There is a high demand for workshops of this kind, spaces for people to share and connect on the stuff they find hard as parents when it comes to sex ed and raising kids to think critically about the word and empathetically about each other. I do think they’d end up mostly if not completely full of women though, not that that’s a problem, I’d love it, but is a consideration. In a longer term plan how do you monetise this so t would at the very least cover the costs of the research and subsequent shared resources I’d be putting together.
People fund the use of art and imagery helpful, whether it was art works or media images from the 90’s. I think people found the example I gave of a performance art piece quite hard to get their heads around though actually. Using media imagery, ads, magazines etc was effective because the audience, having come of age when these images where most precent, really related to them or remembered them and it helped strengthen the discourse. There is a much more accepted idea also that media imagery affects us societally more than art work but I would perhaps argue that the media imagery we see is a product of advertisers and branding mining the avant-garde and art communities first but whatevs.
Almost no-one knows what a hymen real is. It makes me really sad. The amount of grown women who don’t know how their own bodies work and how that lack of knowledge plays into a negative view of their own sexuality, pleasure and worth is both wholly unsurprising and surprising at the same time. The men in the workshop couldn’t accept the construct of virginity being born from a time when women were still counted as property being relevant today – unable to make the very real connections between cis heteronormative language as the default in out society and the upholding of patriarchal concepts like virginity.
Mothers are shouldering the majority of sex in the home, their male partners aren’t interested in preparing themselves and have often made jokes or said what the mothers consider the “wrong” thing and then been annoyed about it. The mothers want to do the work before hand. They were interested in finding something they could do with their partners at home to facilitate having a conversation to try to get on the same page or at least have a serious conversation.
The men in the workshops basically rely on technological parental controls to do the work for them.
Parents are fearful of social media and the widening technology gap. They understand that they don’t understand it, they assume they will “loose” their child to it eventually but have no real interest in learning about it or understanding it. Demonising it seems to be the way forward and then we can just shoulder the burden on responsibility of how to use it on others without having to then look at our own digital addictions was the general vibe. I could easily clean up on some “social media for parents” course but I don’t want to do that.
Music videos could provide a rich tapestry for discussion. They’re very problematic at times, highlight the cultural generational gaps really wel, provide a wealth of interesting starting points for conversation and often scare the shit out of parents.
The breaking down of concepts, ideas and language itself really needs to be considered. Especially if trying not to alienate men.
Porn is such a vast topic. I need to think a lot more about how to break ideas and key conversations down into manageable subjects.
