One of the many tragic side effects of the pandemic was a dramatic spike in domestic and gender-based violence. According to a recent report, a statewide domestic violence hotline received more than 30,000 calls in 2021. The number of domestic-related murders and shootings in Chicago increased nearly two-thirds from 2020.
These figures reflect only a sliver of the broader problem of gender-based violence when we also consider harassment, sexual assault, physical assault, domestic violence and psychological abuse. Fighting this epidemic of violence requires a holistic, multipronged approach, and the one piece of the puzzle that often gets left out, even in Chicago, is investing more heavily in comprehensive sexual education.
In this post-Dobbs world, Illinois and Chicago generally have passed policies that promote supporting survivors. In fact, last year Mayor Lori Lightfoot launched a citywide initiative to dedicate $25 million toward combating gender-based violence and human trafficking. But what this initiative, and others like it, fail to include is a critical prevention mechanism that we know works to stop the cycle of abuse: ensuring that communities have access to high-quality, comprehensive sexual health education.
Ending this violence requires broad structural changes with solutions that work toward addressing the root causes like harmful cultural norms. One of the most effective ways to address the root causes of many of these issues within our communities is by giving people safe spaces to discuss and learn about consent, healthy relationships, boundaries and identities.
This is especially impactful when the information is age-appropriate, helping the youngest of children to distinguish good touch from bad touch, and helping the oldest of youths to identify whether they’re in a healthy relationship. This kind of education goes even further when caregivers are given the tools to meaningfully engage with youths in sometimes difficult but important conversations. This starts with comprehensive, equitable and compulsory sex-ed in Chicago public schools.
Sexual health education is the key to building a generation that can prevent and drastically lower gender-based violence. Comprehensive sexual health education is an age-appropriate, medically accurate, K-12 curriculum designed to motivate and assist students in maintaining and improving their mental, physical and sexual health at every age, while allowing students to obtain developmentally appropriate sexual health-related knowledge, attitudes and skills.
When the foundation of youth education is centered around knowledge, identity and consent, they have the tools to develop healthy relationships with their friends, families and communities. Sexual health education provides students with the information they need to both prevent the infliction of gender-based violence before it begins and identify and seek resources if it happens.
While Chicago Public Schools has a mandatory K-12 sexual health education policy, it is not enforced or funded. Data from the 2018 Health CPS Survey showed that 70% of CPS schools did not comply with the mandatory policy at the time, with many of those schools on the South and West sides of the city.
It is worse this year, with 40% of schools in the city experiencing budget cuts for the 2022-23 school year cutting out any possibility of discretionary funds to be allocated toward the cost of covering teachers’ training or paying external trainers. The lack of dedicated resources for lifesaving education poses a significant barrier to the safety, economic mobility and stability of some of Chicago’s most marginalized youth.
With the rise of movements working to dismantle young people’s ability to learn, discuss and question themes as it relates to sexual health in the classroom, it is all the more important Chicago’s leadership devote the appropriate resources to our schools in support of sexual health education. Frederick Douglass once wrote, “It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.”
We must address this violence from the roots. We must raise a generation that respects each other as human beings, and has health, consent and education at the natural forefront of their minds. Only then can the cycle of gender-based violence be dismantled.
Karla Altmayer is the co-founder and co-director at Healing to Action.
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