At the helm of the project is Adam Howard, a Colby professor and chair of its education department. Howard’s recent research has focused on elite all-boys institutions which he became interested in after Brett Kavanaugh was confirmed to the Supreme Court despite allegations of sexual assault; one of the things Howard found was that sex education was almost entirely lacking at these institutions. While working with student researchers, he asked what the best way to disseminate their research findings would be. “They said TikTok,” Howard says. “The videos are providing really valuable information in really accessible ways.” Among that information: how to prioritize female sexual pleasure, what to do if you test positive for a sexually transmitted disease, and the difference between coercion and consent.
Sex Ed for Guys offers alternate programming. “Guys could be scrolling through their TikTok and Andrew Tate will pop up but as they scroll, maybe Sex Ed for Guys will pop up and it’ll start having them think a little bit differently,” says Christopher Maichin, 20, a junior at Colby. “I think the greatest part of it is that they are getting education without even knowing it. They’re watching a funny video but they’re learning about consent.” Howard says that the logic of disseminating his research findings on TikTok is two-fold: First, that’s where young people are (research shows 55 percent of TikTok users are under the age of 30) and second, it’s a way of offering a counter-narrative to other popular content. “They are learning what it means to be a man from Joe Rogan and the manosphere,” Howard says. “How can we provide a counter-narrative to that? How can we provide something different?”
Some stereotypes are natural (let’s be real) but to only cater to them makes it seem like everyone else is wrong.
A way around this is to perhaps present the video along the lines of “if you are the kind of person who feels X in situation Y, consider expressing it respectfully by doing A, B or C” (where X is a stereotype)