A new Australian government sex education campaign is being criticized for being "bizarre" and "concerning" by rights activists.
The campaign, which includes videos, podcasts and short movie clips, is aimed at teaching school children about sexual harassment and sexual consent.
The online program uses metaphors to convey ideas such as abuse and disrespect. One video shows a teenage girl smearing a milkshake on her boyfriend's face without his permission - to illustrate how consent works.
While the campaign is well-intentioned it didn't convey intended messages appropriately, its critics said. Women's rights activists and anti-rape groups said the content might be harmful because it didn't reflect realistic situations or relationships.
Rights groups said the videos avoided using the words "sex" or "rape" - which are ideas teenagers need to be aware of at a young age. Another criticism was a lack of clarification between sex and gender norms compared with sex and gender myths. In one example, a video suggested ideas such as "males enjoy sex more than females" as gender norms.
Gender equality organization Fair Agenda launched an online petition calling on the government to work with violence prevention experts to revamp the "concerning and bizarre" campaign.
"There is some good information on the site. But there's also some really harmful stuff, which outweighs any of the good," according to the director of the Australian organization End Rape on Campus, Sharna Bremner.
The materials were also criticized for being out of touch with today's youth owing to their older pop culture references. One of the videos references the movie "Titanic," which was released more than 24 years ago. Another video references the "X-Files" TV series.
The Australian government defended the campaign and said it worked with a panel of experts to come up with the content.
"These materials will provide additional support to better educate young Australians on these issues and have been designed to complement programs already being offered by states and territories," Education Minister Alan Tudge said.
The new national sex education campaign, which includes more than 350 videos and audio content, was published on The Good Society website. It was developed as part of the county's Respect Matters Program aimed at teaching young adults about having healthy and respectful relationships.
