Sex, openness and the impotence of sex education in the digital age
The nature of sex education is changing. Sex educators are failing to keep up, the sex industry is taking on the task itself and higher education is watching from the side-lines largely now powerless to get involved in the teaching of better sex educators.
Advocates of open education talk of access to learning resources that are free of any direct cost to the learner, copy-able, adaptable and most importantly freely accessible with no barriers. The problem of this, in the context of sex education, is that this is not a level playing field. There are many barriers that those involved in traditional health and education sectors honour, but which others are ignoring. The “others” are a combination of the sex industry itself, online communities with specific shared sex or sexuality interests, and a significant criminal element whose main aims are theft, profit or abuse.
Individuals interested in exploring about their sex and sexuality may access more information now than they have ever been able to do before, if they are not boundaried in that exploration by moral, ethical, legal and technical barriers. Those in higher education, either in teaching or research, do not have those same freedoms and this emasculates/femulates the development of future sex educators.
If openness means that information about sex and sexuality is freely available to access then sex education is already “open”, porn is variously reported to make up at least 14 percent of all web searches, 20 percent of mobile searches and at least 4 percent of all websites. But that does not mean that this is “open”, just that it is “ubiquitous”. The pornography industry presents a skewed and biased picture of sex and sexuality, not easily balanced by those who cannot play by the same rules — nor can they ignore rules in the same way!
No, of course, we are not open about sex. In the United Kingdom sexual openness remains an anathema. A strange mixture of being ‘giggly’ and simultaneously ‘stiff upper lipped’ (neatly summed up by one of the leading sex educators as the ‘Benny Hill Culture’) means that we conduct much of our sexual interests and exploration under a cloak of secrecy, disguise and assumed anonymity (although seldom is this anonymity true, people may simply not realise or recognise their own digital tattoo).
This very need to be secret about our own sexual desires and interests is exactly what the sex industry itself fuels and manipulates.
Sex education has certainly changed a lot since my day. I wouldn’t have admitted it then, but I learnt like my peers did, from ‘top shelf’ magazines I stole from my older brother. The girls I knew similarly ignored the efforts of the one and only sex lesson in biology or religious education in schools preferring the advice columns they read in Jackie, or if they could sneak at peak, at an older sisters Cosmopolitan magazine.
Did any of this do any harm? It seemed an easier time in the mid 1970s, but this sex education was very separatist, sexist, hetero-centric, focussed on sex acts and avoiding harm rather than supporting exploration of sexuality and relationships, if pleasure was even hinted at it was only ever suggested that pleasure was for males.
The exception to this sexism was Cosmopolitan as it dared suggest that female orgasm not only existed it was equal in value to a male’s (if not superior).
With such a narrow focus it is no wonder the HIV crisis caught us unawares as this sex education was naïve to how the real world operated.
Responding to the challenges of HIV prevention, and also the rising rates of teenage pregnancies, sex education made a step change and specific sex education guidelines were in place by the turn of the millennium. This meant sex education became a little more inclusive and comprehensive, discussing emotions and sexuality alongside biology. However, since then this progression has stalled, failing to keep pace with the digital revolution.
Fortunately recent announcements of a new curriculum are re-focussing attention upon ‘relationships’ and ‘identity’ rather than ‘sex’ within sex education and this reminder couldn’t have come a moment too soon. Despite the best evidence-based practice for sex education, it is technology that has provided the new driver for (and maybe ‘determinant’ of) sexual health and new technological platforms have enabled the sex industry to take over sex education.
Now, just as in the 1970s young people eschew their teachers and parent’s efforts at sex and relationships guidance and conduct their own explorations in a field that is now more open and accessible than ever before.
As I covered in a linked post in OKHE1 the shift from broadcast to communicative streams of media that came along with Web.2.0 have left much of traditional public health and health education behind, and nowhere is this truer that in the area of sex education.
Openness suggests individuals find their own pathway rather than being directed to consider specific issues like relationships, moral codes, rights and responsibilities?
Whilst this may be simply symptomatic of the ability of the sex industry to draw upon all the tools of a communicative medium whilst traditional sex education teaching struggles to move out of a broadcast mode, it goes much deeper than that.
There are some instantly obvious draw backs to pornography being the leading influence when it comes to sex education:
- Porn limits a person’s imagination and reduces one of the key human driving forces (bound together with a desire for relationships, life meaning and personal expression) into merely physical acts.
- A problem for all ages, but particularly relevant to young people, it reframes expectations of sex and sexuality which adds pressures and insecurities rather than it being a liberating force
- Manipulation and changing perceptions of what is real isn’t just confined to depicting wide ranging or extreme sexual fantasies, abuse and identity theft are also rife in the sex industry. AI porn is not only restricted to photoshopping pictures of real people onto sexual images, the “deepfakes” industry can now manipulate someone’s face into sexualised videos in what is being termed parasite porn and the lines between what is real and what is fake can be almost impossible to untangle
- As in most countries it remains largely illegal, and in almost all is still a secretive social norm, learning about sex through accessing porn lays a person open to other illegal abuses, and it is considered to be a gateway to serious sexual behaviour problems (on the basis of individuals seeking greater stimulation when desensitisation and addiction set in)
- Most importantly, despite generally more ‘openness’ and certainly more information being available, sexual health is declining, and rapidly
On just about every level, pornography is having major health impacts, and particularly for young people. The Children’s Commissioner for England in her interview with the BBC in June 2016 sums this up:
With such a blurring of reality, and the depersonalisation of sex which comes alongside the online industry’s dominance, it is hard to understand how they might become the most appropriate sex educators of the future, however that isn’t going to stop them trying to make it their domain, in fact they are already well on the way to doing so.
Already, there are calls to consider using the power of pornography to make sex education more comprehensive and even ‘pleasurable’.
“Pornhub” (one of the top three most popular porn sites) has already launched a sexual wellness website (Sexual Wellness Centre) and they aren’t just confining their education to young people but are actually directing attention to a much underserved community when it comes to sex education, older people (“Old School” is a website offering guidance for safer sex after the age of 65).
Whist in the United kingdom this may seem a very radical idea pornography is already a part of the curriculum in some Danish schools who are framing porn sex versus real sex conversations within their education, acknowledging it exists, but making sure that young people who do access it do so in a smart and informed way.
So far, I have considered the concept of ‘openness’ from the angle that people are not open about sex and this very fact provides an obstacle to education but at the same time is a facilitator for the sex industry.
However, UNESCO prompt us to think about openness beyond simply whether there is now greater access to information about sex, free of restrictions and barriers to finding and using ‘resources’. They ask educators to move beyond merely thinking about ‘access to information’ to a more critical reflection on the traditional educators’ position of being the experts who control what is regarded as legitimate knowledge.
In this sense, surely, greater access to information on sex and sexuality is a good thing. Particularly if it now encompasses access to a much wider range of views and enables the learner to find answers to question they want to ask, and develop skills and understanding not restricted by perceived out-dated moral codes from society or powerful institutional forces of church and government?
This though assumes that pornography is free of bias and includes all the aspects of information that best practice sex education exhorts. Clearly that is not the case, it is not an altruistic industry driven to educate, on the contrary it is there to make money.
UNESCO suggest openness should drive a more democratic and competitive education system, but is that the case for sex education too, is it even possible for sex education to explore the same territory as pornography but from a health angle?
Currently there are major barriers in the way. The rising demands to modernise sex education to make it a realistic alternative to pornography suggests educators should:
- Recognise that schools can no longer teach effective sex education alone, a whole of society approach is needed
- Combat the sex industry bias by opening the debate as wide as possible and embracing all perspectives into a modern re-examination of sex and relationships embracing religious and moral discussions in more open sex education free from bias of any kind
- Compete with (and drown out) pornographies’ dominance and impact by providing young people with alternative and helpful frameworks within which to make sense of this sexualised world and safely explore issues around gender, sexuality, power, personal identity and consent
Difficult decisions of course will follow. If educators do now choose to use porn within sex education, and, not just teach about its existence and impact but show it too, it cannot be achieved without a fundamental re-write of the policies and frameworks in place within education.
Sex education clearly needs updating, learners already have access to a vast array of sexual information, sex educators need new skills, but what does this have to do with open methodology? How do we operate in this space? The real issue here is that we don’t know how to respond, our tools for sex education are out of date, irrelevant in this new medium, and our educational institutions have outdated policies that are obstacles to effective higher sex education.
Even “Best practice in sex education” written as recently as 2016 misses much of the digital dimension as it concentrates on the characteristics of sex education lessons themselves, however it does acknowledge that “staff delivering SRE should be trained educators, have expertise in sexual health, be sex-positive and enthusiastic about delivering SRE”.
How do we achieve this creation of sex positive educators who understand all the territory in the same way as their students experience them without a step change towards more open higher education?
There are some good web-based resources around to draw from. However, there are also some very obvious obstacles. For example, exploring within a curriculum how pornography makes its impact, and examining the digital influences of sexting, stealing and sharing personal images, online grooming and abuse etc. requires in depth exploration of how those mechanisms work, not merely reading research papers that are sanitised descriptions of the real world.
Leaving the moral and ethical issues this raises for individual educators aside, this still blows a hole through this particular University’s policies on acceptable use of IT, equality and diversity, bullying, harassment and discrimination.
All these are quite clear in banning the use or exploration of indecent or offensive material of any kind within the university and its research and teaching activities.
There are some moves towards more open sex and sexuality education in higher education, borne out of sex educators’ frustrations that current methods are impotent. However, those sex education MOOCS that do exist have not yet fully embraced the digital skills building also necessary for modern effective sex education.
Research into whether MOOCs can enhance sexuality education indicates that they do have some potential to enhance teaching, but also that the more complex issues such as child abuse, or any aspect that raises high emotion or anxiety, need to be taught though blended programmes rather than online only.
Going further than providing sex education MOOCs would mean translating best sex education methods to online learning environments through building a new online sex and sexuality education pedagogy.
The training of sex educators previously was dominated by a groupwork pedagogy evolved over three or four decades, at its core was interpersonal interaction to explore sexual identity, expression and negotiation skills. Whilst these are possible to develop in a solely online format it is a difficult transition to make.
There are some existing devices that may be harnessed but it is going to take further work to build them into a reliable resource, such as establishing anonymous post box mechanisms — a modern Jackie problem page? Simply hosting these for sex educators struggling with new challenges could be a valuable and tangible contribution to open sex education (and provide a number of research opportunities).
All of this suggests that higher education courses for sex educators in future will need to blend three areas of consideration:
- Effective sex education theory and practice (most of this curriculum is freely available, it may simply need more digital contextualisation)
- Digital (health) literacy
- Improved understanding of how to work within and around moral, ethical and legal frameworks
This basic Venn diagram offers a high-level vision for this new pedagogy plus some examples of the overlapping issues it raises.
The goal for more openness suggests a shift from the top left of the diagram (where sex educators training currently seems to be positioned), across to the right and down to the bottom, so that the three areas are studied synergistically.
This demands a blended pedagogy. The sensitivities involved need face to face exploration, the digital world lends itself to online exploration, however both must be carried out within the boundaries of current policy. The synchronous face to face element with potential sex educators is very important to give absolute clarity and assurance on which boundaries exists, what the educational establishment’s position is regarding these boundaries, but also facilitating the educator to explore their own personal position regarding these.
It is possible to manage all of this in an online environment with careful safeguards (particularly for working with young people) and electronically signing off specific agreements on how to study further, however a much stronger personal contract (governance, assurance and support) would be established within a synchronous face to face session between teacher and learners.
A final very important distinction needs to be made. Being open does not necessarily mean being permissive! As educators we need to stop being afraid of the real world and start meeting it on its own terms!
This post has carefully skirted “around” the issue by researching online sex without directly accessing pornography, yet in most of the articles linked to this post pornographic material and images were merely one banner or mouse click away.
Teaching and training sex educators of the future cannot afford to remain entirely in this ‘safe’ zone, as clearly the recipients of their teaching have already for the most part stepped out of it.
