Teenage Girl Lashes Out at School’s “Damaging” and “Bigoted” Sex Education Classes

A 17-year-old student who was so annoyed and unimpressed with her school’s “damaging” and “bigoted” sex education classes has written a letter to her principal and posted it on Facebook. Agatha Tan, who lives in Singapore, was really not happy with the four-hour long ‘It’s Complicated’ workshop that was run at her school. In her letter, she explained that women were referred to as ‘gals’ and that throughout the workshop, gender stereotypes were promoted, including women never meaning what they say and men being “slaves to their hormones”. The annoyed teenager also included images from her course booklet. “On the cover page of the booklet itself, it is written, “no means yes?” and “yes mean no?” The facilitators from Focus on the Family (FotF) neglected to mention that thinking a girl means “yes” when she says “no” is actually completely wrong." “Rather they spent their four hours with us discussing things such as what a girl ‘really means’ when she says something else, as opposed to guys who are ‘direct’ and ‘always mean’ what they say. “While sexuality education rarely manages to teach me something that I have not already learnt through past sessions or mainstream media, this booklet was different. From merely glancing through this booklet, I learned a simple yet important lesson: that bigotry is very much alive and it was naïve of me to think I could be safe from it even in school. “Much as girls have been generalized and simplified in this booklet, so too have guys and this is fair for neither gender,” she continued in her 2,300-word long letter. “By engaging the services of groups such as FotF to teach sexuality education in school, the management hence indirectly participates in promoting rape culture, tells students that we should conform to traditional gender roles instead of being our own persons, demonstrates that the acceptance of diversity in people is unimportant and erases minority groups in the student population," she concluded. Meanwhile, FotF have responded: “It’s unfortunate that what was meant to be a light-hearted workshop for students was taken out of context and misinterpreted. As an approved service provider, we definitely do not promote a rape culture. “We acknowledge that the workshop in question was not perfect, as with even the very best of our workshops there is always room for improvement. However, we believe that the facilitators did their very best in this challenging situation."