An upcoming online panel open to the Brock and wider community will examine the need for non-normative and culturally appropriate sexual education among disabled, deaf and queer communities.

Cripping Sex Education: Deaf, Disabled and Queer Perspectives on Teaching Kids about Sex will be hosted Wednesday, Sept. 29 by Brock’s CHYS 3P44 — Gender and Sexuality in Childhood and Youth course, Human Rights and Equity (HRE) office, Department of Child and Youth Studies, and Social Justice Research Institute (SJRI).

Held from 9:30 to 11 a.m., the virtual event will look at ways in which the needs of these communities are being met by activists who are ‘cripping’ sex education — meaning they are developing grassroots sexual education by and for their communities, many of which have reclaimed the word ‘crip.’

Panelists include Sage Lovell, community educator and founder of Deaf Spectrum; Andrew Gurza, host of the Disability After Dark podcast; Ricky Varghese, X (Ryerson) University postdoctoral fellow and psychotherapist; Fran Odette, community activist/educator and George Brown College Professor; Sara Jama, community advocate representing the Disability Justice Network of Ontario; and Nadia Abdel-Halim, who researches sexual citizenship of young adults with intellectual disabilities.

Funded by Brock’s HRE, SJRI and Centre for Pedagogical Innovation along with Co—operative Education and Work-Integrated Learning Canada, the live, synchronous event is open to the public and will include American Sign Language interpretation and live captioning.

The panel is one component of a larger course project that will see students work with community educators to design short, open-access, online sex education tools to help disabled, deaf and queer youths navigate the topics of gender and sexuality.

For more information or to register for the online panel discussion, visit the Cripping Sex Education Eventbrite page.