PETALING JAYA: Depriving youngsters and school children of comprehensive sexuality education (CSE) leaves them unprotected from sexual violence and is detrimental to society, an expert said today.
Siti Aishah Hassan Hasri, founder of Spot Community Programme, cited issues such as sexual exploitation and low quality of life among youngsters.
Spot Community Programme is a movement focusing on providing CSE to school children.
Siti Aishah said without CSE, children would be more vulnerable to exploitation and preventable tragedy.
“Some examples of preventable tragedies include unplanned pregnancies, child marriages, and baby dumping,” she said at the second annual Malaysia Women and Girls Forum, organised by the United Nations Population Fund Malaysia.
“Without CSE, we are also robbing these children of a better quality of life.”
She stressed that CSE was important because people made crucial choices about their sexual and reproductive health every day.
However, many did not have adequate information about human development, anatomy and reproductive health, which left them vulnerable to coercion and health consequences, including sexually-transmitted infections (STI) and unplanned pregnancies.
Siti Aishah said that when introduced at a young age, CSE would empower children, especially girls, with crucial information about their body to enable them to make informed choices that suit their individual lives.
Student activist Ain Husniza Saiful Nizam, who was the moderator at the talk, asked Siti Aishah about rape jokes in school.
Siti Aishah replied that rape jokes in schools would normalise sexual violence as something inevitable, permissible, funny, and normalising crossing boundaries.
“We need to challenge these norms and traditions because if society permits the rape joke culture, it will encourage sexual violence,” she said. - FMT
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.