Tag Archives: teenagers

Mr Kenneth Tong, misogyny epitomised

Ever wondered what misogyny is? Read this interview.

I fully understand that the concept of feminism doesn’t appeal to everyone (equality isn’t everyone’s bag, especially those who seek to benefit from inequality) but I was very, very pleased to see almost universal condemnation directed at ex Big Brother contestant, the detestable Kenneth Tong.

Popularised via Twitter over the past week for his disgraceful, irresponsible tweets encouraging women and girls to starve themselves for the benefit of his limp penis, today Tong felt the full force of interrogational journalism when Independent columnist Johann Hari’s interview with him hit both the internet and press with a bang.

Tong doesn’t believe women are fully human- rather, women everywhere are disposable playthings for him to exploit freely. Women’s flesh should be regulated. Hell, women shouldn’t even eat! How selfish of them!

Gems such as ‘A girl who has sex for free is an idiot. Seriously.’ prove that Tong views women in an incredibly twisted light- not as human beings with thoughts, feelings, wants, needs and desires, but instead as blow up plastic moveable dolls that exist solely for male utility.

This isn’t a free speech issue- far from it, because I will, and am, using my free speech to contest his free speech. And, whilst this idiot has the right to say whatever he likes, those of us who oppose his hate speech (and this is hate speech, directed at women and the overweight) can use our free speech as an effective protest.

I’ve resisted adding my voice to the crowd for a while on the premise of Tong’s attention seeking nature- but it’s obvious that he’s got his attention now, so I don’t see why not. Thank goodness that everyone thinks he is awful.

I don’t have much else to say on the issue, and I certainly don’t have anything new to add to the condemnation- Johann Hari has covered it brilliantly. Everyone should read the interview. Just read it.

Why sex and relationships education should be compulsory

Last week, Stewart Jackson, Conservative MP for Peterborough, embarrassed himself in an ill informed twitter rant against the importance of sex education. Jackson was responding to the Health Protection Agency’s regional statistics on sexually transmitted infections, and the news that Peterborough has the fourth highest rate of STIs in eastern England. ‘Very disappointing news on STI rates in Peterborough’ He tweeted. ‘No doubt our liberal friends will tell us we need more sex education- as it’s worked so well!’ In response to complaints, Jackson tweeted “Sex education memo to sad tedious sex obsessed Leftie weirdos – you’re confusing me with someone who’s interested.” Later, he told Peterborough’s Evening Telegraph “I wanted to engage in intelligent debate but was met with a barrage of crude, personal abuse”.

Interesting contradiction- for a man whose blame culture views suggest an intolerance of young people, his insults are more than a little childish.Here’s hoping Stewart Jackson remembers what it’s like to be a teenager, because if he does, perhaps he would credit young people with an ounce of intelligence.
Jackson’s oversimplification of the issue is telling in itself. Ask any young person and they’ll probably confirm that sex education isn’t reaching children in time. We need more information, and we need distributed earlier. Sex and relationships education, covering both biological and social aspects of sexual activity, is an issue that needs to be addressed with ever increasing urgency.
It’s no secret that British teenage pregnancy rates are the highest in Europe. Thankfully, not all politicians subscribe to Stewart Jackson’s reductive view, and a recent attempt to get compulsory sex and relationship education back on the political agenda couldn’t be better timed. Put forward by Chris Bryant, Labour MP for Rhondda, the bill only applies to England, and, as previous parliamentary bills on SRE have stated, parents have the option to remove their child from the lessons. But it’s a promising start, and the bill stood unopposed during its first reading in parliament last Wednesday (8th). Whilst introducing the bill to parliament, Bryant made the glaringly apparent yet under reported observation that Britain’s teen pregnancy rates may be so high compared to other countries because our many of our European counterparts many other have compulsory sex and relationship education policies already in place.
Knowledge is power, and logic suggests that it makes sense to equip young people with the education and information they need to embark on safe and healthy sex lives. This means teaching them about the ins and outs before they’re likely to run off and experiment- and in a commercially sex saturated culture, that age is decreasing. As the ‘sexualisation of children’ debate rumbles on, not enough has been said about sex and relationship education that has the potential to counteract the images young people come across almost every day.

Young people are aware of the facts, and in 2008 the UK Youth Parliament launched a campaign called Are You Getting It?, releasing a report that simply said sex education is too little, too late. There’s an unmistakable dichotomy here- late sex and relationship education paired with early exposure to sex and raunch culture appears to fuel the climbing STI and teen pregnancy rates.
Sex education came tantalisingly close to a stamp of legitimacy in 2008, when the previous government agreed to make sex and relationships education a fixture on the national curriculum. Those plans were shelved this year by former Schools Minister Ed Balls, who caving to Conservative opposition, redrafted the Children, Schools and Families Bill a month before the general election. At the time, current Secretary of State for Education Michael Gove buried his head firmly in the sand about the issue, telling the BBC “children are children until they are 16, and after that they are adults”. This, in defence of Tory opposition to remove a parent’s right to stop their children receiving sex education under the age of 15.

Young people are having sex and will continue to do so. Effective sex education is available, but the fact that it isn’t yet compulsory means that some schools choose not to use the resource, instead, laying responsibility at the door of parents. If kids can’t get the information from their parents, they risk an all too common tragedy of attempting to cobble together an education based on peer pressure, pornography, and pop culture.

An open letter to BBC3

I used to feel confident in trusting the BBC. I and many others my age enjoyed our late 90s childhood years. We were quite comfortably over saturated with CBBC’s after school entertainment- the eye catching, bright colours, the chirpy, spirited young presenters who seems to relate to us all so well. It suited our demographic well and I don’t think any of us, at 8 years old, had any complaints.

However, we are not children anymore. The BBC’s mission statement maintains that they aim to ‘enrich people’s lives with programmes that inform, educate and entertain’. All very well. Considering the BBC’s diverse range of media outlets are aimed at an all inclusive modern day Britain, I can only assume that, in the case of BBC3, these programmes have been carefully designed for idiots. Let’s not beat about the bush here- it’s pretty much an ‘either/or’ situation.

BBC3 seems to take the BBC’s mission statement and manipulate it ever so slightly; instead of these programmes being informative, educational and entertaining, they are educational or informative or entertaining. And, lets not forget, BBC3’s definition of entertaining is dubious at best. As students, we fit rather neatly into the channel’s suspiciously vague 15-34 year old target audience demographic.  Essentially, BBC3’s target audience age range may contribute heavily to the core of the problem. The rather loosely grouped ages 15-34 tends to span from under eighteens to those well established into adulthood, and all those tricky years in between. What do BBC3 choose to feed these fertile, tumultuous, rapidly expanding young minds?  Well it seems that if you’re aged 15 to 34 and you find yourself suddenly and urgently concerned about Danny Dyer’s opinions on the existence of aliens, BBC3 is your first point of call. To put it simply, almost all of their programmes are so incredulously cretinous that I often wonder, whilst watching, if BBC3 are actually just playing some kind of cruel joke on me. The informative ‘Don’t Get Screwed’ is a programme consisting of consumer law set to a Top Of The Pops soundtrack and fronted by vacant looking pretty people who appear to be suspiciously dead behind the eyes. Then there’s the relatively new ‘Hotter Than My Daughter’ series- a makeover show presented by a forgotten member of a forgotten girl band that pits mothers and daughters against each other in a bid to look the most attractive.

Get your act together BBC3, because I am not informed, not educated and certainly not entertained by these poor excuses for television programmes. Of course, it’s important not to forget BBC3’s educational documentaries, but even then, they’re fronted by a presenter with celebrity credentials in order to drag in more ratings. As far as I can remember, BBC3’s origins were rooted in showcasing sharp, young British comedy and drama. Although these gems still sparkle on their listings, it’s now rare. There appears to be such a lack in quality British programming for young people- in turn giving way to vapid, soulless, condescending MTV style programming for the masses. Is this the way forward for youth television?