David Hetherington  00:00

Just a quick warning. This episode is focused on consent education and includes discussions around sex and sexual assault. Please take care while listening and perhaps save this episode for when your littlest ones aren’t around. Hello, and welcome to Hands Up, a podcast by the Public Education Foundation that lifts the lid on everything going on in our public schools. I’m David Hetherington, the CEO of the Foundation. You know all those burning questions you’ve had about what actually happens at your child’s school? Schools should be doing more to teach consent as part of sex education classes. Do you think consent has been taught early enough? 

UOW Student 1  00:42

Oh, my God. I thought by the time I get to uni, like I’d have to say no to drugs, like [laughs]. Because like, you’d go to sex ed, they’d be like ‘say no to drugs, like drugs will follow you for your whole life. Everyone will offer you drugs and pressure you.’ No, it’s totally not that at all. It’s more I guess… Sex is more that issue now and how to say no to sex.

David Hetherington  01:03

2021 was a remarkable year for many reasons. But in Australia, some very high profile Me Too moments led to a public reckoning for women and girls outside parliament in Canberra. One of those moments was instigated by a recent graduate of a private girls school in Sydney, Chanel Contos, who petitioned for sexual consent education to be taught much earlier in Australian schools. Chanel, who we’ll hear from shortly, collected more than 6000 testimonials from school students who had experienced sexual assault. So how is consent taught at schools? Should it be taught earlier? And how can it be taught in a way that’s not so awkward for teachers and students alike? We put these questions to a group of journalism and podcasting students at the University of Wollongong, who still keenly remember their sex education classes.

UOW Student 1  01:50

Hello, okay. Hello.

UOW Student 2  01:53

So I text my friends from school and asked if they ever remember being talked, like talked to about consent. And my friend Caitlin said, ‘Literally, nope, LMAO.’ [laughs]

UOW Student 3  02:06

I went to a Catholic boys’ school. And they really just talked about the birds and the bees, like the biological, how the human body works. I just remember our school not talking about consent, really.

UOW Student 4  02:18

The extent of my sex education was a double period in year seven when we watched a horrific cartoon of actual sex, and birth. Which did in fact, not include consent. So yeah, my sex education was pretty awful.

UOW Student 5  02:37

Yeah, so I went to all boys Catholic school down in Bankstown. Because we were just teenage boys will just kind of like, ‘when’s it gonna happen? When are we gonna hear the teacher say the word penis?’ type thing. Like, and then we got this talk and it really was very vague.  They should have touched on consent a lot more, particularly men have to do to make women feel safe. I feel like they didn’t even really touch on… ‘this is what you need to do as men.’

Jennifer Macey  03:00

Do you think consent should be taught in school? 

UOW Student 1  03:00

I went to a public high school in a really small country town. And there was a massive issue with the guys in Year 12, texting and forcing the younger Year 8 girls to like, send nudes and stuff like that. And that’s the only time I can remember talking about consennt. And the girls were removed from the room. And the guys just got a massive yelling to from the principal.

UOW Student 4  03:11

Yes. Absolutely. I had a friend send me something on Instagram from an account called Teach Us Consent. And she sent me this last year, we were both like 2021. And she’s like, ‘Why did I only just know about this now?’ She was like, ‘I was feeling so awful about myself after a recent experience with a guy, and I thought it was me but I can see that it was just another form of him trying to get consent from me when I clearly was not comfortable.’ And I think as particularly her who’s someone who’s so intelligent, and so well read in life, for her to still be like, ‘How did I not know that, is pretty telling about the current climate of consent education.’

UOW Student 6  04:17

Um, I think one thing I would have really liked to say in the curriculum is, um, well, everybody, but specifically, probably the male students, their girlfriends are not obligated to give them any any part of their body, like they are not entitled, yeah, they are not entitled to any part of their bodies just because they’re in a relationship to them. And I think that was something that probably a lot of male students at our school need to learn

UOW Student 3  04:17

Yeah, well, growing up in that environment where there was no consent really taught. Say, you’d be in the playground chatting with mates or other friend groups. To put it bluntly, yes, we would hear stories about other students, sexually harassing women. Sometimes we would hear about other students sexually assaulting women. And it’s, it’s a very hard thing to talk about, especially because these people that we hear the stories about, they’re from our school, some of them could be mates of mates, some of them could be mates. And we just can’t think of that person like that. And then all of a sudden we hear these stories about people I’ve known and thought I was friends with, and was friends with, until I discovered how they’ve acted, that they’ve done these things, they’ve acted this way. And it just, it sucks. So it made me realise that well, there’s something really, really wrong going on. It’s… something needs to change, we need to be taught younger and better about consent.

UOW Student 5  05:44

100%. Like, I do believe that needs to be taught in schools. And I believe it needs to be taught like, in a way where people like, especially younger people are able to get it through their heads. Teaching it towards the end of them graduating really isn’t as helpful as like, as early on as possible, but still, at the same time, not to a point where they’re in primary school, and they can’t really grasp the concepts and grasp the ideas that you’re trying to put out there to them.

UOW Student 6  06:06

I think like, it doesn’t have to be about sex. I think that kids as young as four and five are perfectly capable of deciding whether or not they want someone to touch them. Like kids are supposed to hug their relatives or parents’ friends or whoever says, ‘Oh, give me a hug goodbye.’ Like, kids need to be allowed to say no to hugging adults and stuff like that. So I think in that sense, they can understand consent on a basic level.

UOW Student 7  06:28

By the time we’re 15, 16, 17, it’s too late. Like I don’t know about, you know, your guys’ schools, but, you know, by the time we were in Year 10, shit was already happening, you know, it was too late to start talking about it.

David Hetherington  06:43

These stories aren’t surprising to Chanel Contos, who just finished her master’s in gender, education and international development at University College London. Her dissertation looked at how sexual assault occurs with extraordinary prevalence within the culture of single sex elite Australian schools. It all began with an Instagram post collecting stories from close friends who had also been sexually assaulted during the school years. This led to an online petition calling for consent education to be taught in Australian schools much, much earlier.

Chanel Contos  07:14

My name is Chanel Contos, and I’m the founder of the Teach Us Consent campaign.

David Hetherington  07:20

Well, thanks very much for joining us today on the podcast Chanel. I wonder if you could tell us a little bit about your thought process in setting up the petition and what you’re looking to achieve.

Chanel Contos  07:28

The reason I set up the petition was because there’s power in numbers, and I knew that this was something that resonated with many Australians around the country. And the ask of the petition was for consent education to be made mandatory in the Australian curriculum for the purpose of reducing teen on teen perpetrated sexual assault. And I just really think that education can be a large catalyst for cultural change, especially in a situation where people are inflicting violence accidentally and unconsciously. And it did, it resonated with many Australians to the point where, you know, over a matter of weeks, there were 45,000 signatures on the website. And I also called for people to submit testimonies of their own sexual assault in a semi-anonymous way where they named schools, but not individuals. And I think this was really powerful way to make it close to home. And again, within a few weeks, almost 7000 Australian school students or previous school students had documented their experience of sexual assault on teachusconsent.com.

David Hetherington  08:40

So it sounds like you had a an inkling or an intuition that this was going to be an issue that resonated with young Australians. But even given that, were you surprised by the scale of that response?

Chanel Contos  08:52

Yeah, I was, I definitely knew that this was something that impacted Australians and people around the globe far and wide. But I mean, to ask people to put a testimony of sexual assault in a public website forever is a very big ask. So I was pretty thankful and overwhelmed by how many people were willing to do that for the greater good and for the benefit of future generations. But I’m not surprised at how many people had experience sexual assault, and I’m very well aware that that doesn’t even scrape the surface given that the vast majority of those submitted were from Sydney.

David Hetherington  09:26

And so what was the ask of the campaign? What did the petition set out to achieve and to see changed?

Chanel Contos  09:33

The ask of the campaign was for mandatory and holistic consent education earlier in Australian schools, and that’s exactly what we’ve gotten actually. Now, consent education has become a mandatory part of the Australian curriculum from as young as kindergarten and builds upon concepts and understandings over time up until students reach Year 10. And when they’re in Kindergarten, this is obviously starting in a very age appropriate way, you know, it’s about asking permission, denying permission. You know, teaching things like names of body parts to keep children safe, especially to, you know, pedophilic types of sexual assault in that case when they’re that age. And all these concepts slowly get built upon until finally, when students reach those later high school years, we’re explicitly talking about sexual consent. And then ideally, these concepts make sense because this idea of asking for permission and being able to say no and accepting when someone says no, and, you know, reporting abusive behaviors to parents, or teachers, or loved ones, that those should all be ingrained in students from much earlier on from now on.

David Hetherington  10:46

And how did you so quickly arrive at Teach Us Consent? Because this will happen in a very short space of time for you. And it’s, it’s quite a thoughtful frame for how to… how to achieve action and change on a topic. Was that something that had been in your mind prior to all this exploding in the public domain?

Chanel Contos  11:05

For sure, I mean, the first thing I did when I got consentt education myself was go to someone in my school, like, one of the… one of the teachers and said, you know, ‘that was… that was great, but that needed to happen earlier, we’re hearing that information too late. It’s not preventative, to hear at this stage.’ And me and my two best friends were essentially told that we were too advanced for the year. And that’s why these issues were relevant to us. But they weren’t relevant to other people in the year and they weren’t going to teach it any earlier. And then obviously, we put it aside for about, I don’t know, 10, almost 15 years, and picked it up again, with a bit more power this time. But yeah, I mean, consent education is something I’ve always been passionate about because of how transformative my consent education experience was. And I started recollecting testimonies in 2020, actually, and then waited until 2021 to take it public for no real reason, other than, I didn’t know, I was just more motivated and angrier in 2021, and was less afraid of the social stigma.

David Hetherington  12:11

Anger’s a powerful motivation, indeed. You mentioned that the education authorities in Australia came together after the petition was launched, and declared that consent would be formalised in the curriculum. What do you make of that response? Do you think that that is sufficient, and what have you made of the follow-up action since then?

Chanel Contos  12:32

I mean, it’s a massive feat. Like, everyone wants something in the curriculum. And it’s pretty cool, how much stuff we put in and how much space we took up in that curriculum, it’s actually it’s, it’s a really large step forward. It’s a really comprehensive curriculum, the fact it’s mandatory from kindergarten to Year 10 is something that I haven’t seen in other curriculums around the world, from what I’ve looked up. But our next challenge now is implementation. And that’s always really historically been the challenge with relationships and sex education in everywhere, not just Australia, it’s a constant challenge, because you can have, you can have anything written in the curriculum, but ultimately, it matters what that teacher tells that group of students at the time, and it matters, what students are hearing from their parents and their siblings and what they’re seeing online at the same time that they’re getting this content. Because although it’s taking up a lot of airtime proportionately in the Australian curriculum, realistically, this is still only going to be a couple of, you know, PDHPE lessons a year sort of thing, which, it is powerful. But of course, there needs to be this discourse coming in from kind of all aspects of society if what we truly want to achieve is cultural change.

David Hetherington  13:47

And do you have any sense of how teachers have responded to this, because this, this requires something of a mind shift, I imagine on the part of teachers who haven’t been used to teaching the kind of full gamut of of sex education, consent education to students so young?

Chanel Contos  14:02

I’ve had lots of young teachers reach out to me with really positive feedback, you know, for looking at the next generation of teachers that have been coming through the last few years and those studying now, the vast majority of them are young girls, especially the primary school teachers, which unfortunately also means that a large proportion of these people have been victims of sexual assault themselves. And so I feel as though there’s lots of passion and motivation to teach this topic well in order to be preventative for other individuals. But I’m sure that there are lots of teachers who feel really uncomfortable about the fact that they have to teach this content. And of course, there’s always the argument that this is a conversation for the home, not the school, which I certainly disagree with because I think Australia has such a robust education system and it should be used to make Australians better people as a whole and we can’t standardise or measure or control what type of information comes through at home either. Lots of problematic, you know, old school patriarchal values, and I grew up in like a pretty old school Greek household. And if that was the only education I ever got, if I didn’t speak to my friends about feminism, I would be a very different person. So you know, ensuring that these conversations are happening in a way that we know is best practice and with resources that are accredited in order to prove that this is preventing violence and fostering a healthy culture in Australia. But I think that’s also why we definitely need the government and, you know, organisations and principals and schools and everyone to be on board with implementation and things like teacher training to actually equip these teachers and how to do this well and ensure that they’re not in uncomfortable positions, when these conversations are happening. And then also, you know, going a step further things like parent training to again, ensure that the information that students are getting at school coincides with that, that they’re getting at home.

David Hetherington  15:58

I mean, I guess we’ve been trying that approach for generations leaving it to education at home to take care of consent education and awareness, and it hadn’t worked. Do you have any thoughts on how that how the different school sectors historically have, have dealt with this? My sense is that the majority of of testimonials that that you collected were from non-government schools. Is that a reflection of just a particular set of networks? Or do you think there are differences systemically?

Chanel Contos  16:24

I think both. I think that it’s important to keep in mind the context of the fact that I launched this petition on Instagram and my immediate following at the time were all private school Sydney kids, which meant that every single private school Sydney kid knows about this petition. But potentially, very likely a government school in Western Australia no one’s ever heard about it. I think there’s a few things that come into play in terms of this being a systemic issue. So one: concepts of entitlement and power. A lot of elite schooling institutions, especially all boys, ones really uphold and foster these notions. Single sex schooling institutions, again, especially boys ones, uphold ideals of hegemonic masculinity, and you know, really what it looks like to be a man, someone who’s wealthy, someone who’s good at sport, and someone who engages in sexual activity. So of course, this isn’t directly upheld by the school, like it’s not the school principal, but it’s what you’re hearing indirectly from your peers and the way people socialise, who the cool kids are, all this sort of thing teaches you that that’s kind of what should be aspired in order to be a man. And yeah, and then I think the single sex nature of a lot of these private schools, you know, Catholic and independent schools, there’s something to be said for that, because Australia has the highest proportion of single sex education institutions out of high income countries in the world. It’s actually like extraordinarily weird how many single sex education institutions we have, given that it does not at all reflect the real world.

David Hetherington  17:53

And do you see that as broadly a positive or negative thing that that preponderance of single sex schools?

Chanel Contos  17:59

I see it as a negative thing. I see the value of single sex schools in low income countries, because it’s a way to create safe spaces for learning and comfort and freedom for girls that are confined by you know, strict cultural or religious practices. But it just doesn’t make sense to me, in Australia, why the default is, you know, for a lot of people who live in large cities is to go to single sex institutions, because it means that you start seeing the opposite sex as a sex object rather than a friend. It means that we’re not fostering relationships between young boys and girls to make it so that there’s kind of a fundamental respect between the two of them. And yeah, friendships are formed. It’s a way to get older and sexually active, start going to parties, throw in alcohol, and then the only time you ever see the opposite sex is on a Saturday night, intoxicated, and then we wonder where we have an epidemic of sexual assault in Australia where we’re keeping boys and girls away from each other and a socialised way. The other things I want to note is that government schools tend to be a lot better at implementation around respectful relationships and sexuality education, whether that be because government schools have to follow along with the state or territory’s curriculum, which can be a lot more specific in terms of the sort of the sort of concepts. So you know, for example, Victoria has really holistic, respectful relationships and sexuality education embedded in its state curriculum. And the state schools have to do that. Whereas independent schools, Catholic schools have the freedom to not go down that route. And then, of course, the religious affiliation with a lot of these schools. And I think the misunderstanding of how consent relates to concepts such as you know, abstinence, or whatever the school wants to teach or their cultural values means that they’re probably going to be less inclined to teach it and less inclined to teach it well.

David Hetherington  19:56

So what what happens next, Chanel, where are you directing your efforts and what do you see as the kind of logical next steps in the evolution of this debate in Australia?

Chanel Contos  20:08

I guess now the big challenge is implementation. And we’ve had Labor announce, I think it was a $77 million implementation package to ensure that, you know, we’re really properly implementing respectful relationships and sexuality education, finally. But I think the biggest thing is just to keep awareness up and keep the conversations going, because that’s actually where the real, like most of the cultural changes come from. And I think that’s what’s really defined 2021 I think the fact that so many people, they brought their personal to the political for the benefit of the greater good of everyone, I think we just need to keep keep doing that, because it’s powerful. And enabling those conversations, I think, is what’s going to start shifting things. There’s nothing you can ever do to stop your child from being sexually assaulted, but you can do a lot and put in very little effort to ensure that your child never sexually assaults someone. I think that’s yeah, that’s what we need to keep the focus on.

David Hetherington  21:06

And schools have an enormous role to play there, of course. Well Chanel, thank you very much for joining us today. We really appreciate your time.

Chanel Contos  21:12

Thanks so much. Lovely to speak to you.

UOW Student 8  21:14

At school in Year 12, we actually had a video that we watched it’s about tea and it compares tea to consent. And it’s the best video because the whole way through no one really knows what it’s about.

Narrator ‘Tea consent’ Video  21:27

If you’re still struggling with consent, just imagine instead of initiating sex, you’re making them a cup of tea. You say ‘hey, would you like a cup of tea?’ And they go, ‘Oh, my God, I would love a cup of tea. Thank you.’ Then you know they want a cup of tea. If you say ‘hey, would you like a cup of tea?’ And they’re like, ‘you know, I’m not really sure.’ Then you can make them a cup of tea or not. But be aware that they might not drink it. And if they don’t drink it, then and this is the important bit, don’t make them drink it. Just because you made it doesn’t mean you’re entitled to watch them drink it. And if they say ‘no, thank you,’ then don’t make them tea… at all. Just don’t make them tea. Don’t make them drink tea. Don’t get annoyed at them for not wanting tea. They just don’t want tea. Okay.

UOW Student 1  22:16

The tea video? It just haunts me. Like, I remember it came out it was everywhere in school. And we’re like ‘have you seen the tea video?’ Like, nobody takes it seriously. Yeah, so we need to say sex is sex. Yeah. Why does it have to be a cup of tea?

UOW Student 7  22:28

Exactly.  It was joked about a lot in just everyday conversation, but I think actually deep down, everyone really took it on. Like when we all got to Year 12 and people started turning 18 going out, personal experiences kind of started to coincide with the tea video.  Everyone’d be like, ‘Oh, remember the tea video.’

David Hetherington  22:47

Now the tea video that aims to teach consent is very divisive. It’s either loved or hated, according to our next guest, Dr. Melissa Kang,

Melissa Kang  22:55

The cup of tea video, I’ve, I’ve met so many young people who tell me how much they love that. And I’ve met a couple who don’t like it. They think it’s too simplistic. I guess for someone who has spent their whole life delving into sexual development, sexuality and consent, I find it a bit simplistic, but I think that doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter what I think if it resonates, if people understand it, and the concepts are conveyed, that’s what’s important, and it’s not doing any harm.

David Hetherington  23:23

Now, some of you will recognize Dr. Kang as the long standing expert behind the iconic Dolly Doctor column, which answered thousands of questions from tweens and teenagers about everything from their changing bodies to sex and consent. She’s a strong advocate for young people’s rights, especially their rights to health, health literacy, health access, and youth participation. And she’s just co-authored Welcome to Consent: How to say no, when to say it and everything in between, with TV presenter and author Yumi Stynes.

Melissa Kang  23:54

I’m Melissa Kang, I’m a medical doctor and I still practice medicine working with homeless and marginalised young people. But my main job is as an Associate Professor at the University of Sydney, where I do research and teaching into adolescent health, sexuality and sexual health. 

David Hetherington  24:12

Well Melissa, you’re the co author with Yumi Stynes of a very topical book, Welcome to Consent. Tell us a little bit about how the book came about.

Melissa Kang  24:21

I had met Yumi Stynes through her podcast that she does on the ABC: Ladies, We Need to Talk. She interviewed me amongst many others over the years. She asked me if I’d like to co-author Welcome to Your Period with her. And it was a great collaboration. It was a lot of work on weekends. But we were very, very happy with the finished product and so was our publisher. So they said what would you like to do next? And after going back and forth many times we landed on a book about consent, which probably happened 18 months before the beginning of 2021. And we were thinking it was a bit of a risk, a bit of a gamble. We weren’t sure how it would be received. And it was just sheer coincidence, in fact that it’s released date coincided with the huge media publicity and public discourse around consent and the need for consent education.

David Hetherington  25:12

It’s fascinating because I think if you went back even three or four years, consent as a kind of domain expertise might have been recognised by a lot of people out there. And as you say, it’s really come to the forefront of our public conversation in the last couple of years. So tell me, what exactly is consent education?

Melissa Kang  25:32

The first person I interviewed in preparation for writing Welcome to Consent, was a colleague and I’d like to say a friend who works within the Department. 

David Hetherington  25:43

The Department of Education? 

Melissa Kang  25:45

That’s correct, yes. To ask about what consent education looked like. And, in fact, not too much to my surprise, there is consent education throughout the health and PE, PDHPE curriculum or syllabus in New South Wales. And it certainly is woven throughout the national curriculum as well. But perhaps it’s not quite so explicit in the sense that consent as a, as an idea, as a concept, really is the bedrock of any I think kind of life education for children and adolescents, around health wellbeing, healthy development, relationships, there’s got to be some underpinning of understanding of what consent means and how to communicate what it is you want and don’t want. So, in short answer to your question, I think consent education is built into the whole of the K to 10 PDHPE syllabus, and it’s made more explicit at some points in time across, across that syllabus. And I think now, though, there’s going to be a lot more focus on exactly how we draw out consent as a, as a key topic, really, in that syllabus. But I think there’s certainly a very strong desire and wish to have consent education being made much more explicit.

David Hetherington  27:11

And from your perspective, why is it so important that young people are taught about consent?

Melissa Kang  27:16

I see consent and consent education as a part of a much broader syllabus around healthy development. And that includes sexual development, and relationship skills, I suppose. I think that children, in fact, even as young as Kindergarten or preschool are not too young, to learn about their bodies, about what feels good, and what doesn’t feel good, and about how to communicate what they feel. So in the book that Yumi and I wrote, we give examples about how consent is about saying yes or no to lending your friend a t shirt, or being able to communicate that you don’t like being tickled, or being asked first if you feel like giving Grandma or Grandpa or an uncle or an aunty a hug. So I think that those I would call it one of the pillars of consent and consent education is teaching children about bodily autonomy and the right that they have to express an opinion about whether they want to be touched or not. So in that sense, I think consent education is about really teaching children about their bodies and their right to say yes or no to what people do with their bodies.

David Hetherington  28:42

And you mentioned a moment ago that one of the earliest conversations you had was with it with a colleague and friend, working in the Department of Education, who was looking perhaps for, for different, better ways of communicating these ideas. Have the changes in teaching consent been driven largely by education professionals, or is it also families and parents and young people themselves, demanding better education, clearer education around consent?

Melissa Kang  29:16

I would say certainly what we’re seeing now is being driven by young people, particularly young women, and I take my hat off to them. I think that we, there many examples in Australia and certainly internationally as well saying we we demand to prevent what’s been happening to us by the time we are leaving high school, entering university, we we demand that society does something to help prevent experiences of sexual harassment, right through to sexual violence and assault, and with the knowledge that this needs to start in their education. It starts at home as well, of course, I think, obviously, sex education, any expert in the world would say it begins at home. But it’s also a very important role I think that education and educational institutions play. And there’s been decades now of research that shows that comprehensive sexuality, relationships education does a lot of good. It has a lot of positive health outcomes, but including the prevention of sexual violence and assault.

David Hetherington  30:29

And if this is something that that has been led, in large part by, by young people, particularly young women, how comfortable or confident in your experience are parents and carers going along this journey with with their children?

Melissa Kang  30:44

My experience in talking to parent audiences around consent, is that they come up to me and say, ‘I have no idea how do I start these conversations?’ And to be honest, even though Yumi and I wrote the book for young adolescents, by the time it was finished, I said quite publicly, I want this to be a book for parents, I think parents need this as much as children. And when I think about, I’m a parent of four, four adult children now, and I think, Gosh, this book would have been handy when when they were quite young, as well and certainly once they started going through high school. I think parents talking to their children about sex, broadly speaking, and growing up and what is happening to their bodies, and the feelings that they have, when they start to experience attractions, and so on, I think parents find that on the whole, still quite difficult. I mean, that’s a broader societal issue, I think we’re all a little bit funny about talking about sex. And so I think that’s true for a lot of parents that it’s an uncomfortable area, particularly when they think their children might not be ready and might be too young. And then once they sort of think, Oh, they’re ready, now, it just becomes awkward. So, and I see the discussions around consent as part of that, which is why I would personally but also in our book, and also as an academic, and also, as a doctor, I would encourage parents to really pause and reflect on what their comfort zone and what their discomfort zone is, when it comes to talking to their children about consent and sex. And to start getting into practice much earlier than we than we normally do. So starting very young, for example, naming body parts correctly, rather than using euphemisms. Talking about feelings, you know, we can talk to our children about whether they’re happy or sad or excited or whether something feels icky or yucky, or feels really nice. You know, those are the kinds of things that are, I think, quite easy to talk to children about. And if we get into the habit of those kinds of conversations, using that kind of language, helping children articulate and express what it is they’re feeling either emotionally or in their bodies, I think it makes it easier when they get to an age where we think, ‘Oh, we’ve got to have that, we’ve got to have that talk now.’

David Hetherington  33:05

It’s almost I mean, I think the the framing of the consent education is something targeted at children, but it’s almost as though you know, parents, carers require their own consent education is part of this process and I guess your book, in part responds to that. You mentioned changes in social attitudes. And I imagine underlying social attitudes play a big part in all this debate. Can you see that over time, better consent education, is the thing that may drive longer term over over decades, changes in social attitudes if we can educate young people to come out of their schooling, with more informed, more respectful understanding of consent and and sexual behavior, is that the kind of thing that will alleviate these problems socially over the course of a generation or two?

Melissa Kang  34:00

I’d like to think it will only take a generation or two, I’m not so sure. I think that we mustn’t lose sight of the fact that what young people want, of course, is consent education and how to teach each other how to be more respectful. But they also want information about sex they want information about sex, that they’re not getting from anywhere other than perhaps media and social media and each other that they don’t necessarily believe is correct or accurate. And there is this expression of sex positivity and sex education that is sex positive, which has been also growing in momentum actually, for many years, and I think is still seen as a little bit marginal, as a little bit risky to go there and, and I would love to see all of society’s attitudes change around that, because I think if we can acknowledge to our children and young people, that sexuality, broadly speaking, and that includes how you identify, that it includes the relationships you have, that includes what happens to your body and the different bodily sensations that, that you experience as you’re growing up, if we can talk about all of that as normal human things that happen to most people, and that there’s lots and lots of positives around that, I think we will start to be able to then help children and adolescents learn about why consent is so important. If we, if we frame it only as well, sexual violence and the prevention of sexual violence and harassment and assault are terrible things, we’ve got to put in consent education to make sure that that doesn’t happen. To me, that’s only solving, it’s only solving the proble partly. I think that children and adolescents are still crying out for information about sex that they don’t know where to, they do know where to get it from, but they don’t know, there’s so much out there. I answered questions to Dolly magazine for 23 years that were mailed in and then emailed in to the magazine. And I have done a little bit of analysis of the content of those. But there was certainly a substantial proportion of all the letters that came in that were about sex, sexual arousal, sexual pleasure, sexual relationships, attractions and, and also just, you know, the mechanics of sex and I read Dolly when I was a teenager. People up to a certain age or down I should say, to a certain age still remember, Dolly magazine has kind of the the only source, or the the only really easily available source of reliable information that that they had about sex. And so I think, to me, that is proof enough that we are not doing anything wrong, by attempting to address these questions that young adolescents have, kind of rather than sweeping it under the carpet and saying, ‘Oh, if we talk to children as young as late primary school or early high school about puberty and sexual arousal, that that’s going to give them ideas.’ We know from research, international research over many decades that that’s not true, that that’s not what happens. And now of course, we’re competing. There’s no magazines anymore. We’re competing with everything that’s out there on the internet, I think it’s even more reason for us to not be afraid to talk and teach children and adolescents about, about sex really. And once they feel that their curiosity and their burning questions are actually being addressed somehow, being acknowledged, at least as existing in their own right. I think then we can also begin to build in consent education around that in a much more robust way. 

David Hetherington  38:03

Excellent. Thank you so much for the for the valuable and timely work that you do. And thanks to for joining us today on the podcast.

Melissa Kang  38:11

Thank you for having me. 

David Hetherington  38:13

That was Dr. Melissa Kang, Associate Professor at the University of Sydney in the Faculty of Medicine and Health and co-author of Welcome to Consent. Before her you heard from Chanel Contos, the founder of the Teach Us Consent campaign, speaking to us from London. You also heard from an outstanding group of University of Wollongong podcasting students. My name is David Hetherington, and you’ve been listening to Hands Up, a podcast from the Public Education Foundation that answers all your burning questions about our public schools. For more information of the work of the Foundation, in supporting young people with scholarships, and advocating for a high quality well-resourced public school system, go to our website, which is publiceducationfoundation.org.au. You can find the book Welcome to Consent in all good bookstores. And the link to the Teach Us Consent campaign is in the podcast show notes. If this episode has raised any issues or concerns for you, you can ring the National Domestic Family and Sexual Violence Counseling Service: 1800 Respect. The number is 1800 737 732. Or try Lifeline on 13 11 14. We’ll also include links to those numbers in our show notes. Hands Up was produced by Jennifer Macey and Olivia Roseman with editing by Holly Forest and Emily Perkins. Sound engineering by Jason Nicholas and research by Melanie Morrison. We’d like to acknowledge our former colleague Janine Miguez-Shawn, who was a source of inspiration for the podcast. Thank you to the New South Wales Teachers Federation for their support and for allowing us to record in this excellent podcasting studio. A big shout out to the students and staff in the instrumental music program at Fort Street High School in Sydney for composing, performing and arranging a wonderful theme music. This podcast was produced on the land of the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation, the first and original teachers and knowledge holders of this land. Thank you for listening.