Sex Education and Chilled Speech
In addition to the linguistic codes used to discuss anatomy and sexual health, visual metaphors, like the watermelon example I mentioned earlier, are also often used to reference sexual anatomy. Creator @loudandsticky stands in front of a green screen image of a yonic rose. She says, “This is a flower,” and winks, “Flowers are often referred to as vaginas, but the vagina is actually the inside portion of the flower,” she continues to gesture at different parts of the pink rose while explaining the anatomy of the vulva (Britney, 2021). This is a lesson that would benefit from an anatomically correct visual aid of the vulva itself, but due to TikTok’s trend of removing content and then making it more difficult for educators to create future posts, users like @loudandsticky refrain from showing images that would typically appear in an anatomy textbook.
Although pop sex educators have felt the chilling impact of moderating language associated with sex, gender, and sexuality, their frustration is the byproduct of whorephobic tech design. The accessibility of SRE and can lead educators to grow frustrated, tired, and isolated in their efforts to make sex education widely available for young people, but sex educators and other AOPs are less impacted than sex workers (who may also be sex educators, activists, organizers, or protesters). The chilled speech pop sex educators have chosen to engage in out of their desire to not be censored is a side-effect of whorephobia.
Hacking//Hustling found that of their respondents “44.19% of AOPs have avoided content for fear of being kicked off, shadowbanned, or facing legal action, which is significantly less than their sex working peers (68.75% of sex workers said the same)” (Hacking//Hustling, 2021). The hierarchies of privilege when facing whorephobic policies on social media is further exemplified by their findings that “45.45% of AOPs were able to get their accounts back after they were deplatformed, but only 6.25% of sex workers and 7.69% of people who identifies as both were able to get their accounts back. If you haven’t done sex work you are over 5x more likely to get your account back after being deplatformed” (Hacking//Hustling, 2021). Whorephobia makes anyone discussing sex online a target for digital violence, but sex workers will always be more impacted by the forms of overmoderation and surveillance perpetuated in response to anti-sex-work policies as the targets of this suppression.
In addition to SIECUS’s Guidelines for CSE, other sex education policies have highlighted the importance of teaching children accurate language relating to their bodies. This further demonstrates how the chilled speech of pop sex educators is damaging. In 2016 the California Healthy Youth Act (CHYA) was adopted by K-12 public schools throughout the state. In 2019 the California State Board of Education released the content of the pending Health Education Framework to accompany the act. CHYA requires that health education is taught to students in grades seven through twelve but encourages that children in kindergarten through sixth grade are introduced to CSE content that has been adjusted to be age-appropriate for each grade level. The “Growth and Development” section of the Health Education Framework states: “Kindergarten students are very curious about how living things grow and mature (K.1.1.G, Essential Concepts). Most are ready to describe their own physical characteristics including their body parts and functions as well as the five senses (K.1.2.G, K.1.6.G, Essential Concepts). Becoming more aware of their surroundings, students describe ways people are different or the same (K.1.3.G, Essential Concepts).” Without addressing what has become known to many as “private parts,” children may have trouble expressing when a health issue arises pertaining to their genitals, difficulty communicating if they have been inappropriately touched, a lack of understanding of puberty, and poor body image. Sex education is harm reduction. The story that is frequently used as an example is one of a child who calls their vulva her cookie at home, she tells a teacher about how an older family member touched their cookie – a harmless sentence out of context. The teacher does not recognize this conversation as a child informing them of sexual abuse at home so they do not intervene. Had the child known the proper names of their body parts, the teacher or another trusted adult could have taken action to protect the child. This story is used to demonstrate the importance of destigmatizing language for sexualized body parts. Vagina, Anus, Penis, Vulva, and so on are not vulgar, they are not pornographic, or inappropriate they are body parts that we all have some combination of. TikTok’s moderation of sex education conflicts with what sex education professionals and some policymakers have clearly outlined as important concepts in CSE for the health and safety of children.
Refusing the spread of factual information about sex, sexuality, relationships, and the body is in direct opposition to what is considered best for the health and safety of young people, and yet TikTok claims to strive to create a platform that feels “safe.” If TikTok was safe and welcoming for pop sex educators, we would be seeing content that uses medically accurate terms for the body without modifications or euphemisms. Educators would be allowed to show diagrams of sexual anatomy, sex toys, and diverse forms of contraception. We would see more of this content produced by and for people of color, queer and trans people, and people with disabilities. We would allow teen and adult users of the app to create and view content that is relevant to their lives. What is the difference between feeling safe and actually being safe? For TikTok, it seems that upholding a certain standard of morality produces the feeling of safety, but it is not enough to make users of all ages safe from bullying, harassment, exploitation, or other harm done through the platform’s ability to disrupt community building and make its users feel isolated and punished for their actions online.
The vision of SIECUS and other sex education advocates is still at odds with moral conservatism that is reflected in sex education curriculums across the United States. In Texas, for example, reproductive health services are largely inaccessible, and since it is up to the school districts to implement a sex education curriculum, sex ed is unreliable and inconsistent. Sex-education courses in Texas may not include any information about condoms or other contraceptive methods and are required to teach that pre-marital sex is not only shameful, but also financially, physically, and psychologically risky (Vickery, 2017). “A 2017 report by the Texas Freedom Network found that 58.3 percent of school districts took an abstinence-only approach to sex education, 16.6 percent taught abstinence-plus curriculum, and 25 percent taught no sex education at all” (SIECUS Texas State Profile, 2021). Texas is only one state among many where educational inconsistencies can be observed. When Jacqueline Vickery similarly asked, “If teens are not receiving medically effective and scientifically accurate information about sexual health at school, where then do they turn for information?” In her exploration of youth, risk, and opportunity in the digital world, she noted that in 2011, “89 percent of young people cited the Internet as a top source of sexual health information” (Vickery, 2017). As social media has continued to be increasingly present in the lives of young people, I infer that this trend has continued to persist.
Vickery’s Worried About the Wrong Things argues for shifting harm-driven expectations towards technology to opportunity-driven expectations that would include educating and empowering young people to engage in the digital world. I would like to emphasize that encouraging youth to attain digital literacy would also mean teaching them about pornography. This would mean teaching that pornography is a prevalent part of the internet’s makeup, that there is no shame in being a viewer, but there should be an element of critical viewership that allows for nuance. This nuance is that pornography can be positive and empowering, but it can also perpetuate harmful narratives about gender, race, sexuality, class, and ability that re-affirm dominant structures of power. It is important to acknowledge that porn performers and sex workers are indeed performers as well as skilled sexual athletes, not everything seen in porn can, should, or will happen in the average sexual encounter. Pornography should not be the only sexual script offered to young people, but it can be a bridge to important conversations about sex, sexuality, relationships, body image, pleasure, consent, and power. However, underlying whorephobia embedded in and enacted through technology prevents even the remotest consideration of a porn-literacy forward approach to teaching sexual and digital literacy.
