Planned Parenthood to bolster sex ed
EDUCATION NEWS / Group says provincial materials lacking crucial queer content
Elah Feder / Toronto / Saturday, August 25, 2012http://www.xtra.ca/public/Toronto/Planned_Parenthood_to_bolster_sex_ed-12457.aspx
Anna Penner and David Udayasekaran are developing a sex ed resource for queer youth.(PHOTO: Elah Feder)Whether it's the gay teen assured that condoms are the best way to prevent pregnancy or the trans girl who isn't given the tools to cope with puberty, many queer and transgender youth find sexual health education to be an exercise in frustration, the place in the school curriculum where their experiences are perhaps most blatantly excluded.
Over the coming school year, however, Anna Penner and David Udayasekaran of Planned Parenthood Toronto will work to make sex ed just a little bit queerer, by developing a resource with and for LGBTQ youth.
"What we hope to achieve is a resource that queer and trans youth can look at and think 'This is relevant to me,'" Penner explains.
One student reported being asked on a quiz whether they'd be attracted to a) men or b) women when they grew up (and yes, there was a right answer).
They've also heard from several people who were advised by doctors that they didn't need paps unless they had sex with men (Planned Parenthood Toronto, in fact, is involved in a campaign encouraging queer women to get paps). Most complaints, however, don't seem to be about bad information, but an absence of information.
The two say there are, of course, serious consequences to the systemic exclusion of queer youth, and these extend beyond the oft-discussed issues of depression and teen suicide.
