J Fiedler. Human Rights. Sexual Education Research Centre

Stuart Murray  0:00  
This podcast was recorded on the ancestral lands, on treaty one territory, the traditional territory of the Anishinaabe Cree, Oji Cree, Dakota and the Dene peoples, and on the homeland of the Metis nation.

Amanda Logan (Voiceover)  0:19  
This is humans on rights, a podcast advocating for the education of human rights. Here's your host, Stuart Murray,

Stuart Murray  0:31  
sexual health, reproductive health, the education of both those amazing and important topics today something I want to explore with my guest on today's podcast. Jay Fiedler is a sexuality educator, originally from Detroit. They have a background in HIV, AIDS, two, stlgbq, one. I A plus culture and inclusion and comprehensive sexuality education. Over the years, Jay has facilitated workshops in various territories around Manitoba, from the paw to Vita. They now live in beautiful Winnipeg. Jay, welcome to humans on rights.

J Fielder  1:17  
Thanks for having me

Stuart Murray  1:18  
So Jay, before we get into the conversation about some of the incredible work that you are doing as an advocate and an educator on sexual health and reproductive health, tell us a little bit about your life journey. How did you find yourself coming into Winnipeg and being involved in this very important topic?

J Fielder  1:34  
Well, to make this story, not too long, I ended up marrying a Canadian and a very proud Winnipeg and so Detroit, being that we're just north of Canada, right across the river right often, growing up, people from Detroit and Windsor would go back and forth. I mean, that still happens, though 911 changed a lot for the border. You know, I watched CBC growing up like I'm a Degrassi kid. So when I met my partner, who went to Western University in Ontario, which isn't too far from Detroit, that's kind of how we met, kind of as our relationship was going, it's like, well, someone's gotta move. So I was like, Alright, I can move to Canada. Let's do this. And so in 2016 that's when I received my permanent residency. And so, kind of, as you mentioned, my background working in HIV, when we ended up landing in Brandon rather than Winnipeg, first, that's when I found circ the organization I currently work for. And kind of in Brandon, like, looking around, I was like, I want to work there. And I just lucked out that a job opening opened up, like, a month after I said that, I was like, I want to work here. I went there. I was like, Do you have any volunteer opportunities? They're like, we might have a job opening very soon. And I just applied very quickly. And so luckily, I've been with Cirque ever since, for the past eight years. And just

Stuart Murray  3:00  
for listeners. We'll put all of this stuff into the Episode notes. But Cirque S, E, R, C stands for the sexuality education resource center for Manitoba. And by the way, just as a side on that, Jay, when I went onto the website, which is a very interesting, very in depth, robust website, I didn't realize, again, this is one of these things that I find fascinating about, you know, the pride Resource Center as example, like the origins of that, and being one of the very first gay clubs in North America, and it's here in Winnipeg, and we hardly know that. And I admire the fact that there's this great, great history in Winnipeg. And in fact, when you look at the Sexuality Education Resource Center, or circ, as we're calling it, it actually started in 1934 here in Winnipeg, and I, again, knew nothing about that. I don't want to be an expert. I simply went on on your website to have a look at it, and you look at sort of how it came through what became Planned Parenthood, which when I was growing up. And certainly I know that when my wife was going to university, she volunteered at Planned Parenthood, was something that everybody was aware of, and then how it kind of morphed into the sexuality education resource center. But the history is quite I mean, when you look at it's 90 years history here in Manitoba, so something that I think is important for the foundational and the understanding of the legitimacy and the deep roots that an organization that talks about sexuality and education has here in the in the province of Manitoba. What are some of the issues that you have found most interesting to get involved with from a programming and an education standpoint? And then I'm going to ask you to sort of position that on the basis of, how would you look at the state of human sexuality from an education standpoint here in Manitoba as we speak today,

J Fielder  4:51  
oh gosh, we're going to, we're going to have like 20 conversations. There's so much there. But because, kind of, I think going back to kind of talking about sexual. The Education Resource Center. You know, this year's like, our 90th year, so that's kind of, you know, you might have saw that piece on the website. But even just that, like exploring the history of how our organization started, there's really great activism. But like with anything with history, there's also not quite the right word, but like problematic pieces as well. Right looking back into our history, how we were started, and I think I'm kind of like an amateur historian, and kind of exploring those things, exploring the language we use, exploring like what communities were represented by certain organizations which weren't. It shows you kind of like some threads so thinking about like, what is the state of sexual and reproductive health and access and education right now? There's so many ties to the past, both positive and negative and everywhere in between, to really look into. But other pieces you asked my start at the Brandon office. So Cirque, we have a Brandon office. We have a Winnipeg office, and then currently we do have one staff up in Flynn fun, and I started in the two st, lgbq, ia plus program there. So that's doing community events, that's doing education in schools, that's doing education with service providers, that's running, there's two, like community support groups. Usually that program takes some active role in like the pride celebration in Brandon. And so that's where I started. That kind of inclusion, culture, identity, diversity, those pieces. But also, since I've moved my new position in Winnipeg, really looking a lot at sexuality education in schools. That is something that's been interesting. Kind of you mentioned to like the name Planned Parenthood. So being an American now living in Canada, I think the difference in education, how people talk about sexuality, but also the healthcare access difference between the United States and Canada, where healthcare is different here, but there's still access issues, and that's certainly related to rights. And then I think also, to not make my answer super long. There's so much specialized knowledge within circ that staff we learn from each other. One example I can think of is we have a FGC, so that's female genital cutting program at Cirque that does service provider training, but also does workshops with affected communities, and it's something I'd only heard of previously, but I've learned so much from the facilitators from that program and from the evaluation that we do in house, from the participants from that program that really I had Never really thought before. So that's just one example. So

Stuart Murray  8:02  
let me just unpack a couple of things you said there, Jay, you talked a little bit about, obviously, the conversation around sexual health, that conversation between the United States and, say, Canada. Would you say that, you know, just the ability to have the conversations from your experience, is it really noticeable between the two countries? And if so, why? Yes

J Fielder  8:25  
and no, I feel as if sometimes there's a tendency from, I'd say, Canadians in general, that there's like a little bit of like, pointing to the south and going, well, that's extreme, which is true, for example, kind of the like, don't say gay bills from the past few years from the United States, the abortion access laws targeting transgender people in the United States. Certainly that is extreme. I think we you know, some people would say, but then we can look at things that are happening across this country, in Saskatchewan, Alberta, like New Brunswick, that it's kind of like, well, you don't need to point south. You can point north, south, east and west. So some things are different, some things are the same, but I think that in general, from my personal perspective, there's a little bit more of a willingness to try to have the conversations, a little bit less polarized at this point. But the American in me is like, oh, what might be coming, right? Which kind of fuels my work, I guess, yeah,

Stuart Murray  9:36  
no, for sure. And you did mention in your in your response, you talked about sort of the rights issue, what does that impact have? Or how would you explain the importance of the rights issue around this conversation?

J Fielder  9:48  
When it comes to sexuality, people think of like those, healthcare access, things like abortion is the polarized issue. Perhaps there are different opinions on abortion. In but I think further, when we think about rights and justice, we could say reproductive rights and reproductive justice. While abortion is a a safe legal option in Canada, it's not accessible to many people, due to living in rural, northern remote areas, due to biases of healthcare providers in their area, right? Those are just some examples of access issues. And so, you know, that might be something someone thinks about a lot, but the other examples of like identity, around gender identity, sexual identity, and I think also to something that sexuality educators we talk about a lot, something that can't be legislated, is pleasure, and that can be a scary word when people think about sexuality, because certainly we are talking about sexual pleasure, but I think there's also just pleasure in who We are, in our identities, pleasure in autonomy and owning our own bodies. And while that can sound kind of scary, especially when people say with youth in schools, pleasure protects us, pleasure keeps us safe. Pleasure is a right. And so you know, if we teach a young person that they have a right to a pleasurable sexual relationship, if that's something that's right for them, that they choose, they are more likely to then be able to have conversations with a partner about what they need. They are less likely to accept being degraded or told what to do by a partner, we're more likely to achieve equality within relationships, which builds more pleasure in return. So I think there's like so many pieces to what sexuality is, but really the right space piece, we can attach it to so many pieces and see positive outcomes. Yeah, for sure.

Stuart Murray  12:00  
And I want to get into a sexual health conversation and a reproductive health conversation with you. I just was taken aback a bit by something you just talked about, a program that you're learning about. And I'm not going to get the name exactly right, but it's female cutting,

J Fielder  12:14  
genital cutting, FGC as the acronym. So female,

Stuart Murray  12:19  
there's lots of people that identify in different ways around female. Is it something that is self inflicted, Jay, or is it something that is inflicted upon somebody?

J Fielder  12:30  
Well, I mean, I definitely have to say before I can, I can speak very generally on this. I I've learned quite a bit, but I'm definitely not the expert on it. And so female general cutting. Yes, like that word female, how we use it in society? We could talk about that, but generally, that's like acronym that is used, but it refers to various forms of cutting or removal of pieces of someone's vulva. And so certainly, someone that isn't female but has a vulva can experience that, and it's huge. Usually, cutting is done by someone else within their community. Usually it's done to children, and they do not consent to it, not medically necessary. There's various ways the cutting is done. There's various reasons why the cutting is done, but in general, that's what FGC is, very general, speaking to the bright space piece part of Cirque's approach, really then to write, if we talk about people have a right to their bodies, they have a right to bodily autonomy that cutting violates, that it violates people's human rights, certainly, but like Moving forward, acknowledging that someone has been cut a kind of Cirque approach. Again, very generally, I'm not the expert on it, is then, like, how do we respect that person's right going forward? And for us, that's not telling someone their body is broken or wrong. It's acknowledging that this happened to them and acknowledging their feelings about it, but they still have a right to they want to be pregnant, if they want to give birth, if right, if they want to have, like, a pleasurable sex life. Okay, let's talk about that. Because you have been cut, some things might be different, but this doesn't mean you're any less of a person. This doesn't mean you don't have rights or deserve all of these other pieces to your your sexuality. So again, very generally, taking that red space person centered approach is kind of how circ discusses that issue.

Stuart Murray  14:27  
Is this something that takes place in

J Fielder  14:30  
Manitoba? It is against the law in Canada, most definitely, yeah, as it should be, and I'm pretty sure that there haven't been any cases like prosecuted by that law in Canada, but I'm, again, I'm not as up to date on that.

Stuart Murray  14:47  
No, that's not what you're on the program for. So I just thank you very much for for being so open and to sort of comment as you did. I respect that, and thank you for that. But

J Fielder  14:56  
there are certainly people that have been affected by it in Manitoba. That is true. Yeah, interesting

Stuart Murray  15:01  
and staggering. Jay, is there kind of a basic 101, if you were talking about, what is the definition of sexual health,

J Fielder  15:09  
that would be like a little bit of a workshop. So I'll try to answer. But at Cirque, like, one tool we use that is on our website, if people are interested in looking is like a sexuality wheel, which is like other teaching wheels, like a medicine wheel that has, you know, four directions for Sacred medicines, and circles are strong and they're connected, and things change over time. And so we use a wheel similarly. And other sexual health organizations use it similarly, where we look at some of those. I call them, like the sciency parts of sex ed, like STIs, pregnancy, body changes, hormones, which certainly are part of it, however, like we've already discussed, like it's identity, it's self worth, it's how we feel about others. It's about relationships, like sexual relationships, but also family, friends, all sorts of different relationships, and also, another thing we include on our sexuality wheel is values and beliefs which kind of go into the sex ed piece isn't something you really teach, but it's there, and we need to discuss it. And kind of like I alluded to, perhaps before people might have heard it in my language is when we're talking about sexual and reproductive health choices education, we need to offer people options that work, that are right for them, that they choose, that are right for them. So that also often, is where the values and beliefs piece comes up as well.

Stuart Murray  16:44  
You mentioned, you know, the element of pleasure that is part of this conversation. I'd be interested to hear from you the sort of experience you have when you say, been asked to go into a school to have a workshop. And there are many people that kind of, you know, whatever the word is, jump the shark. The point is, is that they they hear sexual health, and the first thing they think about is that this is going to be some kind of an ability to promote promiscuity, or promote, you know, sexual relations, or you should be doing something that certain parents, perhaps in a school, in the school district or board might sort of put the brakes on and say, no, no, we don't want to have that conversation. Or saying, No, that's not the conversation. It is part of the conversation, and it has to be, but that is not the conversation. How have you felt when you've gone into schools? Do you sort of feel that there's an openness? And it can probably be from different school to different school, I would suspect I mean it just that kind of makes sense to me as I asked the question. But is there ever a sense that you get, that you look around, you wonder, Should we be in this workshop to, like,

J Fielder  17:59  
rewind a tiny bit I didn't say in the beginning my current role in Winnipeg, I mentioned I did the twist tlgb, QIA Plus program in Brandon. Now I do service provider training in Winnipeg. So when I'm going into a school, I'm going in with the teachers. I'm not with the students very much anymore. That's very rare when I would be in that role. But kind of in my experience, and what I've been hearing from many of my co workers is things have recently changed as far as kind of the welcome Miss to us and having us there. And certainly, I would say internally, but especially my work as doing service provider work is talking about kind of that voluntary versus involuntary audience, because especially often around certainly like talking about diversity and inclusion if people don't want to be there, if people want to have the conversation, is it worth it versus the people that are like really want to engage in the content. It's a little bit different when you're going into a school classroom where young people, they do have to be there, they aren't voluntarily there. And we do various things at Cirque to give people that autonomy and options to participate or not. But to go back to your original question, yeah, there's been a little bit of a change. There's been some more pushback, or perhaps we're not being invited to places we were before. And I think we don't know for sure, but we think, kind of like you alluded to, it's our community want to have this conversation, or how, more importantly, how will this conversation be viewed by our community? Yeah, I

Stuart Murray  19:40  
always think that when the word education appears on part of the program or what the naming is about, that role is something that is important. For example, I talk about human rights education. When I was involved at the Canadian Museum for Human Rights, it was all about an education. And what I mean by that, it wasn't all a conversation that could possibly take place to say, Well, what's right and what's wrong, who's right and who's wrong, and it's like no stop. That's not at all where we can have a conversation. We need to have a conversation around the education of this issue. And yes, people will have maybe make up their own mind and want to withdraw, or they may want to proceed totally valid under the auspices of what you've learned at that particular time and through a workshop that you might have done. But I guess I just ask, when you're looking at the education side of of this, and particularly education in public schools, do you have a feel why they're starting to become a little bit more backlash of allowing the sexuality education resource center to be included in the sexual health education with students? Yeah, I

J Fielder  20:53  
think there's a few things you said before, probably school to school, like classroom to classroom is even different, sometimes within schools. So in Manitoba, I don't know how long this law goes, but there is, like, the legal option for parents and guardians to opt their children out from sexual health education in schools and just health education, right? Because also, like, they can opt out of substance use education, I believe, as well, and so that kind of goes back, like that's been around for a long time. I don't know how far back that goes, and that already puts this like in a school environment. It puts sexual health in kind of like an other category, right? There's not a my kid opts out of math because we don't agree with math, right? No, you're going to math. You're going to get a grade NX. And so it already puts like health in like an other category. And to be fair, like health is different. It hits harder. We do talk about trauma and abuse and what to do if you experience those things that don't really come up in something like mass so to be sure, it is different, but how they're the same is they're important to everyone, and they impact our lives in the same way. And I would say, kind of more recently, those changes, like you're saying that influence from the United States is kind of these library challenges, these school board challenges that are happening in both countries. They're coordinated. And so different models might be a little bit different over the border, because we're different countries, but they they model themselves off of each other, and certainly that is kind of creating a chill, I guess you could say in various places. And certainly there's places in Manitoba, there's certain schools where they have never taught sex ed, or don't really touch it, or they're kind of like puberty means take more showers and wear deodorant, right? And they're not going into the comprehensive piece. So for some places, it's status quo. For other places, it's maybe they weren't quite there. They're like, oh, we'll touch on this a little bit. And then those coordinated campaigns come in, kind of misrepresenting what places like Cirque do, and, quite frankly, what the sexual health curriculum in Manitoba represents and then that, you know, pushes them down that hill, because it's easy. It's easy just to say, well, let's just not do it,

Stuart Murray  23:29  
and without any understanding of who's actually being impacted by that conversation, right? I mean, it excludes, you know, young adults from the possibility of being a part of that conversation. And I guess, if given the opportunity, you know to present, say, Jay, in your capacity, you were in front of a group of educators who said, we're not sure about sexual health education. What is the importance of a comprehensive sexual health education? What is that?

J Fielder  24:00  
I think it's just a matter of like we all experience that we're all sexual beings. I think even, for example, asexual people that don't experience sexual attraction or very little, or they're not interested, or don't have sexual relationships, they still have relationships. We all want some sort of intimacy, whether that's just like friendship, hugs, like emotional intimacy with each other. So all these skills, yes, in sexual realm, sexual relationships, most people have them, so that is an important skill. But just like the relationships, the communication, the boundaries, the knowing who we are accessing healthcare, choosing whether or not we want to start a family and reproduce, all of those rights pieces that are related, it affects everyone, certainly, and so I think that's one thing, and kind of related to that schools already. Do it right, like in a kindergarten classroom when a kid just like grabs crayons from another kid, and the one kid goes, Hey, and the teacher stops and says, We need to ask, Can Can I use some of your crayons? That's a consent lesson. Might not use the word consent, but that's what it is. And so sexual health, again, like someone's not thinking, well, it's borrowing a crayon. Yes, that's just being a good person, but it's a relationship, it's communication, it's boundaries. It's like knowing whether or not you can touch and grab all of these things are related and then do impact how we view each other, how we treat each other, and then how we treat each other sexually. And I would say more and more to kind of best practices and reach research is talking about these conversations like sexual health, conversations related to identity, related to gender, related to boundaries, related to consent, impact levels of gender based violence. And so beyond STIs and unintended pregnancies, which we need to address in sexual health, it also is a safety and violence prevention education. And so I think maybe the final wrap up, I'm giving a little manifesto here with your question, but to kind of take that narrative back, some of these groups are saying they want to protect children and they want to preserve parents and guardians rights, and I think that's a false narrative where one I would actually agree. We all want to protect children, that's the goal. So let's talk about what that means. We need to explore that further, because silence doesn't protect children in this case. And then I think the other piece kind of going back to your saying the human rights education one person's human rights don't take away someone else's. So when children have rights, quite frankly, to like, learn about their bodies at certain ages, to make their own decisions. That does include sexual health decisions, those people's rights does not take away an adult's right. That's not the way it works, right? It's not like you take a piece of the pie and the pie gets smaller. It just means other people have rights. And so how are we going to have those relationships. And again, going back to the sexuality we all part of its relationships. A lot of our workshops are talking about guardian and children relationships, family relationships, and respecting kids rights is part of it. How do we work with that and everyone, for every family, is different. We don't tell families like you have to do this, and your kids have full autonomy. But it's like, let's really dig into that conversation, rather than just using rhetoric to hide behind if that makes sense,

Stuart Murray  27:50  
it does, and it's a it's a great conversation, Jay, because you know, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights very clearly declares that there are elements called children's rights. There are no elements called Adult rights. That does not exist. And so I think it's so important to frame this under the education I mean, you may not agree at the end of what is being discussed around, when is it appropriate to bring in a conversation into schools around trans rights, just as an example? And you can look at that and say, Well, do we opt out of that, or can we be a part of it? The point simply is that those rights exist for children, and I know that we are struggling as a society, Jay, to get a sense of, you know, I think so often we're looking to see, well, to drive, you need to be 16. To drink, you need to be 19. I mean, there seems to be these ages that somehow delineate something. Now you're trying to sort of drive down into a level of saying, Well, what is the right age? As if there is a right age because of the complexity of society, but it should never take away from the necessity of bringing in the education of the sexual health conversation.

J Fielder  29:12  
Yeah, I think also, like an example you just gave to like in schools, like, when do we talk about transgender rights with youth? Again, kind of like zooming out a little bit. And think and thinking about the right space piece. Like, as a trans, transgender person myself, like, I have a child, and so if a school's like, we can't talk about that, my child can't talk about their own parents. Like, how does that protect a child like it doesn't like it does like these things my child, no matter what his gender identity is, these things affect my child. My child could be cisgender, right? And then it gets played out where, like, I put my child in danger just because I have a certain gender identity. No, that's not true. And so too, like people thinking they can opt out of this conversation. Um, no, you can't like one of my favorite things I love to reference is Sesame Street. So wonderful. These are the people in your neighborhood, right? Like that song, and so again, kind of like that, that piece, where too there's this idea of, like, we don't talk about these things, and that makes it safe. I think that also undermines the intelligence of children, because these things happen in your neighborhood, like, certainly, children might not have, like, an understanding of all this sexual things that happen in their neighborhood, but we're not talking about all of those. We're talking about the relationships, some of the identities, like some of the pieces. And so if we're like, oh, well, it's wrong to have multiple partners. Well, is it really like, maybe for you and someone's values, but who are your neighbors? What is happening like, what's the reality? Like? It's it's closing the door to reality. So kind of going back to that question of, like, Does it promote it? I think the other thing too, is part of having sexuality education in school, so it allows to have and facilitate some of these very real conversations. Otherwise, silence allows other teachers in so that's maybe healthier unhealthy things happening in your community that allows healthier, unhealthy things that are online, healthier unhealthy things that are in movies, TV shows, right? So let's have these conversations to help young people digest these kind of quote, unquote lessons they are already learning as well, right?

Stuart Murray  31:31  
Yeah, it's great conversation. Congratulate on parenting. It's a wonderful, wonderful experience. I'm sorry, by the way, to the reality of what you just brought forward about the challenges of bringing a child into the world with, you know, a transgendered parent, or however that may be. And I'm I mean, that's where we need this, this conversation, to be much more open and broad, and hopefully people like you, Jay and your partner and others, and all the other many 1000s of other parents that are in relationships similar, will start to have the conversation in such a way that, again, it'll become embraced, understood, as opposed to something that has to be hidden.

J Fielder  32:13  
To add to that, I think you know, kind of in the beginning, you talked about like, looking at the history of like Cirque and like sexual health in these conversations is for a lot of people like I shared, you know, one of my identities like that certainly impacts me and how I learned about sexuality, certainly. But so many people experience that, like silence around an identity or stigma around like topics like sexuality, that we kind of had to hone these skills and, like, learn sexuality education, because we weren't getting it other places. And so kind of like looking at that history as well, it's like you were saying having more families start these conversations. That's why we're having these conversations, because there have been, like, wonderful advances in human rights invisibility, where there are more like queer and trans parents that have kids, and they're also willing to stand up and say, like, my child is affected by what is happening by these policies. And so we could do many examples, like same with like we were talking about FGC before, like those affected communities they get together, and once they break the stigma and are able to talk, okay, how do different policies, different things affect our communities? And that's really kind of where sexuality education has looking at the history has come from. Has come out of necessity of people saying, Hey, I am going to break the silence. I'm going to break the stigma. I need to talk about how this affects me and or my communities, and that's how we have have progressed, really.

Stuart Murray  33:46  
You know, I asked a bit of the question about the importance of a comprehensive sexual health education, which you've answered. I was going to ask a couple of areas that may have an impact, and would love to get your thoughts on the changing demographic in Canada, Manitoba Winnipeg, is that having an impact on how, as a organization, you're able to instruct or get involved in workshops with sexual health education?

J Fielder  34:11  
This would be again, like looking on our website and our timeline, but kind of like a more recent, I think, don't quote me on it, but like last 30 ish years in Cirque history, it might be a little bit further back from that. A lot of our programs, again, I do service provider training. Then we have workshops that we call our community workshops, where people that show up to that aren't result representing like a professional capacity. We've done more and more workshops, particularly with with newcomer communities, various newcomer communities and organizations, you know, like Manitoba Association, settlement, or, I forget exactly their acronym, but like, they're a good partner and friend of ours, and so all the member organizations there, and so, kind of a lot. Of the pieces we've been talking about that that's where I've learned a lot, is from the facilitators that do those workshops. Because changing demographics is more than just newcomers from other countries, like myself, but when folks do come from another country, the laws and rights might be different, the relationships and norms, gender norms are might be different. How families behave might be different. How people behave and interact and discuss at schools might be different. And so kind of how I've connected sexual health to a lot of those other like kindergarten kids borrowing the crayons conversations. You know, we have a lot of those conversations, and they are right rights based, because we need to talk about that right when you come from country like this was the rights or laws here, it's a little bit different here. How do I work with that? And especially because what we see in families as well is if parents and guardians and youth come together, youth are usually a little bit quicker to like, catch on to the new social norms in the new place, and so we have those conversations about, that communication within families that I alluded to earlier. But also, what does it mean to hold on to your your culture, your home culture, for relationships, for family and also for sexuality, because that's what relationships and family are sexuality. So we've been doing that work for quite a bit, and I would say in general, circas, since we have that little bit of history, we can adapt pretty well to the changing demographics, because we acknowledge and see that who people are, their culture, their language or languages, their traditions, their values, you can't separate that from their sexuality. So we need to dig in, dig in there and talk about those, those those pieces.

Stuart Murray  36:58  
Can you share your experience now that the Truth and Reconciliation, when I say now, I mean, it's a number of years ago that the Commission dropped the recommendations on Canada has that had an impact on how you talk, or when I say, you Jay, I refer to SERC, or the broader sexual education community deals with issues that were raised through Truth and Reconciliation with our First Nations and and in broader indigenous community. Yeah, I

J Fielder  37:31  
would say certainly so again, sir, there's various facilitators for various backgrounds. So I'll just speak for myself. That's That's something for me that I'm still trying to learn and improve my practice. And I think one example of something I learned, just one example, maybe I have two. I talk a lot, sorry, one example is the word relationships. I've brought up quite a bit, and things I've learned from like First Nations folks, is that relationship to land? So we're talking about consent, we're talking about caring. We're talking about like taking care of each other. We're talking about is a relationship healthy, unhealthy or abusive. We can actually talk about relationship to land in the same way, and that can be part of sexuality conversations. And so again, that's something I'm learning. So I'm far from being an expert on that, but that is some like one thing I try to incorporate, certainly, and another example that, again, I'm far from being able to do this yet, but I think too, when it comes to truth and reconciliation, is acknowledging and incorporating language into sexuality education. So like, one example, we've talked about, like, gender identities, you know, sexual identity. And certainly that's a topic often when that's talked about is talked about in English, right? So people hear an acronym and they're like, oh, that's, like, a lot of terms, yeah, those are the terms in English. Like, if we talk about terms in Anishinaabe and like, sorry if I'm mispronouncing that. Again, I'm working on language, how gender is talked about, how sexuality it's talked about, there's going to be more words that do or don't translate. And certainly, again, kind of talk about newcomer populations, how pronouns work in Ukrainian is not exactly the same as English versus like Arabic, Mandarin, all the languages. So acknowledging language and finding room for people to use their their first languages, or reclaim those languages and use them is certainly a part of sexuality education as well,

Stuart Murray  39:41  
yeah, and I know your your background and your knowledge and what you've been involved in, and certainly the work that you do with Cirque, the Sexuality Education Resource Center here in Manitoba, is, you know, there's obviously a great team of people that are involved in that. I was thrilled and delighted when you answer. The request to come on humans on rights, because I really wanted to have an opportunity to talk about sexual health and the wellness of sexual health, and a sort of sense of it from somebody who is living it every single day and teaching it and being involved in it, which you are, you know, I just want to say that from my perspective, I thank you so much for your for your time, for sharing what you shared, your openness. I suspect there are many more opportunities for us to have conversations down the road on some of these other most pressing issues around sexual health, and we didn't even get into reproductive sort of issues, which I'd love to do as well, but let's reserve that for another conversation. Thank you so much for this. I really appreciate your time, and we did have to reschedule this. And again, I want to thank you for taking the time to allow us to reschedule this conversation.

J Fielder  40:53  
Yeah, no problems. Hopefully listeners are left with, like, even more questions and are very curious, definitely more. So that'd be great, yeah, and

Stuart Murray  41:02  
you know, I'll just say that you have supplied so many different resources and so many different organizations, which we'll put into the Episode notes. If people want to start finding more, we'll, we'll include all that. So thank you for putting that into your bio, and I'll put that into the the Episode notes. But thank you so much, Jay. I really appreciate your time, and hopefully, if we're walking down the street, you get a chance, and I'm I don't recognize, I don't see you come over and say hi, I'd love to meet you.

J Fielder  41:27  
Sounds great. Thank

Stuart Murray  41:28  
you. Okay, thanks, Jay. Thanks

Matt Cundill  41:30  
for listening to humans on rights. A transcript of this episode is available by clicking the link in the show notes of this episode. Humans on rights is recorded and hosted by Stuart Murray, social media marketing by Buffy Davey, music by Doug Edmund. For more, go to human rightshub.ca produced and distributed by the sound off media company. You.