Better RSHE is what young people want, and what we need

Jack Liepa, 22, is National Director of Sexpression. In this blog, he explains why the sex education he received at school wasn’t good enough, and how the impact of that had long-lasting repercussions on his physical and mental health. 

My relationships, sex and health education (RSHE) was, quite simply, not good. I grew up in a small, socially conservative midlands town, where the hate crime rate was twice the national average and my school’s last Ofsted verdict delivered an inadequate rating that cited the pervasive discriminatory language amongst pupils as a key reason for such a rating.  

As a young gay man just coming to terms with his sexuality, the RSHE curriculum had the potential to be a lifeline at a very formative time.  

Instead, I have two distinct memories of LGBTQ+ people being discussed in school. The first was in relation to who was most likely to contract HIV and the second time pertained to who was most likely to be engaging in the risky new practice of ‘chemsex’ – in both instances, the answer being gay men.  

What strikes me now more than anything is the lack of context with which these two facts were delivered. There was no wider discussion of why HIV was prevalent amongst gay men or how to prevent, test for, or manage a diagnosis of HIV; nor any attempt to address the stigma surrounding the illness or even an acknowledgement of the catastrophic effects it had historically wrought on the gay community. Likewise, there was no interrogation of chemsex’s popularity in the gay community, nor even any signposting for where support could be found. As a result, I left school aware that gay men were at higher risk of sexual infection and were seemingly innately sex-mad, but I was profoundly ignorant of basic information regarding sex and relationships.  

Or rather, I was profoundly ignorant of gay sex and relationships. The curriculum had been sufficient enough that I knew how to prevent pregnancy, that ‘sex’ involved the insertion of a penis in a vagina and that wearing a condom during (vaginal) sex would prevent pregnancy and STI transmission.  Unfortunately, I was unclear as to how gay men actually had sex (though clearly we were having a lot of it) and by extension was unaware that anal or oral sex could pass on STIs, aside from HIV by the former.  

With no openly gay people at my school and no one I knew in my personal life, my lack of education forced me to look beyond school to learn about sex and relationships. My first understandings came from joining the app Grindr at 16.  

I did not want to be on an app like Grindr and I wish I hadn’t, but like many LGBTQ+ young people, I wanted to learn more and connect with the community I knew I was a part of but knew nothing about.  

Grindr, however, was no panacea and instead my knowledge of gay sex and relationships now came through a distorted, hypersexualised lens which categorised everyone by their preference for anal sex, denigrated femininity in men and promoted a hypermasculine and unrealistic body image. Consequently, I learned a number of inaccurate and deeply problematic ideas about gay sex and relationships that negatively affected my emotional wellbeing.  They left me feeling even more isolated and unhappy with my appearance and personality.  

Overall, I had learned nothing helpful in school and my attempts to educate myself online had only imparted misinformation and poor self-esteem. The combined outcome has had ramifications well into my life as a young adult. My lack of knowledge engendered sex anxiety, which I still struggle with to this day. It also led me to engage in risky sexual behaviour because neither myself nor my partner knew we had to test for anything but HIV.  

If my RSHE in school had been inclusive of LGBTQ+ people, both my physical and mental health would have fared much better.  

I would have grown up with less shame about my sexuality and would not have engaged in risky sexual behaviour. I also would not have felt such a pressure to reach an imagined standard of body type, personality and sexual voracity, which has resulted in me having sex-induced panic attacks. 

This is why the current RSHE review concerns me greatly, particularly the suggestions of Section 28-style age restrictions about LGBTQ+ content. As a young gay man, the absence of LGBTQ+ inclusive content in RSHE had pernicious effects on my mental and physical health, and seeking to restrict this knowledge will no doubt have similar effects at a time when young LGBTQ+ people still suffer disproportionately worse mental and sexual health outcomes. 

I think it’s paramount to remember that, ultimately, RSHE exists to benefit young people and give us the skills to navigate the complex world of relationships and sex in an informed, safe and consensual way.  

To give us those necessary skills, the curriculum must listen to and respond to the needs of young people. Focusing on arbitrary ideas of appropriateness does not keep young people safe; instead it creates an informational vacuum that leaves us: ignorant of ourselves, of potential dangers and vulnerable to harmful disinformation. Not teaching about LGBTQ+ people did not prevent me learning about them; it just meant I learned it from a sex app instead of in a safe environment facilitated by a trained professional. Not teaching about non-reproductive sex didn’t stop me having but it did leave unaware of how to keep myself safe doing it.  

High-quality, comprehensive and inclusive RSHE keeps young people safe, promotes good health and wellbeing, and supports equality. Whilst this article has focused on the negatives of poor RSHE, I want to stress the potential for positive change from this review. We have the opportunity to invest more in teacher training and ensuring the curriculum is rolled out comprehensively across schools so that everyone has access to high-quality RSHE. Better RSHE is what young people want and it’s what we need.