Sex "Education" Ain't What it Used to Be

Or, how to confuse kids and feel like a social justice warrior.

A little bit of venting again about this “lived experience” in this upside-down world. Once upon a time educators knew the difference between male and female. No longer. Now children apparently “identify as” male or female. Take your pick. Modern sex education teaches that boys and girls (if we can call them that) will definitely go through puberty, however that puberty may be just a tiny bit different based on the “sex you were assigned at birth”. The words “male” and “female” on their own don’t even appear in the curriculum. But I’ll let the letter to my child’s school do the talking, along with some inspiring pictures of bonafide materials being pushed out by the ARC Foundation and BC Ministry of Education as SOGI 123. Because apparently when taxpayers pay $350,000 a year to an activist organization, they literally get a garbage curriculum based on ideology instead of science.

To set this up properly, you’ll have to see a part of the curriculum I refer to in the letter. As you can see, there are some real gems here. Among them, not all male bodies have penises and not all female bodies have vaginas. It also instructs teachers to refer to male/female bodies instead as bodies with a penis and bodies with a vulva. I challenge you to wrap your head around that. The literal implication is of course that bodies can actually change sex. Anyone who says or thinks this should not be teaching sex education. I would prefer for them to not be teaching at all.

And more…suddenly they seem to care about the science. The curriculum instructs teachers to introduce the scientific word for slang kids may use for body parts. And by the way, teachers need to be careful about [perpetuating] misinformation and misunderstanding. Sure, telling kids they can be girls who can be boys and boys who can be girls or boy/girl mixes or be non-girl/boys is completely straightforward and logical. I just… words fail me.

My Email Reply

I’m not claiming this is ultra witty, but this is what I replied to the school principal after receiving the grade 5 curriculum.

Thanks for sending this over. I think what concerns me most is the sexual health component. Obviously, it's good to learn about puberty and but I'm concerned about this inclusive language. Would the teachers doing these lessons actually use language like "bodies with a penis" or "bodies with a vulva"? Surely in grade 5 we can call them boys and girls/males and females? Female and male is the scientific and correct term. Sex is based on our reproductive ability (ovaries/testes) and not really on secondary sex characteristics like penises and vulvas. The fact that intersex is discussed is pretty strange. It's neither here nor there. It's a very rare condition and doesn't necessarily mean that someone isn't male or female. I would imagine that this type of condition could be something that they can learn about later in life and not while learning the basics about the body and puberty. I'm honestly finding this really confusing. I can't imagine what kids must think of the language and approach.

I know it's not you or the teachers developing these lessons so I guess I'm wondering how strictly teachers tend to stick with it or if they can use more reasonable and correct language. I'm not keen on my daughter growing up to think she's a "body with a vulva". What if she were asked to write this down on a form somewhere and she literally didn't know she was female?

What do you think of all this? Just between you and me... does this seem weird to you? I feel like, even if someone eventually grows up to become transgender (surely this is not an issue in grade 5) that even then they will still have a female or male body. We can't escape our bodies, genetics, or the very innate characteristics that define us for life. No amount of identity change, hormones, or even surgeries will ever change your sex, so to not learn the correct terms for our sex seems silly. I'm all for being accepting and caring about everyone no matter how they want to live, but doing so while depriving children of accurate and true language and ideas is not the way to go about it. Kids need to understand that they do have a sex, how this is defined, and that this is really important and will define them in terms of their physicality, their emotions, their social and romantic life, and their health. This is a public school at the end of the day and community relies on it for children to learn the basic fundamentals about life. Obfuscating fact for the purpose of somehow avoiding offending certain people (although I can't imagine how biology could be offensive) is less than helpful for setting children up to understand the world accurately.

Anyway, if you do have any other information about this or would be open to a conversation at the beginning of the year, I would be happy to have one. If you're interested in looking into some of this confusion around sex and science, I encourage you to check out Colin Wright (Bing Videos). Super interesting and grounding. Basically, what we oldies were taught in school, that there is female/male and this has not changed.

And finally, additional screenshots from a video included in the grade 5 curriculum, with graphic depictions of changing bodies, which girls and boys are meant to view together (lest their gender dysphoria flare up). Here is yet another educator who also seems to believe that sex is randomly assigned at birth and that children are ripe for gender moulding.

What really gets me about these materials is their lack of accuracy. No, that’s not strong enough actually. They’re outright lies. It is an absolute lie that babies are assigned a sex at birth. It is absolutely not true. This is not a sorting hat situation, not an eeny meeny miny mo moment. The doctor records your sex. If genitalia are ambiguous, there will be further testing. It’s as simple as that. So don’t lie to my child please.

I can only imagine being a young girl or boy, on the verge of some uncomfortable bodily changes, and having to learn about this in the presence of the opposite sex, to whom you are starting to feel more interested in. There are very few children in that situation who would feel comfortable enough to ask difficult questions. They just won’t. By mixing everyone together they’re impacting the quality of learning that’s going on. As if it could get worse!

I would be interested to hear what others think of the new sex education. I remember back to these grades at school and the awkward lessons we received. They might not have been fun but at least they were accurate. At least the teacher knew male from female and used the terms boy and girl. The Ministry of Education is providing our children with subpar, confusing, and deceitful curriculum. This is not serving absolutely anyone, except for the ARC Foundation which continues to line its pockets with taxpayer dollars.