Sex Ed: Failing Minorities
This is the third of the three promised Sextember article and... as you can probably tell by the fact it's October when she is writing this, she ran out of time in September. We are also in the middle of a bad chronic fatigue flare while writing this, so expect things to be a little less logical then normal. In the previous article, we briefly touched upon in the idea that sexual education tends to be poor for minorities. Sexual education is generally tailored to its audience, different cultures and religious majorities shape the way sex Ed gets taught, but around the world, one fact remains constant, sex Ed is tailored for a cishet, able bodied, majority.
Broadly we identify three general failings in sexual education: discrimination, infantilisation and failure to be relevant. Every minority suffers from at least one of these three problems, with many suffering from all three. This article will briefly explain each of these problems, how they can impact members of a minority, and finally, how its the communities responsibility to provide education where professional and familial education fails, both to members of the community and in a broader sense. If you haven't yet read the previous article, she recommends that you go read it first, as it covers the definition of comprehensive sexual education we will be assuming here (assume from this point onwards when we say sexual education we mean comprehensive), as well as why sexual education is important in the first place, and how community has a part to play in that.
The Failings
The first, and probably most obvious, of the three issues minorities face is discrimination. Discrimination is found in all aspects of minority sexual education, queer sex is often totally ignored, religious minorities might have unique customs that are failed to be respected, disabled folks might have unique needs etc. The difficult thing about discrimination is it's often difficult to spot, unless your the one experiencing it, and if you are, it's often difficult to get anything done about it. The queer community, above all else, are likely the ones most experienced with this category of failings. Most sexual education they received as a minor and even on young adulthood completely fails to address queer topics, excluding queer experiences and often totally ignores its existence. Likewise, a religious minority may have unique practices around sex (not all religious interaction with sex is negative), such as prayers to be offered or customs that should be taught, which may be discriminated against if they fall at odds with the religious majority. Discrimination can leave member of a minority feeling unsafe, sexually isolated and vulnerable, while also leaving them without the tools others would receive.
Failure of relevance in sexual education is often, but not always, a symptom of discrimination. Poor training, lack of scope, and inexperience ,are all contributing factors which can make education not relevant. Either way, sexual education tailored to majorities often ends up missing important information, making it irrelevant to minorities. Failure of relevance does't just directly effect minorities, leaving them without the needed tools and education, but also indirectly leaving the general public, and often even medical professionals, with no education about the needs and risks those minorities experience.
The final failing is infantilisation. This is when members of the minority are treated like children, often being patronised, or treated like they need to be shielded from sex. Disabled folks are particularly often treated this way, for some reason society seems to equate disability with not being mature enough for sexual education. Infantilisation is every bit as harmful as the other failings but is uniquely insidious, undermining and harming minorities by removing their agency. The biggest issue with infantilisation is that, if you fight back against infantilisation, you tend to be ignored on the basis that they know better then you because you have been infantilised already.
The Communities Responsibility
In the previous article we briefly mentioned that when sexual education fails minorities it becomes the responsibility of the community to pick up that slack. In that article we mostly focused on how communities need to move past external pressure and attacks on the community, and continue to provide education. That article in particular focused on the attitude of the queer community to yield to bigots, not providing education in an attempt try and avoid being accused of grooming. As we discussed in that article, this is both counter productive, actually increasing the risk to members of the community, and simply yielding to bigotry. What we didn't discuss then is how the community can actually provide that education.
The community has access to the most valuable piece of education available: experience. One of the most effective ways a community can provide sexual education is simple conversation between older and younger generations. In this way, younger generations are able to ask questions and get advice in a safe space, while older generations share their experiences for younger generations to learn from. Brief aside: younger and older here don't necessarily but generally refer to physical age, it can instead refer to how long someone has been part of a minority. To accommodate this, the communities greatest responsibility becomes to provide a safe, judgement free, space to enable these conversations. Such a space should be open to all members of the community, regardless of physical age. Once again (see the previous article), minors will always have sex, there is nothing you can do to stop them, but you can keep them safe.
Along side this informal style of education, the community is also able to provide formal, structured education. Community leaders can organise classes, workshops, panels etc., run by more experienced members of the community. These can be targeted directly at the community, or can be targeted instead at professional and familial audiences, educating the educators on how to teach to the community, and ensure that sexual education is relevant. Such education can also be presented to medical professionals and general society, in order to fight the lack of education on minorities. The community also has a responsibility to fight discrimination, using what power they can to raise awareness on the issues faced by its members. Advocacy can take many forms, but simply discussing the issues faced by members with others helps, and eventually, working together, the community is able to raise awareness at higher and higher levels, until the discrimination ceases.