Sex ed is about protecting children, actually

No liberal society can treat children like this, part I

Cuties, which sparked controversy in conservative media circles for accusations of pedophilia. I remember watching it and thinking shit, this is exactly what being a kid was like. When all that is sexual is designated as adult, transgressing into the sexual becomes an act of peering into the adult world; and because you're uninvited to the sexual world, you cross that threshold ignorant, naive, and vulnerable.

There's some naivety in how american conservatives talk about children, but the naivety and "save the children" talk stop being cute when you realise the impact that view has on actual children -- one that makes them more vulnerable, not less. Children not being able to put words to their body, to things being done to them, helps abuse continue. Queer children being told queer sexuality is child abuse, immoral, dangerous, grooming, gain no lense through which to discern what situations are actually abusive, immoral, and dangerous, and where they're being groomed -- if all gay sex is wrong, how do will a child distinguish between kissing a classmate and an adult forcing themselves on them? Can a child distinguish between this, if they're told all their desires are wrong? Who do they talk to about this? Girls being told - implicity or explicity - that girls have no sexuality, will not be able to draw the line between desire and force -- something that is both a problem in individual relationships, but also in a bigger political landscape. So much feminist discource gets stuck in this idea, that women have no sexuality. dworkin quote. Dworkin falls right into the trap that women have no sexuality, that women do not desire sex and that they cannot enjoy it within the confounds of a marriage. This is false -- what is true is that women historically have needed something as bounding as a marriage to be able to have sex, and even then have struggled to let themselves enjoy it out of stigma. But that is a very different thing than saying that married women are raped by their husbands, and I think that is a horrible thing to tell women, married and unmarried. How is a woman reading this Dworkin quote going to be able to distinguish between abuse and love in her marriage? Isn't it possible that a woman will hear Dworkin call marital sex rape and think "oh -- I guess what I am experiencing in my sex life - the dread, the discomfort, the violation - is just how women experience sex," just like the child being told homosexuality accounts to dread, discomfort, and violation, is left toolless to detangle violation and desire? This is why sexual education is not optional, not secondary, if you care about protecting children and creating well-rounded adults: it's giving vulnerable people - and when it comes to sex, most people are vulnerable in one way or another - the ability to say "yes, I want this; no, I don't want that. This is what this person did to me; this is how I felt about it; this is what I did."

There's a difference between innocence and vulnerability. Women are vulnerable, not "innocent." Children are vulnerable, not "innocent." And usually, the "save the innocent children," or "save the innocent women," lines makes children and women more vulnerable, not less -- because it pushes them further away from autonomy and an ability to communicate, to themselves and to others, how they feel and what is happening to them. The problem of the "innocent" is that it becomes a passive actor, unable of want, unable of communication - naive, unknowing. Something that is even worse when the "innocent" doesn't find themselves in this description, building on the guilt and shame. The crime becomes enacting violence on a body so pure, that it was unable of want; the problem is that maybe the crime could've been prevented all toghether, had you told the "innocent" what sex is, how to talk about it, and listened to what they had to say about it.

The thing is most countries understand this, and can have a more nuanced understanding of sexual education than "is teachers talking to children about sex grooming?" So let's ditch America for a while and talk about how sex eduaction in and of itself is a complicated thing. There's this sense with sex edu Kropp & Knopp

I've always thought americans would go nuts if they knew about this sex-column for children. Are these adults grooming kids by letters they're sending in unbenownst to their parents??? I mean, the reality is that if this was America, we're talking about the risk of bomb threats. But answering children's questions about themselves, is not grooming. When I think back, this column was one of the few places where as a child, sexuality wasn't adult, transgessory, mysterious, but rather about facts, about body, want, desire, change. It wasn't just about biology; it was about personhood and being an embodied person and deaing with that. The thing about most columns is that the answer usually goes "thank you for sending your questions - here is how you can move forward in your problems." That sort of seriousness, I think, is almost unheard of as a child. I am a person with valid questions that other people are wondering too, and with some guidance I can make actions that affect how my life moves forward. And I'm grateful to have had a place like that.

Also, let's talk about the word grooming. How exactly is it helpful for children to distort the word grooming into being taught about sex? Isn't that exactly the difference that adults should strive to make clear to children? This is also the problem with pushing sexual education away from public spaces like libraries and schools - children will seek this information, information about themselves out elsewhere, and the further away from public light that is the more problematic it will become. No one thinks the internet is the perfect place for sex education, but for many, but if you don't offer education in other ways, it becomes the only way for children to seek out information on their own terms - on their own level of comfort. This is also part of the reason for having drag queens in libraries -- it is pushing gender-divergence out of being a thing exclusively of bar scenes. In the documentary Paris is Burning, a group of young gay boys are interviewed. (quote) I am sure that gay spaces have plenty of safe adults, who see themselves in these young kids and are able to guide and protect them in ways their parents were unwilling or unable to. But being at the fringe of society, will always be more unsafe than being within the warmth, the security, of public view; and the drag scene in New York wasn't for children specifically. A drag queen story hour is specifically for children, and as such can be adapted to fit their needs, understanding and comfort. It is unequivocably safer for children to experience their gender identity in spaces like this, than in bar scenes, secluded groups their parents don't know they're attending, or online spaces.

Let the children come to me, and do not stop them, because the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.

In Sweden (THE BEST COUNTRY 🇸🇪🇸🇪🇸🇪THE FREEST COUNTRY🇸🇪🇸🇪🇸🇪🇸🇪) this just didn't happen. Of course Sweden is a different country than the US, with a different medical system, different living density, that affect the spread of a virus and the necessary action in a health crisis. But I remember in the beginning of the pandemic, while Sweden was encouraging people infected with the COVID-19 virus to go on walks on a safe different from other people, ... prime minister went on crazy rants yelling at non-infected people for taking a walk, or ... DRONES following people walking their dogs. At the times, these videos were shared as funny post, but they've aged pretty badly, right? They now look like authoritarian goverments struck with fear, abusing their citizens beyond any justice.

Chaya Raichik, the woman behind for the tiktok account Libs of Tiktok, and account known for posting clips and videos about teachers posing with pride flags bla bla bla. When asked what radicalized her, Raichik answers "the pandemic." This doesn't seem to be an uncommon experience in the US -- sure, the tension was building earlier, but it is post-covid that conspiracies like anti-vax, has grown mainstream.

The rational response to this, is of course starting a campaign to eradicate LGBTQ-education from public life. Jk, but people are never rational, and I think suffering under the goverment not trusting you as an adult, capable of making choices to protect your family and community, valuing an arbitrary idea of your health and safety over the messy and complicated reality that is your health, safety and your personhood, is not to enact the same authoriatarianism on queer children. Human beings do not need to be protected from themselves by goverment forces - that is the essence of liberalism, and that right begins to be given to a person in childhood, as they mature. And children, also, do not need to be protected from themselves - from their sexualities, from their questions, from their bodies - they need to be protected from predatory adults. And blurring the line between protector and predator and keeping information from them in public spaces where they can seek it out on their own terms, talking openly about what they find, about what they feel, about what they're experiencing, is not making children more safe.