Held 13–14 July 2007 at The Centre, Randwick, Sydney
* PHOTOS * REPORT * PRESENTATIONS About Let's Talk About Sex
Let’s Talk About Sex was held on 13-14 July 2007. It provided an opportunity for 100 young women from across Australia to discuss and explore sexual and reproductive health issues.
ARHA has drawn the findings of the YWG into a published set of recommendations, and invited four YWG attendees to present these recommendations to the Parliamentary Group on Population and Development at Parliament House in Canberra in August. The presenters were Rose McConnell (ARHA), Keya Saha-Chaudhury (Marie Stopes International Australia), Aodhmair Lenagh-Maguire (ANU student) and Maria Kolety (ANU Women's Officer).
Overall aims were to achieve better sexual and reproductive health outcomes for young Australians, to generate new knowledge about rights-based approaches to sexual and reproductive health, and to foster a better understanding of current attitudes in young Australians.
Why talk about sex?
Talking about sex is hard even though it is an exciting topic and perhaps a new part of a young woman’s life. Sex is often associated with danger, guilt, and anxiety. Talking about sex is hard because it veers between pleasure and danger, glory and shame, internal desires and external pressures. Let’s Talk About Sex provided an open forum and comfortable space for young women to explore these issues.
Young people need to talk about it because it is not talked about enough. They need to talk about it because they don’t know enough about it. They need to talk about it so that policy-makers understand where they come from and what they need.
Why now?
The way people think and talk about sex, and hence the way they practise it, is influenced by contemporary culture, attitudes, and technology. Young people are vulnerable in the way they think about sex as they are under peer pressure, parental pressure and the conflicting messages around them.
The world in 2007 is different to the world in 1967 or 1987. The height of the women’s liberation movement and the prominence of the safe-sex message of the 1980s have faded. The new generation of young women in Australia were born into a world where equality and choice had supposedly been won. Now we are in a time where changing sexual attitudes, fertility patterns, drugs and the spread of sexually transmitted diseases are affecting the sexual health of young women. Alarmingly, there is a backlash against women’s achievements in freedoms and rights. The rise of a conservative and anti-choice agenda in Australian politics is impinging on the choice and control over women’s own bodies, battles they thought they had won. Although recent developments in better sexual reproductive health medicine provide more options for young women to control their own fertility, such as the RU486 abortion pill, access to these has not always been straightforward.
What will come out of this?
ARHA will draw the findings of the YWG into a published report, and invite nominated YWG attendees to present this report to the Parliamentary Group on Population and Development (see http://www.pgpd.asn.au/index.htm) at Parliament House in Canberra in late 2007.
Links and Reading return to top
Headlines
Is sex even fun?: Messaging for Young Women of Colour RH Reality Check - 31 May 2007
Making Youth Participation Real RH Reality Check - 24 May 2007
Teenage pregnancy: Let's talk about sex Young People Now - 24 May 2007
Kids exposed to sex too soon Brisbane Times - 15 April 2007
Time to end the sex sell The Courier Mail - 4 April 2007
"Let's Talk About Sex" Editorial in Student Newspaper at Boston University
Teenagers beware: Domesticated sex threatens your independence Sydney Morning Herald - 16 March 2007
Card may deny teens the pill The Daily Telegraph - 24 January 2007
Gang rapes & drink spiking – that’s Summernats Bendigo Advertiser - 16 January 2007 What happened to safe sex The Age - 9 January 2007 Sex: teens want more than mechanics Sydney Morning Herald - 10 December 2006
Abortions rise among older women The Age - 17 November 2006 Morning after pill still a mystery – study The Courier Mail - 16 November 2006
National Fertility rate jumps to 10-year high The Age - 18 October 2006
Unsafe sex drives HIV infection rate to 10-year high Sydney Morning Herald - 12 October 2006
Text service for sexual health advice The Australian - 12 October 2006
Virus jab for girls gets Lancet backing West Australian 7 October 2006
Reports and readings
Secondary school students & sex – summary, La Trobe University 2002
Sex Lives of Teenagers by Joan Sauer
Girls Talk by Dr Maria Pallotta-Chiarolli
