How Sex Education will Change the World
Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are of the writer’s and are not to be associated with TLMUN Herald.
Albeit the title of this article references Rayne Fisher Quann’s Ted Talk title, whose points I will reference a lot in this article and have 100% inspired me to write this, and my experience as a woman in of itself has created a burning rage within me that tells me I need to write this out.
As a child I was always told to bring an extra jacket, to cover up my shoulders, my chest, and my body, before going out at night. Never smile at strangers. My mother would text me saying, if I were to drink, I should be careful not to leave the cup alone. I remember searching up women’s safety defence tools because I was so sure that I would need them one day, so sure that I would get assaulted one night and not know how to fight against it.
At 14, I decided to sign up for karate class. This was not because I was interested in karate, it was more so that I was interested in feeling strong enough. In my 14 year old girl brain, I thought I would be strong enough to fight against grown men.
Let me repeat this. I was 14. 14 and afraid of being abducted in the night. 14 and afraid that if I showed too much skin, hungry older eyes would prey on my skin.
14 and afraid of men.
I didn’t receive much sex education as a young teen. I was only taught to never ever have sex and to sign a form of abstinence. I was told that sex could lead to death, disease and could potentially ruin your life, but I was never told what it was about. Discussions about consent or how it happens or where it could happen never surfaced.
People may ask why we should care more about sex education, that it’s not a matter of life or death, but I think that these statements show how we underestimate the power of education because quite simply, sexual education is the difference between life and death for millions of girls.
We live in a world that is decimated by gender based violence, where an estimated 120 million girls around the world experience sexual assault at some point in their lives and where over 70% of women worldwide are victims of violence because of their gender, according to UNICEF. The numbers are overwhelming and often this violence is cyclical. It starts with young boys seeing how their fathers treat women and they grow up to mimic the perpetrator. Oftentimes women experiencing abuse never realise that they could be treated any different.
There was a survey conducted in Malaysia and it was found that over half of the 1,007 men living in Klang Valley were under the impression that body language is enough to indicate consent. An infuriating statistic was reported, stating that 65 percent of men did not know that sexual consent must be an explicit “yes”.
When women don’t realise the autonomy they have over their own bodies, it becomes nearly impossible to enforce laws against gender-based violence. Gender-based violence is especially prevalent in schools, even during the students’ most formative years, examples of this ranging from sexual harassment in the hallways to inappropriate comments from teachers to sexual bullying. It is all too frighteningly common.
These experiences are not unique. It is achingly, depressingly, relatable for many girls worldwide. The most effective way to break this cycle is through sustained, universal, quality education. Yet, the Malaysian government and the leaders from around the world refuse to take action to uphold sex education despite the advice of thousands of teachers, educators, mental health professionals, parents and the cries of thousands and thousands of students.
Why are we still shielding our children from the words penis, vagina and consent? I believe there are a few answers to the questions.
The first one is simple, ignorance. Specifically, ignorance about women’s bodies. The world is changing at a rapid pace and when teachings start to change, it can feel like it’s moving too fast to keep up with and that’s scary, it’s terrifying and I understand. When the older generation feels scared, they try to resist the change when they feel like they don’t belong in society anymore- but that’s something that education can help. When children learn about gender, sex and sexuality, parents learn as well. It can change the way that our society and our schools talk about gay marriage and about gender identity or about healthy relationships. We can change the way all of these things are framed in a society. It’s a big leap but we have to take that leap.
Another reason is one that is a lot more serious and a lot more sad. Just as the cliche goes, knowledge is power and when power is given to women and to oppressed minorities, that upsets the power imbalance that has seen thousands of years in the making. People in power, and even those with privilege have no worse fear than losing that power. What could be more threatening to somebody whose power stems from the patriarchy than a generation of women knowing just how much power they have? What could be more threatening to a homophobic politician than a generation of educated children just waiting to vote him out of office? What would threaten an abuser’s security more than his victims being able to put words to his crimes?
Women’s bodies have been policed, sexualised, colonised and objectified for thousands of years. Physical domination has made way for intellectual and emotional domination as well. Women have been treated terribly for generations that they are no longer aware of any other way to be treated. We can break this cycle with sexual education. The way that women are treated in society comes from the way that we talk about sex. We need to change the way that we talk about sex. What comes to mind when I think about what women are taught to think about sex is that sex is for men to take and for us to give. That our only power comes from its repression. We’re taught that we are only valuable so much as we stay pure but also when we are we are made available to be sexualised by other people. We are never to act, only to be acted upon. A lot of women don’t know that sex is something we’re supposed to enjoy!
Sex is something we are supposed to act on because of desire, for pleasure. These conversations are not just about sex, these conversations are about the role of women in society. Talking about sex means talking about power and talking about gender ignorance which is the only thing that upholds this terrible balance of power. The only way to realign the balance of power is to put information and self-determination back into the hands of those it was taken from.
Knowledge is power and it’s time for women, minorities and for the LGBTQ community to get their power back through education. I was born in 2004, and in the short time that I’ve been alive, there has been a shift in the way that my generation is interacting with the world and with information. We are the generation that learnt about sex from Pornhub and sexuality from Tiktok. We are the generation where boys are finding their way to a Reddit message forum a lot easier than finding a way to comprehensive sex education — and when you try to teach the kids a curriculum written before Facebook you might as well accept that you’re not teaching them anything.
Things are changing and they are changing fast but we have the opportunity to change everything! I don’t want my daughter to grow up in the same world that I did. I don’t want her to have to learn to pack a sweater. I don’t want her to have to cover her drink at parties. I want her to be able to take the bus home at night. I’m tired of women being punished for the crime of being born into these bodies. I’m tired of women being told a million little ways to protect themselves from the world. Why don’t we start teaching everybody something else?
Note: There is an article that serves to spread awareness on sexual assualt in Malaysia, which is both insightful and terrifying and includes a commentary of women’s stories with their experiences with sexual assault, written on In Real Life.my. It is worth a read: “It Was Not Rape, But It Felt Like It”: Malaysian Women Share How Their Consent Was Violated”. Being informed and changing your perspective on sex can bring light to the whole situation of how sex is viewed in Malaysia. Hopefully, in the coming years, power dynamics will be deconstructed and conversations can lead to easier access to quality sexual education.
[Written by: Daphne Lam. Edited by: Miza Alisya.]
Note: This article has been written by a Guest Writer and published under TLMUN Herald.