Alberta Premier Danielle Smith plans to bring in legislation that would require parents’ permission for their child to receive lessons about human sexuality.Spencer Colby/The Canadian Press
It’s the kind of thing that would make for a movie plot, if it weren’t so hard to stomach – utterly horrifying and almost unbelievable. In France, at the continuing rape trial of Dominique Pelicot and dozens of other men, the court has heard that over the years, Mr. Pelicot drugged his wife and had dozens of men over to their home to have sex with her while she was unconscious. He found them on the internet.
Gisèle Pelicot, the victim, has waived her right to privacy; “shame must change sides,” she has said through her lawyer. It should be on the rapists, not the victims. Amen.
Mr. Pelicot, for his part, has admitted his guilt. “I am a rapist,” he told the court.
“I am a rapist just like all the others in this room.”
Not all the others on trial agree. Fifty additional men, ranging from their 20s to their 70s, were charged; more than a dozen have pleaded not guilty. Their arguments include that they did not know what they were doing was rape. They thought the unconscious Ms. Pelicot was in on it. Some have explained that Mr. Pelicot told them she was pretending to be asleep.
One of the men argued in court that he did not know what “consent” meant. Another said he thought Mr. Pelicot, as her husband, could consent on her behalf. One man told the court he has learned that “women don’t belong to men,” the New York Times reported. “I hope they’ll teach that in schools. It took me 54 years.”
Now to Canada, where consent is one of the key concepts taught in sexual health lessons at school, beginning from a very young age. You may have heard kids express it as “my body, my choice.” This is important information; kids learn that nobody can touch them without their permission, for instance.
But children in Alberta could soon have iffy access to this critical message.
Premier Danielle Smith plans to bring in legislation that would require parents’ active permission for their child to receive lessons about human sexuality (along with gender identity and sexual orientation). The current policy allows parents to opt out. Under the proposed changes, parents would have to opt in to “each instance.”
Kids whose families do not opt in will miss out on lessons that include how to navigate the all-important issue of consent – which, as the world has seen, has so baffled a bunch of grown men in France.
As The Globe and Mail’s education reporter Caroline Alphonso wrote this week, sexual-health lessons have been shown in studies to reduce sexually transmitted infections, teen pregnancies and dating violence.
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If the idea is that the parents who don’t want their kids learning this stuff at school from experienced educators are going to handle the teaching themselves at home, well, please forgive the skepticism.
Even for parents who do feel confident or at least comfortable venturing into this territory, the older their child gets, the squirmier they might be about the topic – which they might absolutely not want to talk about with their mom or dad.
What these kids will be missing out on isn’t just information about sex. Teaching consent promotes self-worth because it teaches children that their feelings and needs are valid, Vancouver-based sexual health educator Saleema Noon explained to me this week. It helps create a respectful culture in school, reducing bullying and peer pressure. Students learn how to express themselves and create – and respect – boundaries.
“This is not about penises and vaginas, and it’s not about they/them pronouns,” Ms. Noon said. “It’s about safety and teaching our kids to think critically in the world that they live in, which is much different than the world we grew up in.”
A recently released University of British Columbia report on the SOGI 123 program (which aims to make schools more inclusive for students of all sexual orientations and gender identities) shows that the program didn’t just reduce bullying and sexual orientation discrimination for LGBTQ+ students – it did so for heterosexual students, as well. (In British Columbia, where it is election day on Saturday, the BC Conservatives have vowed to scrap SOGI 123.)
If enough Alberta parents don’t opt their children in to these teachings (or don’t remember to, because life is busy, as Ms. Alphonso notes), school communities could lose the critical mass of positive transformation Ms. Noon describes.
And some students – maybe those who need it most – would be shut out of valuable lessons that could help them as they grow up in a complicated, scary world. Denying them this indispensable information would be dangerous – and, as the Pelicot case demonstrates, a real shame.