Miriam: What do you think is presently the Sense Project’s based challenge?

Christina:

Moral panic. I think that, that leads into other challenges. So it starts off like with somebody’s own anxiety around sexual health and youth, and it just comes on to them putting blocks in like either partnership-building or funding or gossiping like either.

Miriam:

Given the current state of the media, do you find it difficult to understand or how do you cope with this idea that sex ed would make somebody more upset, let’s say like the latest Beyonce video?

Christina:

I know, yeah, I don't know. Really, it’s irritating. Let me just say that. I watched Sex and the City, and I was so irritated, so irritated by like the fairytale kind of like nuclear family, like heterosexual, like every girl meets a man had a fairytale story, that just is like, “Oh my god, really, again, we have to like…” And like her relationship with the guy was just so demeaning, and I was like, “Wow, really, this reminds me of sexism 101.” Like it’s right there in front of me, and women are loving it. It makes you get so angry, like why isn't that a problem? Why isn’t that a problem, but you know…talking about condoms is…I don’t know. Like it’s just frustrating. And what do you do about it? Like you can’t…I mean, I don’t think we’re going to change the world, but I think that having a really smart discussion with a 16-year-old girl about it is enough for me at the end of the day. Like making small changes in communities, having impacts because that’s the whole point of peer education, right? Is like you reach one person they reach another person. It’s like a nice chain reaction. Just like anything educational, right? Like, I went to a university. It impacted me this way and now I’m working at Head & Hands. I mean, like it’s a great chain of social revolution. So yeah.

Back to media though, I’m sorry. And then with the media training, they then have the skills to create a tool for dissemination, I think. And I think that’s also really cool, but there's always the level of interpretation to - like they’re going to have this great film that they’re going to make, say screen it and people may not get it. I also remember that we can also look at Beyonce and think differently, and it doesn’t mean that Beyonce is programming people to be like, I don’t know, sexist or whatever. People always have the power to kind of see and relate and think differently. So yeah the peer educators might create a video screen it in their school, and they might get heckled for it. There’s no ideal solution anyway. So the media is definitely a tool for disseminating that knowledge.