Cliff Notes, I think there should have been information SDIs. I think there should be information about HIV. I know they do talk about SDIs, but not sure about HIV. I think they should have talked about abortion.

00:36:28
I don't know. I think they should talk more about anatomy. And I thought they should have talked about what actually is sex. I think in year ten they do talk about anatomy because I think I've seen some kids with diagrams of and they probably do at different schools. But I think that what I was saddened to see is, even in the Cliff Notes, that these kind of topics that I would have thought would be big topics were not there.

00:36:50
And the problem as well with any curriculum is it's how you as a teacher reads it. So how you read all the you read them all right, I'm going I'm going to to teach this. Teach this, I'm going to teach this, I'm going to teach that. So everybody obviously, you do have to try to moderate and try to get on the same page as another school, but it's not going to always be identical. Yeah, it's true, isn't it?

00:37:08
And I guess this links into one of my last points, is that there are resources out there that you can get that aren't necessarily just like pornhub. No. And that's what Health Expos are for as well because you have the outside communities and people who are experts in the field of specific parts about health education who can come in and whether it's specific about your exercise and your body in that way or if it's about sexual health or if it's about gender. Because I know that Freedom Center will come to all the Health Expos and that kind of thing. So it all depends.

00:37:42
Sometimes the health teachers aren't always the best people to teach it and sometimes you shouldn't feel shame in saying hey, I'm not the best person, I'm going to go to my holler and say hey, can I bring an expert in for this subject? Because I'm not comfortable that I will do a good enough job. And I feel like sometimes teachers are too scared a fear for losing their job, fear of being ridiculed by their peers, for not knowing enough that sometimes they're too scared to say hey, I'm not good enough in this field, could I bring in an expert? Yeah, but we can't be specialists in everything. No, I know that.

00:38:13
Yeah, it's true. It's a very good yeah, I found this really good resource that was from the WA government and it's called Growing and Developing Healthy Relationships and it's a website, we'll link it in the show notes. It had all these different resources so you could look up depending on who you were and who you wanted your target audience to be. So it was lower school, upper school how the different years there were some for teachers, there were some for parents. It all depended on what you wanted to target and it was really good because it enabled you to actually look at what you wanted to have.

00:38:47
There was like a website on consent or you could look up a book or you could look up there was even games, there was music, there was all these kind of difference there was all these little videos that you could watch as well. So it had all these different links that you could get through to that would talk about different topics and potentially topics that are quite difficult just discuss. So if you are somebody who's having trouble with finding information about this, there is a lot of things that we will link in the show notes to get you that information because it is so important. Totally independent of what your background is, utilizing them for yourself as well as utilizing them for your children, or if you're a teacher for your students or just anybody who's questioning who needs some more support or just needs evidence based resources. These are really good.

00:39:36
I think I've heard of this website so I think schools might be using it or they might have been encouraged to use it because I've heard of the web at the website before. Yeah, it's great. You literally could pick your topic and it would be like consent or it could be sexual identity and then it would ask you what you specifically wanted or who you specifically were and you'd touch it and then we'd give you all the resources that you could actually link through to. It was great. I thought it was fabulous.

00:39:58
And I think that if I was somebody who was teaching sexual health or if I was a parent and I was coming to that birds and bees conversation, I would definitely utilize this and being like, all right, well, where to start and what's appropriate for this level of learning on catering to this age bracket? I would definitely utilize it because it is a conversation that will come up. It's undeniable. I don't specifically remember having that conversation with my parents, but I'm sure it happened because my mum's a nurse. It's inevitable.

00:40:27
And I never really felt uncomfortable talking to my mom about it. But I do remember how brief it was in sexual health, and I remember it only being one conversation or one lesson that we ever had about what condoms were and what genitalia were. And I remember this horrible slideshow of, like, genital warts. We're all like, we watched a birthing video. Oh, did you, on a VHS tape, gosh with a priest playing it?

00:40:58
This is what it is, guys. PTSD don't have sex. The priests will know. Oh, gosh. Anyway, so thank you for listening.

00:41:07
I think it's very important. And if you are struggling or if you do want to know further, like I said before, we'll link it in the show notes. But, yeah, feel free to send us a message about it. We're always open, and we would love to help you out how we can. Yeah.

00:41:21
And if you'd like to add your voice to the topic, just let us know because we can always add your voice and what you think about everything. And yeah, don't forget to rate, review and subscribe. Yeah, if you liked us, if you like what you heard, please rate, review, and subscribe. It helps us get out there, and we want to chat about these conversations. Until next time.

00:41:39
I hope that we have been. Perfectly queer, byebye.