University denies permission for sex ed event

Lee Ga-hyeon’s Gender Prism

By Lee Ga-hyeon

Published April 5, 2017

Translated by Marilyn Hook

※ Editor’s note: The Gender Prism column publishes the viewpoints and voices of feminists in their 20s and 30s. Author Lee Ga-hyeon is an activist with Feminist Fire Action.

Cancelling a university sex ed event because parents disapprove?

In November of last year, Fireworks Femi-Action decided to give sex ed lectures for new female university students. They would be called “Femis’ Sex Ed”, and would be for the women who had been forbidden to talk about or have sex as younger teenagers and who were suddenly expected to become “women who are sexy but don’t know about sex” in university.

We would hold them at Sogang University and the Catholic University of Korea (CUK). But we ran into an unexpected difficulty. CUK notified us that it could not provide a classroom for an event co-run by an organization from outside the university. We hastily changed the site of that lecture to SungKongHoe University, and breathed a sigh of relief. The day of the lectures approached. But the very day before, someone from Sogang called. They were cancelling our permission to use the classroom, and they asked if we could come immediately to the Office of Financial Aid and Student Activities (OFASA).

We and Sogang’s Women Students Association hurried to OFASA, and then an administrator called us into the Student Affairs Office in a serious manner. The head of OFASA said that permission to use the classroom had been cancelled for three reasons: first, that an intercollegiate group was involved; second, that participants were required to pay a fee; and third, that parents had complained about the contents of the lecture.

The document that we were given said that an organization championing the legalization of abortion, free engagement in sex, and the almighty birth control principle must not be allowed to put on an event at Sogang, a university that held a philosophy of respect for life. We found out later that a sex ed lecturer who based their ideas on Catholic teachings had originally published this document on their blog and that it had also been posted on the Archdiocese of Seoul’s “Good News” public forum website.

 Left: “Worry more about handling campus sexual assault cases properly!” Right: “Why are parents on campus?” At the press conference denouncing Sogang’s decision.

ⓒ Fireworks Femi-Action

A daughter’s right of sexual self-determination belongs to her parents?

The lecturer’s post introduces “a piece of writing by a fifty-something father who’s sending his beloved daughter to Ewha Womans University in 2017”, in which the father mentions that he saw a flyer for “Femis’ Sex Ed” at the university’s entrance ceremony and felt that “real” sex ed, which teaches the value of chastity, is needed before an explanation of birth control methods. I was shocked to see this claim that being a parent means you should be able to control your offspring’s sex life. Was the idea of his daughter talking freely about sex and practicing it safely and comfortably such a difficult thing to stomach?

I thought of my mom saying I should stay pure for that special person’s sake. In other words, I had tend myself well as a thing to be fucked for the first time. The thought that virginity must be protected unconditionally produces ignorance. Many women grow up not knowing where exactly their clitoris and vagina are. Proper sex ed and birth control education are not being given, and telling young people “it’s forbidden” makes sex a shameful thing and worsens ignorance about it.

Emphasizing pre-marital “purity” by saying “do it after you’re married” is something that arises from a stereotype that connects sex with childbirth and that ignores women’s rights over their bodies. So many women have fought to assert women’s right to sexual self determination, not their chastity as the property of a patriarch. The government controls women’s reproductive rights and urges them to give birth for the good of the nation, and parents and even teachers emphasize chastity. They are telling women like me, who won’t get married, to never have sex.

We asked the administrators if it wasn’t outrageous to cancel an event the day before it was supposed to happen, but they said it was unavoidable because of the parents’ opposition. According to a recent press report on the whole affair, the university will, because of its founding principles, prevent events that touch on free sexuality and the legalization of abortion from taking place on campus in the future as well.

“A student who’s had an abortion is no longer a student?”
At the press conference denouncing Sogang’s decision. ⓒ Fireworks Femi-Action

  

In 2017, calling for the repeal of anti-abortion law isn’t allowed on college campuses?

In January, a woman ended her own life because she could not decide whether to terminate a pregnancy or to give birth. Her suicide note said that her boyfriend didn’t want her to have the child and she didn’t have the courage to get rid of it, and begged for her family’s forgiveness. (Source: The Kyunghyang Shinmun, Jan. 23, “‘My boyfriend doesn’t want me to have the baby’ – pregnant woman commits suicide”)

The anti-abortion law that puts the responsibility for pregnancy terminations on women is actually a violation of life ethics, because it produces situations like this, in which women end their lives out of a sense of guilt. Do people really think that women who terminate pregnancies do so because they are less ethical than everyone else? In Catholic ethics, where is the promotion of dignity and a decent life for women? To them, women are only recognized as valuable because they gestate life; they are not humans with dignity by virtue of their own existence.

It is said that Pope Francis, originally a Jesuit, has called for mercy to be shown to women who have had an abortion. I don’t think that I need mercy from others for a decision I make about what happens in my own body, but still, one can guess that a flexible approach, which considers the reality faced by women, is taking hold even in Rome, the center of Catholicism. And yet Sogang University, which was founded by Jesuits, forced the last-minute cancellation of an event that would have discussed and taught the controversies surrounding issues like university sexual culture, how to understand your body, what sexual assault is, how sex works, and pregnancy, childbirth, and abortion.

The big clubs in this university have been conducting sex ed, under the name “Christian Relationship Seminar”, that includes obsolete points like “Do you care enough about your appearance?” and “Men don’t know women, women don’t know men”, with no interference from the administration.

I want to ask Sogang University: can’t university students also receive sex ed that discusses free sexuality and talks about anti-abortion law? Is a student who has an abortion is no longer a student?

* Original article: http://ildaro.com/sub_read.html?uid=7828