Girls Know Nothing - S2 Ep31: Brook | Sex Education, Superdrug & Consent

Episode Date: September 13, 2023

GKN is a female-focused podcast hosted by  @SharonNJGaffka The new episode of #GirlsKnowNothingPod featuring guest @superdrug, @superdrugpr and @brook_sexpositive GKN Social Channels: Https://linktr.ee/girlsknownothing  Instagram: @girlsknownothingpod  Tiktok: @girlsknownothingpod TikTok: @girlsknownothing #girlsknownothingpodcast #buisnesspodcast #sharongaffka #bestpodcast #uktoppodcast #superdrug #brooksexpositive

Hi, I'm Richard Karn, and you may have seen me on TV talking about the world's number one expandable garden hose. Well, the brand new Pocket Hose Copperhead with Pocket Pivot is here, and it's a total game changer. Old-fashioned hoses get kinks and creases at the spigot, but the Copperhead's Pocket Pivot swivels 360 degrees for full water flow and freedom to water with ease all around your home. When you're all done, this rust-proof anti-burst hose shrinks back down to pocket size for effortless handling and tidy storage. Plus, your super light and ultra-durable pocket hose Copperhead is backed with a 10-year warranty. What could be better than that? I'll tell you what, an exciting exclusive offer just for you. For a limited time, you can get a free pocket pivot and their 10-patter pattern sprayer with the purchase of any size copperhead hose.

Just text water to 64,000. That's water to 64,000 for your two free gifts with purchase. W-A-T-E-R to 64,000. By texting 64,000, you agree to receive recurring automated marketing messages from Pocket Hose. Message and data rates may apply. No purchase required. Terms apply. Available at pockethose.com slash terms. You just realized your business needed to hire someone yesterday. How can you find amazing candidates fast? Easy. Just use Indeed. Stop struggling to get your job posts seen on other job sites. With Indeed Sponsored Jobs, your post jumps to the top of the page for your relevant candidates,

so you can reach the people you want faster. According to Indeed data, sponsored jobs posted directly on Indeed have 45% more applications than non-sponsored jobs. Don't wait any longer. Speed up your hiring right now with Indeed. And listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility at indeed.com slash kids and family. Just go to indeed.com slash kids and family right now and support our show by saying you heard about indeed on this podcast terms and conditions apply hiring indeed is all you need so as a bisexual woman i had zero education on any other genitals apart from how to put a condom on a penis which is just 50 of the time redundant to me yeah um and why is it do you don't think we

have that inclusivity when it comes to sex education yet I think it's definitely something that um at the moment a lot of relationships and sex education it's not catering for everyone in that classroom a lot of the time and people feel can feel really left out of the conversation. Welcome back to another episode of Girls Know Nothing. As a woman safety advocate, I've been a massive champion for comprehensive and intersectional sex education that includes an LGBTQ plus education as well as safety and wellbeing.

This year, millions of people across the UK will experience a lack of consensual behavior. In fact new research from Superdrug reveals that more than a third of people aged 18 to 21 have gone along with sex even if they didn't want to. 41% of people aged 18 to 21 are too afraid to say no when it comes to unprotected sex and two-thirds of people between ages of 18 and 21 have received an explicit content over text whatsapp or social media without their consent it's important to remember that you always have the right to say no it's important to remember that you always have

the right to say no when it comes to any form of sex or sexual activity and you can withdraw your consent at any time my next guest is amber new-Clark, Education and Wellbeing Coordinator at Brooke. Amber believes that all young people have the right to high quality and inclusive relationship and sex education. Amber and her team work directly with young people, teachers, parents and carers offering a range of education and training programs

all designed to keep young people safe and healthy. Brooke is a national charity that fights for everyone's right to safe, confidential and accessible healthcare, no matter who they are. Brook challenges stigma, amplifies voices and provides lifelong support so that meets the diverse needs of our communities.

Brook is also a partner of Superdrug's You Before Yes Consent Campaign. Superdrug's You Before Yes Consent Campaign delves in deeper into the crucial but often overlooked world of consent and it opens up the important conversations about what consent actually means. It's all about helping you feel like you're in the know and empowering you to find your voice when it comes to consent. So welcome to the studio. I've been really excited to kind of have this episode for

a long time like I've been trying to get in the diary because I've done a lot of work with a lot of different organizations and I go to schools a lot. I talk to young women and young boys about all kinds of things to do with like sexual health and relationships. And one thing that always surprised me, actually, I think it was when I went to Oxford Brooks open day and someone said to me, what is consent and it freaked me out a little bit because they were in their early 20s and if I like if you get to your early 20s and not know what consent or enthusiastic consent actually is yeah it makes me fear for like everybody else that's going to come after yeah um so what like obviously what is consent and then what how is that different to enthusiastic consent yeah it's it's a really great question and it's quite um i think different

people have uh like different understandings or levels of understanding of what consent is because it depends on kind of when we were taught and how we were taught it um but i'd say that a lot of people that i work with tend to understand what the definition of consent is, which is just permission to do something. But then enthusiastic consent is more the way that we teach about consent in schools and how we hope people would talk a bit about consent a bit more. Because it kind of moves away from this idea that like no means no. I think that that was how I was taught consent. I mean, if you're lucky enough to be taught about consent at school that might be the kind of general way that you were taught about it

but enthusiastic consent is talking a bit more about um the fact that we're looking out for an enthusiastic yes so the person that you're having sex with wants to be there and they're enjoying what's happening you're enjoying what's happening and it feels like it's maybe more um got a basis of communication to it basically and you're kind of um reading and it feels like it's maybe more got a basis of communication to it basically and you're kind of reading someone's body language their facial expressions and it's got a bit more to it perhaps. Yeah because I think my education on consent stopped at the tea video yeah which I mean is pretty much a sign that you went to any form of British educational institution if you'd watched the tea video but i know that there

are people that i've come across that when they are having sex they didn't say yes in the beginning but then they were eventually convinced to say yes so technically they consented if you say no means no but they weren't enthusiastic about it and i think that's the it's really important to be able to teach people to differentiate between the two yeah and also like it makes for a better sexual experience for everyone when you speak to young people in schools and you teach them that about enthusiastic consent as opposed to just consent you know how would a person go about practicing that as well practice that in their sexual lives yeah i think it's something that when we're teaching about it in schools as well when we put on if we put on that tea video or they've they've

experienced that kind of method of teaching about consent it's it kind of blends in with the rest of the messages that maybe um they've received throughout some of their sex education but sometimes when we come in and we talk about um consent uh and and during sex and we ask young people maybe about um how they would know if someone was enjoying something we might take the sexual example out of it even and help someone to understand it from the perspective of if you ask someone to go to the cinema with you how would you know if they want to go or not we kind of take the sex out of it to sort of help people to understand it a little bit better in the sense that consent is a skill that we're practicing all the time it's something that um we're saying yes and no to things and then

we're also reading people's body language and we're also reading people's facial expressions and we're not pressuring people to do something if they're not that keen to do it because um why would you want to like you said why would you want to go to the cinema with someone if they didn't really want to go with you or they didn't really want to see that film or it's a i think it's something that um it's it's sort of part of our everyday experiences but when it comes to sex it's a bit more complicated because it's got the added taboo of sex we don't necessarily talk about it that much um in society so the way we talk about it in schools first of all is we'll kind of maybe remove the sex from it to help people to kind of recognize the concept of consent again and then we

might talk about um how uh someone who's consenting might feel um what kinds of noises might they make what what does their body language look like and really try and get young people to think about that and also think about the fact that um just because someone consents at the beginning doesn't necessarily mean that they are consenting throughout and that people can withdraw consent at any time as well so um how might you know that someone's continuing to enjoy what's happening or how how do you show that you're continuing to enjoy what's happening so it's sort of getting young people to think about that um in the context of non-sexual examples and then bringing it into the context of sexual examples really asking them what they

think about it as well yeah i think that's really important because i think where where there has been a lack of education on consent people were taking it either not knowing how to get it or taking it literally i think i saw yeah one comment that kind of threw me a little bit and it's like do we have to get to the point where we now get people to sign stuff to say that they've consented to any form of activity and I think like how I'm sure you probably get those kinds of questions all the time so what what kind of things do you say to somebody when they you're faced with that question yeah it's it's a really common one and it's I think it's comes from a good place of like trying to understand right like we want this to be a really black and white decision right and and unfortunately um that we live in a society where people are quite uh there's kind of a normalization of um

pushing boundaries basically um and i don't think we're that used to um establishing boundaries and then being respected um so i think that um that is maybe a bit of a backdrop as to why people do want this like kind of black and white answer of like in this situation is it consent is it not consent and i do get quite a lot of that in schools we get that a lot where young people are like well in this scenario person a does this and person b does this and you know what is uh what's going to happen here what's the legal uh ramifications of this so the way that we might tackle that in in in a school or when i'm talking to a young person is really trying to sort of um understand from their perspective uh what skills they might need

to identify it in that person so like um that example that i gave about um maybe how someone what someone's body language and facial expressions might look like when they want to do something right they don't necessarily have to say it out loud but you can generally tell if they're like leaning forward they are um like giving you positive body language and facial expressions they're smiling that kind of a thing and then we do often also get people being like but what if you're still not sure like what if you still don't know and at that point you ask you just ask someone the question like do you like this does this feel good um and i think that's when we want to really try and um demystify communicating during sex because it is something that's normal and it is something

that's okay um And it's actually kind of essential as well that you are communicating with the person that you're having sex with. Hi, I'm Richard Karn, and you may have seen me on TV talking about the world's number one expandable garden hose. Well, the brand new pocket hose copperhead with pocket pivot is here, and it's a total game changer. Old fashioned hoses get kinks and creases at the spigot, but the Copperhead's pocket pivot swivels 360 degrees for full water flow and freedom to water with ease all around your home. When you're all done, this rust-proof anti-burst hose shrinks back down to pocket size for effortless handling and tidy storage. Plus, your super light and ultra-durable pocket hose

Copperhead is backed with a 10-year warranty. What could be better than that? I'll tell you what an exciting exclusive offer just for you for a limited time. You can get a free pocket pivot and their 10 pattern sprayer with the purchase of any size Copperhead hose. Just text water to 64,000. That's water to 64,000 for your two free gifts with purchase. W A T E R to 64,000. By texting 64,000, you agree to receive recurring automated marketing messages from pocket hose message and data rates may apply. No purchase required terms apply available at pocket hose.com slash terms. W-A-T-E-R to 64,000. struggling to get your job posts seen on other job sites. With Indeed Sponsored Jobs, your post jumps to the top of the page for your relevant candidates, so you can reach the people you want

faster. According to Indeed data, sponsored jobs posted directly on Indeed have 45% more applications than non-sponsored jobs. Don't wait any longer. Speed up your hiring right now with Indeed. And listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility at indeed.com slash P-O-D-K-A-T-Z-13. Just go to indeed.com slash P-O-D-K-A-T-Z-13 right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring Indeed is all you need. And if they're enjoying something or not enjoying something, so that tends to be where we go with it. Yeah, I think there's like this weird misconception that talking during any form of sexual activity is like a big no,

but actually like the older I've gotten, the more I realize it's actually a big yes, because if you feel comfortable being able to use actual words with a person you're probably going to get the best experience for both parties or however many people are involved yeah um but I think one of the things that has always been stuck in my in my brain since it happened is, somebody said to me that every single time a person participates in sexual activity, it's non-consensual. And I don't really understand where they would have got that from, but what do you think shapes people's or young people's perceptions of what consent is? I think that there's quite a lot of things going on and I think it's for everyone.'s not just for young people it's adults as well and the way that adults talk about consent also impacts the way that young people think about it too so it's we've got a bit of a a kind of ongoing cycle

going on i think but i think um pornography can have a big part to play in um how we understand consent particularly if pornography is used as sex education um and in this instance i'm talking about maybe like mainstream um free pornography um that particularly is is maybe more people access there doesn't tend to be a great deal of uh enthusiastic consent going on a great deal of communicating during sex um and i think that that part uh it has definitely had plays and plays apart plays an impact um outside of pornography there's also other kind of media um going on so film and tv we tend to have a bit of a script a bit of a trope in particularly rom coms where um maybe a a guy and a girl and a, the guy is like trying to win the girl back in,

you know, after they've broken up, for example, they're trying to kind of win them back. And that already kind of negates this concept of consent when someone's established a boundary and then that's kind of being pushed or being kind of negotiated. So I think that there's kind of a few parts to play in terms of what influences young people

and people's perceptions of consent do you think that's what contributes to people thinking that it's a gray area as opposed to black and white yeah yeah i think it's there's the gray area part um is definitely a part of it is um this idea that we're we're not really sure or it's really complicated. I think that there's definitely the fact that we've not really seen it. We've not got that much evidence in TV and film. There are definitely TV programmes and films that are doing it really well and are doing that work to show consent in really normalised everyday contexts um but equally i think historically it's not always been something that we've been amazing at showing so um this is something that i'm still pretty much learning as well but um a couple of episodes ago i had

a guest called millie gooch who's part of sober girl society and we broke we briefly spoke about consent when it comes to being intoxicated um obviously we know that british culture has like a weird relationship with alcohol um and then you know boundaries may be shifted or changed or consent is given differently if at all when you're under the influence of alcohol so you know how how does a person navigate a situation like that? Yeah, it's, oh, that is a very common question. And we get that a lot in schools as well. Like that situation I was saying about before,

the scenario where people ask kind of, well, this person's had this many tequila shots and this person's had this much to drink. And it's this sort of conversation again. But I think that it's really important to discuss because so often um adults will have the message that um we just we don't drink and we don't have sex in the same time like that just doesn't happen yeah and obviously we know that it does happen and it's

incredibly common so that's not really giving us doesn't really give people enough tools to navigate that situation right so again I think we'd go back to um establishing the law so the law is that you can't be incapacitated basically and understanding what capacity means in the context of sex um and asking young people like how would you know if someone was too drunk basically too drunk to do do something um and so you kind of get answers like well maybe they're slurring their speech or they're wobbling around they're behaving differently um and then if we again it's sort of going back to that thing of if we're still not sure if that person is still um displaying some

things but not other things again it's always best to sort of go on the side of caution basically because there are lots of things that we miss when we are incapacitated, when we're too drunk. Like we're probably a lot less likely to have conversations about contraception and safer sex, condoms and conversations about our sexual health. And then also, it's so much harder to read body language, it's so much harder to read facial expressions and um and to really understand how someone is feeling during sex um so i think that it's it's something that we don't say like you know it's absolutely off the table because again it's just trying to build those skills among people to be able to recognize when someone is too drunk to consent basically and if you're not sure then then it's always best to

err on the side of caution so what would your biggest bits of advice be to anybody that's trying to either get consent or give consent i'd say um something that i think is not always as uh commonly talked about is um the fact that we might have different ways that we like to communicate like when we're having sex so i think that um if you're in a relationship or if you're having sex with the same person then it might be that you start to get to know and have those conversations about how you like to be checked in on when when you're having sex for example i think definitely remembering the fact that people can withdraw consent at any time really good thing to have in the back of your mind.

I understand sometimes people can find that a little bit difficult because it can feel like a rejection sometimes. But ultimately, that's something that we all kind of experience at times. And it's definitely still important to respect people and come to terms with that rejection in some sort of some form or another I think that that's something that um when it comes to people giving consent um it's I think probably a quite a like natural thing a lot of the time um and I think that if you're if you're kind of um wanting to be really clear about it you can always like say out loud what what you're thinking what you're feeling um what you like what you don't like it's kind of communicating that part of things as well i'd say i think it's really important to say as well that being in a relationship somebody long-term or monogamous does not automatically grant consent at every moment it's still something

like regardless of your relationship with the other person you have to still get it every single time you engage in any form of sexual activity um absolutely i think that i'm like i'm very openly open about how bad i think the lack of sex education is in the uk and i think that obviously plays a massive part into people considering consent to be a gray area um why why is it important that we even have these conversations like the conversation we're having now yeah I think it's because um they're still they're happening more like they're definitely happening more than they were um but I still think that there are um a lot or there's a lot of nervousness still and i think that having conversations about things that make us nervous is is a way to help bring clarity and and and um

and work through what it is that is making someone feel unsure about something and there's still a lot of uh work that we need to do there's still um uh large numbers of um violence against women and girls in schools um and and sexual harassment um that happens in in all over within society um and that's still only becoming a conversation um over the last few years and it still needs to continue to have that conversation because it impacts everyone it impacts um people of all genders really um in in so many ways um yeah yeah I think my form of sex education I think the last time I had any conversation my parents are very conservative don't talk about any of that stuff so I had to really rely on what I was getting from school And I think my last form of sex education was when I was 14. My class had a male teacher

who was a newly graduated teacher, probably about 22, 23, teaching group of 14 year old girls how to put a condom on a blue penis. And that was pretty much all of it. But then that doesn't give me, it doesn't make me feel comfortable. It doesn't make the teacher feel comfortable to answer questions from a group of curious women but also

like as a group of as an all-girls school should is putting condoms on penis is the only thing we need to consider yeah I think that's for so long that was like as far as it went right yeah that teacher also probably was feeling embarrassed and aware of the the the thing that was going on in the classroom and and um and that is something that uh is it is part of relationships and sex education but for so many people that was it like that was the whole thing no more uh to say um and actually we know that there is a lot more to relationships and sex education. The relationship side of sex education is also huge in talking about kind of what is healthy in a relationship, what's unhealthy. Discussions about porn and thinking critically about what we see in the media relating to sex. And then as well, our sexual health and kind of the different variety of ways that we can uh contract sexually transmitted

infections how we prevent them um so there's a lot to it basically do you think that the rise in young people using pornography to get any form of sex education contributes to the things you're talking about earlier like sexual harassment because pornography is not real sex like it's quite i would say it's quite violent towards women yeah and depending on what you look at but for the majority i would say it's quite violent towards women yeah yeah exactly it's there's definitely in mainstream pornography there's definitely a narrative or like a script and um it tends to always follow a pretty similar uh set of things. It is quite prescriptive a lot of the time about what sex is, what counts as sex, which again,

isn't particularly inclusive of people of different genders and sexual orientations. And so we've got a kind of a type of sex that's being portrayed in pornography that if we didn't have sex education at all, then that would be a huge problem because it would it would be teaching um a lot of myths it would be um perpetuating a lot of stigmas in society um whether that be um racially uh marginalized groups being

represented in pornography and as well women um generally is they're represented in a particular way and and usually a really um sort of discriminatory way so if that is the only way we learn about sex then that is going to have an impact on the way that we think about sex and what that should look like um in private when actually they're really different things a lot of the time yeah i mean do you think that contributes as to why people don't talk about sexual health as much as they should yeah i think so i think there's that and there's also a history of sex being stigmatized and and and and it being a taboo topic particularly in the uk i think yeah i think um this is gonna sound really weird but the sexual health clinic like we used to be an after-school trip this is gonna make it sound

so bizarre groups of us would just go to the sexual health clinic after school but at the same time like you knew that your other friends were doing it and you're all there for the same reason but at the same time if you saw any other group of people that you'd be hugely embarrassed and I guess that's when the stigma is that you said about you know if the girl came out of the clinic clinicians room to go to the bathroom to take a test you heavily judge that person when actually you know yeah there's no harm in doing it and this kind of idea that stis or sexually transmitted infections are kind of dirty or that they are any different to any other type of infection that we get and again it's like we go to the clinic or we go to

the doctors and we and we ask a professional and we get help for it and that would you know we don't we don't usually get as as um uh as embarrassed about like a lot of other infections but when it's to do with sex we do feel more embarrassed or we do feel that there's a lot more um stigma attached to it so i think that there's yeah a common denominator there which is a lot of the time that we're not that comfortable talking about sexual health. I think it's just because as well, there's always that stigma that if you catch something, you must have slept with everybody under the sun, but you can literally catch anything,

even the first time you have sex. Yeah, absolutely. But do you think that, what do you think is one of the biggest barriers as to why particularly young people don't get tested as often as they should? I think that education can be a part to play in that and not necessarily knowing. And then as well as that, I think there is part to play in the stigma and the worry as well that

maybe parents or carers or teachers might find out when actually sexual health tests are completely confidential and parents, carers, teachers wouldn't find out if someone went to a sexual health tests are completely confidential and parents carers teachers wouldn't find out if someone went to a sexual health clinic or if they ordered a test online and they're usually packaged really anonymously and in a way that is meant for privacy kind of a thing so it's only up to you who you tell about your health, basically, because it is private and it is confidential. Yeah, I mean, I will give a massive shout out to, I think it's my local NHS trust, that their sexual health stuff's really good.

You literally get a test kit through your door. And it's like you said, you literally would never know. I actually didn't know what it was when I got it. So that's how like, like unnoticeable it was. And even when I handed it back, but you know, there's lots of different things. We always talk was and even when I handed it back but you know there's lots of different things we always talk about STIs when it comes to sexual health but sexual health isn't just about STIs also about your well-being when we say sexual well-being what does that actually

mean so sexual well-being or well-being in general is talking about kind of lots of different parts so it's it's kind of how we respond to our environment, as well as kind of what's going on inside us as well. And sexual health and wellbeing has had like an interesting dynamic, I think, over the years, because we've started to recognise how key sexual health can be within our wider wellbeing and how linked mental health and sexual health can be as well. Um, because if we are, uh, there are kind of lots of different situations where the, where our issues in our sexual health will impact our mental health and vice versa. Um, and often sexual health is for a lot of people ignored or not something they want to speak about or worry about. So, um, that I'd say is, is is is a big pun of peace in that and i think if people kind of wanted to learn more about um their uh sexual health and well-being or about consent

they can go to um the brook website um or you before yes as well the you before yes website so if people wanted to learn more they could go to the brook website or the you before yes website as well when i was a teenager and i was first sexually active i was always thinking about does my body look right does it smell right is like is it ugly and because when you with the lack of education around what anyone's genitals may or may not look like you look at images online but they're not representative of like the average person but then also i've seen lots of things about um the design of vagina surgery being one of the most like commonly looked for and i i don't even know where like this kind of idea comes from that it has to look a

certain way yeah yeah i think that body image and um particularly uh how our genitals look um in general is really informed by um wider society media pornography and as we said before the the kind of um very mainstream um looks basically um and it's very prescriptive and it can make people feel really anxious about um how if their body looks any different again kind of down to the fact that um everyone's bodies and they're like everyone's faces look different so of course all of our genitals are going to look different of course that's going to be um going to be the case we've kind of got such a variety of different um like humans on this planet and And I think that our bodies and our faces and

our genitals, all of these things are going to look different, basically. You just realized your business needed to hire someone yesterday. How can you find amazing candidates fast? Easy. Just use Indeed. Stop struggling to get your job posts seen on other job sites. With Indeed Sponsored Jobs, your post jumps to the top of the page for your relevant candidates, so you can reach the people you want faster. According to Indeed data,

sponsored jobs posted directly on Indeed have 45% more applications than non-sponsored jobs. Don't wait any longer. Speed up your hiring right now with Indeed. And listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility at Indeed.com slash P-O-D-K-A-T-Z 13. Just go to Indeed.com slash P-O-D-K-A-T-Z 13 right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring? Indeed is all you need.

You just realized your business needed to hire someone yesterday. How can you find amazing candidates fast? Easy. Just use Indeed. Stop struggling to get your job posts seen on other job sites. With Indeed-sponsored jobs, your post jumps to the top of the page for your relevant candidates, so you can reach the people you want faster. According to Indeed data, sponsored jobs posted directly on Indeed have 45% more applications than non-sponsored jobs.

Don't wait any longer. Speed up your hiring right now with Indeed. And listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility at indeed.com slash kids and family. Just go to indeed.com slash kids and family right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring Indeed is all you need. Really unhelpful, I think, when we only see one type all the time. I did get I did put a Q&A box on my Instagram because I know that I get a lot of DMs from teenagers that this is how I know that sex education hasn't moved on from when I had it 14 years ago. From teenagers asking me questions or, you know, like saying that they are unsure about certain

things and obviously I'm not the expert um so I kind of told told them to treat this as if it was sex education lesson that they never had or that they could ask questions they were afraid to ask in front of everyone else but I think you know a lot of the themes are very similar and I think one of the biggest questions I got was how does somebody know that they're ready to engage in sexual activity for the first time yeah it's really common question um and when we get a lot in schools as well and when we get young people kind of asking us to come back as well sometimes to talk about it more um and I'd say a big thing is it's it's a lot of kind of um internal questioning I would say so thinking about um maybe uh trying to put to the back of your mind as much as you can um what other people are doing basically so like there is no set age

that someone uh should be having sex or not having sex there are plenty of people that aren't particularly interested in having sex now or ever as well then that's completely valid. We've got people who are sometimes informing like if they want to have sex or not based on maybe what their friends are doing or what they see other people doing as well in wider society. So again I'd kind of try and work out if there are kind of like healthy reasons for wanting to have sex and not so healthy reasons so like maybe a healthy reason for having sex might be um because you are um because because you really like the person that you're that you're having sex with or because you are curious about it you should generally be feeling kind of excited obviously everyone feels a bit

nervous the first time they're gonna have sex that is really normal but there's a kind of excited obviously everyone feels a bit nervous the first time they're going to have sex that is really normal but there's a kind of difference between like an excited nervous and a scared nervous or a worried nervous so I'd kind of have a kind of thought think about that for yourself um sometimes we ask young people as well like um what do we think that someone who is ready for sex like what do we think they are thinking about like in terms of contraception and an STI testing are they kind of already thinking about some of those things you know do you know a bit about consent already and understand how you might check in with your partner to check that they're having a good time and that you're having a good time and so those are all signs that you might be um uh

ready but also only you can really decipher that i think so the first time i had sex i would it was with the right person at the right place like i didn't feel pressured into it from that person but i think that because we'd been together for a considerable amount of time before we had sex and everyone else in my year was like haven't you done it yet why haven't you done it and it kind of got so I think I don't regret the person I lost it with but I would have if I had not had those external pressures probably would have waited a little bit longer yeah and also I think it's really important to say that to people it's not going to be amazing your first time it's not going to be like firework or it might be for some people for me it was not like fireworks and stuff it was really awkward very clumsy but I felt comfortable with the person

that I was with so then you know you kind of just laugh about it now but yeah yeah I think people expect it to be like you see in pornography yeah and sometimes a question I get a lot as well is like is it going to hurt particularly for people with vulvas that's a question that get a lot as well is like, is it going to hurt? Particularly for people with vulvas, that's a question that a lot of people ask is like, is sex meant to hurt or is it going to be painful the first time? And so often kind of trying to explain that it can sometimes, but it doesn't have to for everyone. And there are usually things that people can do that means that it's not as painful or if it is painful at any point, we should stop and make sure that everyone's okay, basically. But it's definitely something that is like with anything, the more you practice something, the better you get at it basically and the more confident you feel uh being able to tell someone what you like and what you don't like um and uh you're more comfortable with uh the feelings that come up as well so yeah um another one of the really common questions i got is about the lack of representative sex education so so as a bisexual woman I had zero education on any other genitals apart from how to put a condom on a penis, which is just 50% of the time redundant to me.

And why is it do you don't think we have that inclusivity when it comes to sex education yet? I think it's definitely something that at the moment, a lot of relationships and sex education, it's not catering for everyone in that classroom a lot of relationships and sex education it's not catering for everyone in that classroom a lot of the time and people feel can feel really left out of the conversation and I think that um a part of that might be that um professionals teachers parents like don't genuinely don't know like they don't know how to have those conversations or they don't have the information at hand and I'd say definitely do your research I'd say using like websites like Gallup they have fantastic relationships and sex education and as do Mermaids and Stonewall and lots of different organizations that support parents and carers and LGBT young people and adults but I think that uh one ways that we at brook talk about um sex in a

more accessible inclusive way um is we're not talking solely about one type of sex so when we're explaining and we're asking young people what they think sex is we're not just talking about um a penis goes into a vagina that's the end of the sex conversation that's actually not on a lot of people's um that's not what a lot of people engage with so you're kind of already ignoring like a portion of people um whether that mean be that someone is heterosexual or um or lgbt it's not something that everyone is going to engage with every single time so we do need to talk about sex in a more inclusive way with a more variety of definitions and so we talk about kind of sexual terms basically that people use so that might be an anal sex oral sex genitals genital touching mutual masturbation using toys

and there's slightly different conversations that come with that when it comes to stis or consent and so that's sort of when we're just entering the conversation about sex we're not assuming the kind of sex that people are having it's it could be any of those things and people need to know how uh how to be safe when they're engaging in any of those types of sex i think um another question as well is that we when we talk about sex and we there's um do you know what's even in any form of media or sex education is that we never talk about female pleasure or the pleasure of people with vulvas and I feel like that's a people feel shame when they talk about it or it's not that it's it's not as important because if you're procreating

technically the woman or the vulva owner doesn't need to have a good time in order to procreate um so how do you how does a person approach that conversation with their partner in terms of um about like what feels nice or what feels pleasurable yeah or like why we don't talk about it in general i think that um it's something that kind of is probably approached differently depending on your relationship and particularly in in school situations or when we're talking about sex in general or we're talking about condom use for example pleasure can kind of be integrated into these conversations and it's so important for conversations about consent as well because if someone is consenting if someone is engaging in

enthusiastic consent and they're um they they're clearly showing that they're having a good time that is showing that they're enjoying it and which is pleasure right so pleasure and consent the conversations come really hand in hand um and so uh when we're talking about um any sort of realms of sexual health we can talk about the fact that sex for a lot of people the reason that they're having sex is for pleasure. Most of the time, the majority of the sexual encounters that people are having, it's not for a baby. Like that's maybe a few times or however many times it takes for someone to have a baby. But there's also pleasure is in the mix there. It's a really key reason why people are having sex in the first place. And that's regardless of gender. And unfortunately, when it comes to female pleasure or pleasure for

people with vulvas it's it's still somewhat of a mystery almost like people kind of treat it like it's still um a really mysterious body part and the clit is a myth but it's not yeah which which is i think down to like lack of relationships and sex education to be honest not really having um an understanding of anatomy which is such a kind of that's like beginner level isn't it that should be where we start the conversation and the start of the conversation can also be around consent and we have those conversations with um with children and young people before we talk about sex at all we're talking about consent in the context of um sharing toys or um asking someone if they want a hug or a high five like it's it's choosing and giving people choice elements to the the kinds of touch that they're experiencing um so it's it's

kind of um we can we can stage it up we can use it in a way that um we introduce topics when people are ready to hear them when they're age appropriate when they're stage appropriate and for people to experience and so it's relevant to their life as well because again it's not that useful for us to have these conversations when it's going to just go over someone's head and they're not ready to hear it as well so yeah i think you pretty much answered what my next question was going to be was like how do parents know at what stage they should start introducing certain topics of conversation to each age group or like gender of baby or child but you've pretty much explained it about how you introduce like consent and sex and relationships to each other yeah i think

consent is definitely the starting point um as well as understanding our bodies, giving the medical, medically accurate terminology, vulva, penis, genitals. These aren't, they're not bad words. They're just body part words, like our knees and our elbows and our fingers, like whatever. That's just all body parts. So that's really important for keeping people safe mainly it's it's um it's important that we know accurate names for our body parts so that we can tell someone if if something's wrong um i'd say when young people start asking questions we should try and answer them in a way that's honest as much as we can without going into so much detail that it's going

to go over their heads um and i'd say consent is something that you can uh practice in in the home non-sexual examples you know um uh when you're um uh explaining body parts when you're uh sharing something sharing food with someone you're offering them like your i don't know slice of pizza and they say yes like that's an example of someone wanting to do something giving you permission to do something so there's lots of ways we can explain it that that is isn't to do with sex at all and then when someone does get to the age when they are interested in uh having sex um or or asking questions then they've kind of got the framework then it's not a really confusing subject and it's not a really big gray

area either because they've already practiced it in a way so why is it so important that we talk to young people and teach young people about consent so there's so much research um about why it's important to teach about consent um super drug did some research with 18 to 21 21 year olds about this um as well so they revealed that percent of 18 to 21 year olds say that sexual education didn't improve their confidence around sex sexual consent and relationships so it's definitely inadequate and three quarters believe improved education around consent in schools would help elicit positive change and so that kind of comes from young people directly that that the education that they're getting isn people directly that um that the education that they're

getting isn't really enough um and that the education that they could receive would actually make a big change and an impact so if young people were so desperate for sex education to become more well-rounded and more open and honest why is it that we're not getting that yeah so we're quite behind in this country generally um we only established mandatory relationships and sex education in schools in 2020 um and the rollout of that uh has come you know um over the pandemic but also a kind of lack of training or proper funding for teachers to learn a lot of this. If you think about the teachers that we have as well, a lot of them went to school at the time that we went to school and we weren't really receiving adequate sex education. So if you've only ever experienced

certain type of sex education and then you're expected to teach it, like you're not really going to be able to have the tools that are available to you. There's definitely some teachers out there doing fantastic work, but the overarching theme is that they're really really need some support some training some extra funding to um to access this um and and really do benefit to the young people um so i'd say that yeah that's part of it i mean i personally wouldn't feel comfortable giving somebody that kind of education because that's not just something that they're going to learn to pass an exam. That's something that's going to impact their entire lives.

But so I think that's a lot of pressure to put on one person. But why is it that there is such a big backlash when it comes to sex and relationship education? I think that we've seen an increase definitely since the mandatory relationships and sex education guidance came in and a little bit previous as well. And there's definitely been a kind of politicization of relationships and sex education, quite a lot of myths as parents and teachers and adults in general that young people aren't being taught age appropriate or stage appropriate stuff and we've seen a huge backlash against LGBT inclusive relationships and sex education which we at Brook are particularly worried about and how that will impact relationships and sex education moving forward. Thank you so much for like having that open and honest discussion with me. I know that there are a lot of young people, do you know what,

not even just in the UK, but anywhere in the world that listen to this podcast that don't feel like they're being heard when it comes to sex education. And I know plucking you out of a classroom somewhere and putting you in front of the cameras out of your comfort zone, but I really appreciate everything that you've spoken to about today and everything you do so thank you thanks for having me no worries for more information education and support on how to improve your understanding of consent for more inclusive lgbt plus information about sex and relationships and having sex for the first time and how to ask for consent you can visit superdrug.com forward slash you before yes. Hi, I'm Richard Karn, and you may have seen me on TV talking about the world's number one expandable garden hose.

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