Sex Gets Real 217: Nadine Thornhill on saving comprehensive sex education

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Nadine is saving comprehensive sex ed

Ontario Canada recently elected a conservative leader named Doug Ford. One of his campaign promises is to roll back the comprehensive sex education program for Ontario schools.

Nadine refuses to let that happen, so she decided to do something about it. Check out her Go Fund Me campaign and donate here.

We talk all about what’s in the comprehensive sex ed program and why life-long sex and relationship education is so crucial. What scares people and why do people want to roll it back?

We also talk about why it’s important for kids to see adults mess up and do things awkwardly, plus we answer an amazing listener question from Kip about teaching her brother about sex when their parents are fans of abstinence only.

Queer the sex talks! GO KIP!

Follow Dawn on Instagram.

In this episode, Nadine and I talk about:

• Why Nadine decided to save sex ed in Ontario Canada
• What scares uninformed folks about the comprehensive sex ed program. We aren’t teaching 1st graders about anal sex, folks.
• Age appropriate sex education and what IS being taught to 1st and 2nd graders
• The difference between learning consent and boundaries as kids versus adults.
• Why gender diversity isn’t confusing to kids the ways it is to adults.
• How the things that feel like a big deal to grown-ups is often totally normal to younger folks and why we need to make room for that around sexuality and gender.
• The neurobiology of learning new things as adults and why it’s so uncomfortable.
• What it was like for Nadine growing up never seeing Black characters or heroes in her TV shows and movies and how that translates to the pain of being ignored as a trans or gender non-conforming kid.
• Teaching STIs to kids and why we both think that’s so important to do from a stigma-free, pleasure-based perspective.
• Listener Kip’s amazing question about teaching sex ed to her younger brother and getting the lesson plan past their parents who are abstinence-only fans. THIS IS SO GOOD!

About Nadine Thornhill:

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Episode Transcript

Dawn Serra: Your boundaries never have to be justified. They never have to be rational to anyone other than you. Your boundaries are not up for debate. Ever. Did anyone ever tell you that you, and only you, own your body? That you get to choose how to enjoy it, explore it, and share it with others? Did anyone teach you how to sit in the uncertainty and the discomfort of stating a boundary without wavering or justifying yourself? 

Setting boundaries can be endlessly challenging. A big part of why is because setting a boundary is to take up space. It’s to prioritize yourself and to risk the discomfort that can come with people’s feelings about our boundaries, but you deserve to be heard and honored, respected and supported. That’s why I created a new online workshop called Take Up Space, a workshop on boundaries, self-worth, and strengthening your relationship with self. If you could use help with boundaries, exploring some of the stories that you have around them, and also learning new techniques for communicating them, I have an online, on demand workshop that has 10 video lessons with matching worksheets full of self reflective prompts. It includes three bonuses which is an hour long interview with boundary expert Cristien Storm, a 90 minute community call I did all about boundaries. Plus free access to my relationship charter workbook that helps you to start talking through some relationship boundaries. So if you’re interested in signing up for Take Up Space, just click on the link in the show notes and grab your spot today.

Dawn Serra: You’re listening to Sex Gets Real with Dawn Serra, that’s me. This is a place where we explore sex, bodies, and relationships, from a place of curiosity and inclusion. Tying the personal to the cultural where you’re just as likely to hear tender questions about shame and the complexities of love, as you are to hear experts challenging the dominant stories around pleasure, body politics, and liberation. This is about the big and the small, about sex and everything surrounding it we don’t usually name. The funny, the awkward, the imperfect happen here in service to joy, connection, healing, and creating healthier relationships with ourselves and each other. So, welcome to Sex Gets Real. Don’t forget to hit subscribe. 

Hey, listeners. Welcome to this week’s episode of Sex Gets Real. I am spending two weeks on Vancouver Island doing some writing and some work, and just a little bit of getaway which is why some interviews sound a little bit different than others. Because I am in a different location and making do with the little cottage that I am in, the best that I can. My conversation this week is with sex educator Nadine Thornhill. Nadine has been on the show before. She’s one of my favorite people. She specializes in teaching parents on how to deal with sex education and sexuality in young kids and also specializes in sex education for younger kids. She is taking on the Ontario Canadian Government because their new elected official Doug Ford is like Trump light. One of his campaign promises is to actually remove the comprehensive sex education program that was established in 2015. 

Dawn Serra: So Nadine is doing some really cool stuff and we’re going to talk all about not only what she’s doing, but sex education that’s age appropriate for first graders, second graders, talking about gender with third graders, and I’ll whole bunch of other fun stuff – plus, a listener question that I am in love with. So I’ll tell you more about Nadine in just a minute. If you want to sign up for my boundaries workshop, it is now live. You can get the link for that either by heading to sexgetsreal.com/ep217 for Episode 217 or by clicking on the link in the show notes. 

I also got an email from Cooper Beckett because their Desire Takeover is coming soon, and they want your help. So every year, Life on the Swing Set hosts a full takeover of the greatest place on earth – Desire Resort Riviera Maya in Cancun, Mexico. Desire is an all inclusive resort, boasting a beautiful beach pool, hot tub, four excellent restaurants, three full bars and most importantly, space to be yourself. Their takeover is the most inclusive and geeky trip that Desire sees all year with theme nights, educational events, and entertainment for straight couples as well as every letter and the LGBTIA+ rainbow. They have live nude karaoke, foam parties, dungeon disco, BDSM nights, live podcasting, demos of pegging fisting, flogging, speed dating, wine and beer tasting, costume theme nights, orgies, gang bangs – truly the sex positive vacation of a lifetime says Tristan Taormino. So if you’re interested in joining Cooper Beckett and the Life on the Swing Set crew for SS Desire, you can go to ssdesire.com.I promised Cooper I would talk about it on the show because they do amazing things and if you’re looking for a super sexy vacation, that might be where you want to head. 

Dawn Serra: Patreon supporters, if you support at $3 and above for Sex Gets Real, which really, really, really, does help me so much. This week’s bonus, I am talking about an incredible piece that was in Bloomberg all about orgasmic meditation in One Taste. You heard my interview with Bridget Phetasy last year about the article that she did for Playboy, which has since been removed because One Taste is so litigious. But this Bloomberg piece is an incredible exposé on some of the massive abuses that they have committed. So I’m going to be talking a little bit about that and including a link to it so you can check it out and sharing my thoughts. I’m also going to be reading a piece of erotica. 

So if you support the $3 and above every single week, you get all kinds of bonus content which is me sharing thoughts about something, answering listener questions, extended interviews with guests, me reading erotica, and cash free access to paid stuff – all kinds of good stuff. So you can go to patreon.com/sgrpodcast. You actually have to type the URL in. Patreon won’t let you search for me because I’m adult content. Everything that you throw my way helps so, so, so much. 

Dawn Serra: So let me tell you a little bit about Nadine, and then I will share our interview. It’s a super fun chat. I love it. Oh my god. So Nadine Thornhill has been helping families and educators talk to kids about sex for over a decade. She has a Doctor of Education and Child and Adolescent Sexuality and is a member of the Sexuality and Information Council of Canada. When she’s not working, Nadine enjoys adventures in the city with her husband and son, off key crooning at karaoke, eating great food, and watching reality TV. So here is my conversation with Nadine Thornhill.

Welcome back to Sex Gets Real, Nadine. I am so excited to talk to you today in this very last minute conversation that we decided to have. So hello.

Nadine Thornhill: Hello. Thank you for having me at the very last minute. 

Dawn Serra: Yeah, you’re so welcome. So I had to invite you to come on because you’re doing this really rad thing that is in response to a recent election that happened in Ontario, Canada. I think the exciting thing is you’ve already surpassed your fundraising goal. But for people who are listening to this when the episode drops, there’s plenty of time to still support this. So can you tell us a little bit about what’s going on and why you decided to birth this project?

Nadine Thornhill: Yes, okay. So I’m going to try and summarize this as briefly as I can. But just for some history for your listeners who are not in Ontario – In 2015, the Ministry of Education here introduced an updated health and physical education curriculum. The first update we had had in, I believe at that point, it was 17 years. Included in this curriculum was an updated sex education program. So the previous program predated social media. There was nothing about consent, there was very little about sexual orientation, nothing about gender identity. Not to mention a lot of information has changed and is more current. So this was wonderful that we had this new comprehensive, fact-based sex education program. So, it’s been in place for three years now. Recently, very recently this month, we had a provincial election. The party that was elected into power was the Progressive Conservative Party. So they are the, for your non-Canadian listeners., they’re like the Republicans of Canada. Their leader, our new premier designate is a man named Doug Ford. He’s sort of Trump-like to give people a frame of reference. 

One of his campaign promises was that he was going to “repeal this sex ed curriculum”. That’s what he kept calling it. He was quite adamant that he was going to do this. The fact that he kept calling it a sex ed curriculum right away told me that he doesn’t really know what he’s talking about. But he is pandering to certain component of his base that either think that this sex ed curriculum is horrible and are willfully misinformed about what the curriculum entails, or they just don’t like some of what it what it contains. So he was elected, unequivocally, and will be the leader of our province. As recently as, I believe it was less than two weeks ago, gave a press conference where he reiterated his promise to repeal this curriculum. 

Nadine Thornhill: My wheels have been spinning for a while now for a few weeks and I’ve been thinking, “What can I do? What can I do?” Because this is my work. This is my life’s work. I believe very passionately in comprehensive sex education for use throughout throughout their childhood and adolescence. I was so happy when we finally had this in place in schools. I don’t want to see it taken away. I didn’t know what to do, because I thought protest is important and, you know, resistance is important, writing letters, making your voice heard. But I also know, based on Doug Ford’s history, that he is not the kind of leader who is responsive to his populace. He’s just not. He’s the kind of leader who’s going to do what he wants to do. So then, it just came to me in a flash, I thought, “Wait, well. I know this curriculum. I don’t know the full curriculum, but I know the sex ed components of the curriculum really, really well. I know how to teach this sort of material. This is what I do and I have a YouTube channel.” So I thought, “Hey, now, I can just teach this curriculum. I can put it on my channel and then at least it’s there. If people want it, they can still access it in some way.” No matter what happens, in terms of schools, the information will still be there. People can watch and get ideas about how to have the conversations at home or how to have the conversations in classrooms or community groups, or wherever it’s happening. 

So I had that idea and that was about 10 days ago. Then I started furiously making notes and making plans and be like, “Okay, this is happening. I’m going to need about three grand and I don’t have three grand right now to spend on a project that I wasn’t planning.” So I started a GoFundMe campaign. I announced it yesterday around 10am. And when I went to bed last night,I was a little more than halfway to my goal, which already blew me away. Woke up this morning and was within a few hundred dollars of my goal. Interestingly enough, this morning I got up and wasn’t really paying attention to the campaign because my son was running a Spartan Race. So we had to drive way into the country and get him ready and he was racing. Right before he crossed the finish line, my partner happened to look at the campaign on his phone and was like, “Hey, you just met your goal.” 

Dawn Serra: That’s awesome. 

Nadine Thornhill: Yeah, it was kind of a nice moment of celebration because it felt like I won at the same time as my son crossed his finish line. We were a little more excited for him.

Dawn Serra: So comprehensive sex ed is something that is rare in the United States and is be about to become more rare in Canada. Thanks, Doug Ford. I think one of the things that’s so fascinating about this curriculum is that it’s for grades one through 12, basically. I know you said that the curriculum includes consent, which is crucial. What are some of the fears and or complaints that people have around the curriculum? Do they hate that it’s inclusive or is it that it starts at such a young age? What are people scared of that you’ve seen?

Nadine Thornhill: So one of the things that a lot of people I’ve spoken to are scared about is that they are conflating different parts of the curriculum. So when they hear, for example, that the curriculum starts at grade one, and that there are also components of the sex ed program that talk about safer sex and that that discussion includes talking about anal sex, and oral sex, and how to reduce your risk of STIs – they conflate those two things. What they hear is, in grade one, you’re going to be talking to first graders about anal sex. Not a thing that is happening at all. 

The safer sex components do not come in until grades seven and eight and above. What we’re talking about in the first grade, literally is naming all the parts of the body, including genitals. That’s it. In grade two, we’re talking about the fact that bodies change as we age. 

Dawn Serra: Which is such a beautiful thing. I mean, just before we hopped on, you and I were talking about how we can’t wait to teach consent and all of these other things like gender identity until someone’s an adult. It sets us all up for the failure that we’re experiencing now. It’s such a mass scale and to be able to have really young kids, who can not only name body parts, but who feel comfortable talking about boundaries, and it’s not okay to touch me, and are aware that other people have boundaries and to be able to literally grow up with that dialogue is such a such an important thing.

Nadine Thornhill: Absolutely. It’s interesting, because I will often have people come to me and say, “But it’s going to be so confusing for them.” Like this is such a complex issue. I hear it a lot around consent and gender. What I will often say to them is, we have to consider that one of the reasons that we often find these things confusing, even as adults, is because when we were children, we were taught something different. We were taught these things as being axiomatic particularly around gender. I know that I grew up learning that there were boys and girls, men and women. All the boys had the same body part and all the girls had the same body part. And that was it. It was a thing that I could take for granted. 

So yes, I believe the first time I ever realized that there was anything different was when I saw the crying game when I was 17 or 18. I remember this very audible reaction in the audience, when we discovered that this woman had a penis. But had I grown up just knowing that, “Hey, people with the same gender can actually have different body parts in the same way that I know that people of different genders can have different color hair or sometimes some people have just one leg or some people are tall and some people are short. If sexual organs were just another thing that, hey, they’re different on different people. I wouldn’t be – it wouldn’t have been so confusing and shocking as an adult. It’s interesting because I see it with my son and kids his age who are growing up with more exposure to gender diversity, where for them, it’s not as confusing. They’re very comfortable oftentimes talking about people with trans identities are people who are gender expansive. No, they don’t know every nuance of it, but they’re not falling down in shock on the playground being like, “Oh, my god. My concept of the world has been shattered.”

Dawn Serra: Well, I think that’s such an important point. Because I think sometimes it feels like a big deal, because it’s something that we as adults are still trying to figure out and understand. But when it’s something that you’ve literally grown up with, where the language was normalized, the adults around you used the language, you use the language so when the people around you use that language and identify a certain way; it’s not a big deal. It’s not shocking or weird or confusing. It’s just a part of life and part of all the things that you’ve been learning like how to use a fork and a spoon, and how to use someone’s pronouns. I think it’s really fascinating when adults take their lens of fear and scarcity and shame, and then put that on to young people and assume they’re going to have the same experience, but in these young bodies that can’t process these bigger emotions in the same way. It’s a totally, completely different experience.

Nadine Thornhill: It’s a different experience. It’s interesting, something that I recently become fascinated by neurobiology, even though I have no science background. So I’m struggling through these really jargon laid texts and highlighting words and looking them up on Google. But something that I’ve learned recently is that our brains don’t like information that we don’t immediately understand. It makes us anxious. When we feel anxious, what our brains do is we look for reasons to justify our anxiety. So when we are confronted with something like, “Hey, gender diversity and gender spectrum; and in fact gender exists along this infinite spectrum, and people experience it in all different ways, and it’s actually not necessarily this easily categorized. identity.” It makes a lot of us anxious. Then what we decided is, “Oh, well, I must be anxious for a reason. So this must not be okay.” Instead of recognizing, “I just feel anxious because this is new or because I don’t know everything.” It’s nothing beyond that. And that’s okay. So we decided like, “Whoa, this is going to make my kid feel the same way.” But as you said, when you grow up with it, you also have the luxury of time. You don’t have to try and synthesize every nuance all at once. You have your whole childhood and, really, your whole life to sort it out.

If somebody handed us a book for the first time, as adults, and we’re like, “Here, read. This is Shakespeare.” We would lose our minds if we’ve never read a book before. We’d be like, “What? What is happening right now?” That’s why we teach kids to read when they’re little so they can gradually start to under– We start with the little words and then when they get older, give them big words, and then we explain grammar to them. Then we explain all the weird exceptions to the grammar that exists in English. By the time we’re adults, we’re like, “Hey, I can speak and read this very complicated, frankly, illogical language with no problem.”

Dawn Serra: What’s hitting me so hard is, it’s so evident in this conversation, something that I say pretty regularly but I think that people don’t really get in their bones. They’re like “Yeah, yeah.” Which is – all of these things are skills. It’s like being able to talk about pleasure, being able to understand the nuance of consent, being able to dive into someone’s experience of the world and talk to them about it using their language. These are all skills that we learn and develop and practice and mess up. And as adults to be able to make mistakes without really feeling ashamed of that is a really tough thing. 

I think that’s why it’s such a beautiful thing that we have these curriculums like this one – the health and physical education curriculum for Ontario and The Owl Program for UUA, where these skills are something that are trained and practiced and rehearsed collectively in classrooms and with community groups over so many years that you don’t even realize you’re developing the skill. It’s just something you do like reading. But for those of us who didn’t have exposure to those kinds of programs, it feels really different. How do I ask for what I want? What are the names of those body parts I don’t know? What if I feel like my gender is different than what everyone’s been telling me? I mean, those feel like huge, scary questions. But that’s also because so many of us didn’t have a place to practice and rehearse.

Nadine Thornhill: That’s exactly what it is. In many ways, that’s the beauty of childhood and of childhood learning. It’s this time in your life where you’re going to make a lot of mistakes. But generally speaking, we’re also very forgiving because you’re a child. It’s okay. You’re just learning. I mean, I personally believe that that’s what our entire lives are for. But I believe that childhood and adolescence is a really special time of learning.

Dawn Serra: Yeah. So I’d love to hear a little bit more about how gender identity is handled by this curriculum.

Nadine Thornhill: So this is another very controversial aspect of the curriculum, which is probably why keep coming back to gender identity. So the way it was publicized – it was publicized as there were going to be discussions of gender identity theory in grade three. Nobody’s discussing the theory of anything with third graders ever. Their minds are not capable of really processing abstract concepts. They are still very concrete at that age. What we have in the curriculum is there is a discussion of visible and invisible differences. An example given in the curriculum of an invisible difference is gender identity. That’s it. So many people find this terrifying and objectionable. Their perception is that there is going to be this in-depth conversation in class, where teachers are telling students that they can choose whatever identity they want, and kids are going to be very confused and running out and demanding surgery and hormones, which is not even possible in this province. Even if they were demanding that, and that’s not what’s happening. 

Again, we are having a broad stroke discussion about the fact that people are different. Different people have different ethnicities, different religions, again, different body types. Then there are our invisible differences. When I have seen this taught in schools, when something like gender identity often comes up, it often comes up if it is relevant to the students in that specific class. So, there may be somebody in the class – there may be a child who’s gender expansive in the class or gender non-conforming, there may be somebody in the class or somebody in the school who has a parent or close relative who is trans or gender queer or whatnot. So, again, it’s letting the kids know, “Hey, there are all kinds of different people. Treat them respectfully because they exist.” Literally, it’s just, “Trans people exist. Gay people exist. Know this.”

Dawn Serra: Darn it we need to campaign a little harder to get people in the club. 

Nadine Thornhill: Absolutely. I’m cis gender but I’m also a black woman. This really gets me where I live because when I was a child, I remember having textbooks and storybooks and watching TV, and seeing magazine covers and almost never seen myself represented. We’re not seeing people who look like me. It was never this overt hostile, “You’re a terrible person and we hate you.” But I think what a lot of people don’t appreciate is that there’s a real pain in being ignored and in having your experience ignored, and you still get this message that, “There is something wrong with me. There is a reason that people don’t want to see me.” And other people get the message that you’re not as valuable and you don’t matter. Then that carries over. It escalates into situations that parents will express concern over transphobic bullying in high school. 

It’s very difficult to tell someone who’s a teenager, “Look, you need to treat all of these people respectfully and kindly.” When five years previous the message was – we can’t even talk about these people. We can’t talk about them because it’s dangerous for you and it might harm you in some way. Then, to take it to its extreme, you have tragedies like what happened at the Pulse nightclub. That was devastating. I kept hearing people saying, “How can anyone do this?” and “This is horrible.” That attitude doesn’t come out of nowhere. It’s not that somebody wakes up one day and is like, “Oh, I just decided that it’s okay to kill gay people.” We have to do a way better job of teaching people that everyone is human being who’s worthy of being seen and validated and valued. You can’t do that when you were trying to make entire segments of the population invisible to children.

Dawn Serra: Yes, yeah. Because they notice. 

Nadine Thornhill: Because they notice. 

Dawn Serra: Yeah.

Nadine Thornhill: They absolutely do. The kids who are identifying that way or have family members who identify that way, they notice. The kids who don’t get the message that it doesn’t matter. And it does.

Dawn Serra: So, now that you have passed your goal, and for people listening, you can still throw money at Nadine because there’s all kinds of other things that she’s thinking about doing. But now that you’ve passed your goal, and you have a chunk of time, what are you thinking is going to be when you start delivering these videos and make this curriculum available online?

Nadine Thornhill: So I’m the kind of person where if I don’t have hard deadlines, then I don’t get anything accomplished in life. So my goal is to release the first set of videos the second week after school goes back here in Ontario. So that will be the second, I believe, that’s the second week of September. I haven’t 100% finalized my release schedule, but I think what I’m going to do is each week is going to be a different topic. Then I will probably release a video – one on Monday, one on Wednesday, one on Friday, probably. So I’ll be tackling the same topic but for the different grade levels. You can see the progression of this is how you discuss consent with very young children. This is how you can discuss consent with older kids and tweens. This is how you have the discussion with teenagers and young adults.

Dawn Serra: Is there a part of the curriculum that you’re most excited to get to roll around in?

Nadine Thornhill: Oh, there’s so many. I love sex ed so much.I love all the parts of it. I am actually really excited to dive into the visible and invisible differences part. There are some more units on gender that start in sixth grade and then go up. Again, I’m just excited to tackle it because I’m really hoping that I can present it in a way that people see that, “Hey, it’s not scary and overwhelming.” It can really be simplified and accessible for folks. I’m hoping that I can connect with some great trans and non-binary educators in the city so they can share their experience, which is much greater than mine. 

I’m excited to dive into even some of the more standard biological stuff like sexually transmitted infections, because I think the fun challenge there is always to find a way of presenting it where it’s not dry and didactic. “Here’s a list of illnesses and here’s a list of symptoms.” That’s been some of my favorite learning as an adult is being like– I was an adult when I learned that – I was like, “Oh my gosh, there were all of these treatment options available for HIV. I had no idea.” This is fascinating. I find the statistics really interesting – just how prevalent or not prevalent certain illnesses are. There are so many that you can cure and there are so many that you can live with and have a really happy, healthy life even though you have this chronic illness that you have to deal with. I love trying to destigmatize STIs. One of the best analogies I heard was a student that I worked with, said, “It’s funny, because if you say you had a lot of friends and you had a lot of contact with your friends and got the flu, everyone would feel sorry for you and be like, ‘Oh, well. That’s what happens.’ But if you have a lot of sex and you get chlamydia, people want to be like, ‘Oh, you’re terrible and you deserve this.’” That’s amazing.

Dawn Serra: That is amazing. I also think it’s so important, too, of, “Yes, we have to destigmatize STIs in, oh my god, all the ways and all the places. I also think that one of the really incredible things around destigmatizing STIs also teaches that lesson inherently that you can have a beautiful, thriving, connected, pleasure-filled life, whether you have an STI or not, and whether you have any other kind of illness or disability or not. I mean there’s treatments, there’s options, there’s knowledge – there’s ways to get all the wonderful things that you could possibly dream for yourself, whether you have HIV or you have mono or you have Fibromyalgia or arthritis or whatever it might be. I think it just fits into that pushing back against the liberalism puzzle as well.

Nadine Thornhill: Yes, yes. Pleasure is not just something that you get to access when you are perfectly healthy and conventionally beautiful. I don’t even know what being perfectly healthy would be. I literally never met a human being in my life like, “I’ve never been sick or had issues with my body.” That’s just what bodies do. The consent is one of the topics I’m most passionate about, particularly because over the past few years, I’ve really transitioned into trying to teach consent from the perspective of, again, of pleasure and joy that when you come into a relationship, when you are interacting with someone – be it sexually, be it under the auspices of of love or affection or attraction, what you are trying to communicate to someone else is, “I like you” or “You are making me feel good, therefore return the favor…” Even when you’re talking about very little kids and not wanting to hug a relative or something. 

What I will say to adults is like, “If you are trying to hug a child, you’re the whole purpose of that interaction is that you are trying to make that child feel loved and good. So, if they don’t feel loved and good, find a different– It is incumbent upon you as the adult and the person with the power in the situation to try and find a different way of conveying that love to them.” Because love that makes you feel like, “Blah, there’s a person with their body all over me and their face right up– ” The kid is not going to get that right from you. And it’s the same thing in sex. Everyone should be feeling good. If everyone is not feeling good, then something’s got to change.

Dawn Serra: One of the things that I think is so important about what you just said, too, is, and we’ve talked about this previously on the podcast, but I just want to bring it up again. I think one of the things that’s standing out is if you’re an adult who wants to hug a child, and part of that reason is because you want the child to feel loved. Then in that moment, they’re like, “I don’t want to hug you.” One of the most beautiful parts of that interaction, is the child getting to see you fumble and figure out what to do instead. Then offering the alternative and then moving ahead with that. I think that adults forget that often that sometimes the most powerful things for kids to see is to see adults make mistakes or not know, and then in that moment to like, “Oh, they don’t want a hug. Okay, maybe we can do a little pinky swear, or maybe we can do a high five, or maybe I’ll make a funny face at you.” Doing that kind of investigative curiosity – how do I still engage in a way that feels good, I think, helps kids to see like, “I don’t have to have it all figured out. I can learn as I go, because the adults in my life do that. And they’re happy and good.”

Nadine Thornhill: And they’re happy. I think it’s also valuable for kids to see, “Hey, I pulled away from this. This didn’t feel good for me. The adult felt awkward. The adult got over it. And the adult still loves me and still is still here for me, and still cares about me. They’re not holding this against me.” I think that’s so important. I think that’s especially important for those of us who are socialized as girls because we often get these messages that don’t ever make somebody feel bad. I think it is important for kids to see that, “You know what, it’s okay if people feel bad for a second. They’ll be fine. It’s not your responsibility to make everything okay for them. They’re not going to take off and abandon you because you just had a slightly awkward interaction for two seconds.”

Dawn Serra: Yes. God, I love that so much. So because we’re talking about curriculum, I got this fascinating question from someone who’s trying to DIY a curriculum for their brother. I’m wondering if you want to help me answer the question.

Nadine Thornhill: I 100% do. 

Dawn Serra: Okay. So the question is a little bit on the longer side, I’ll read it and then we’ll geek out and see what your thoughts are. 

Nadine Thornhill: Okay. 

Dawn Serra: So Kip wrote in and it says, “How can I help my brother? – Dawn, I’m so excited to finally be writing into you. I cannot put into words how significant in impact your podcast has made on my identity and my perspective. Thank you so much for your education, tireless work, and palpable love for all. I’m a 20 year old gender non-conforming, mega queer woman, and she/her pronouns are A-okay with me. I have a 15 year old brother, we’ll call him T, who has always been a bit developmentally behind. His personality is like that of an 11 or 12 year old. He’s going into his sophomore year of high school and he has never taken a sex ed class nor will he for the remainder of his high school career. To put his knowledge of sexuality in perspective, he had never heard of oral sex until three months ago, and he still has no idea what masturbation is. Our parents are not good with sex talks and are very sex negative. T is not the kind of kid to go perusing the internet for answers. I don’t think he even would know where to search. After negotiating with my parents, they agreed that if I wrote up a lesson plan and had it approved by them, I could give T a sex ed lesson.” 

“I work hard to immerse myself in sex positive culture and I feel confident in my ability to give him a pretty solid, well-rounded sex talk. The only problem is that our parents are going to censor the shit out of me. They support abstinence-based, cis het-centric sex ed, and want discouragement over practicality. But I want to inform my brother about things like being safe, masturbation, how to build a sexual relationship with yourself, how to listen to your partner and be open minded, how to avoid toxic masculinity and sexual situations, and how all of these things can be put into a queer context in case that’s part of his identity; if he ever starts to question. So how can I word or present “inappropriate subjects” like these in a way that my parents will approve of, but also will be comprehensive, relatable, and real for my brother? I was lucky enough to find ways to educate myself in adolescence, but I know T isn’t going to walk that path. I love my brother endlessly and I’m terrified of him going into the adult world with absolutely no sexual literacy. I’m truly at a loss and want to get this right. Much love, Kip.”

Nadine Thornhill: Wow, wow. Okay. The very first thing I want to say off the bat – Kip, you are an amazing sibling. 

Dawn Serra: Yes. 

Nadine Thornhill: Just Wow. I don’t have siblings. But if I had had a sibling, an older sibling, I wish I had had a sibling like you. So good.

Dawn Serra: For sure. This is amazing.

Nadine Thornhill: So I am also the parent of a child who, maturity-wise, is a bit younger than his chronological age. He’s also chronologically younger than Kip’s brother. But that having been said, I sort of can relate a little bit to this idea of knowing that his natural curiosity hasn’t led him to seek out certain information, and yet at the same time understanding that because he is the chronological age he is that certain situations and certain topics are going to become relevant anyway. Then trying to get that information to them. So, I would say, I respect, Kip, that you, I think it sounds like you want to respect that your parents are your parents and are T’s parents, and that they are the ones who are raising him for now. But the other thing that I would say is that you are also an adult in your brother’s life and you are invested in his well being, and the things that you want to teach him are really going to serve his well being as he grows up and as he moves to the world. So I think that your plan for his sex education will be far more useful than your parents’ plan and I do not want to disrespect your parents. I do not know these people at all.

But, yes. Sex education that is based strictly in deterrence and everything that you should not do are not effective. That is not just my opinion. There is vast research to indicate that abstinence only sex education is not effective, that youth who receive this type of sex education do not have sex any later than kids who receive comprehensive sex education. But what does happen is they’re less likely to do things like practice safer sex. Their health-ed tends to be poor. They have a much poor understanding of things like consent. It can be a real struggle for kids who–This sort of cis centric, hetero centric, bent on sex education, it really doesn’t serve kids who are queer. Do your thing. So now we have to figure out how to get this past your parents. 

Nadine Thornhill: Something that I find is effective because it sounds like you can’t present this outline to your parents and say, “I want to talk about gender identity.” “I want to talk about sexual orientation.” “I want to talk about pleasure.” “I want to talk about consent.” What you can do is A.) if you’re giving them, and I’m not sure what this is going to look like, but if for example, you’re giving them a list of topics, you can frame some of these euphemistically. You can talk about pleasure as healthy relationships – something like that. We can talk about gender and sexual identity under the auspices of something like “Understanding yourself”.

Dawn Serra: Healthy bodies.

Nadine Thornhill: Yeah, healthy bodies. Even with relationships you can talk about– Sorry, sexual practices – you can talk about… You do that under healthy relationships or you can say, “Respecting your body”. That’s a really big one that people take that – people have tend to be like, “Oh, respecting your body. It’s all about abstinence and whatnot,” which it can be if you are so inclined. I just don’t think that is the only way to respect your body. You can even say things like, “This lesson will include discussions of abstinence.” Because I personally happen to think that absence can be and should be part of a comprehensive sex ed lesson. It just shouldn’t be the only thing by a long shot. 

The other thing you can do is you can build into your curriculum, some open-ended questions. When you’re talking to your brother, let him know that in answering – as he’s answering the questions, then you can ask some more open-ended questions to try to steer the conversation towards the topics you want to talk to him about. So, it’s not strictly outlined in the original curriculum that you’re designing. So you can ask a question in your curriculum like, “What do different relationships look like?” If you want to put examples, again, in the written curriculum that your parents see, you can have examples like, i.e. marriage, i.e. dating. But when you’re actually talking and it’s just the two of you, you can be like, “Yeah, i.e. marriage, i.e. dating, i.e. some people who are married are the same gender.” “i.e. some people date multiple people at the same time and everybody knows about it, and it’s great.” “i.e. some people have relationships that are not strictly defined in hetero or cis normative terms. Here are some other relationships– ” You can do the same thing with healthy bodies – an open-ended question. What is a healthy body? Then have some more questions about – Do all bodies need to be healthy? You can slip some information in there about how a healthy body for someone might be a person who is undergoing hormonal therapy, because that makes them feel mentally healthy and that is part of health too. So, yeah. You can be a little stealth that way.

Dawn Serra: Yeah, I totally agree. My notes say Trojan horse it.

Nadine Thornhill: Absolutely.

Dawn Serra: Yeah. I think, too, they might only sign off on this one. But this doesn’t have to be the only time you ever talk to T about this. So I also don’t think that Kip needs to try and fit all the things into this one conversation – fit the basics, fit the most important pieces in and just let T know in that lesson that there’s so much more to learn and there’s so many other interesting conversations and stories that you can share. So after T has a chance to sit with all of this, maybe we can talk again or maybe next year we can do another lesson. Focusing on the bits that are the most important for a 15 year old who has the maturity of 11 or 12 year old, get all the stuff in that would be appropriate for an 11, 12, 13, 14 year old. Then just know you can build on this. It doesn’t have to be the only time.

Nadine Thornhill: Absolutely. A couple of great things that the two of you have going for you in your sibling relationship is that number one, just by virtue of the fact that you are putting so much time and thought into doing this for him, is going to signal to him very clearly that you are a safe person in his life that he can come to when he has questions. A lot of people, myself included, we worry a lot about saying the right thing and making sure we have all of the right content, when really just the fact that we are willing to have these conversations is the lesson for our kids. That is us telling them that this is worth talking about. That I think this is worth talking about, that you think this is worth talking about; and that I’m open to having these conversations. 

The other great thing for Kip is that you are a great queer model. Like I said, you sound awesome and it sounds like you have a great relationship with one another. So I would also say don’t estimate the power of being able to see you and witness you living in your body and living your life, and being a wonderful, caring human being.

Dawn Serra: Yeah, yeah. One of the other thoughts that I had, too, is one of my favorite things to use around teaching is pop culture. I think that could also be a fantastic way for you, Kip, to be able to show your folks, “Oh, hey, we’re going to talk about safety and bodies and anatomy and respecting your partners.” But then the way that you do that is showing a rich variety of clips from movies, TV shows, music videos, and allowing T to ask age appropriate questions about that and then be able to have dialogue, where it’s about this third party and not necessarily about the two of you – could also be a really fun way to ground those lessons in something where T can actually see it unfold, and then process with you. 

Nadine Thornhill: Absolutely, absolutely. 

Dawn Serra: Oh my god. I am so excited for whatever, Kip, you’re cooking up for T, because I can tell you, it’s more than a lot of us got and I love that you’re so passionate about this. I hope whatever lesson plan you get in front of your folks that they sign off on it, and then you do something super fantastically subversive, when you actually have the conversation.

Nadine Thornhill: I really hope that Kip writes back so we find out how this all turned out.

Dawn Serra: Me too. So Kip, thank you so much for writing in. This was actually one of the most surprising questions I’ve gotten in a long time, because I have not had anything like this come in before. I wish you the very best in the first of hopefully many conversations with T about sex positive experiences of body and self and pleasure and all that good stuff. So thank you for doing what you’re doing. Nadine, thank you for helping me to feel the question.

Nadine Thornhill: Oh, thank you. It’s always a pleasure to hear about other amazing sex educators out there in the world. Yeah.

Dawn Serra: Seriously. So for people who want to either check out your campaign or even throw you some money so that we can get even more great content out there, how can they find your campaign?

Nadine Thornhill: So they can go to www.gofundme.com/saveHPE which stands for health and phys ed.

Dawn Serra: Awesome. Great. Today for those of you who are listening to this when it drops – so this episode is going to drop on June 24th 2018. Nadine’s campaign is still open on June 24th. Nadine, you’re planning on keeping it open for at least another week, right?

Nadine Thornhill: Yes, so now that I’ve exceeded the goal, I’m considering a stretch goal. So I was telling you before the show, a friend of mine was mentioning that all those will be on YouTube, up in Northern Ontario. They don’t have great internet access and it might be hard for them to watch the video. So I’m considering making a stretch goal, so that I can put the videos in some sort of hardcopy format. And actually send it up to some communities up north. So I just have to do a little bit more research and find out what that might cost and what’s entailed. If that’s something that I can do, then I think I’m going to make that a stretch goal. 

Dawn Serra: Awesome. So to everybody listening, whether you’re in Ontario or not supporting Nadine means that this awesome curriculum is going to go up on YouTube and be accessible to parents and caretakers and teens everywhere. So throw your money at Nadine and also follow Nadine so that you can stay in touch. How can people follow you on social media so they can see the developments as they come out?

Nadine Thornhill: So probably the easiest way is to just google Nadine Thornhill because all my stuff comes up but I am @NadineThornhill on Twitter. I am Nadine Thornhill on YouTube. And I am @NadineThornhill on Instagram.

Dawn Serra: Awesome. Okay. I will have links to all of those things in the campaign in the show notes for this episode. Nadine, I want to first thank you for being such a frickin’ badass that you saw Doug Ford say, “I’m going to do this thing.” You were like, “Fuck that. I’m finding a way around this.” And now you’re going to make all these awesome videos. So go you for being amazing.

Nadine Thornhill: Oh, thank you. I thank you for helping me get the word out there. I want to say thank you so much to everybody who’s donated, everyone who shared the campaign – people who have sent really kind words of encouragement. I will never be able to find the words to express how much I appreciate this.

Dawn Serra: To everybody listening, thank you so much for tuning in. Check out the show notes, follow Nadine, support the campaign. Of course, you can check out your weekly Patreon bonus if you support the show over at patreon.com/sgrpodcast, I will see you there. And of course, I’ll be back next week. So I’m Dawn Serra with Nadine Thornhill. We will talk to you later. Bye.

Dawn Serra: A huge thanks to The Vocal Few, the married duo behind the music featured in this week’s intro and outro. Find them at vocalfew.com. Head to patreon.com/sgrpodcast to support the show and get awesome weekly bonuses. 

As you look towards the next week, I wonder what will you do differently that rewrites an old story, revitalizes a stuck relationship or helps you to connect more deeply with your pleasure?