Aussies would have been hard-pressed to miss the controversy swirling around this year’s schoolies after several OnlyFans models announced they would be attending and pleasuring “barely legal 18-year-olds” for content.
Regardless of where you stand on Bonnie Blue, Annie Knight and Ray Manuel’s antics, one sex and relationship expert told Yahoo News there is a glaringly obvious problem highlighted among the noise that should unite everyone in the debate.
Sex education in Australia needs to be better.
“One of the things that they [the OnlyFans models] are suggesting, and they’re essentially misleading people with, is that they are marketing it [their X-rated content] as sex education but it’s really for their personal, professional and financial gain,” sex and relationship expert Georgia Grace told Yahoo News.
Bonnie recently defended her intention to attend schoolies events saying, “I’m educating the younger generation on safe sex, consent and allowing them to understand their bodies and those they’re sleeping with”. And while speaking to Sea FM radio this week, said she expected to earn “more than what people earn in a lifetime” over the two-week schoolies break.
While Grace believes sex work is a legitimate occupation, she called out the creators for painting the “nuanced” issue as one thing when it was really another.
Better sex education needed to stop ‘sexual conquerors’ trope
Grace told Yahoo News she doesn’t stand firm on either side of the schoolies controversy and instead flagged the importance of “context” in situations like these.
She believes the national debate has given many Aussies an excuse to “discriminate against female sex workers” and called it “really distressing”. However, she also said it had revealed emotionally “risky” sexual experiences for young men are often trivialised.
“We really need to understand these messages that young boys are given around being the ‘lucky one’… socialisation and sexualisation of these power dynamics is happening,” Grace said, suggesting many young men will likely feel peer pressure to be “sexual conquerors” in the schoolies environment.
The mentality that young men must be or are sexually insatiable can place heightened expectations on them, cause genuine negative experiences to be dismissed, and leave their female peers dealing with the fallout of the stereotype being chased.
Australian sex education needs ‘shame-free’ overhaul
Sex education is integrated into the public school curriculum in some form from the start of school through to Year 10, while the educational approach may differ in private schools. However, sex education in the country is often criticised as it is highly varied between states and communities, and it’s accused of not being comprehensive enough.
In a national survey conducted in 2021, the majority of Australian secondary students admitted the content covered in their sex education was not relevant — over 76 per cent of female students responding, and over 71 per cent of male students.
“We need sex education to change, and consent education from a younger age… we need to teach sex-positive, shame-free, inclusive, consent-focused, sex ed,” Grace said.
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