Human rights as the foundation for sexuality education
The standpoint for sexuality education is the right for education, knowledge and information about sexuality, referring to ICPD and RFSU’s three fundamental principles: The right to choose, the right to be oneself and the right to enjoy. A rights-based, comprehensive sex education needs to recognize, address and accept children’s and young peoples’ needs and questions.
But young people have different needs. Sex education also has to have an “inclusive perspective” regarding gender, sexual orientation or identity, ethnicity etc. It’s cynical to deny young people knowledge. Some of them suffer, from diseases, discrimination, abuse – or ignorance. How can we support them? We can’t avoid sensitive issues. Sexuality education has to be realistic, positive and non-judgmental. It needs to be norm-conscious, e.g. dare to question existing gender norms.
We need to speak clearly and be specific. We can’t hide behind the cultural curtain and refer to culture as a barrier – we can always do something. Our – professionals – approach to sexuality influence the work. Young people are falling in love, having sex, masturbate, harass each others, get infected, get abused – we can choose not to see reality with its consequences or work on it. Everyone agrees that sexuality education is important – but so far it has been much of lip service or stopped at some HIV-education. We must prepare ourselves better. Sex education is too much about moral instead of ethics, professionals’ personal views than evidence-based knowledge, and conformed norms than diversity.
