Our response to the Education Minister

At School of Sexuality Education, we are proud of our inclusive, comprehensive, and evidence-based approach to delivering Relationships and Sex Education. It is something we have always been transparent about and actively promoted. This includes sharing our work directly with parents and carers. We regularly take time to meet with them and not only show them our content, but talk through our approach to those interested in it. 

As such, we are baffled by the recent letters issued by the Secretary of State for Education, Gillian Keegan. In these letters the Minister instructs schools and parents, (other carers and guardians of young people appear to be pointedly excluded in the address), on their rights to see teaching materials used by external providers who are delivering content around relationships, sex and health education (RSHE) within schools.  

We regularly deliver sessions specifically for parents and carers, as well as working with students within homeschools. We know parents and carers are important stakeholders in meeting children and young peoples’ needs. The Education Minister’s letters portray the relationship between parents and specialist RSHE providers as an adversarial one. Not only is this an unhelpful view, but it also does not accurately reflect our experiences. Most of the parents and carers who take the time to engage with us are pleased (relieved even) that someone is taking the time to start conversations with their children about subjects that they often find embarrassing and difficult to tackle. 

This is a sentiment often echoed by teaching staff. The current RSHE curriculum only became a mandatory subject in English schools in 2019 (with a grace period of a year granted due to the difficulties accompanying the pandemic). Since this time very little training, guidance or financial resources have been made available from the central government to support schools in implementing this change. This is especially shameful, considering how important high quality education in this area is to the wellbeing and secure development of young people.

Our organisation is made up of professionals with a range of backgrounds - including healthcare, education, safeguarding, academics and other specialisms. Expert RSE providers like ourselves exist precisely because of this failure to adequately support schools in meeting the RSHE needs of their students. Casting aspersions on the organisations which have come about to fill the gaps left by the government does nothing to improve education in this area. 

The Minister’s letters suggest that specialist RSHE providers like ourselves are secretive organisations. This simply isn’t accurate. Like many experts in the field, we are proud of the work that we do and strive to actively promote our approach. We’ve even written a book about it, Sex Ed: An Inclusive Teenage Guide to Sex and Relationships - widely available to anyone with a library card.

When RSHE appears in the headlines, we invariably see an increase in the number of parents and carers who contact us directly. Although as a small charity this can feel overwhelming in terms of our capacity, ultimately it is a chance to engage and include more people who largely want the same thing as us. 

Gillian Keegan ends her letter to parents encouraging them to read and respond to the upcoming RSHE review. We would seek and encourage all parents and carers interested in the wellbeing of young people to do the same - not just those who seek to politicise youth wellbeing with the aim of censoring evidence-based RSHE. 

School of Sex Ed’s Instagram account censored and deactivated by algorithms

School of sexuality education’s Almaz Ohene explores how internet policies around sexuality are consistently implemented in favour of straight, white, cis male ideas of acceptability

A couple of months ago, in July 2020, the School of Sexuality Education Instagram account was blocked and disabled. 

We received a message from Instagram stating that the account had been deactivated for not following ‘Community Guidelines’ because ‘sexually suggestive content isn’t allowed on Instagram’. This includes ‘posting sexually suggestive photos or other content; soliciting sexual services; using sexually explicit language.’ There was no specific information regarding which post(s) were problematic for Instagram, nor was there any warning of the deactivation. Considering the fun, educational tone of our account, the use of anatomically correct language, and the fact that most of our posts are illustrations this was baffling.

School of Sexuality Education reported this deactivation as an error but heard nothing from Instagram for a week. We went on to report it through Report Harmful Content who contacted their industry partners. After that our account was reactivated but with no further explanation. 

Both the team, and wider supporters of the work we do at School of Sexuality Education, were outraged. That Instagram had deemed the vital Sex Education work we do, to be in breach of the community guidelines, without specifiying what exactly it was that breached them, was beyond frustrating.

A number of independent studies have shown that internet policies around sexuality are consistently implemented in favour of straight, white, cis male ideas of acceptability, and that the censorship of benign Sex Education content on social media platforms is disproportionately harming marginalised communities.

How? Well, automated moderation, or algorithmic models, are used on a huge scale to automatically sort through content posted to social media platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, TikTok etc. Facebook’s algorithmic model, for example, has now been programmed to spot commonly used emoji strings – such as the eggplant or peach emoji – which are commonly used to refer to fun sex acts or indicate certain sexual preferences.

Often, social media platforms will ‘shadowban’ – when a social media platform hides content from the algorithm with tactics such as making them invisible in the hashtags, banning liking/commenting, or continuously censoring their content – accounts using vocabulary or hashtags deemed unacceptable.

This means sex educators can’t even use code to talk about the pleasurable aspects of sex, or help LGBTQ+ people find information via hashtags, even when the content is non-explicit.

Salty, an online newsletter and platform for women, trans and non-binary people, conducted some research in 2019, which reported that that plus-sized profiles were often flagged on Instagram for “excessive nudity” and “sexual solicitation”, and concluded that “risqué content featuring thin, cis white women seems to be less censored than content featuring plus-sized, black, queer women.”

It also found that people who come under attack for identifying as a member of the LGBTQ+ community, for example, have had their accounts reported or banned instead of the attacker. And later this year, it also reported that wheelchair user Alex Dacy (a.k.a. @wheelchair_rapunzel) had her picture, below, banned, even though it was inspired by an accepted Kim Kardashian West photo.

It is truly saddening how common real-life structures of oppression are being replicated online through this inherently biased automated moderation and censorship. It sends a deeply upsetting message, that only homogeneity is acceptable. School of Sexuality Education’s work is focused on dismantling these norms and online communities have the opportunity to help us do this work, but instead we are forced to stick to the same tired tropes.

Facebook also does not allow the mention of sexual pleasure in adverts for contraceptives. Instead, the focus must be “on the contraceptive features of the product.” A dichotomy exists because a cis man’s ability to have an erection is considered a health concern, based on the biological fact that a man must orgasm in order to procreate. As a result, male sexual wellness brands are considered morally acceptable as ‘family planning products’. Women, however, don’t need to experience an orgasm in order to procreate, so any information that exists solely to grant women pleasure is considered a ‘vice’ by Facebook.

This academic year sees Sex and Relationship Education become compulsory for all schools in England for the first time, hooray! But without being able to voice questions about the topic on social media, – which, as we know, is where young people spend a large proprtion of their time – they will still be left with the misconception that anything sex-related is taboo. And that’s the opposite of our ethos here at School of Sexuality Education. Social media bods, this is getting really tired – sort it out!

Illustrations by Evie Karkera, unless otherwise credited.

Our book ‘Sex Ed: An Inclusive Teenage Guide to Sex and Relationships’​ ​ is out​ ​now.