Former Dolly Doctor: Teens want to talk about consent. Do it before they start drinking

When ABC TV presenter Yumi Stynes and former Dolly Doctor Melissa Kang sat down two years ago to write a handbook for teenagers about consent, they couldn’t know they would be launching the book in the midst of a national conversation about sexual assault.

It’s a topic that has been thrust into the spotlight in recent weeks with Brittany Higgins’ alleged rape in Parliament House and online testimony that sexual assault by peers is “endemic” within the social circles of Sydney teenagers.

Dr Melissa Kang and Yumi Stynes, co-authors of the forthcoming book for teens, Welcome to Consent.Credit: Louise Kennerley

Parents have called for schools to do more to teach students, boys and girls alike, about sexual consent at an earlier age. Consent forms part of the NSW syllabus but is sometimes ticked off by hosting a guest speaker rather than building it into lessons more holistically.

The book, Welcome to Consent, to be published in June, could be a welcome tool for parents and educators who are realising that they need to tackle the topic in much more detail. One mother told The Sun-Herald schools should instruct students with scenarios similar to how learner drivers are taught the road rules.

Stynes said the book provides just that level of detail to help teens navigate the grey area - what to do, for example, if someone has had a bit to drink but is not falling down drunk. (Short answer? If you’re unsure, there’s no consent).

Stynes said it felt pressing because both she and Dr Kang had experience navigating the issue with their own children and “consent” could be boiled down to a simple concept.

“Imagine your body is like a territory, you’re the boss of it and you can say what happens in this territory,” Stynes said. “Having that concept quite clear means that you understand also that other people’s bodies are their territory.”

She said the issue of “consent” also applied to medical treatment, tickling sessions with children and even haircuts. She acknowledged there was also an overlap between individual autonomy and parents making health decisions for their children or society imposing rules such as face masks on public transport.

Stynes and Dr Kang previously wrote Welcome to Your Period, which had an audience of mainly teenage girls, while the new book on consent is explicitly aimed at boys as well.

Stynes said the first half of the book was accessible to children from the age of 8, then there was a “Berlin wall” midway through, with the second half talking about issues that are more relevant to teenagers such as alcohol.

Dr Kang, who is a clinical associate professor at the University of Sydney and also works with disadvantaged young people as a medical doctor, said the issue of teenagers being coerced or pressured into sex and other intimate acts at parties was not new.

She has a stack of handwritten letters and archived emails from her reign as the Dolly Doctor from 1993 until the teen magazine folded in 2016 and although the letter writers rarely used the word “consent”, it was often implicit to the questions they were asking about kissing, first dates, and sexual intercourse.

What had shifted in the past few decades was the emergence of a more nuanced understanding of consent beyond “no means no” and an increase in adults talking about the issue.

Dr Kang said consent education in the younger years was focused on “stranger danger” and there was a gap until about year 10 when it shifted to talking about sexual relations with peers. She backed a petition started by former Kambala schoolgirl Chanel Contos calling for education on sexual consent to start much earlier.

“I’ve always felt these conversations need to happen way before they’re drinking or they’re having sex or ready to have sex,” said Dr Kang, pointing out that the typical Dolly reader had been aged 11-14. “That’s why we were so keen for the book to hit home at that younger age group.”

Dr Kang and Stynes say we should all be outraged by the alleged attacks at Parliament House and even more so by the apparent cover-up. Defence Minister Linda Reynolds has said she was protecting Ms Higgins’ privacy at the young woman’s request, but Dr Kang said this was not good enough.

“There are still other things you can do to try and change policy and change culture and that’s what needs to happen,” Dr Kang said. “What I think is unacceptable is that [Ms Higgins] felt she would lose her job and she was really scared of what other people might think of her.”

Stynes said she was concerned about Ms Higgins “standing in the limelight completely unshielded, absorbing people’s judgment”.

“I wish I could wrap my arms around her and take some of the heat,” Stynes said. “It’s just horrendous.“

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