Think back to the first time you ever talked openly about sex. The first time you ever talked about it without resorting to euphemisms about pencil sharpeners and giggling inarticulately. For most of us brought up in the English education system, this talk happened at primary school. The topic of the class was puberty, and its message was clear: “don’t panic! You’ll get out alive.”
Fast-forward to a few years later, to PSHE (Personal, Social and Health Education) classes in secondary school. I remember the cringe-worthy parade of awkward teachers. We had models of everything – model vaginas, model penises, model uteri with wavy fallopian tubes. We talked about pregnancy and STDs – along with vivid and gory full-picture shots of what happens to the unlucky. We talked, always, about heterosexual sex. The message of these classes was rather less clear: “if you have sex, any of these terrifying things might happen. So, well, good luck with it all.” Were they trying to put us off? Encourage us? Scare us?
With that, the education system washes its hands of the icky business of talking about sex – but the messages we get about sex, and the real questions that we have about sex, are not at all about the bio-mechanics of sex. The real questions are about people, relationships, power, pleasure: sexual welfare, as well as sexual health. Yet the closest we get to talking about sex openly in a group discussion is a stuttering Biology teacher talking about the uterus. Although we congratulate ourselves on being a sexually liberal society, the real frontiers of liberation haven’t been breached. We have sex with other people, in a social community – liberation means being able to address pertinent issues of sexual welfare openly.
This week, thousands of freshers are arriving at Oxford. We arrive from a diverse range of backgrounds. Many of us have been informed, misinformed, and awkwardly educated about sexual health. Some of us will never have had any sexual health education – from parents or from teachers. Some of us will have had sexual experiences. Many of us will not have. We all converge on the same city, with different expectations and understandings of sexual relationships and sex. It’s an incredibly exciting time – and that’s how it should be.
We have grown up with a mixed bag of norms about sex and sexual relationships, and with considerable social stigma against addressing them openly. In the UK, the NSPCC found that 1 in 5 boys and 1 in 10 girls think that violence against women is justified if within an intimate relationship. In a recent Home Office survey, 1 out of 3 women said they had experienced what is legally classified as sexual assault while in a relationship, although they may not have all recognised it as such. According to Amnesty International, 34% of people in the UK believe that a woman who has previously flirted with her assailant is responsible for being sexually assaulted. There is still the widely believed, and highly dangerous, myth that men cannot be victims of sexual abuse.
These opinions and myths may well be voiced – often in the company of those who have experienced sexual abuse. Survivors of abuse don’t have their experiences written on their foreheads. Nor will they say, “Hey, I don’t find your rape joke funny, because I’ve been raped.” Nor should it be up to survivors to fight every sex myth that gets thrown out there. It is up to us as a new, and hopefully liberal, generation to address our own understanding of sexual welfare.
What these sex myths have in common is a misunderstanding of how to respect people’s right to sexual privacy. It’s easy to get this wrong. The question I want to ask is: now that we are aware of these myths, and of the lack of shared understanding about what sex and sexual relationships are meant to look like, where do we go from here?
We can start with an open discussion of sexual consent. Sexual consent is simple: it’s a positive, informed, conscious indication from both people that they’re happy with what’s going to happen sexually between them. That’s all there is to it – yet it is a highly misunderstood concept. It forms the basis of respecting other people, respecting ourselves, and protecting one another from unintentional sexual harm. Sexual consent means being able to know that the other person is having fun and not being hurt.
At Oxford University, our Common Rooms and our Student Union are there to foster inclusive, diverse and welcoming communities to live in. Corpus Christi JCR, Wadham JCR, and Queen’s JCR will be the first Common Rooms to host Sexual Consent Workshops. Varsity Events, the company that runs student club nights in Oxford, have signed onto the Oxford University Student Union’s Zero Tolerance campaign to make sure that sexual assault and sexual harassment are not tolerated in clubs. The change is happening – the real sexual liberation.
Think back to the first time you ever talked openly about sex. The first time you ever talked about it without resorting to euphemisms about pencil sharpeners and giggling inarticulately. For most of us brought up in the English education system, this talk happened at primary school. The topic of the class was puberty, and its message was clear: “don’t panic! You’ll get out alive.”
Fast-forward to a few years later, to PSHE (Personal, Social and Health Education) classes in secondary school. I remember the cringe-worthy parade of awkward teachers. We had models of everything – model vaginas, model penises, model uteri with wavy fallopian tubes. We talked about pregnancy and STDs – along with vivid and gory full-picture shots of what happens to the unlucky. We talked, always, about heterosexual sex. The message of these classes was rather less clear: “if you have sex, any of these terrifying things might happen. So, well, good luck with it all.” Were they trying to put us off? Encourage us? Scare us?
With that, the education system washes its hands of the icky business of talking about sex – but the messages we get about sex, and the real questions that we have about sex, are not at all about the bio-mechanics of sex. The real questions are about people, relationships, power, pleasure: sexual welfare, as well as sexual health. Yet the closest we get to talking about sex openly in a group discussion is a stuttering Biology teacher talking about the uterus. Although we congratulate ourselves on being a sexually liberal society, the real frontiers of liberation haven’t been breached. We have sex with other people, in a social community – liberation means being able to address pertinent issues of sexual welfare openly.
This week, thousands of freshers are arriving at Oxford. We arrive from a diverse range of backgrounds. Many of us have been informed, misinformed, and awkwardly educated about sexual health. Some of us will never have had any sexual health education – from parents or from teachers. Some of us will have had sexual experiences. Many of us will not have. We all converge on the same city, with different expectations and understandings of sexual relationships and sex. It’s an incredibly exciting time – and that’s how it should be.
We have grown up with a mixed bag of norms about sex and sexual relationships, and with considerable social stigma against addressing them openly. In the UK, the NSPCC found that 1 in 5 boys and 1 in 10 girls think that violence against women is justified if within an intimate relationship. In a recent Home Office survey, 1 out of 3 women said they had experienced what is legally classified as sexual assault while in a relationship, although they may not have all recognised it as such. According to Amnesty International, 34% of people in the UK believe that a woman who has previously flirted with her assailant is responsible for being sexually assaulted. There is still the widely believed, and highly dangerous, myth that men cannot be victims of sexual abuse.
These opinions and myths may well be voiced – often in the company of those who have experienced sexual abuse. Survivors of abuse don’t have their experiences written on their foreheads. Nor will they say, “Hey, I don’t find your rape joke funny, because I’ve been raped.” Nor should it be up to survivors to fight every sex myth that gets thrown out there. It is up to us as a new, and hopefully liberal, generation to address our own understanding of sexual welfare.
What these sex myths have in common is a misunderstanding of how to respect people’s right to sexual privacy. It’s easy to get this wrong. The question I want to ask is: now that we are aware of these myths, and of the lack of shared understanding about what sex and sexual relationships are meant to look like, where do we go from here?
We can start with an open discussion of sexual consent. Sexual consent is simple: it’s a positive, informed, conscious indication from both people that they’re happy with what’s going to happen sexually between them. That’s all there is to it – yet it is a highly misunderstood concept. It forms the basis of respecting other people, respecting ourselves, and protecting one another from unintentional sexual harm. Sexual consent means being able to know that the other person is having fun and not being hurt.
At Oxford University, our Common Rooms and our Student Union are there to foster inclusive, diverse and welcoming communities to live in. Corpus Christi JCR, Wadham JCR, and Queen’s JCR will be the first Common Rooms to host Sexual Consent Workshops. Varsity Events, the company that runs student club nights in Oxford, have signed onto the Oxford University Student Union’s Zero Tolerance campaign to make sure that sexual assault and sexual harassment are not tolerated in clubs. The change is happening – the real sexual liberation.
