TALKING POINTS
There’s nothing like controversy and current events to kickstart conversation. Seize the day and get talking with your child about these recent news stories…
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What the Cornell 7 Case Reveals About Consent and Bravery (Time, 7/10/26)
“After hearing about the alleged assault of a young woman – known legally by the anonymous name of Jane Doe – by 7 men in a Cornell University fraternity in 2024, with 50 men invited in a group chat to join in, people ask: ‘How could this happen?’ Boys know about consent – but do they know how to be brave? We raise girls to be perfect and boys to take physical risks. But boys need practice in talking about things like: what would you type in that chat and who would you call? Boys need to hear their mum’s story if she is a survivor of sexual assault, and their dad’s story if they laughed along at something they knew was wrong or stayed quiet when a friend crossed a line. ‘Don't hurt anyone’ is a good message. It’s also important that if you see someone about to cause harm, take action. Bravery doesn’t always feel good and speaking up can be hard but both feel better than regret”
TALKING POINT What examples of consent have you experienced? Read the article >
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New law will make sex education mandatory for all under-18s to protect against domestic abuse (Metro, 19/10/26)
”When Faustine Petron, age 26, was 16 her life was ‘derailed’ by a violent, controlling boyfriend who limited her socialising and called her names. She felt brainwashed and says:
‘I didn’t have the language to know what he was doing was abusive.’ At 22 she founded the Make It Mandatory campaign to get relationships & sex education (RSE) to end at age 18,
not 16. The founder of the campaign Killed Women, Carole Gould, whose daughter Ellie was murdered by her boyfriend at 17, says about his coercive control towards her: ‘We all failed
to recognise the red flags and danger she was in.’ Backing a bill by Alistair Strathern MP to extend RSE to age 18 is Jess Phillips MP, who combats violence against women and girls (VAWG). She says it’s vital that young people learn to ‘recognise the warning signs of abuse’”
Fill in a quick form to have your local MP vote to extend sex ed to age 18.
And look at Make It Mandatory’s mock sex-ed textbook The RSE Unofficial Curriculum
TALKING POINT In what ways is sex ed different for kids of different ages? Read the article >
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Police confiscate robot that groped 16-year-old girl, probe whether young men were at the controls (Independent, 13/10/26)
“In a case of what German authorities consider ‘possible sexual harassment’, a robot controlled by 2 young men, aged 16 and 19, touched the bottom of a girl aged 16 and made thrusting movements at her. They filmed, streamed and commentated online on the alleged assault. A police spokesperson said they were unfamiliar with this type of incident. The robot, 3ft 11in tall and with a fake moustache, was wearing a tank top, sweatpants, sunglasses and a gold chain. Videos circulated on the internet show 2 young men escorting the robot towards a group of women, with the robot bumping into one and hugging others. One of the men shouts at the robot and pulls it backwards after it makes sexual gestures, prompting laughter in the street”
TALKING POINT What feelings do you have when you hear about this story? Read the article >
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Women given shorts at Oktoberfest to prevent upskirting (BBC, 3/10/26)
“For 3 years, the 80-year-old woman who operates the Devil’s Wheel ride at the Oktoberfest in Munich has been giving out free cycling shorts to women and girls wearing dresses to protect them from people in the crowd filming them. This year she has handed out 100 pairs. About 32,000 voyeuristic videos have been viewed millions of times online (one clip made £7,650for the woman who posted it). Some images are digitally altered to show the women naked. The ride rotates faster and faster until passengers fall off – and the motion and speed can make skirts fly up. Upskirting is illegal in Germany, with a 2-year jail sentence – but the law ‘applies only when you film under the skirt’, not if a skirt flies up and the person is photographed”
TALKING POINT What do you think about the act of upskirting? Read the article >
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What’s up with Trump’s unhinged fixation on male candidates’ bodies? (Guardian, 23/10/26)
“At a rally in Ohio, US president Donald Trump, age 80, stopped reading his speech and
said about the Republican senator Jon Husted, who played football at university: ‘I don’t do this with men very often. I started examining his body, because I didn’t know he was a great athlete. And I looked and I watched up and down. I looked at his ass and I looked at the whole – and then I looked at his hands. Look at his hands.’ It was just one example of Trump offering unsolicited, and increasingly unhinged, assessments of men’s bodies in the 2 weeks before the US elections. In Kentucky he said of Husted: ‘I examined his ass. Then I looked at his shoulders… feet… hand… jawline. Studied him. I then patted him on the shoulder, and
it was like a piece of steel. I’m still recovering.’ Recently he mentioned ‘a good-looking man. He’s all man’ and at one rally got ‘big, strong, handsome Oklahoma studs’ to stand onstage”
TALKING POINT Is it OK for a politician or anyone to comment on bodies? Read the article >
And finally: to discuss…
Why So Many Women Watch Their Own Bodies From the Outside (Psychology Today, 27/10/26)
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“Women know what it feels like to have their body treated as
an object to be looked at. And for generations they have been pushing back against having their body judged. In 1968 feminists protesting the Miss America pageant crowned a live sheep to make a point about women being judged like livestock. Women are still being evaluated and criticised based on their looks.
In 1997 psychologists Barbara Fredrickson and Tomi-Ann Roberts gave this a name: objectification theory. It proposed that girls who grow up being watched and commented on can eventually take that outside view in and start monitoring their own body the way an observer would. They called this self-objectification.
They published a study in which female university students tried on either a swimsuit or a jumper, alone in a dressing room, and then took a maths test. The women in swimsuits did worse than the women in jumpers. Just putting on a swimsuit seemed to shift the women’s attention from the work in front of them to their appearance. Wearing a swimsuit was enough to distract them.
This happens in daily life. A woman sits through a meeting worrying about how her stomach looks. A teenager at the beach is so preoccupied with how she looks that she barely enjoys being there and avoids the water. It’s hard to pay attention to what’s happening around you when so much of your attention is focused on how you look.
Research has also found associations between self-objectification, body shame and body dissatisfaction. Self-objectification is linked to disordered eating.
What does it mean to experience your body rather than constantly evaluate it? Many people are so used to checking how they look that they barely realise they’re doing it.
When people are asked about their body, often what they say is what they imagine other people think. They have become so used to seeing themselves through someone else’s eyes that it’s difficult to separate their own feelings from the judgments they’ve learned to anticipate”
TALKING POINTS Why is there such a focus on how women look, not just in our culture but in countries around the world and over time? Do you think about how you look every day, and if so, at what point or points during the day and why? How often do you look in a bathroom mirror or a full-length mirror? What do you think when you see yourself in a mirror? Do you look at your reflection in windows, and if so, why? Do you think you have a pretty good idea of how people view your body and your looks? How do you know what people think of your body and your looks? Where have your feelings about your body and your looks come from (eg people, movies, magazines)? Do you judge people on their body and looks? Do you compare yourself with other people, and if so, does it help you?