By Louisa Foley
The book Fact and Fantasy File and the Making Sense of Sex Hotline have created a stir among reactionaries in NSW, with the Sunday Telegraph running a campaign against them, Premier Nick Greiner condemning them and Prime Minister Paul Keating immediately caving in and cutting off federal financial support.
Both book and hotline are the initiatives of the NSW Family Planning Association. Launched on January 22, they are designed by and for young people to inform them about their bodies, sex and relationships.
The Fact and Fantasy File is in the form of a school diary and is a fantastic resource for young people. Full of positive advice and tips on sex, health, relationships and legalities, the diary goes a long way to dispel the darkness young people are kept in about their sexuality.
It includes interviews with young people like Sophie Lee and Maynard Crabbes about their views on relationships and safe sex. Graphics and cartoons also get the information across about safe sex and, particularly for young women, having a healthy attitude to one's sexuality.
The Making Sense of Sex Hotline is intended to answer the questions that the diary doesn't. Again it is young people who run the hotline; they staff the phones from 4 to 7 p.m. daily.
Young people usually get most of their information on sex from their friends, even when they have the most sympathetic of parents, but now they have access to quality information about sex, rather than the kind of information that can land them in trouble. Those staffing the phones have all been trained by Family Planning Association educators for a period of three months, and two FPA educators sit in with them.
The hotline will run for four months. Young people want it: 130 calls were received on the hotline's first night, and they have continued at about 50 calls a night. One very positive aspect has been the number of callers from country areas who
discovered the hotline through the furore over it from conservative politicians and the commercial media, and who have obviously found that the hotline fills a need for information in more isolated areas.
The controversy has brought headaches for the Family Planning Association, but also a lot of support from young people. One caller said , "They're trying to put us off you, but all they're doing is to make us know about you more". All 5000 of the diaries have been snapped up too.
The hotline has been funded as a pilot project. The Family Planning Association would like to see it continue and expand to have a 008 toll free number. The hotline and diary are both fantastic, and would be totally worthwhile as an ongoing project. Letters of support for it can be sent to Brian Howe, federal minister for health.