Policy — Educating our Young People

Policy — Educating our Young People

The Women’s Rights Party supports, with some reservations, the Ministry of Education’s Relationships and Sexuality Education Framework which replaces the previous guidelines. The RSE Framework recognises the reality of biological sex and removes references to the imprecise concept of “gender”.

We support age appropriate and scientifically accurate education about sexuality, relationships, and consent. However, any discussion about consent in the context of sexual activity must stress that young people cannot legally consent if they are under 16 years of age.

Schools should provide full disclosure to parents and caregivers of what is being taught in the relationships and sexuality curriculum. Schools should dispose of not use resources that conflate the words, “sex” and “gender” or confuse sexual orientation and gender. Outside agencies such as Inside Out and Qtopia should not be providing resources or instruction in schools, especially if the teacher is not present.

Children who do not conform to sex-based stereotypes or who could grow up to be attracted to the same sex, should be supported in this. It needs to be clear that changing sex is not biologically possible.

New Zealand’s education system has been reinforcing “social transition” (changing appearance to align with stereotypes of the opposite sex (or no sex), using inappropriate pronouns, and allowing use of opposite sex toilets and changing facilities), often without parents’ knowledge. The RSE Framework is a signal that such practices can no longer be tolerated.

Teachers should not be supporting social transitioning in schools. Supporting social transition is a clinical intervention that often leads to medical transitioning and affects all students.

Teachers can refer concerns about children who show signs of distress about their sex to appropriate professionals in line with the recommendations of the Cass Report, and all such discussions must involve parents.

The Women’s Rights Party welcomed the removal of the previous RSE guidelines and the focus on developing an RSE framework that will sit within health and education learning, and will be based on knowledge and scientific reality, as opposed to beliefs, including beliefs that people can change their sex, or that there are more than two sexes.

In our submission on the new Framework, we supported the Resist Gender Education position that the proposed RSE Framework is a vast improvement on the RSE guide. In their Substack commentary titled “Proceed with caution”, Resist Gender Education highlighted the following improvements:

• There is no mention at all of gender identity.
• There is no more coercion to have ‘gender identities’ “visible in resources” or students to be “addressed by their preferred name and pronouns.”
• The topics are listed under year levels, rather than Ministry curriculum levels, making it much easier for parents to know what is to be covered for their child’s age group.
• The reality of the sex binary is reinforced in factual language; “male and female bodies have reproductive systems that work together during fertilisation” and “Females have ovaries, a uterus, and a vagina to make eggs and grow a baby. Males have testicles and a penis to make and deliver sperm“
• That there is a wide range of views around sexuality is recognised: “people have views that are influenced by culture, religious beliefs, and family values. These views may inform the personal choices they make about relationships and sexual behaviour. This can include discussions about choosing not to have sex.”

Parental rights are acknowledged

The education of our children is vitally important to our members, as is the protection of parental rights, for example to know what is being taught in schools and to be able to take their children out of any part of sexuality education.
We are concerned at the influence of outside agencies with an agenda to promote “gender ideology” producing resources that would undermine the new RSE framework. We warned that there could be resources supplied by outside agencies hanging around in teachers’ resource rooms. Principals should ensure such materials are removed and destroyed.

Issue of “consent”

A number of members contributed to our submission on the proposed curriculum, with debate around what is meant by “consent”, given that sexual activity with anyone under 16 years of age is illegal and therefore, children under this age are not capable of consenting to sex.

The topic of consent in relation to sexual activity is proposed to be covered in Year 10 (14-15 year olds). Given these teenagers are under the age of consent to sexual activity, there needs to be a strong emphasis that underage sex is against the law and that sexual activity is a choice to be made only by those aged over 16.

As Resist Gender Education says: “The reasons for the legal age of consent to sexual contact need to be clearly communicated as well as the fact that not everyone chooses to be sexually active, nor does any person have a right to demand or coerce others into having sex.”

Consent education at a younger age is about boundaries, and is primarily about the right to say “no” in a range of contexts.  Children need to learn that they have the right to say “no”, especially when it concerns their own bodies.  If children do not learn to have a sense of bodily autonomy, of their right to say “no” to adults (and to other children), and of their right to resist social pressures, then they will be more vulnerable to sexual abuse.