Assembly Speaker, 28 March
Dr Yasmin Walters - Let’s Talk about Sex
Profession
Dr Walter was raised in Birmingham, she went to uni in 2010 at Cambridge. She qualified as a doctor in 2016, then worked as a junior doctor in Suffolk before moving to London in 2018 and then began her speciality training in 2021. Walters' most recent work has been in Chelsea Westminster Hospital and she’s training to be a consultant in 3 years.
Dr Walters spoke to us about various key elements surrounding sex in a very accessible and frank way. She began by saying sex shouldn’t be embarrassing as it should be safe and enjoyable for all who do it. Natsal [the National Surveys of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyle] through their research about sexual behaviour around the UK found that, albeit the legal age of consent here is 16, the median age at which adolescents are having sex is 14. They also found people have on average sex 3 to 4 times a week when sexually active.
She then went on to dispel some myths on sex:
- Virginity is a social construct, different sexual interactions could count as losing virginity to different people.
- Not only boys masturbate, and it’s not true that you’ll go blind if you do it too much.
- Consent goes both ways and you can choose to not give consent anytime during sex.
- HIV is not only transmitted through sex, for example it could be transferred during child birth. However, this is an extremely rare case. So try not to make any assumptions about someone with HIV
- It’s completely reasonable to not want sex, asexuality is a part of the spectrum of LGBTQ+
- Sex isn’t just the heteronormative way, it’s any range of sexual contact with genitals.
Dr Walters also underlined the importance of regular sexual health screening once you are sexually active.
You can be checked for S.T.Is at sexual health clinics, like Sexual Health London, which give you a kit to test yourself via post. These screenings will check for HIV, Syphilis, Hepatitis, Gonorrhoea and Chlamydia. You can get S.T.Is in places other than the genital regions such as the mouth and eyelashes, so it is important to be vigilant. She advised going to your local sexual health clinics if you have any STI symptoms, which she gave us a list of. They're all easy to treat, except HIV, using antibiotics or a course of antibiotics.
HIV1 is the most common type. However, some individuals have HIV2, especially people from West Africa. They use viruses to detect whether you can transmit HIV or not by detecting how much of the virus is suppressed in your body. If HIV is well controlled you’ll have the same life expectancy as someone without it, as it's not the death sentence it used to be in the 80s and 90s. Treatments range from tablets to injectables. There is also a new and innovative medication called PrEP (pre-exposure prophylaxis) which is medicine people at risk from HIV take to prevent getting HIV from sex or injection drug use. When taken as prescribed, PrEP is highly effective for preventing HIV. This is available at sexual health clinics, and they will monitor you to for 3 to 6 months after taking it..
Consent
Dr Walters talked about the importance of consent when engaging in sexual activity, outlining that this is agreeing to have sex with someone when you want to and when you are fully aware of doing so. It needs to be freely given, so saying yes when someone is pressuring you is not consent. You need to have capacity, if you are drunk or high you can’t legally give consent and, very importantly, consent can be withdrawn at any time during sex.
Dr Walters then pointed us towards a number of very good charities which are easily accessible for all such as:
- Relate, is a charity that helps people at any age with relationship problems; if you're struggling to communicate, you think you're in an abusive relationship, not in a good place then Relate is good for you.
- Rape Crisis, is a charity that help victims of rape and sexual assault.
- The Havens are a network of specialist sexual assault referral centres (SARCs) located across London who can take samples quickly and sensitively from individuals who want to go forward and press charges. And they can keep the samples if you don’t want to press charges or if you want to do it later on. There was even a case where someone chose to go to court 10 years ago using the samples taken from them at the time of the attack.
Overall, this was a very useful and informative assembly, and Dr Walters was very happy for people to talk to her privately at the end or have us contact her by email if we preferred.
Harry, Sixth Form Senior Prefect
A group of Year 7s and 8s have come together to create some modern fairy tales as part of Y7/8 Drama club.
