Ms Mary McDermott:

Education is another thorny question. I return to sex, gender and sexuality and how it is handled in schools. Core to that whole dynamic is the issue of violence and control in intimacy and what that is all about. We talk about consent and who would not support that? On the other hand, one of the most dispiriting things I heard within a short time of this issue being raised was that you already had young men asking young women to sign a consent on the phone to say that they had agreed to sex. Consent is completely meaningless without context and the issue of choice: whose choice; what are you choosing; whose desire is at play here? Famously women's desire is always rather submerged.