B4Y Mag Issue #15 January 2019 January 2019 Issue #15 B4Y | Page 67

Gays gone wild
Many of the people who spoke about their first time were very young and didn’t
really consider the sexual health consequences of sex.
Cliff Joannou, the editor of QX, is currently spearheading the ‘#SameSexSRE’
campaign for sex education in schools and believes that sex education needs to
evolve to help young people make better decisions about their sex life.
“The problem we have is that when it comes to sexual health awareness we’re
still treating young people in the same way they were being treated thirty years
ago. The education system has not evolved with the times. The internet changed
everything and apps and mobile phones have taken that to a whole new level.
Sexualised imagery is everywhere, from advertising to soap opera storylines, and
young kids can easily access porn on their phones or computers. This is not a
judgement about those things or the concept of fantasy or embracing one’s sexu-
ality, but what’s wrong is that the education system doesn’t give young people the
information they need to value their body, the facts about sex or understand the
difference between fantasy and reality.
“We need to stop pretending that young people live in a bubble within the real
world. If a young person is curious about sex or porn, they will find it. The best
thing we can do is give them the right level of information so that they can re-
spect their bodies and make educated decisions based on facts and not what
they looked up online.”
Cliff thinks that the problem lies at the top and that young gay men aren’t look-
ing after their sexual health because they just aren’t aware of it. “There are mid-
dle-aged men in Parliament who are completely oblivious to the real world and
don’t understand that teenagers are having sex.
“HIV transmission rates between young people are so high because most teen-
agers are not even taught about it at school. Younger guys have no connection
with 80s and 90s advertising campaigns. Even younger straight people think the
issue of HIV has gone away. Yes, HIV is a manageable condition and no longer a
death sentence, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be educating young people
about it and helping them to protect themselves.
“Besides there are also lots of other STIs that we need to be educating them
about. At least then if they are having sex, they can do so safely and be fully
informed.”
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