FOR THE LAST few months some fellow educators and I have been the targets of an ongoing online hate campaign using disinformation, lies and intimidation to discredit the new SPHE curriculum being rolled out in Irish secondary schools. Most people wouldn’t have a clue any of this is going on but when you become the central focus of someone else’s hate, it can be an overwhelming experience.
So why are these groups so hell-bent on discrediting a programme of education that children, teachers and parents have been calling for, for decades?
It comes down to two things really: one, their disgust at the general acceptance, protection and celebration of LGBTQIA+ people in Irish society, and two, the acknowledgement that exploring one’s physical sexuality can be a natural part of a young person’s sexual development. Ultimately, however, the problem for these small-but-loud groups of people is that the science and fact-based modern education of sex and sexuality does not fit with their archaic, repressive and discriminatory religious ideology.
So let’s clear up a few things, just so everyone (including misguided county councillors, TDs and senators who care to comment) is properly informed on the issues:
‘Gender’ refers to the socially constructed characteristics and behaviours we
traditionally expect of men and women depending on the culture we grow up in. Our ‘gender identity’, on the other hand, is our internal sense of who we are. It is not an ideology; it’s science. You can Google it. The research in this area is expanding all the time and although still not exhaustively comprehensive, it does conclude that “existing empirical evidence makes it clear that there is a significant biological contribution to the development of an individual’s sexual identity and sexual orientation.”
Transgender is what the T in LGBT has stood for since the acronym was first coined back in 1988, almost 40 years ago. It’s not just some trending woke concept that someone made up, it’s not some modern-day left-wing ‘ideology’, it’s been the neuro-biological experience of a consistent percentage of human beings for as long as we’ve existed on the planet.
Even the commonly held understanding that chromosomes always dictate a person’s sex has long been expanded to acknowledge that this is not always the case. (Again, you can just Google this). Separately to this, biology now also explains that sometimes people are born with the chromosomes and genitals of one sex but know that they are transgender, meaning they have an internal (neurobiologically-influenced) gender identity that aligns with the opposite sex — or even, occasionally, with neither gender or with no gender at all. None of us get to choose our sex or our gender identity or whether one aligns with the other. It is not ideological; it’s biological.
So when it comes to the classroom and the acknowledgement in SPHE that sometimes a person’s gender identity may not align with the sex they were assigned at birth, this is absolutely scientifically true for a very small proportion of the young people of Ireland. For the students who recognise this as their experience, it can be invaluable and potentially mental-health-saving information. For the rest of the students for whom it has no immediate relevance, it’s just one part of one of the forty or so different lessons they’ll sit through in school that week. It’s not going to confuse them, or harm them in any way; it may however create a culture whereby the experience of trans people is acknowledged, tolerated, included, supported and even, dare they dream, celebrated for the rich diversity they contribute to our world.
So what’s the problem?
Some ideologies (sets of beliefs) that have been inherited from less inclusive, less informed and less educated periods of recent history have failed to catch up to the biological truth outlined by science when it comes to sex and gender. Surely, the obvious irony of fundamentalist religious groups calling for only content grounded in science to be taught in our schools cannot be lost on them.
So some religious ideologies do not marry with the science of gender identity and that’s OK. As long as they don’t deny the human rights of anyone else, we still protect and respect the religious freedoms of Irish citizens in this country and there are many aspects of modern Irish education that are currently taught alongside the often conflicting doctrines of our predominantly religious-run schools. But let’s just be clear about one thing when it comes to the relationship between religion and gender identity. One is an ideology, the other is biology.
For decades the research has consistently told us that by the age of 14, around 40% of girls and 60% of boys have tried and enjoyed masturbating and by the age of 17, 60% of girls and 80% of boys have tried and enjoyed it. Masturbating can be a natural part of a human’s sexual development and for the majority of humans, it is. What has not come so naturally to us in recent decades is talking about it.
Many parents report finding it difficult to discuss this aspect of sexual development with their children. In Ireland, many of us are still emerging from centuries of religiously inflicted shame and guilt around our natural sexual development but thankfully, as a society, we are starting to see the importance of educating young people on these aspects of life in a healthy, non-judgemental and age-appropriate way.
And just in case anyone remains misinformed by recent convincing but entirely false claims on social media when it comes to the classroom, no one is going to be teaching anyone how to masturbate; that would be inappropriate and it would not be ok.
But it would also not be ok if we continued to completely ignore a perfectly natural part of sexual development that the majority of young people are engaging in by the age of 14. It would not be OK, if we continued to refuse to address and debunk the persisting myths around it and it would not be OK if we continued to facilitate the inherited shame of generations past to continue on, negatively impacting yet another cohort of otherwise happily and naturally masturbating teenagers.
And regarding the religious ideologies that still want to teach the repression of natural sexual development, unfortunately, they had their chance to do right by the Irish population for the decades upon decades that they controlled our social, personal, moral and sexual education. We know the result; we are all very well-versed in the ongoing trauma that was facilitated by the non-inclusive, fear, shame and guilt-based education they inflicted on us, not to mention the thousands of sexual crimes against children that they oversaw in the process. We lived through it, many of us did not survive it; I’d like to think we’ve learnt our lessons from it and that we will not be subjecting any more Irish children to anything like it ever again. We tried the religious-ruled approach to sex education and we’re never going back.
But let’s be absolutely clear about one more thing. These online hate groups are right about something: children are still being abused, now more than ever. Children are being groomed. Children are being fed wholly inappropriate content every single day, in the toilets at school, on the bus home from school, in their bedrooms at night, and in their beds every night. The online world is flooding our children’s lives with the most egregiously inappropriate content you can possibly imagine.
Their social development is being curated and controlled by a comparison-based model of online interaction, their personal development is knowingly being monetised, their mental and physical health is knowingly being damaged, and their sexual development is knowingly being warped beyond belief.
Last week, the first comprehensive report of its kind outlining the impact of pornography on the sexual development of the population, particularly our children and young people was launched by the Sexual Exploitation Policy and Research Institute here in Ireland.
Among its remarkably stark findings and varied recommendations, it stated that “building on the work already started with the revised SPHE curricula,” more time, resourcing and teacher training was needed to deliver this learning from earlier in children’s schooling in an age-appropriate way. Teaching students about the unhealthy impacts porn use can have on a human’s otherwise natural positive sexual development is long overdue. Enabling them to realise why pornographic content should be avoided entirely if they want the best chance of developing a strong healthy sense of their own sexuality, one that isn’t influenced by the violence and misogyny that is prevalent in 90% of the most popular mainstream porn currently being accessed by teenagers on a regular basis, is now unfortunately essential learning for all students. This is what is known as porn literacy; it does not involve exposing any children to pornographic content. That is illegal and yet it is currently happening to 10% of children by the time they are nine year olds and to the majority of primary school children before they even get to these classes being introduced in secondary school; child ownership of smart devices and the total lack of any online regulation are the real enemy in this regard.
In a world drowning in false information, Sinead O’Connor’s famous confrontational call to “fight the real enemy” is more relevant now than ever. We didn’t listen to her then; we know better now.
The truth is that these little-but-loud hate groups that put so much effort and energy into their efforts to shame and discredit our more inclusive educational programmes and those of us who champion them are doing so in the full belief that they are fighting the good fight; they are motivated by the exact same goal as we all are: the protection of our children. The difference is that instead of lies, fear-mongering, hate, repression and intimidation, the real protection of children has and will always come from information and skills provision, educational freedom, universal inclusivity and above all else listening to the needs of our young people every day around our dinner tables and in our classrooms and responding to them in an open, inclusive, curious and non-judgemental way.
I cannot help but lament the wasted intelligence, energy and commitment of these hate groups in not targeting their efforts at the insidious forces actually responsible for immeasurable harms being perpetrated against children every day in our world. Inclusive education is not the enemy here; it’s an ally. “Fight the real enemy”; call on the government to legislate to protect our children online from those who seek to do them harm and in the meantime equip your children with the knowledge and skills they need to protect themselves throughout a childhood that we have handed the unregulated adult online world total and unfettered access to.
SPHE, their Social, Personal and Health Education and RSE, their Relationships and Sexual Education have never played a more vital role in our system of education, and the teachers who teach it have never been more invaluable. They are leading the charge in arming your children as best they can against the risks of an online world within which they must continue, for now, to fend for themselves. Tell the misinformation-spreading online hate groups to focus their energy where it’s actually needed, and to protect, support, and celebrate the immeasurably valuable work your children’s SPHE teachers are doing; now more than ever, we can’t afford not to.
Eoghan Cleary is an assistant principal, English teacher and coordinator of SPHE and curricular wellbeing at Temple Carraig Secondary School in Greystones. He serves on the Board of Directors of the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre, was recently appointed to the Online Health Task Force and is the co-author of multiple textbooks for the new Junior Cycle SPHE course. He is also a founding member of the Gen Free Campaign calling for legislative protections for children online.
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