Sex Education Can Lead to a Decrease in Violence
By Kara Schweiss
Photo by Ron Coleman, C4 Photography
Researchers with numerous organizations like the National Institutes of Health, the World Health Organization and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists have long reported the benefits of high-quality, comprehensive sex education. These include reducing risky behaviors, understanding consent and fostering healthy relationships.
Yet there is another, lesser-known benefit to sexual literacy, according to Alex Pecoraro, prevention strategist with the Nebraska Coalition to End Sexual and Domestic Violence, a statewide advocacy organization with 24 member organizations.
Sex education can prevent violence. “We know that when kids have access to sex education and consent education, we see a decrease in violence,” she said.
To understand the link between sex education and violence prevention, it’s important to recognize that complex factors are involved, Pecoraro said.
“When we focus on prevention, we get to ask, ‘What is causing or creating the environment that allows violence to happen?’ We know that violence is ultimately a choice of the person who harms, and they face responsibility for that,” she said. “But we also know there are these things called risk and protective factors that can influence the risk of violence happening or someone becoming a violent person.”
It’s common to associate sexual literacy with teaching teenagers about their changing bodies, sexual intercourse, conception and contraception, and sexually transmitted infections, Pecoraro said, but the impact is actually much broader.
“Sexual literacy has components for different age-appropriate things. So, yes, it could be about sexual intercourse or pleasure or sexual feelings, but when we zoom out, it really just has to do with body knowledge. We’re talking about understanding consent, body autonomy, safe versus unsafe touches, kids knowing what pregnancy is and how it happens, and even adults having the skills and tools to talk through something like family planning,” she said. “So sexual literacy really has to do with an individual’s understanding of their own body and how it relates to or interacts with others, and it gives people the power to make their own choices and to be safe in that body.”
That sense of having power over one’s own body, Pecoraro said, is key.
“This helps prevent violence, because people are able to identify what consent is: ‘What are my body boundaries?’ ‘What words can I use?’ ‘I need to ask for help if something unsafe is happening,’” she explained.
Early sex education can make a difference even sooner, Pecoraro said.
“A few years ago, the Mayo Clinic’s Children’s Center, their pediatric unit, was actually talking about how it’s so important to start around the age of 5 and in kindergarten with sex education pieces and sexual health pieces. And I just want to be clear: I’m not saying that someone should sit down in a room with a 5-year-old and talk about sex. I’m saying that in kindergarten, we need to be talking about what is yes and no. Meaning, is it appropriate to shove your classmate and touch their body like that without consent? What are body parts? So, if something is happening, they can communicate to a trusted adult that something bad is happening to them. It’s about teaching about unsafe and safe touches and that strangers can’t do X, Y and Z,” she said. “It’s just teaching kids a sense of ‘my body is my body.’”
Information should then be adapted for teens, she added, and for all genders.
Power and control are at the root of sexual violence and sexual assault, she said, and “we can tie that into why we see certain communities experience it at a higher rate… it parallels the cultural norms around who has power in society.We still live in a culture where men are paid more and they have more leadership positions, and there are other factors that create this power imbalance. And so that power imbalance is what allows sexual violence to, for lack of a better word, thrive,” she said.
When children reach their teenage years, they are in a phase of life where their bodies and hormones are changing, but they’re also now in more adult spaces at a time when they don’t have full control over everything in their lives, she said.
Conversations should also continue through adulthood, Pecoraro said. Understanding consent and boundaries and what is safe and unsafe sexually has a natural connection to the same concepts in a nonsexual context.
Pecoraro said there are adults who have never had a conversation about consent or what a healthy relationship looks like. “When we think of adults, it’s about creating an environment where we highlight that it’s OK not to know and it’s OK to ask and want to know. And I think sometimes when folks want to talk about sex or bodies, it’s kind of deemed as gross or bad. I think we have to destigmatize that, because it’s not bad for people to want to know what’s healthy and what consent is and what safe sex is.”
At any age, sexual violence goes hand in hand with other types of violence, Pecoraro said.
Stalking and human trafficking can be deeply intermeshed and interwoven into domestic violence (DV) and intimate-partner violence (IPV), she said. “We often hear them talked about separately, but they’re both forms of violence that utilize power and control tactics. Often in a situation where DV or IPV is happening, sexual violence is a tactic that’s being used. We know that folks who are experiencing sexual violence often know the perpetrator. This doesn’t automatically mean it’s a partner or family member, but a family member or partner is going to be more common than a stranger when someone experiences sexual violence, so they’re using the same tactics.”
The risk factors for violence may be numerous—from economic status to prejudice and discrimination against specific groups to unhealthy cultural norms—but there is hope, and education is perhaps the most effective tool in prevention, Pecoraro said.
“There are lots of different risk factors, and they exist at different levels, but that means that we can intervene at these different levels with education,” she said. W