The teaching of sex education in schools only became compulsory from September 2020. for years many schools have opted to teach their students about sex and relationships independently. Because of this lack of curriculum on sex and relationships education (SRE), its quality has varied from school to school, with one in seven 16-24 year olds not receiving any SRE during their time in school and almost three quarters of pupils not learning about essential aspects of sex education, such as consent.
In my own experience, and the experience of many of my peers, SRE simply taught the very basics of safe sex, such as how to avoid STIs or unwanted pregnancies. Essential aspects of sex and relationships such as consent, pleasure and forming healthy relationships were never mentioned.
The issue surrounding whether SRE goes far enough in educating students about sex, sexuality and relationships has been debated for years, and has recently come back into focus across social media; this time focusing on whether teenagers should be taught about sex toys and masturbation.
Youtuber and author Zoe Sugg, commonly known by her YouTube channel name Zoella, was recently dropped from the AQA GCSE Media Studies course material after publishing a post to her website entitled “The Best Sex Toys to Spice Up Your Life in 2021”. AQA addressed the issue in early February, stating on their website: “In 2017, her website was a personal blog with content that was all suitable for the children as young as 14 who take our two-year GCSE course. Since then, the Zoella website has gone on to include a range of articles of a sexual nature – alongside many other topics – aimed at adults aged over 25.”
Sugg responded with a post to her Instagram account: “It worries me that they think 16-year-olds aren’t exploring their own bodies, doing this with someone else or know what a sex toy is.
“These media articles are just perpetuating the fact that female pleasure is something that we should feel ashamed of. THE VERY REASON WE WRITE ABOUT IT IN THE FIRST PLACE!
“We will continue to write about these things on @zoella and prove that WOMEN DO MASTURBATE & FEMALE PLEASURE IS A THING (even if we’re shamed and “dropped” for speaking about it).”
The issue has stirred a debate across social media about the quality of sex education in the UK, andwhether it goes far enough to cover all necessary topics regarding sexual identity, health and even pleasure, and whether teenage girls in particular, should be taught about the concept of self-pleasure.
A survey by Joyce McFadden in 2008 reported that 70% of women experience guilt or shame for masturbating, proving how prominent the stigma around female mastrubation really is. Many feel as though teaching about female masturbation will help to break this stigma and stop the shame that women feel when talking about it.
In an interview with Dr. Caroline West, 38, sex educator and host of the Glow West podcast, she spoke about how the SRE curriculum could be improved upon, and how the repression of female sexuality has led to such a stigma surrounding female masturbation.
“I would love for sex education to include pleasure, and be taught in a fun, calm, and objective way. People have lots of questions about masturbation, and often no one to ask. It doesn’t have to be graphic or obscene, it can be calm and fact based. If people are comfortable knowing the names of their anatomy and what pleasure looks like for them, then that empowers them to have healthy relationships and satisfising sex lives, on their own or with partners.
“Yes there is [a taboo surrounding female masturbation], and it’s a result of hundreds of years of repression of female sexuality, sometimes through religion, society, culture, or the impact of intergenerational trauma. We have also seen female sexuality commodified in a way that male sexuality is not, and so this can lead to performative sexuality rather than authentic sexuality. Shame, silence, and stigma have no place anymore in sex and sexuality, it is time to embrace the fact that sexual wellness is just as important as physical and mental wellness.”
However, othersare more sceptical when it comes to teaching teenagers about more taboo aspects of sex. As maturity levels vary so heavily in teens, the question of how it would be possible to teach these types of topics in a classroom setting is a concern brought up by many.
Sophie Maxwell, 22, a science teacher at New Field secondary school, is just one of many teachers that expressed this issue.
“It’s really important to note that most students in my classroom are not of the same maturity. So you’ve got a classroom full of students that are all at different stages within their sexual education and with their experiences as well.
“We really have to be careful where we pitch this education to, because it would be really inappropriate to instantly talk about pleasure to students who aren’t aware of sex or aren’t aware of masturbation.”
While Sophie raises an important issue of not overloading teenagers with information that they aren’t prepared for, many students complain that their own sex education didn’t provide them with enough information. Because of the lack of set curriculum on the topic, many schools across the country opt out of teaching sex education, or provide a one-off class to teach students the very basics.
Megan Ainsworth, 19, a History student, spoke about her own experience with sex education and how limiting it was. She said: “We only learnt about the basics of sex in secondary school, like contraception and consent, and many people in my year had already had sex before we were taught about it at the end of year 11 so it definitely came too late.
“Even with sex education in secondary school we were told that sex ends when a man finishes, but we were never taught about the female orgasm. It was always male focused and not enough emphasis was placed on female pleasure which is why I think it’s still really stigmatised.
“When you come across pieces such as what Zoella had written and see how much stigma had been placed on what she’s saying it makes you feel kind of ashamed. In order for women to have guilt free masturbation we need to tackle society’s stigma.”
The question of developing SRE to teach about female pleasure and masturbation is a difficult one. For teachers its a question of how and when it would be possible to add these topics into the SRE curriculum, but for experts such as Dr West and students who felt under-prepared by their sex education such as Megan, they encourage further education.
Teaching more about female pleasure would definitely expand pupils’ understanding of sex and healthy relationships and remove the shame attached to it, but it’s a question of when and how it would be appropriate to do that.