Great repression

31st January 2003, 12:00am

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Great repression

https://www.tes.com/magazine/archive/great-repression
Ann Summers’ vibrators have set British high streets buzzing. We can’t get enough of Sex In The City. Repressed? Us?

Yes, judging by what we teach our young. Science texts - for kids approaching the age of consent - are strictly biological. What-goes-where diagrams are as racy as it gets. PSE books treat sex as trouble and suggest different ways of saying no (until marriage). Pleasure? Homosexuality? Teenage sex? Contraception? Relationships? Let’s not go there.

Dutch kids, meanwhile, get naked bodies and contraception, relationships, different types of sex - and how to say yes as well as no. Shocking? Their teenage pregnancy rate is 10 times lower than ours.

As adults merrily fornicate in all sorts of unapproved ways, it is hardly surprising that the young do as we do, not as we say. Double standards rule - and if teenagers get into trouble, it is our fault.

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