Ep61: Vanessa Hamilton, Sexual Health Nurse, Educator & Author

Today my guest is Vanessa Hamilton, a Sexual Health Nurse, Educator & Author. In this episode we chat about Vanessa’s professional experience as a nurse and her various roles delivering professional development and educational workshops to a wide range of audiences including doctors, healthcare workers, teachers, and parents. Vanessa brings her experiences from human sexuality and reproductive nursing to outline that sex is much more than just the physical act or being male and female; it’s about relationships, respect, diversity, reproduction, consent, pleasure, health and sexuality. Vanessa believes that teaching young people about sex and sexuality needs to be age-appropriate, ongoing and use suitable language. Significantly, it doesn’t have to be uncomfortable. On this point, we talk about how parents and teachers might engage in everyday conversations with young people about human sexuality, and other ideas outlined in her new book ‘Talking Sex: A conversation guide for parents’. Just so you’re informed, as you might have guessed by now, we chat about potentially confronting topics, including those associated with child sexual abuse rates and sexual violence, as well as other less-confronting topics like pleasure, consent, and abstinence. Even the clitoris, the familiar bulb-shaped yet often misrepresented female organ, it’s sole function - pleasure, gets a mention. We explore how the word itself – sex – can often present challenges and obstacles when having conversations. We chat about some of the recurring parental concerns, often coming from a social context of fear, shame, negativity, hushed tones, and the idea that ‘this is unspeakable, and we don’t talk about it’ often associated with this topic. Vanessa shares insights into her writing process and how she manages the potential overwhelm of information in this territory. Vanessa believes human sexuality is at the heart of being human, that young people deserve a better outcome through life, and how this can be addressed with education - at home and in the classroom. That is, getting good information about sex, sexuality, respectful relationships and consent to be healthy, happy and well. Here’s my conversation with Vanessa Hamilton. Links: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vanessa-hamilton-943495102/ https://www.talkingthetalksexed.com.au/ https://ambapress.com.au/products/talking-sex