Talking to young people about sexual ethics

“Pick-up artists” from the American company Real Social Dynamics (RSD) have been back in Australia to run a series of seminars for men on how to seduce women.

At the very least, the strategies RSD promote constitute highly unethical sexual practices. At worst, they teach men strategies of sexual assault.

Compounding this problem is that we don’t consistently provide young people with information about sexual consent and negotiating romantic or sexual relationships as part of sex education at school.

So what, precisely, does an “ethical” approach to sex and sexual consent look like? And how can we avoid repeating the various pitfalls of the RSD model?