May 16, 2024 - 7:15am

Remember child safeguarding? Until five minutes ago, the term was considered terribly passé in certain “progressive” circles. Anyone who used it was bound to be some “won’t somebody think of the children” bigot, clutching her pearls over people just trying to live their lives.

Now, however, safeguarding’s cool again. As the Government today publishes plans to ban sex education for those under the age of nine, we are suddenly learning that sex ed plays a valuable role in protecting children from harm. Without sufficient knowledge, how will a child know when boundaries are being overstepped? (It seems we’re allowed to talk about those again, too.)

For the record, I think an outright ban is an unnecessary and potentially damaging step. Sex education for under-nines need not be focused on sex acts but — at least when delivered appropriately — can instead be based around sharing, relationships and bodily changes. Good sex ed can mitigate harmful messages children may already be receiving from elsewhere. Knowing when to tell children what is not easy — my partner, who delivers it at Key Stage Two, is struck by the vast differences in what some pupils have encountered compared to others. Nonetheless, as adults we can do more than throw our hands up and say it is better for all children to be told nothing at all.

Still, I cannot help finding the horror of many of those condemning the Government’s proposal somewhat disingenuous. “Not letting teachers deliver sex education to children who will encounter sexual content on the internet is exactly the wrong thing to do,” tweeted trans activist barrister Jolyon Maugham, before agreeing that the plans constituted “a paedophile’s charter” (it’s okay to go around calling people paedophiles now, too).

But what if much of what is on the internet has already crept into the classroom? What if some of the most harmful messages about bodies, boundaries and growth were being picked straight off Tumblr circa 2014 and repackaged for children under the guise of sex ed itself? What if the supposed antidote had become the poison?

As feminist campaigners have long been pointing out, some young children are currently being given poor, ill-informed and inappropriate teaching on sex, gender and relationships in the name of “inclusion”. Some have been told that their identities may not match their “assigned sex”, or that they must accommodate boys who believe they are girls in order to “be kind”. Queer theory-infused teachings about fluid boundaries and the unsexed body are wholly incompatible with the kind of sex education that produces confident children who understand their own needs and feel at home in their changing bodies. It is rather galling to see many of those who have aggressively promoted the former now complain that we are at risk of losing the latter.

What did they expect? This is what happens with the kind of forced-teaming in which a certain sector of the “progressive” Left has been engaging. Getting sex education right is vitally important, because potential abusers have always used the line that their abuse is itself “educational”. Yet so many of us were told not to criticise anything at all.

“The invocation of young people in political discourse often serves reactionary ends,” wrote Amia Srinivasan in 2021’s bestselling The Right to Sex. “Calls to protect their innocence are based on a fantasy of childhood that does not and never did exist — a childhood untouched by the world of adults and adult desires.”

One might wonder what Srinivasan means by “innocence”. Is she truly incapable of distinguishing it from ignorance or incuriosity, or of understanding the importance of minimising how far children’s lives are “touched” by certain “adult desires”? Or does she, like the trans activist Alok Maid-Venon, just want us to agree that “little girls are also kinky”? Are there any distinctions to be made? If so, when?

Age-appropriate, relationship-focused sex education could produce a generation of young people capable of identifying predatory behaviour anywhere: in the home, on the internet, on the Right, or on the Left. But unless this is the education the “progressives” are willing to fight for — and if so, I’d join them — they cannot complain if others have heard them say “all or nothing” and taken them at their word.


Victoria Smith is a writer and creator of the Glosswitch newsletter.

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