Stopping shame

Stopping shame

Over 27 years, Meg Hickling changed sexual politics in B.C., earned an Order of Canada and taught countless children -- and their parents -- the truth about sex. Her mission started the day she watched a man die -- of shame.

Published: The Vancouver Sun, March 17, 2001, Insight
By Deborah Jones

Meg Hickling never forgot the older man she nursed nearly 40 years ago. He was a regular fellow who, typical of earlier generations, was too embarrassed to ask for help about his troublesome prostate gland. The only word he knew to describe his genital area was "pecker" and he couldn't bring himself to utter it to a physician. Rendered mute by shame about his body, the man suffered for 15 years, as his prostate grew ever larger. Finally it blocked his urethra, causing acute kidney failure and a gruesome death.

Hickling, a young nurse at the time, cared for the man. She knew if he'd only had the right words to talk to a doctor earlier, he could have been treated. And when he died, she recalls, "I promised myself that when I had children, I would teach my kids those words."

With that simple vow, Hickling inadvertently started a 27-year career that changed the landscape of sexual politics in B.C. and abroad and earned her the Order of Canada. As she prepares for well- deserved retirement, she's also earned her place as a healer in the best and broadest sense of the word.

"She introduced the whole healthy aspect, and the idea of people taking responsibility for their own body and their own actions," says sex educator Alice Bell, one of Hickling's proteges.

After the births of her three kids (now aged 37, 35 and 30), the Hickling household -- a warm and cultured place full of books and art and imbued with a strong sense of decorum -- became an unlikely haven for verboten words like penis, vagina, testicles and breasts. They were all presented matter-of-factly.

Her approach was the antithesis of the mindless cheerleading by the burgeoning porn industry. Sex was a science topic to Hickling, who believed very young kids would regard it as would "engineers" and eagerly learn about human physiology much the way they learned about other things. It helped that Hickling made the topic fun. Soon parents of other kids began asking Hickling to teach sex education, and asked her to make a tape of her talk. She'd discovered her life's work.

At about the same time, Canada's mores and laws were changing. Prime minister Pierre Trudeau uttered his famous line, "The state has no place in the bedrooms of the nation," and family planning was made legal in 1969. Ottawa began spending on sex education.

In the 1970s Hickling volunteered for Planned Parenthood, then became its education coordinator. She was there when the first school in B.C., University Hill in Vancouver, began teaching a sexual health course; such courses are now routine. In 1988 she left to become a nurse in private practice, speaking to school groups throughout B.C. She has written three books on sex education, two for parents and a new one for children which will be out in May.

My kids and I attended one of her lectures in Vancouver seven years ago. I strolled in with the insouciance of an adult who had nothing to learn, and left with my jaw agape. Did you know that there are hundreds of sexually transmitted diseases (counting the variations of HIV and human papilloma virus), all can be transmitted through oral as well as genital sex and that nine of them can kill?

You really haven't experienced sex education until you've seen the incongruous sight of Hickling demonstrating a condom and showing a dildo in front of hundreds of giggling elementary students and squirming parents and teachers.

Hickling is a petite woman who radiates an unusual combination of dignity and warmth. Her natural healthy countenance is topped with a cap of shiny grey hair, she wears glasses that enhance her merry eyes and, as other observers have noted, she looks for all the world like a nun.

She does, in fact, faithfully attend her United Church -- but her religious zeal is directed at the health and welfare of children, who from infancy are bombarded with sexual images and in virtually all media, hearing about sex even on newscasts. Sex in a time of AIDS can be lethal. Sex at an early age can cause lifelong psychological damage. Ignorance about sex sets kids up to become prey for sexual abusers. Studies show that kids who receive good sex education delay having intercourse for up to four years.

Many parents close their eyes to these realities, insisting on teaching their kids about sex, or blindly believing that sex is sinful and a taboo topic. "This is a tough subject," understates Hickling, who has received death threats but doesn't dwell on them. "They're wounded souls," she says with compassion for her tormentors. Her critics say sex education encourages youngsters to have sex. They might be surprised at how remarkably conservative Hickling is.

Some of her advice: Children should never take friends into bedrooms to play. Abstinence is desirable. Sleepovers should be banned: "You have no idea what's going on in that family."

And to people who say sex education erodes childhood innocence, she retorts, "Nothing ends a child's innocence like being sexually abused."

Hickling's leadership in sex education is one reason that B.C. has North America's lowest rate of teen pregnancy.

Hickling, 60, will miss watching kids' faces light up with relief when "they realized they are not alone or that they are normal." But she has books to read, two grandchildren to play with, travel plans with her husband Tony.

And so last Wednesday night Hickling gave her last performance in B.C. at Renfrew elementary in Vancouver, the same school where she first talked to students. As she did every night before her sessions, Hickling sat in her car quaking in nervousness until a scant five minutes before she was due on stage, because "I never know what's going to happen or who's going to take exception."

Then Hickling launched into her passionate, funny and rigorously scientific campaign to help kids respect and understand sexual health. At the end, for the first time in her career, Hickling got a standing ovation.

If Hickling's patient with kidney failure were alive, he'd surely have presented an armful of roses to his nurse as she took her bows.
Copyright Deborah Jones 2001
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Meg Hickling retires from teaching sexual truths

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