Why we need to decolonise sex education

Trigger Warning: sexual exploitation and violence against Black and brown bodies

We cannot teach people about sex and relationships without teaching about power. Who has it, why they have it, and how we can redistribute it equitably. 

A good place to start is the damage done by British colonialism and its legacy of cis-heteronormative white supremacy that persists today. When we decolonise Sex and Relationships Education (SRE), it will not just benefit Black people and people of colour - it will benefit everyone. 

Journalist Almaz Ohene has said: ‘I can’t help but imagine what the [Sex and Relationships Education] curriculum could look like if alternative sexual identities and sexual experiences weren’t minoritised by the elites.’

This reimagining is what Decolonising Contraception (DC) aims to make a reality. DC, founded by Dr Sowemimo in 2018, is a collective of Black people and people of colour, working to address the sexual health inequalities experienced by our communities due to colonisation. 

As a Tamil, non-binary person working with Decolonising Contraception and the School of Sexuality Education (formerly Sexplain) in SRE, I am often asked by South Asian students about my heritage and (somewhat incredulously) whether this is ‘my actual job.’ I understand the question - my South Asian and Hindu community firmly taught me that sexual touching would lead to failure in life and to avoid it at all costs. Unfortunately, young people within our communities continue to experience similar scaremongering today.

During lockdown, DC  started a podcast series entitled The Sex Agenda, to discuss all things sexual health. Episodes have explored issues including, ‘Reproductive Justice’, ‘The Politics of Black HIV Prevention’ and ‘Power, Pleasure and Patriarchy.’ In September 2020, DC was named Grassroots Organisation of the year by Brook and SH:24’s Sexual Health Awards.

We hold workshops, talking about the nature of intersecting struggles under a common oppressor; unpacking the fact that anti-blackness, sexism and transphobia are all rooted in white patriarchy and its construction of our world. We discuss real allyship and how to respond to the awkwardness of being called in. And how to apologise for our unthinking racist behaviour. But in talking about it, we normalise self-reflection, trying, failing and eventually doing better.

A part of our work is unpacking the colonial history of sexual and reproductive health, including non-consensual experimentation on Black and brown bodies, as well as the gross misuse of scientific racism within medical practise. It’s important to reveal this oppressive history as it negatively impacts peoples’ relationships with healthcare systems today. 

For example, some people may be more suspicious of contraception due to its recent historical use in reducing Black and brown populations. As Dr Sowemimo says, ‘we owe a lot to our ancestors who unknowingly sacrificed their fertility so that we could have reproductive freedom. It’s time for us to understand the harmful history of reproductive medicine and start changing the narrative.’ 

Hyper sexualisation and fetishisation experienced by Black folk is another type of anti-Black ‘othering.’ This can and does lead to the inequitable treatment and exploitation of Black people in personal and professional spaces. As South Asian people, we must reflect on our prejudices and ask ourselves how we can start dismantling anti-Blackness in the community, the media, healthcare settings and other spaces we occupy. 

For us to know about our prejudices, we must know our history. Our education will inform our decisions, and there is a lot that we haven’t been told about. 

• Saartjie Baartman 

Saartjie Baartman was a Black South African woman, who was taken to England by a British doctor, without her consent. From 1810, Baartman was displayed as an ‘object of fascination’ around London, for Europeans to view and touch. After her passing in 1815, this human zoo ‘exhibition’ continued; her brain, skeleton and sexual organs were on display until 1974. This prolonged exploitation of Baartman’s body fed into the (ongoing) colonial narrative of race-based science. This is the false idea that humans are divided into hierarchied races, genetically, providing a justification for certain races to be denied their humanity. 

• Lucy, Anarcha, Betsey and unnamed enslaved people

Lucy, Anarcha and Betsey were three Black women who suffered experimentation under J. Marion Sims. Sims was an American surgeon who experimented on enslaved people from the 1840s, for so-called ‘gynaecological advancement.’ His medical practise was deeply rooted in the slave trade; he grew his wealth by treating enslaved workers so they could produce and reproduce for their white owners. Black patients were not treated with anaesthesia and did not consent to being operated on.
Sims is recognised as having discovered what is still referred to as the ‘Sims’ vaginal speculum - a medical tool inserted into the vagina to give a clearer view of the vaginal walls. There is little recognition however, of the fact that the practise that enabled this discovery was nothing less than torture. Sims’ experiments involved an audience of other white ‘medical practitioners’, as patients including Lucy, Anarcha, Betsey and other unnamed people, endured traumatising procedures. He operated under the racist claim that Black people did not feel pain like white bodies -  an extremely harmful myth which perpetuates the unequal treatment of Black people today.

• Fannie Lou Hamer

Fannie Lou Hamer was an American civil rights activist, living in Mississippi in the 1960s. In 1961, she went into hospital  to have a uterine fibroid removed, and was given a hysterectomy (removal of the womb), without her consent. She was one of many people of colour and indiginous people who were violated by this procedure  - a procedure so common it was known as a ‘Mississippi appendectomy.’ This is just one example of racist medical practise that has been employed in an attempt to reduce Black and brown populations. 

• Black American men in the Tuskagee Experiment 

Between 1932 and 1972, the Tuskagee Syphilis Experiment violated hundreds of Black American men.  These men were studied, without their informed consent, to see how syphilis (a sexually transmitted infection) progressed within the body. The study was projected to go on for 6 months, but actually lasted for 40 years. In that time, many of these men were left to suffer complications and die for the sake of the experiment. At the time, the penicillin injection was known to be a cure for the disease, but simply wasn’t offered as treatment. It is understandable then, that this kind of exploitative medical experimentation on BPOC can and has led to mistrust and scepticism of medical practise amongst some communities. 

Ultimately, by uncovering this history, DC aims to provide decolonising and culturally competent SRE, so that our communities can have what they are entitled to: good sexual and mental health. We do this so that people can learn in safer spaces outside of coloniser-championing, systemically oppressive frameworks. Other resources can be found through The Black Curriculum, The Free Black University, Facing History and Ourselves and Black History Walks. Learning to decolonise in all areas of our lives is a personal and collective responsibility - it must be an ongoing and lifelong practise.

This article was originally printed in Burnt Roti Issue 3 - anti-blackness in South Asian communities (2021).