I don’t know why I should be so shocked that the Yes side of the marriage equality debate in Australia should be so triggered by the fact some people believe marriage is between a man and a woman, it seems some can’t even handle basic biology. In The Australian today is an article by Rebecca Urban “Call to strip gender talk from sex-ed classes” about the push by Damien Riggs and Clare Bartholomaeus of Flinders University in South Australia to rid school sex-ed of ‘gendered’ genital terms.
This Safe-Schools, gender-neutral, men-can-give-birth-too bullshit is nothing new, though I am freshly disgusted by the suggestion that ‘erectile tissue’ should replace the words ‘penis’ and clitoris’. Way to take the joy out of sex. I want to suck your erectile tissue? Ew, no thank you, you most likely serial killer. And you if think men have difficulty finding the clitoris now, wait till he’s groping around in the dark for ‘sensitive nerve endings’. Mr Riggs believes this kind of non-gender specific language will reduce HIV, unplanned pregnancies and coerced sex. More realistically it will take us back to an age when teenagers didn’t about their anatomy or what was happening to their bodies until a baby plonked out in the middle of class.
And anyway, what else do we expect from Damien Riggs, a man who is President of the Australian Critical Race and Whiteness Studies Association, and Clare Bartholomaeus author of such illustrious articles as ‘Girls can like boy toys: junior primary school children’s understanding of feminist picture books’.
No, what rankles my circular flesh anew is the quote from Mr Riggs that:
…”the language of sperm and eggs can produce dysphoria for some young transgender people. It is entirely possible … to speak about combining the two gametes as resulting in a pregnancy, without referring to egg and sperm per se.”
