The Saturday Paper

Joy Townsend Teaching Young People About Consent

Australia faces a reality where porn has become young people’s choice for sex education – not because it’s a good educator, but because it’s better than what else is on offer. The federal government’s new consent education campaign is exemplary of why this is the case.

The campaign has come to be known as “the milkshake video”. It depicts a scene in which an overly enthusiastic teenage girl smears her milkshake on her male companion’s face, chanting, “Drink it, drink it all!” A David Attenborough-esque voiceover then introduces an otherwise unfamiliar concept of “the field model” to discuss consent.