Less shaming, more educating

Throughout the 20th century, Ireland’s culture and attitudes were heavily influenced by religion. One of the areas that was most controlled by it was what went on in the bedroom.

Sex was taught to be a shameful act, and for procreation only. Generations of Irish people were crushed under so-called “Catholic guilt”. However, as a society, we are now moving away from the firm grip of the Church. Yet, the sex education curriculum has not caught up with the attitude of Irish people today.

Shawna Scott is a 34-year-old Sligo-based sex educator who owns the award-winning online adult boutique Sex Siopa. She has been running the shop for eight years and has noticed how Irish attitudes towards sex have softened. “When I started I had a lot more people saying to me, ‘I really love what you do but I could never do it myself’. In the time since, I’ve heard that less and less,” she said.

Our votes to legalise the once-controversial topics of same-sex marriage and abortion also reflect these changes in society. Scott said, “Ireland's attitude to sex has changed in a lot of ways. I think the biggest change we can see is around the two referenda we had. We can see that we had a major push in releasing some of the stigma.”

Michael Bridgeman has run Angels, an adult boutique in Limerick, for 22 years. “When we opened we had people praying outside our door. The Church was against us. The Gardaí were against us. They wanted us to close,” he said.

At first, nobody wanted to be seen near the shop. According to Bridgeman, only men “hiding under their hoods, full of shame” would come in. This has changed in the last few years. Customers now come into the shop and speak openly about what they’re looking for. “To me, that shows as a society, we’re no longer ashamed of sex and pleasure,” Bridgeman said.

While Ireland has become more open to the idea of sex for reasons other than procreation, the sex education system still does not reflect this. The curriculum has not been updated in over 25 years.

Scott feels that neglecting sex education in this way is a disservice to young people. “Sex education should not just be about biology and how sex is just for a baby because in the real world, the majority of the time, that is not the case. We’ve come far enough as a society to openly recognise that,” she said.

Despite the progress we’ve made, many people feel that they received an inadequate amount of education about the topic in school. Scott said, “There should be comprehensive sex ed. We should have pushed that into our schools by now, and it’s just not happening.”

Sex education was introduced in Ireland in 1995 under the title of Relationships and Sexuality Education (RSE). However, it is up to the school to implement the curriculum. This can be difficult depending on the experience the teacher has with the material, as well as the religious ethos of the school.

Approximately 90% of primary schools in Ireland are owned and operated by the Catholic Church, according to Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review in 2019. This can affect the standard of RSE that’s given to students. In fact, a 2020 survey conducted by the Economic and Social Research Institute Ireland revealed that the subject greatly varied across individual second-level schools.

A previous survey carried out in 2012 showed that almost a third of Irish people did not receive any form of sexual education throughout secondary school. In 2018, a survey of NUIG students found that 71 per cent of women and 63 per cent of men were not satisfied with the level of education they received on the topic in secondary school.

One of the major gaps in the RSE curriculum is the education around LGBTQ+ relationships, despite the fact that the number of young people that openly belong to the LGBTQ+ community has grown significantly. “Our education needs to keep up with that and recognise that, not try to hide it and pretend it doesn’t exist,” Scott said.

Access to the internet and media consumption is also influencing how young people see relationships. Twenty per cent of young people find pornography a “useful” source of information about healthy sexual relationships, according to a 2018 Youth Work Ireland Health Survey. This can be dangerous, as a lot of pornographic material can be violent and unrealistic.

Bridgeman said, “Being in the work I am, I’m always hearing stories of young people engaging in sexual acts they’ve seen online, without properly educating themselves on things like consent or safety. It’s worrying and disturbing.”

Dublin West TD Ruth Coppinger of Solidarity-People Before Profit, among many others, launched the Objective Sexual Education Bill in 2018. Under the bill, schools will not be allowed to let their religious ethos affect the way RSE is taught. The bill has passed through the first stage of the Dáil and is currently in the Select Committee on Education and Skills. While this is major progress, when exactly this bill will be put into action and enforced in schools across Ireland is unclear.