“A Few Years Ago Providing A Comprehensive Sexual Education Was Like You Were Seen As ‘The One That Talks About Sex'”, Says Argentine Feminist Celeste Mac Dougall.
By WAF Editors
Celeste Mac Dougall is a history teacher and an activist in the National Campaign for the right to a legal abortion in Argentina. She has led numerous rallies during the last decade addressing large crowds and advocating for abortion rights and comprehensive sex education within the Network of Teachers she is part of. Celeste believes that comprehensive sexual education has helped advance a “social decriminalization” of abortion, taking it out of the shadows and removing shame from the procedure. Women Across Frontiers interviewed Celeste a few days after Argentina legalized abortion making Argentina the largest country in the region to do so.
Read and watch our interview in our YouTube channel by clicking the link below
Celeste Mac Dougall: “A few years ago providing a comprehensive sexual education was like you were seen as ‘the one that talks about sex,’ or ‘oh look what she’s talking about, she said orgasm.’ My former students, who are adults now, say to me: ‘you were the only one who spoke to us about sex education in secondary school.’ I imagine it must have happened to other fellow teachers. When I started teaching sex education in schools ‘sex’ was a bad word. It seems to me that social media helps a lot in the dissemination of information. Even with all these social networks or doctors’ influencers, school is irreplaceable, and studying at school is also irreplaceable because the content in social media is instantaneous and decisive. I’m not saying it is good, there is good information, but they are like “spasms” of information, with loose data. One of the keys to comprehensive sexual education is the possibility of building a friendly space within the classroom where certain issues can be worked through with such depth that it allows these kids to rethink situations of daily security in which they live and that they can chat about.”
Celeste has been a key player with the “green wave” green bandanas (or pañuelos), a symbol of the feminist movement in Argentina, a term she is not convinced to give to this movement:
Celeste Mac Dougall (CM): “On the one hand, I like the reference because the tide comes, and it sweeps you in. But it also comes and goes, and this movement is here to stay, and it is not that it comes and goes like the tide. Moreover, it was something that was built little by little, consistently, in an invisible and federal way that changed and produced many ideas and pre-concepts related to the right to abortion and in general to everything else. When you discuss the right to abortion, you also discuss sexual relations, if they are pleasant or not, the relationship you have, you discuss everything. I feel that the law allows for the discussion of everything. So, all these discussions are here to stay, they don’t come and go.”
WAF: Now that abortion is legal in Argentina, what’s next for the Campaign and for abortion activists?
CM: “We achieved this law, now all the responsibility lies with the state, to guarantee and comply with the law. We, as activists, have already done what we had to do, we have already managed to generate social awareness and we have succeeded in getting the government to approve this law. We would tell you that we are done “
Top photo credit: Julieta Bugacoff