Thursday, April 21, 2005

Sex Ed Issues - What is sexual exploitation?

This weekend, our church is offering its third sex education weekend training program for senior high school students (grades 10-12). We have divided the huge curriculum into 4 parts, and so most of the youth have taken about half of the course so far.

One of the workshops that I am co-leading with my friend Guy is on sexual exploitation. The goal of the workshop is for the youth to understand what the difference is between erotica and sexual exploitation, including sexual harassment.

We thought we would start by asking the question: Why does this matter? And answering from our own perspectives (ie. male, female, work place issues and legal/human rights issues)

Next we thought we would ask the group to define what sexual exploitation means. We will give them some parameters - for example, this session is not about what is illegal in Canada, such as pictures with children having sex or snuff movies. We want to focus on what is considered legal. We expect them to come up with some kind of black and white definition.

Then we want to show them examples of pictures which are considered erotica by some people. We are going to ask them to decide if these pictures are exploitive. The interesting part has been to figure out where to get the pictures. Guy is going to buy some soft porn mags, like Playboy. I found some adult comic and anima pictures that youth would have access to. Plus, I found some slash fiction pictures online which are extremely interesting. For example, I found some drawings of Harry Potter sleeping with Ron Weaseley! I think these might be considered illegal, because they are children - but they aren't having sex, they are just hugging and kissing in the pictures with their clothes on.

Finally, we hope to then see if it was hard to decide which pictures were exploitive, with the emphasis on the fact that sometimes this concept is very subjective - depends who is looking at the picture. We want to try to come up with a test that helps them to figure it out for themselves in the future and be more sensitive about the types of material they read/write, see, say, etc. We will look at what the intent of the material is and its effect on individuals and society as a whole.

Any suggestions would be great!

Comments:
When my kids are teens, we are going to come and live in your basement and then you can teach them. OK?

Good. Now just sign in blood over here....

Poppins
 
... or you could do a take on the exploitation of married women in some cultures..Sounds wonderful though Lisa!
 
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