Comprehensive sex education is abolitionist work

As an anti-capitalist with a background in organising, there was one realisation that made me pivot to teaching sex education: sex negativity, or the taboo nature of sex, is as pervasive as it is because it’s profitable.

The purpose behind oppressing women, queer folks, BIPOC, fat and disabled folks is to increase financial profit, by ensuring hierarchy and creating standards and norms that require us to  spend incessantly to reach. Oppressed people – even more so those with intersecting marginalised identities – are told both subtly and explicitly that sex is not for them or about them. Their pleasure, their bodies, and the types of sex they may have are excluded from conventional sex education in lieu of conversations about condoms and STI horror stories.

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Although abolition is often linked to moving away from capitalism, it is rarely associated with sex education – but it should be. Abolitionism is about alternatives to carceral justice. Unlike right wing and centrist “tough on crime” advocates, or liberal calls for police and prison “reform”, abolitionists seek to get rid of police and prisons entirely.