Daniel Alves: society can also fail the abuser – 02/23/2024 – Sport

Sexual abuse and rape are not signs that society fails only the victim, who is statistically a woman, but also the aggressor, who is mostly male. It could be a sign that the lack of sexual education affects, among many, those who commit the crime. It is instruction to be used not as a weapon to end cases, but to prevent occurrences.

Situations like that of player Daniel Alves, who made headlines across Brazil and the world, need to remind us that sexual violence is a preventable crime in some situations. Among the methods for reducing this type of abuse is sexual education, a sensitive topic in Brazil that never seems to go off the agenda.

How to prevent sexual diseases and unwanted pregnancies? How to have a healthy, polite and pleasurable sexual relationship for you and everyone involved? How to clearly understand what a consensual sexual relationship is? No, it is not? This is a little of what sexual instruction wants to answer.

The Ministry of Health states that addressing the issue in schools is a way of combating sexual violence against children and adolescents. An American study that linked states with the highest and lowest rates of rape and the sex education of these places concluded that those with the lowest rates of crime had in common teaching about “consent, coercion, dating violence, healthy relationships and refusal skills “.

The work indicates that this is not the only factor that must be dealt with. Results from other studies propose that sexual violence, as it is multifactorial, should be addressed with intersectoral actions (including socioeconomic ones) and place sexual education as crucial to reducing the problem

But it seems that it will not be easy to get this subject where it should be: in the classrooms of public and private institutions in the country. The debate, which was no longer easy, was stolen by Bolsonarian fake news that the classes would be based on supposed “gender ideology” (which, in the end, no one can explain exactly what it is), “dick bottle”, encouraging sex and, why not, promoting abortion.

The classes, however, are based on covering cognitive, physical and emotional aspects of relationships. A UNESCO publication that talks about “integral sexuality education” defines the concept as the transmission of knowledge, skills, attitudes and values ​​to children and adolescents in order to provide autonomy to guarantee their own health, well-being and dignity, in addition to to develop respectful social and sexual relationships.

This type of course, which had no space during the Bolsonaro administration, returned during the Lula government with the Health at School Program.

Lucky for me, out of the few sex education classes I had at school, in the seventh grade at a private institution, I clearly remember what I learned – and none of the lessons instructed me to have sex with the classmate next to me. In a class, they taught me how to put on a condom correctly. In another, that I wouldn’t get pregnant at a distance, and that coitus interruptus was risky.

In some of them, I heard that “no” should be respected above all things.

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