Consent education is mandatory throughout Australia from 2023. It is often included in the Respectful Relationship or Sex Education syllabus or material.
There are two particular problems to look out for with consent education programs.
1. Gender identity undermines consent
All students should be taught safety, bodily integrity, respect, the importance of consent, the right to assert boundaries and the right to privacy, themes which can only be built on accurate language. However all recent consent education we have seen teaches gender identity. Coercing girls (via risk of being seen as non-inclusive or bigoted) into accepting the proposition that some men are literally women if they identify as such trains girls to suppress their awareness that a person is male, putting girls at risk. It also denies them the right to set boundaries. This undermines consent.
2. Erasure of sexual boundaries and normalisation of extreme and niche sexual practices
There is a distinct move towards including sexually explicit themes within consent education materials.
Until recently, Students were taught about consent using the “tea analogy”.
At a recent consultation session about proposed changes to Victoria’s Respectful Relationship program materials parents were horrified by the explicit nature of the new consent teaching resources shown to them.
Transgender Trend summarise what’s behind this move away from teaching consent via cup of tea:
“The objective reality of biological sex is the foundation of teaching about sex.
The idea that gender identity is the reality and biological sex is merely a social construction originates in queer theory. The ‘sex positive’ feminist and queer movement is linked to kink, BDSM, fetish, porn and prostitution (euphemistically renamed ‘sex work’). The dominant theme behind this movement is the erasure of sexual boundaries and the normalisation of extreme and niche sexual practices and commercialised sex .“
