Meredith
The state of sex and relationships education in the Isle of Skye has been, in 17-year-old Meredith’s view, a bit patchy.
Her class went a whole two years without any sex education during the pandemic, which happened to clash with a pivotal moment of their growing up. But even before COVID-19 closed their classroom, the curriculum had some gaping holes in it. There was nothing about female pleasure, according to Meredith, LGBTQ+ relationships were mentioned but largely brushed past, and trans people were all but forgotten.
The Scottish Government has made moves over the past few years to increase inclusivity in schools, namely by making LGBTQ+ content mandatory across the Scottish curriculum. But Meredith says that those efforts tend to clash with more conservative attitudes in Scotland’s Highlands and islands (shown most plainly back in 2020, when the neighbouring Western Isles Council voted to commend Roman Catholic teaching materials above the Scottish Government’s guidance on sex education).
Nonetheless, Meredith is determined to increase sex positivity and LGBTQ+ inclusivity in her community. She’s currently fundraising to bring the School of Sexuality Education to her school, who will lead workshops that put progressive attitudes to sex at their centre. She spoke to us about her motivations and hopes for the campaign.
In your view, what was the state of sex education in the Isle of Skye before you started your campaign?
Meredith: Over the last few years of learning about Sex Ed in high school, I have seen there's not been very much teaching about LGBTQ+ sex. It's not quite a taboo thing, but people are more scared to talk about it because it's very traditional up here. If you are part of the LGBTQ+ community, you can sometimes be treated like an outsider.
I was pretty shocked by my curriculum and how it dealt with LGBTQ+ education, but then also Sex Ed in general, about female anatomy and female pleasure in sex. It's very male-orientated. Also, we're always taught about it in very black and white forms – it's a white male and a white woman and there's a reason why they have sex. I know that's a problem everywhere, but up here it's so ingrained in our culture that it's very taboo to even ask questions about sex.
The only time that I was ever taught about LGBTQ+ was in second and third year, when I had a really dynamic support teacher who went off-book a bit and created a space in our classroom where we could start asking hard questions. But we never learned about transgender sex – that was never ever touched upon in our curriculum – and gay and lesbian sex was never introduced to us. We would do exercises where we'd put a condom on a plastic penis, but you wouldn't look at a vulva. You wouldn't look at the clitoris. I don't think I was ever taught anything about the clitoris through my whole sexual education, or how the vagina works, or how it responds to sex and how vulnerable it is in sex.
I'm really lucky with the teacher that I'm working with to organise this project and get it off the ground, because she's much more open to creating this education. She feels it's important that it happens at a young age, because at the moment in the curriculum young ages are not being taught any preventative education. At my age they're taught maybe a bit more, but it's too late. People have already stumbled through it from experience.
How has this limited sex education affected your peers as they navigate their relationships?
Meredith: There's lots of everyday examples, like the language that the boys use. I'm lucky that my year’s grown up a bit more, but I know in the year below and even the year below that the boys in my school are really, really sexist. They're treating girls badly within their sexual experiences. Girls having any kind of pleasure in sex does not exist. Foreplay or any of that stuff doesn't get talked about in school. Using lube, something so simple and necessary in sex, it's considered almost weird, because it's just about the man having pleasure.
Thankfully in my social group with the girls in my year, we have a very open conversation about sex. All of the girls I know have had bad experiences before they know their worth and that they should be gaining something out of the sex that they're having. Now we can have an open conversation about it and we'll all check up on each other. A lot of my friends have really lovely boyfriends, where they can sit down with them and have an open conversation about what works and what feels right.
But actually that is such an alien concept to so many people up here, because people are kind of fearful of having that conversation. You can see the direct effect it has in the way that boys talk about girls, and then also the way girls talk about other girls.
What was the moment that you decided you’d had enough and were going to take sex education at your school into my own hands?
Meredith: It was about a year ago. I was speaking to a friend who comes from a very conventional household. She was talking a lot about body image and how that has such a severe impact on insecurity. She was saying it's ridiculous how we don't learn about these things in school or how we don't learn about how two males can have sex or any of this. It was so interesting to finally have that conversation with her. I've never had that conversation with her before. It really got me thinking about having a day where people from all representations could come and create these spaces and workshops, where people were learning things and creating a better attitude towards LGBTQ+ people, towards body image and sex, towards sexual violence, and towards pleasure.
What really tipped it was a couple days after when I suggested the idea to her, and she suddenly became very closed off to the idea. She was just like, “I think it's fine. It was an interesting conversation, but what can you do? It's just the way the world works.” It's that classic thing of “boys will be boys”. Her reaction suddenly sparked something in me. It made me realise how important it was for me to do this, because there are so many people that are afraid to speak up about it.
What will the workshops look like?
Meredith: The School of Sexuality Education are going to come in and do three intensive 100 minute workshops on three different subjects. I'm getting three facilitators so the year can be broken up into three groups, because I think it's important to create more of an open environment for students to ask questions.
The SSE are inclusive in the range of subjects that they teach. It's about how you're having sex, safe sex and contraceptives, and they pride themselves on creating an inclusive environment for LGBTQ+, which is exactly where we need to be headed. I think having a charity come up that has a lot of experience dealing with people from all walks of life, or having kids speak out about past things that have happened to them because of their identity or because of their sexuality, will create a much safer environment than a classroom would.
I'm going to ask them to do a talk with the parents as well, so they can create an open space where, if there are more adults in the room talking about sex and LGBTQ+ issues, then it will create parents who know how to speak about it to their children. When their child comes to them and says, “I think I like girls” or “I don't want to be a girl or a boy, I want to identify as non-binary,” I think parents don't really know how to deal with it. So it's helpful having someone who can guide them a little bit.
Where would you like this campaign to go in the future?
Meredith: I'm hoping with my school that this education can be added every single year. In terms of the future future, I hope that by one school doing this, then those around it will be more open to it and then slowly the traditional side of things will be separated from sex education. We can create a different narrative for people in the Highlands and Islands that will say yeah, we're actually very sex positive, and we're creating a younger generation who treat each other when they're having sex with respect. That is my real hope.
Photography by Laura Prieto
Interview by Becca Inglis
