November 19, 2024 • 21 mins
Consent, respect, and healthy relationships—how can parents prepare their children for these crucial aspects of life?
Chanel Contos, founder of the Teach Us Consent movement, joins Justin to discuss the challenges of addressing normalised sexual violence, the role parents play in creating open dialogues, and the crucial inclusion of boys in these conversations.
In this episode:
- Talk About Consent | consent.gov.au
- Normalised sexual violence
- Pornography
- Consent Laid Bare: Sex, Entitlement & the Distortion of Desire by Chanel Contos
- Educating parents & teachers
- Age-appropriate conversations
- Respect, boundaries & removing shame
- Lifeline Australia - 13 11 14
- Kids Helpline - 1800 55 1800
- 13YARN Australia | For First Nation Australians - 13 92 76
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
It's the Happy Families Podcast. It's the podcast for the
time poor parent who just wants answers.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Now, Hello and welcome the Happy Families Podcast.
Speaker 3 (00:16):
So good to have you along today.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
I am extremely delighted, so pleased to welcome Chanelle Coontos
to the Happy Families Podcast today. Chanelle Contos is a
leading advocate for sexual consent education in Australia and the
founder of the Teach Us Consent movement. We're going to
talk more about that movement shortly just before we kick
on with the podcast, though a quick heads up, some
(00:40):
of the discussions that we're going to be having in
this podcast will probably not be for small is that
the content is not explicit by any stretch. But we
are going to be talking about consent sexual issues and
making sure that we can reduce the amount of abuse
and increase the amount of respect that we see in
the way that kids are being raised, especially around this topic.
(01:03):
So if you've got young kids who are listening to
the podcast with you, may be in the car on
the way to school, this one might be one to
have listened to on your own first before you decide
whether to bring the kids in important discussion. Nevertheless, please
use your parental discretion Wisely, Chanel Contos has been a
powerful voice for the urgent need for comprehensive consent education
in schools and a result of her work, we pretty
(01:24):
much have that across the nation now. She's also an
ambassador as am I for the Australian Government's Consent Can't
Wait campaign. Go to Consent dot gov dot au for
more on that, and she Noel continues to work towards
the future where young people grow up understanding the importance
of respect for relationships and the boundaries of consent. So
good to have you on the podcast this morning. Where
does this conversation find you?
Speaker 1 (01:45):
I'm actually an Oxford at the moment, I just started
to studying again.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
Wow okay, And it's early for you and it's late
for me because time zones are really hard. So delighted. Yeah,
de love to be able to talk with you about
this conversation. There will be some people, even in twenty
twenty four who didn't quite catch the whole teachers consent thing,
the thing where you probably unintentionally, I guess, became a
(02:09):
national spokesperson for consent. For those who are unfamiliar with
the story, can you please give us a sort of
a reader's digest feeling of what teachers consent is and
how you came to be doing what you're doing.
Speaker 1 (02:23):
Yeah. So, Teachers Consent started as a campaign, and it
started as a petition for consent education to be mandated
in the Australian national curriculum. It actually started as a
petition the concer education to be mandated in my local community.
And then because it got traction from all around Australia,
we pretty quickly expanded it to you know, make it
(02:45):
inclusive of everyone in all schools. And in that process
we collected and published testimonies of sexual assault or rape
that occurred while people were of school age they think
could have been preventable or at least handled it in
(03:05):
a better way if they had a better understanding of consent.
That was supposed to emphasize the petition. So we ended
up getting almost fifty thousand signatures in that petition and
almost seven thousand people submitted these sorts of testimonies and
actually more did but we could only read and post
seven thousand because it got to a point where it
(03:26):
was a lot and we worked very closely across the
political spectrum for a year quite intensely, and then consent
education was mandated from kindergarten to year ten in all
Australian schools every single year in a nache appropriate way
as a consequence, which is really exciting.
Speaker 2 (03:45):
Chanel, It's an incredible story. I don't want to glorify
or glamorize what occurred, because it's a sult, it's ripe.
Speaker 3 (03:53):
It's just it's appalling.
Speaker 2 (03:56):
And yet when you share the story that you've just shared,
sometimes it's easy to gloss over the reality that the pain,
the violence, the awfulness of what occurred. I wonder if
in a way that you feel comfortable if you can
help people who are listening to this and maybe going oh, yeah, okay,
(04:16):
that's great, well done.
Speaker 3 (04:17):
Good on you for doing that.
Speaker 2 (04:19):
Can you help can you help us to understand the
gravity or the impact of these seven thousand plus testimonials
of primarily school girls, although not exclusively, who have endured
these challenges. You can you give us a bit more
context around that, again without sort of turning into too
something that it's not meant to be.
Speaker 1 (04:41):
I think the context that is important is that, and
I think this was also what teachers consent did quite
specifically was we looked at normalized sexual violence, and I
think a lot of the context of teachers consent was
that these are things that happened when people were young,
but because of their lack of understanding around consent or
(05:03):
respectful relationships, they you know, never seek help about it.
They didn't really think much else about it. They kind
of labeled it as like an uncomfortable or unwanted sexual experience.
They never thought about it as potentially a crime or
something that they should tell a parent or a teacher about,
or you know, an older sibling or something like that.
And I think that normalization is really key here as well,
(05:25):
because it explains why because you know, yeah, as you said,
almost seven thousand testimonies, almost all of them were young girls.
Almost all of the perpetrators were young boys. Even when
the victims were boys in those testimonies, almost all the
time the perpetrators were young boys as well. And I
think when we think about that, it also helps us
(05:45):
understand how it could be possible that that sort of
scale of violence is being perpetrated in our schools. There's, uh,
there's so much I want to go into right now.
I actually I've written a whole book on different types
of rapists and perpetration and how you can prevent those
different things. So if you want to check that out
for more information, it's called Concentale Bear. But in brief,
(06:07):
there are forms of sexual violence that are easy to
prevent with education, and this sort of normalized violence that
occurs in teen years perpetrated out of ignorance, out of entitlement,
out of the fact that the main form of sex
education for young people these days in Australia and beyond
is pornography. Those sorts of acts of sexual violence can
(06:30):
be counteracted with adequate conversations and educations, and that's why
there's such a focus on it, I think, because they
also make up the majority of this sort of Yeah,
this context.
Speaker 3 (06:41):
Consent light Bear is the name of the book.
Speaker 2 (06:44):
I really appreciate the way you describe I'm going to
use the term the casual brutality of this just accepting
that boys be boys, or it's just the way things are,
or I didn't know, or there was, like you said,
this fundamental misunderstanding of what consent is and how it's
supposed to work, which leads to who I mean, These
experiences cast long shadows through the remainder of many of
these people's lives. This is not a oh, whoops, we
(07:07):
made a mistake. Let's just get on with it and
fist pump, We're good. These are much more serious things, Chanel,
You've become an ambassador for consent. Can't why it's federal
government initiative you and I are both involved with, as
well as Dan Prince pay and some other really wonderful people.
What's your role there and what do you think the
federal government's really trying to do here to help parents
(07:28):
and to help kids, and to help educators to deal
with this increasingly challenging problem.
Speaker 1 (07:35):
The whole idea behind it is to encourage parents or
guardians or really anyone who has young people in their
life to take a step back and think, am I
currently equipped to answer these questions? Is there anything else
I could learn myself about this topic so that I
can feel more comfortable delivering it or you know, initiating
(07:55):
it or responding to it when it inevitably will come
up when you're as a young person. And the whole
point is, you know, consent education and these sorts of
conversations in the mainstream are a relatively new thing for
the general population. Obviously, some people would have had quite
specific education on all this stuff throughout their whole lives.
(08:17):
But the whole idea is that there's a very good
chance that this education skipped you. You might intuitively understand
it and know it, but we just want to help
you with accessing the language and helping you know kind
of what's age appropriate for different children, or what should
be happening, or what conversations should I be having with
my kids friends' parents as well to understand what's going on,
(08:41):
and what are the ways that I can, you know,
educate myself before I attempt to educate others.
Speaker 2 (08:48):
So many questions that we really need to unpack here.
I want to because we're in the middle of school
this week. It's the end of school year. Everyone's I
mean this. There were so many stories, so many testimonials,
so many painful experiences that came through your website that
highlighted that this is the time of the year when
so much harm can be done if parents have got
(09:09):
kids heading to schools or already there. I guess in
some ways some people might say it's a bit too late,
but I don't know if it's ever too late to
have a conversation about consent. How do you talk to
parents about the things that they can say to their
kids and actually get through Because a lot of teenagers,
I mean sixteen, seventeen, eighteen year olds, mum starts to
or dad starts to have a conversation about sex and consent,
(09:30):
a lot of them are going to roll their eyes
and be like, hello, you were born last century.
Speaker 3 (09:34):
What do you know.
Speaker 1 (09:36):
I think a few things are one the conversations can
be had from a really early early age. They just
don't necessarily have to be about sex or referring to
sexon anyway.
Speaker 3 (09:46):
Yeah, of course.
Speaker 1 (09:46):
Yeah, So you can normalize these conversations with young people.
You can teach and this is also what's in the
Australian curriculum from kindergarten. You can teach your kids to
ask permission, to hold someone's hand, to braid their hair,
to play with their toys. You can teach them how
to give permission or deny permission and show them that
(10:09):
will be respected when they exhibit that. So that by
the time you are talking about this in a sexual
way around high school, when it becomes very relevant for
young people, that it's just kind of like intuitive to them,
and they already understand these principles and they can just
apply it to this new lens of this new activity
that they may or may not be doing or will
be doing in the near future. And I also think
(10:29):
even though I can almost guarantee you if you have
these conversations with your kids, they will rotherize, but that
does not mean they are not listening. I think that
they will respond in a way that he is probably like, Okay, yeah,
I'm embarrassed to get it whatever again, unless you've had
this you built up over a long time and you've
normalized these sorts of conversations with them, But that doesn't
(10:51):
mean that it's not soaking in and that doesn't mean
that they're not appreciating that an adult is speaking to
them like an adult in this space. And I think
also a way to make sure that you're not just
like completely missing the market again to access the resources
that are provided to you by the Australian government or
other resources and figure out what are actually the challenges
(11:11):
that young people that your child is facing today and
then use your intuition as a parent or a caregiver
to know what maturity level they may be out in
that situation, and then how explicitly and what sort of
topics should be relevant to them. It really is a
conversation that needs to be had in various ways from
a really young age. But if you've gotten too schoolies
now and you're thinking, oh my god, they're off to
(11:32):
schoolies and I've never had this conversation with them before,
it's not too late to you know. You can text
them a resource, you can give them a call. You
can remind them that consent is the law. You can
remind them that consent is important in any happy relationship.
There's definitely ways. From a farce end, a little reminder
(11:53):
to our young people who are currently gathering in various
parts of Australia.
Speaker 2 (12:05):
Three things that have come out of this conversation. The
first is just the reminder. I spoke with Ben Matthews, QT,
law professor. You're probably familiar with his work, Chanel. He
did the Australian Child my Treatment Study. Incredible guy. Research
that he conducted shows that Australian adolescents boys are the
most likely to commit child sexual abuse, that is sexual
(12:28):
abuse on anybody who was under the age of eighteen
and child on child sex abuses pretty much at record
levels for all of the reasons that you've just highlighted.
This is such a wake up call for Australia, for
our parents and for our young people around. This second
thing that I wanted to highlight was just on that one.
On the fifth of November, I did a podcast where
(12:49):
I answered a question from a listener who said her
seven year old had come to her and said, I'm
a bit worried because my friend, who was also seven,
has got a girlfriend he wants to take pictures of
her vagina. And I just said, how wonderful it is
that this seven year old has gone to mum and
that Mum's created an environment where he knows I'm uncomfortable,
this feels icky, and the home situation is open and
(13:13):
supportive and judgmental, which brings me to the third thing
that I was going to say, and I guess it's well,
this is the question that comes off the back of
those two things.
Speaker 3 (13:21):
What have you seen works when it comes.
Speaker 2 (13:23):
To creating opportunities for open and supportive and non judgmental conversations.
A lot of parents number one don't know what to say,
and number two, even if they know what to say
they feel pretty uncomfortable with it, like, how do you
just how do you get the conversation going if you
haven't gone there before.
Speaker 1 (13:40):
I think that trying to remove this kind of like
societal and post shame on the topic needs to go.
It's obviously an uncomfortable conversation. Look, sexual assault is an
uncomfortable conversation, and of course there should be shame around
the fact that the rates of it in our society
are so high, and to that statistic of adolescent males
(14:02):
being the main perpetrators of child sexual abuse and sexual
assault in our country, you know, that's devastating, but we
can also look at that as an opportunity of how
to change that because there's a reason that we've slightly
not me. We're not perfect, and there's still very long
way to go, but there has been slight reductions in
(14:23):
child sexual abuse being perpetrated by adults because we do
have widespread conversations, because you know, we've got safeguarding measures,
different things in place to protect vulnerable children in that way,
and I think that parents having conversations often and also
being willing to learn themselves, because you know, sometimes these
(14:46):
conversations may lead to a young person being like, actually, no,
like this is what I think, or you know, this
is how this is, and you might have to go
back and look at that and see is that the
reality for this young person, or you know, have I
been held something wrong? Saying something that's problematic right now
and being willing to make it a two way conversation
(15:07):
as well. But one thing I also want to really
highlight before we move on from this conversation is that
I think a lot of parents have conversations around sexual
assault prevention with their daughters, but I don't think we've
gotten to the stage where they're having them with their
boys yet and realizing that that's kind of the number
one thing you can do as a parent to prevent
sexuals sould if everyone else was speaking to their children.
(15:29):
I don't want to make it seem as if I'm
attacking boys, because I'm not in any way, but the
statistics do not lie, and when we're seeing that high
rate of perpetration from this specific demographic, we all need
to be willing to confront the fact that the person
that we love so much may, when inundated with alcohol
and peer pressure, may act in a way that we
(15:53):
wouldn't be proud of if we haven't given them those
clear directions, and it is just such a cycle. So
like breaking that cycle and knowing that having these conversations
is not attacking young men and it's actually one of
the best things we can do for them.
Speaker 2 (16:04):
Now, that's a conversation that I've had neumerous times when
I've presented around the country. I talked about on the
podcast as well, And I'm always worried that somebody's going
to jump down my throat and beat me up for
saying it and be really mad. But I actually think
we need to have some empathy for the potential perpetrator
or the perpetrator here, because the way that they will
carry throughout the rest of their lives every time this
conversation comes up, or if they go on to have
(16:24):
their own children, particularly daughters, if they have to imagine
their daughter going out on a date with somebody who
was just like what they were when they were a teen,
the damage, the psychological pain that they'll go through is
just extraordinary. Teaching our boys not to perpetrate is part
of the conversation. It's a really uncomfortable thing to say.
It doesn't feel nice to say it, and we're certainly
(16:45):
not pointing fingers, but it's also a reality that statistically
the guys are the guys are the accelerators, and the
girls of the breaks and when alcohol is involved and
peer pression and all the complexities of social just social
challenges when you're an adolescent, it's such a hard thing.
Speaker 3 (17:04):
Our time is almost up.
Speaker 2 (17:05):
Consent dot gov dot IU is the website where you
can find out more about what both Chanell, myself, Dan
and others have to say about this such an important topic.
Chanell is also the author of Consent Laid Bare, which
has been a phenomenally influential book in this particular area. Chanell,
I guess if we were to wrap things up with
(17:26):
maybe your top piece of advice for anyone who's listening
right now, the one thing that you'd want people to
understand about consent and about their kids as we continue
this conversation and as our society evolves around.
Speaker 3 (17:41):
This really important area over the next few years. What
would your.
Speaker 2 (17:45):
One, your one mega slice of advice be that you
want everyone to be able to walk away and remember
as a result of our discussion today.
Speaker 1 (17:53):
Well, I would start by really heavily suggesting everyone to
go to consent dot govt AU and just you know,
a look and see what you learn. If you learn nothing,
great you could.
Speaker 3 (18:04):
But you've got learn nothing.
Speaker 1 (18:05):
Absolutely yeah, but you might you very well might learn something,
and there's definitely no harm in having look at the resources.
I just really want to hone it on that point
we just said again, it can be really confronting as
a parent or a caregiver or something like that to
think about the fact that it's possible your own child
would ever perpetrate this. But the only way we can
(18:27):
truly stop this from occurring is through addressing the fact
that you know someone's perpetrating it, and again removing that
shame around the conversation and not making it seem like
an attack, but understanding it as a step towards a
more progressive, happier and you know, contrucive society, and being
(18:50):
willing to chat to our kids, knowing that even if
they're the nicest person in the world in all other instances,
that if we leave them to be educated on these
topics only from what they say on their screens, which
they are seeing from a very very young age and
(19:11):
quite explicit content that any young person can end up
perpetrating a violent act and in a sexual way, and
we just need to be willing to think about the
best result for everyone being if everyone was willing to
have these conversations with young people. And I also really
(19:31):
quickly want to address I know that consent is in
the Australian education system at the moment, and that is amazing,
but that is a safety net for people who don't
have parents who they can have these conversations with all
people who you know. Unfortunately, there's devastating rates into family
violence in Australia, people who can't rely on that information
coming from home in that way. It's an amazing policy
(19:52):
that we have that, but it is the bare minimum
and it is really important that all parents that can
do step up and have these conversations consistently with their
young people in a way that you can't really rely
on students having with teachers because they are going to
be so much more personal.
Speaker 2 (20:13):
Yeah, Chanelle, it really does start at home. Unfortunately not
everyone gets it there, but such an important point. Chanel
Kontos in Oxford, really appreciate your generosity and getting up
so early to have a chat with me on the
Happy Families podcast.
Speaker 3 (20:26):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (20:27):
Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 2 (20:28):
If the podcast has raised any issues for you, you
can visit Consent dot gov dot au and get more
information there for you or your family. If there are
more serious issues that have been raised, check out Parentline,
Kids Helpline or Lifeline. There's also one three yarn for
our Indigenous listeners. Chanel Kontos is a leading advocate for
sexual consent education in Australia, the founder of the Teachers
(20:50):
Consent Movement, the author of Consent Laid Bare, and ambassador
for the Australian Government's Consent Can't Wait campaign. We will
link to Consent Can't Wait, the Australian Government campaign in
the Happy Families show notes and for more information about
all the things we've talked about.
Speaker 3 (21:07):
That website will be the best place to go.
Speaker 2 (21:10):
We really appreciate Justin roll On, the producer of the
Happy Families podcast make it sound so great.
Speaker 3 (21:13):
Thank you JR.
Speaker 2 (21:14):
Appreciate your help and for more information about making your
family happier, visit us at Happyfamilies dot com dot au.
It's the Happy Families Podcast. It's the podcast for the
time poor parent who just wants answers.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Now, Hello and welcome the Happy Families Podcast.
Speaker 3 (00:16):
So good to have you along today.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
I am extremely delighted, so pleased to welcome Chanelle Coontos
to the Happy Families Podcast today. Chanelle Contos is a
leading advocate for sexual consent education in Australia and the
founder of the Teach Us Consent movement. We're going to
talk more about that movement shortly just before we kick
on with the podcast, though a quick heads up, some
(00:40):
of the discussions that we're going to be having in
this podcast will probably not be for small is that
the content is not explicit by any stretch. But we
are going to be talking about consent sexual issues and
making sure that we can reduce the amount of abuse
and increase the amount of respect that we see in
the way that kids are being raised, especially around this topic.
(01:03):
So if you've got young kids who are listening to
the podcast with you, may be in the car on
the way to school, this one might be one to
have listened to on your own first before you decide
whether to bring the kids in important discussion. Nevertheless, please
use your parental discretion Wisely, Chanel Contos has been a
powerful voice for the urgent need for comprehensive consent education
in schools and a result of her work, we pretty
(01:24):
much have that across the nation now. She's also an
ambassador as am I for the Australian Government's Consent Can't
Wait campaign. Go to Consent dot gov dot au for
more on that, and she Noel continues to work towards
the future where young people grow up understanding the importance
of respect for relationships and the boundaries of consent. So
good to have you on the podcast this morning. Where
does this conversation find you?
Speaker 1 (01:45):
I'm actually an Oxford at the moment, I just started
to studying again.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
Wow okay, And it's early for you and it's late
for me because time zones are really hard. So delighted. Yeah,
de love to be able to talk with you about
this conversation. There will be some people, even in twenty
twenty four who didn't quite catch the whole teachers consent thing,
the thing where you probably unintentionally, I guess, became a
(02:09):
national spokesperson for consent. For those who are unfamiliar with
the story, can you please give us a sort of
a reader's digest feeling of what teachers consent is and
how you came to be doing what you're doing.
Speaker 1 (02:23):
Yeah. So, Teachers Consent started as a campaign, and it
started as a petition for consent education to be mandated
in the Australian national curriculum. It actually started as a
petition the concer education to be mandated in my local community.
And then because it got traction from all around Australia,
we pretty quickly expanded it to you know, make it
(02:45):
inclusive of everyone in all schools. And in that process
we collected and published testimonies of sexual assault or rape
that occurred while people were of school age they think
could have been preventable or at least handled it in
(03:05):
a better way if they had a better understanding of consent.
That was supposed to emphasize the petition. So we ended
up getting almost fifty thousand signatures in that petition and
almost seven thousand people submitted these sorts of testimonies and
actually more did but we could only read and post
seven thousand because it got to a point where it
(03:26):
was a lot and we worked very closely across the
political spectrum for a year quite intensely, and then consent
education was mandated from kindergarten to year ten in all
Australian schools every single year in a nache appropriate way
as a consequence, which is really exciting.
Speaker 2 (03:45):
Chanel, It's an incredible story. I don't want to glorify
or glamorize what occurred, because it's a sult, it's ripe.
Speaker 3 (03:53):
It's just it's appalling.
Speaker 2 (03:56):
And yet when you share the story that you've just shared,
sometimes it's easy to gloss over the reality that the pain,
the violence, the awfulness of what occurred. I wonder if
in a way that you feel comfortable if you can
help people who are listening to this and maybe going oh, yeah, okay,
(04:16):
that's great, well done.
Speaker 3 (04:17):
Good on you for doing that.
Speaker 2 (04:19):
Can you help can you help us to understand the
gravity or the impact of these seven thousand plus testimonials
of primarily school girls, although not exclusively, who have endured
these challenges. You can you give us a bit more
context around that, again without sort of turning into too
something that it's not meant to be.
Speaker 1 (04:41):
I think the context that is important is that, and
I think this was also what teachers consent did quite
specifically was we looked at normalized sexual violence, and I
think a lot of the context of teachers consent was
that these are things that happened when people were young,
but because of their lack of understanding around consent or
(05:03):
respectful relationships, they you know, never seek help about it.
They didn't really think much else about it. They kind
of labeled it as like an uncomfortable or unwanted sexual experience.
They never thought about it as potentially a crime or
something that they should tell a parent or a teacher about,
or you know, an older sibling or something like that.
And I think that normalization is really key here as well,
(05:25):
because it explains why because you know, yeah, as you said,
almost seven thousand testimonies, almost all of them were young girls.
Almost all of the perpetrators were young boys. Even when
the victims were boys in those testimonies, almost all the
time the perpetrators were young boys as well. And I
think when we think about that, it also helps us
(05:45):
understand how it could be possible that that sort of
scale of violence is being perpetrated in our schools. There's, uh,
there's so much I want to go into right now.
I actually I've written a whole book on different types
of rapists and perpetration and how you can prevent those
different things. So if you want to check that out
for more information, it's called Concentale Bear. But in brief,
(06:07):
there are forms of sexual violence that are easy to
prevent with education, and this sort of normalized violence that
occurs in teen years perpetrated out of ignorance, out of entitlement,
out of the fact that the main form of sex
education for young people these days in Australia and beyond
is pornography. Those sorts of acts of sexual violence can
(06:30):
be counteracted with adequate conversations and educations, and that's why
there's such a focus on it, I think, because they
also make up the majority of this sort of Yeah,
this context.
Speaker 3 (06:41):
Consent light Bear is the name of the book.
Speaker 2 (06:44):
I really appreciate the way you describe I'm going to
use the term the casual brutality of this just accepting
that boys be boys, or it's just the way things are,
or I didn't know, or there was, like you said,
this fundamental misunderstanding of what consent is and how it's
supposed to work, which leads to who I mean, These
experiences cast long shadows through the remainder of many of
these people's lives. This is not a oh, whoops, we
(07:07):
made a mistake. Let's just get on with it and
fist pump, We're good. These are much more serious things, Chanel,
You've become an ambassador for consent. Can't why it's federal
government initiative you and I are both involved with, as
well as Dan Prince pay and some other really wonderful people.
What's your role there and what do you think the
federal government's really trying to do here to help parents
(07:28):
and to help kids, and to help educators to deal
with this increasingly challenging problem.
Speaker 1 (07:35):
The whole idea behind it is to encourage parents or
guardians or really anyone who has young people in their
life to take a step back and think, am I
currently equipped to answer these questions? Is there anything else
I could learn myself about this topic so that I
can feel more comfortable delivering it or you know, initiating
(07:55):
it or responding to it when it inevitably will come
up when you're as a young person. And the whole
point is, you know, consent education and these sorts of
conversations in the mainstream are a relatively new thing for
the general population. Obviously, some people would have had quite
specific education on all this stuff throughout their whole lives.
(08:17):
But the whole idea is that there's a very good
chance that this education skipped you. You might intuitively understand
it and know it, but we just want to help
you with accessing the language and helping you know kind
of what's age appropriate for different children, or what should
be happening, or what conversations should I be having with
my kids friends' parents as well to understand what's going on,
(08:41):
and what are the ways that I can, you know,
educate myself before I attempt to educate others.
Speaker 2 (08:48):
So many questions that we really need to unpack here.
I want to because we're in the middle of school
this week. It's the end of school year. Everyone's I
mean this. There were so many stories, so many testimonials,
so many painful experiences that came through your website that
highlighted that this is the time of the year when
so much harm can be done if parents have got
(09:09):
kids heading to schools or already there. I guess in
some ways some people might say it's a bit too late,
but I don't know if it's ever too late to
have a conversation about consent. How do you talk to
parents about the things that they can say to their
kids and actually get through Because a lot of teenagers,
I mean sixteen, seventeen, eighteen year olds, mum starts to
or dad starts to have a conversation about sex and consent,
(09:30):
a lot of them are going to roll their eyes
and be like, hello, you were born last century.
Speaker 3 (09:34):
What do you know.
Speaker 1 (09:36):
I think a few things are one the conversations can
be had from a really early early age. They just
don't necessarily have to be about sex or referring to
sexon anyway.
Speaker 3 (09:46):
Yeah, of course.
Speaker 1 (09:46):
Yeah, So you can normalize these conversations with young people.
You can teach and this is also what's in the
Australian curriculum from kindergarten. You can teach your kids to
ask permission, to hold someone's hand, to braid their hair,
to play with their toys. You can teach them how
to give permission or deny permission and show them that
(10:09):
will be respected when they exhibit that. So that by
the time you are talking about this in a sexual
way around high school, when it becomes very relevant for
young people, that it's just kind of like intuitive to them,
and they already understand these principles and they can just
apply it to this new lens of this new activity
that they may or may not be doing or will
be doing in the near future. And I also think
(10:29):
even though I can almost guarantee you if you have
these conversations with your kids, they will rotherize, but that
does not mean they are not listening. I think that
they will respond in a way that he is probably like, Okay, yeah,
I'm embarrassed to get it whatever again, unless you've had
this you built up over a long time and you've
normalized these sorts of conversations with them, But that doesn't
(10:51):
mean that it's not soaking in and that doesn't mean
that they're not appreciating that an adult is speaking to
them like an adult in this space. And I think
also a way to make sure that you're not just
like completely missing the market again to access the resources
that are provided to you by the Australian government or
other resources and figure out what are actually the challenges
(11:11):
that young people that your child is facing today and
then use your intuition as a parent or a caregiver
to know what maturity level they may be out in
that situation, and then how explicitly and what sort of
topics should be relevant to them. It really is a
conversation that needs to be had in various ways from
a really young age. But if you've gotten too schoolies
now and you're thinking, oh my god, they're off to
(11:32):
schoolies and I've never had this conversation with them before,
it's not too late to you know. You can text
them a resource, you can give them a call. You
can remind them that consent is the law. You can
remind them that consent is important in any happy relationship.
There's definitely ways. From a farce end, a little reminder
(11:53):
to our young people who are currently gathering in various
parts of Australia.
Speaker 2 (12:05):
Three things that have come out of this conversation. The
first is just the reminder. I spoke with Ben Matthews, QT,
law professor. You're probably familiar with his work, Chanel. He
did the Australian Child my Treatment Study. Incredible guy. Research
that he conducted shows that Australian adolescents boys are the
most likely to commit child sexual abuse, that is sexual
(12:28):
abuse on anybody who was under the age of eighteen
and child on child sex abuses pretty much at record
levels for all of the reasons that you've just highlighted.
This is such a wake up call for Australia, for
our parents and for our young people around. This second
thing that I wanted to highlight was just on that one.
On the fifth of November, I did a podcast where
(12:49):
I answered a question from a listener who said her
seven year old had come to her and said, I'm
a bit worried because my friend, who was also seven,
has got a girlfriend he wants to take pictures of
her vagina. And I just said, how wonderful it is
that this seven year old has gone to mum and
that Mum's created an environment where he knows I'm uncomfortable,
this feels icky, and the home situation is open and
(13:13):
supportive and judgmental, which brings me to the third thing
that I was going to say, and I guess it's well,
this is the question that comes off the back of
those two things.
Speaker 3 (13:21):
What have you seen works when it comes.
Speaker 2 (13:23):
To creating opportunities for open and supportive and non judgmental conversations.
A lot of parents number one don't know what to say,
and number two, even if they know what to say
they feel pretty uncomfortable with it, like, how do you
just how do you get the conversation going if you
haven't gone there before.
Speaker 1 (13:40):
I think that trying to remove this kind of like
societal and post shame on the topic needs to go.
It's obviously an uncomfortable conversation. Look, sexual assault is an
uncomfortable conversation, and of course there should be shame around
the fact that the rates of it in our society
are so high, and to that statistic of adolescent males
(14:02):
being the main perpetrators of child sexual abuse and sexual
assault in our country, you know, that's devastating, but we
can also look at that as an opportunity of how
to change that because there's a reason that we've slightly
not me. We're not perfect, and there's still very long
way to go, but there has been slight reductions in
(14:23):
child sexual abuse being perpetrated by adults because we do
have widespread conversations, because you know, we've got safeguarding measures,
different things in place to protect vulnerable children in that way,
and I think that parents having conversations often and also
being willing to learn themselves, because you know, sometimes these
(14:46):
conversations may lead to a young person being like, actually, no,
like this is what I think, or you know, this
is how this is, and you might have to go
back and look at that and see is that the
reality for this young person, or you know, have I
been held something wrong? Saying something that's problematic right now
and being willing to make it a two way conversation
(15:07):
as well. But one thing I also want to really
highlight before we move on from this conversation is that
I think a lot of parents have conversations around sexual
assault prevention with their daughters, but I don't think we've
gotten to the stage where they're having them with their
boys yet and realizing that that's kind of the number
one thing you can do as a parent to prevent
sexuals sould if everyone else was speaking to their children.
(15:29):
I don't want to make it seem as if I'm
attacking boys, because I'm not in any way, but the
statistics do not lie, and when we're seeing that high
rate of perpetration from this specific demographic, we all need
to be willing to confront the fact that the person
that we love so much may, when inundated with alcohol
and peer pressure, may act in a way that we
(15:53):
wouldn't be proud of if we haven't given them those
clear directions, and it is just such a cycle. So
like breaking that cycle and knowing that having these conversations
is not attacking young men and it's actually one of
the best things we can do for them.
Speaker 2 (16:04):
Now, that's a conversation that I've had neumerous times when
I've presented around the country. I talked about on the
podcast as well, And I'm always worried that somebody's going
to jump down my throat and beat me up for
saying it and be really mad. But I actually think
we need to have some empathy for the potential perpetrator
or the perpetrator here, because the way that they will
carry throughout the rest of their lives every time this
conversation comes up, or if they go on to have
(16:24):
their own children, particularly daughters, if they have to imagine
their daughter going out on a date with somebody who
was just like what they were when they were a teen,
the damage, the psychological pain that they'll go through is
just extraordinary. Teaching our boys not to perpetrate is part
of the conversation. It's a really uncomfortable thing to say.
It doesn't feel nice to say it, and we're certainly
(16:45):
not pointing fingers, but it's also a reality that statistically
the guys are the guys are the accelerators, and the
girls of the breaks and when alcohol is involved and
peer pression and all the complexities of social just social
challenges when you're an adolescent, it's such a hard thing.
Speaker 3 (17:04):
Our time is almost up.
Speaker 2 (17:05):
Consent dot gov dot IU is the website where you
can find out more about what both Chanell, myself, Dan
and others have to say about this such an important topic.
Chanell is also the author of Consent Laid Bare, which
has been a phenomenally influential book in this particular area. Chanell,
I guess if we were to wrap things up with
(17:26):
maybe your top piece of advice for anyone who's listening
right now, the one thing that you'd want people to
understand about consent and about their kids as we continue
this conversation and as our society evolves around.
Speaker 3 (17:41):
This really important area over the next few years. What
would your.
Speaker 2 (17:45):
One, your one mega slice of advice be that you
want everyone to be able to walk away and remember
as a result of our discussion today.
Speaker 1 (17:53):
Well, I would start by really heavily suggesting everyone to
go to consent dot govt AU and just you know,
a look and see what you learn. If you learn nothing,
great you could.
Speaker 3 (18:04):
But you've got learn nothing.
Speaker 1 (18:05):
Absolutely yeah, but you might you very well might learn something,
and there's definitely no harm in having look at the resources.
I just really want to hone it on that point
we just said again, it can be really confronting as
a parent or a caregiver or something like that to
think about the fact that it's possible your own child
would ever perpetrate this. But the only way we can
(18:27):
truly stop this from occurring is through addressing the fact
that you know someone's perpetrating it, and again removing that
shame around the conversation and not making it seem like
an attack, but understanding it as a step towards a
more progressive, happier and you know, contrucive society, and being
(18:50):
willing to chat to our kids, knowing that even if
they're the nicest person in the world in all other instances,
that if we leave them to be educated on these
topics only from what they say on their screens, which
they are seeing from a very very young age and
(19:11):
quite explicit content that any young person can end up
perpetrating a violent act and in a sexual way, and
we just need to be willing to think about the
best result for everyone being if everyone was willing to
have these conversations with young people. And I also really
(19:31):
quickly want to address I know that consent is in
the Australian education system at the moment, and that is amazing,
but that is a safety net for people who don't
have parents who they can have these conversations with all
people who you know. Unfortunately, there's devastating rates into family
violence in Australia, people who can't rely on that information
coming from home in that way. It's an amazing policy
(19:52):
that we have that, but it is the bare minimum
and it is really important that all parents that can
do step up and have these conversations consistently with their
young people in a way that you can't really rely
on students having with teachers because they are going to
be so much more personal.
Speaker 2 (20:13):
Yeah, Chanelle, it really does start at home. Unfortunately not
everyone gets it there, but such an important point. Chanel
Kontos in Oxford, really appreciate your generosity and getting up
so early to have a chat with me on the
Happy Families podcast.
Speaker 3 (20:26):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (20:27):
Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 2 (20:28):
If the podcast has raised any issues for you, you
can visit Consent dot gov dot au and get more
information there for you or your family. If there are
more serious issues that have been raised, check out Parentline,
Kids Helpline or Lifeline. There's also one three yarn for
our Indigenous listeners. Chanel Kontos is a leading advocate for
sexual consent education in Australia, the founder of the Teachers
(20:50):
Consent Movement, the author of Consent Laid Bare, and ambassador
for the Australian Government's Consent Can't Wait campaign. We will
link to Consent Can't Wait, the Australian Government campaign in
the Happy Families show notes and for more information about
all the things we've talked about.
Speaker 3 (21:07):
That website will be the best place to go.
Speaker 2 (21:10):
We really appreciate Justin roll On, the producer of the
Happy Families podcast make it sound so great.
Speaker 3 (21:13):
Thank you JR.
Speaker 2 (21:14):
Appreciate your help and for more information about making your
family happier, visit us at Happyfamilies dot com dot au.
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